When asked recently* what he thought was the next social issue to undergo a sea change, Marc Andreesen replied:

“Far more generalized acceptance of widespread variations in human behavior. All of us who were raised pre-Internet were taught that there is something called ‘normal,’ and I think that whole concept might go right out the window.”

You can see this already in many spheres. Partly where young people have been denied membership of the old “normal” (in areas such as employment, home ownership, etc), as well as areas where the next generation plainly decided that the way we had been doing it was wrong (IP around digital media, the degree to which undergarments should be a visible fashion statement, etc).

The interesting question is: what next? If you dispense with the limiting concept of “normal”, a whole lot of new possibilities open up.

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*Credit: The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/05/02/upshot/FUTURE.html?hp&_r=0