Much social change is based on highly interrelated phenomena. For example, during the Industrial Revolution, and in a relatively short time, agriculturally dominant societies became urban societies. This didn’t happen only because people suddenly believed city life was better, although some no doubt did believe that, or merely because city jobs were plentiful and farming jobs scarce, although that was also, generally, true. Industrialization created jobs in the cities, and also made farms more labor-efficient through mechanization. Former small-farm owners and agricultural workers could find jobs in the city manufacturing, among other things, the machines that made their farm labor superfluous. A number of other trends contributed to the farm-city migration, such as improved transportation systems to move perishable goods (and people) quickly to the centers of population, improved communications, and education systems that gave rural people skills that they could apply to urban jobs and urban life.
Indirect and direct convergences. For the farm-to-city migration story, it is no simple matter to define which influencing factors were the primary or the first-in-line cause of the migration, or how much each factor contributed. However, we can identify other common occurrences in which the lines of interrelationship are less obscure, and we would label those “indirect convergences,” in contrast to the “direct convergence” model, exemplified by the farm-to-city migration story.
The Internet is everyone’s favorite “new tool,” and there are hosts of predictions about how it is changing and will continue to change life on Earth. One specific value of the Internet is how it facilitates small-scale, specialized commerce, because prospective customers can not only find what they want fairly easily, but can also acquire it. Simultaneously, interest in entrepreneurship is probably higher than it has ever been. At least part of that enthusiasm is due to the flagging appeal of corporate employment, as aggressive worldwide competition has forced many firms to downsize their staffs and cut long-term benefits, perks, etc. Although the Internet has a role in making the corporate world a more competitive place, it is an indirect one. The two trends, of diminishing corporate appeal and enhanced entrepreneurship due to Internet access, are at least somewhat independent, but they converge, indirectly, to encourage increased entrepreneurship.