That is absolutely fascinating Rainman, thanks for sharing that with me. You said, there is a new-age awareness, can you share with me, some links, on who these groups are. I am already researching novelty theory, and the Mayan prophecies.
I am however very dubious of this all, especially the forecast of novelty theory. While it makes perfect sense, that the gaps between paradigms shifts narrow with the aquisition of knowledge, it does not necessarily imply, that the gaps will exponentially and uniformly reduce. There is always a saturation point, where it all slows down again. Like the economic growth of a country, the population growth of the world, or indeed the growth of a human - if you apply this extrapolation here, then we should be over 15 feet by the time we are 50 years old. The population of India should be 2.5 billion in 50 years, and China's economy should be $18 trillion in 50 years.
Paradigm shifts too, should logically slow down. Think about it, the previous paradigm shifts were mostly conceptual or basic principles of physics, the heliocentric theory of the universe, the realisation the Earth was not flat, the theory of gravitation and newtonian physics, evolution, the steam engine. Since the commence of the atomic age, the information age, and now the Quantum age, which is a true paradigm shifts, we have only started to uncover the many layers of existence, and potential we can tap; wormholes; vacuum energy; gravity manipulation; space time manipulation; superstring theory; quantum teleportation, parallel dimensions; artificial intelligence; interstellar and intergalactic travel. However, this is NOT going to happen in 8 years. We do not have the infrastructure, the resources, the productivity, the capacity and the intellect for such quantum leaps. We are an infant spacefaring species, whose next milestone, is setting foot on Mars(Moon+1) after 2012, developing a more sophisticated artificial intelligence(Computers+1) commercializing fusion and anti-matter production(electricity+1) and genetically modifying humans(Medicine+1) - NOT quantumly teleporting across to the next universe.
Consciousness can only be elevated with leaps in intelligence in all of human socieity as a whole, and when humanity is united and one. This is an ongoing process, augumented with technology, and it will not happen over night. Before you can walk, you must crawl, and before you can run, you must walk. We are still crawling, so before we can run, we have to walk first. In a socieity where more than half of the population has below average intelligence and where 95% are leading sheepish lives, its highly unlikely that anything will change anytime soon.
As for the Mayan prophecies. Could it be, that whoever worked this out, was doing it to conform with the Mayan prophecy?
However, if aliens really are going to be disclosed to us, socieity indeed will dramatically transformed, but its benefits will not be felt right away/