INDUSTRIAL VS. COMMUNICATIONS AGE - PART ONE 

The Industrial Age extended man's muscle. The Communications Age extends his or her mind and imagination.

During the Industrial Age, the discovery of, and demand for, natural resources of all types greatly increased. The Communications Age requires far fewer raw materials than required then. In fact, the fastest-growing portion of today's changing world -- communications -- requires almost no physical resources compared to industries from the past. Computer chips are made of silicon. Sand. And not much of that. Sand is so plentiful that the cost is never going to get out of hand. The power required is practically nothing. No comparison to, say, moving an auto production line. Yet more than $100 billion dollars moves by EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) every day! No assembly line ever ran that fast. Both North America and Europe prospered relatively easily during the age of mechanical machines, because they had the natural resources, understood the game and exploited the new devices that resulted from a spurt of innovation hitherto unknown on this planet.

Japan, with almost no natural resources except their people, is today the second richest country on earth - and still very upwardly mobile. Japanese land values alone, even with a recent temporary slump, are worth four times all the land in America: $16 trillion compared to $4 trillion in the U.S. But, elsewhere the demand for natural resources and the prices those resources can command is dropping steadily even with a growing world population. Why? Everything is growing downscale. Although few people remember, computers used to be huge, filling many rooms. Today, some, such as Sony's new Data Discman fit in the palm of your hand.

Are we too blind, too wrapped up in the industrial game to perceive that the game has changed -- and we are not at bat?

It was in Nottingham, England in 1811 that the Luddite Movement was founded. The Luddites believed -- and rightly so -- that innovations then being introduced into the British textile industry would make their jobs obsolete. So they went on a violent rampage, with overall little impact on the change sweeping their country at that time. It was the advent of John Kay's "flying shuttle" and Richard Arkright's Cotton Jenny that changed the clothing scene forever. The 50,000 hours, then required in India, (the largest cloth manufacturer) to spin 100 pounds of cotton, eventually dropped to 135 man-hours. And the changes provided durable clothes at affordable prices. The changes quickly moved Europe and then America from the 18th century to the 20th. In 1870, about 12 million Americans had jobs. That was 31 percent of the population. Within 115 years there were 116 million jobs and 48 percent of the population learned what steady employment could bring. It could and did create miracles: Per capita income went from $530 (in constant 1958 dollars) in 1870 to $3,500 in 100 years. That 600 percent increase in wealth did wonders for the United States and its citizens. They became better fed, enjoyed a higher standard of living and vastly improved health care and education. Education, now coming into question, today receives 10 times the amount of funding in constant dollars compared to 100 years ago. In 1870 America had an educated elite. Only two percent of the population had a high school education. College students in all the U.S.A. totaled but 52,000. Today 7.5 million Americans acquire higher learning.

Another "elite" is developing. The "have" and the "have nots" of the Industrial Age have been replaced by the "know" and the "know nots" of the Communications Age. The gap between the masses of technopeasants and the new elite will grow ever wider as the new age progresses. Because the more we know makes it even easier to know more. Those that are behind at the start of the race may never catch up.

Figures show that the wealth of the world increased about 30 times when we went from the Agricultural Age to the peak of the Industrial Age. Some of this wealth increase occured during the millennias of the agricultural days. Most happened as a much shorter Industrial Age blossomed. My research suggests that the wealth of the world will increase another 100 times by the end of an even briefer Communications Age. As during times previous such wealth will not be distributed evenly. People and countries that prospered in the earlier age may not make it in the next. Others, who failed to grasp the implications of mechanical action may see the light more clearly in the days of the photon.

More information: "The Age of Intelligent Machines" by Raymond Kurzweil. MIT Press, 55 Hayward St., Cambridge, MA 02142

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