Alex Lightman takes observations from two writers separated by a century and a half and uses them as a basis for an optimistic look at the future. Alexis de Toqueville wrote that in the US the proliferation of voluntary associations made the social fabric of the nation that much richer. In our own time, Francis Fukuyama has asserted that the ability to trust those you know is one of a society's most valuable resources.

Lightman continues by showing how this combination of association and trust was harnessed to promote positive change in the specific example of the move to embrace the IPv6 standard. He terms this process globalization/localization and believes that the nature of the universe is such that when change is wished for strongly enough and actions are taken to start that change, the movement will generate a momentum of its own.

This talk is as much an introduction to the next Accelerating Change conference as an epilogue for this one. As he sends the audience away with copies of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, he asks them to read it quickly so that everyone is rapidly up to speed with the nature of the changes affecting the globe today.