The oddly amazing and amazingly odd (and sadly, recently departed) Robert Anton Wilson, in one of his curious collections of essays, casually suggested the existence of a “Jumping Jesus Phenomenon.” Wilson starts by defining a unit of measure; the “jesus.” He defines it as the “known scientific facts in the year 1 A.D.” The phenomenon then, is the ostensibly exponential growth of human knowledge. As Wilson off-the-cuffs the math:

Before going any further, let us ask how long it took to arrive at one jesus. One way of estimating is to take the estimated age of homo sapiens, in which case it took 40,000 to 100,000 years.

How long did it take to double this accumulation of knowledge, to achieve two jesuses? It required 1500 years - until 1500 A.D. How long did it take to double again and obtain four jesuses? It required 250 years, and we had four jesuses in our larder by 1750.

The next doubling took 150 years, and by 1900 A.D. humanity had eight jesuses in our information account. The next doubling took 50 years, and by 1950 we had 16 jesuses. The next, ten years, and by 1960 we had 32 jesuses. The next doubling took seven years, and by 1967 we had 64 jesuses. And the next doubling took 6 years; by 1973 we have 128 jesuses.

There is no reason to imagine that the acceleration has stopped. Thus, we almost certainly reached 256 j around 1978-79 and 512 j in 1982.

Anyway, what these parabolic-growth-of-human-knowledge theories generally seem to agree upon is that we are living in what Kurzweil calls “the boot of the curve.” Things are changing faster than ever. Change is the new stasis.

Now what? If you’re running an organization, this paradigm of change means that it is more difficult than ever to sit on something that will last. For example, an investment in the telegraph in the early 19th century could be expected to yield returns for a lifetime. What extant technology can be expected to be both profitable and unchanged for the next 75 years? No wonder everyone has been chomping at the bit of innovation for the last decade.

This is where I get to ask those pretentious Seth Godinesque rhetorical questions: What is your organization doing to institutionalize innovation? What effect is the paradigm of change having on your organization’s landscape? How cool am I that I can pose these questions with an air of disaffected superiority?