Time certainly has changed the neighborhood. Once we knew everybody -- everybody that existed in our world. Some people still live like that. Some of the stone-age people in Papua New Guinea live that way. "Never saw anybody so white," they might have said if they could speak to me. Whatever they had for ghosts, the vision likely didn't include white. They thought only they existed in the world. They were right. In their world. No wonder they were so impressed during World War II by strange flying objects in the sky that dropped off bundles of goodies. They waited for the return of this messiah, and formed what become known as "cargo cults."

Our once nomadic society has vanished. In developed countries (even this term is outdated; what comes after "developed"?), few are farmers. The cultures and societies -- taboos, restrictions, routines, legends, mysteries, sexual practices, eating preferences, religions, and views on life and death -- from nomadic days have faded into historical stereotypes, only rarely discussed. The new nomads will be vastly different.

All peoples have had societies that were born, flowered (or failed at birth or shortly thereafter), existed for centuries or millennia, and then moved into the neverending history of yesterday. In times of massive change, society is forced to change. In times past, it was easier. Change usually took place when your tribe lost a battle with another. The victors did what they wanted, and any surviving losers, following the dictates of the day, meekly did as told. So their culture and society folded and was incorporated into whatever the victor was pushing at the time. What was went beyond society, as the vanquished knew it.

As we generate tomorrows at an increasingly rapid rate, we are creating history at the same or greater speed. So our method of recording and storing such details in books is becoming non-viable. While speaking recently to Sage Technologies in Atlanta, Georgia, I was given additional details about their new vinyl CD-ROM which will hold the equivalent of one million 3OO-page books. This wasn't the latest news. I knew that since last week. Their latest is a CD-ROM, same 4.5 inch size, constructed of perhaps up to 16 vinyl layers (their current theoretical limit). Each layer can hold one million 300-page books. Good progress -- for a week.

Society will change more dramatically during the next decade than during most of the last century.

Everything is Everywhere

A lot of people in the Western world refuse to acknowledge that a force stronger than any during the last century is striding over this planet. The globalization of technology is putting into the hands of last week's uneducated Third World peasants a technology much more powerful than that which allowed Britain and other European countries to leave serfdom behind. North America may be the hardest hit, in the near term, as we continue to fail to realize what is happening and fail to act appropriately.

Many very small companies in numerous foreign lands, once considered doomed to forever exist in subsistence survival, have, in the past few years, moved out of that shadow into the Communications Age. In Nigeria, The Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia, people have learned how to provide computer services to companies right here in North America. These numbers will grow. And more countries will provide inexpensive yet efficient services.

What the electric motor did for the world (over the 65-year period it took to get into universal distribution) is happening now within the computer field in months not years. The speed seems almost immediate. Wealth created and improvements in social conditions out-rival anything produced by the Industrial Age.

Take Bangalore. Once just another of India's one million villages, this city, west of Madras and due south of Hyderabad in the middle of the southern tip of India, is now well known next door in Seattle. Microsoft and Nordstrom, the leading department store retailer in the Pacific Northwest, have engineers and programmers working for them from Bangalore. They are working faster and better than their North American counterparts. Their work is also up to a threatening 70 percent cheaper.

Indians involved in this field are over-qualified and, from my experience, are driven to succeed (an attitude likely derived from the competition created by about 900 million people) for a place in the firmament of India's cyberspace. They have a hunger unknown among their counterparts here. Silicon Valley is no longer limited to the original in California. India now has its own.

Because of its huge purchasing power, the American dollar becomes worth 30 times as much in India. That distorts reality and is the main driving force. It is something like the 25 percent discount offered to Americans when they buy Canadian. Only now India can offer an 85 percent discount.

No, this will not continue for long. The rupee will rise dramatically as Indians produce more and go increasingly upscale with their expertise and efficiency. Eventually workers will demand more money. Their current tremendous wage differentials will start to level out. Some will advance to more sophisticated projects, while others will replace what Japan did 30 years ago, what Hong Kong and Singapore achieved 20 years ago, and what Taiwan and South Korea appropriated a decade ago. Those countries have already vacated areas they dominated just a few years ago.

It is obvious in our own marketplace. Thirty years ago Americans produced 85 percent of what they sold; they imported but 15 percent of goods and services. Today they import 45 percent. The trend is slowing down. The figure is not much different in Canada. Even more astonishing, 90 percent of all the goods and services that North Americans will be interacting with in 10 years haven't even been developed. Where will most of those items be created? Where will the goods be made or services managed -- in an age when you can do anything from anywhere?

Go on the Internet, ask a question about Windows 95. You will get a very fast and correct answer -- from the other side of the world. Likely four out of 10 from India. Via E-mail there basically is no cost. One company, among many, provides this service. For Microsoft, who can't find North Americans willing to do economically what they consider too mundane, tomorrow may be another story.

Now that the rest of the world contains 95 percent of the global population, the remaining five percent (and diminishing) in North America is not going to have the same clout as in the past. Youth and energy is on the side of Asia and South America. They want the cappuccino and chocolate and "the fine life" that Hollywood has shown them. That alone provides stiff competition from almost everywhere.

This upsurge will not happen overnight, but the trend is apparent to anyone who looks. The upsurge will come in increasingly major waves on all shores, and it will be unstoppable. When time and space vanish, wonders and disasters can happen overnight.

Classics Go Global

As a born-in-Toronto, raised-in-Philadelphia kid, I learned early in life that there was one great musical organization and that was the Philadelphia Orchestra. Oh, there were others. New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston had fine orchestras, but the Philadelphia Orchestra was tops. At least in Philadelphia.

Remember that this was back, well back, in the days when classical compositions faced less competition than they do today. There are still people who prefer classical music to popular music. But listeners are subject to so many other seductions.

Top orchestras in Oregon and Atlanta have gone on strike. And even high-brow classical musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra have hit the bricks. San Diego and Sacramento have filed for bankruptcy protection. Others are teetering on the brink. Charlotte, North Carolina, just about fell off the stage last spring. Hard times have hit the once untouchables of the music world. Top-notch orchestras in Toronto and Vancouver now swim in a maelstrom of red ink.

With high taxes, even the rich (the government of British Columbia classifies anyone making C$55,000 as "rich"). Here 41 percent of the work force is in the two top income tax brackets. With income taxes of 54.9 percent, even the "rich" can't be that any more. Tuxedos don't come with deep pockets anymore either. With no others to subsidize what a government now will not underwrite, orchestras are in trouble because they really never learned how to market what they have, and because modern home sound systems are so good. Now it's probably too late.

Why have orchestras, at least in recent times, been having high turnover in conductors? Because the conductors are not as good as those we listened to in previous years? Certainly not. If they cannot attract large recording companies to put them on CDs, they do not bring in the big recording fees that balance the bottom line, so they are out.

Orchestras have also fallen on poor times because the "young" bulge is growing older. Then they do not buy as many CDs. Overall CD sales are down seven to eight percent after doubling to US$40 billion during the last 10 years. Another problem.

Foreign music is invading North America in a way similar to the way American music has moved worldwide. Latest fad? The Macarena beat. It comes from Spain, Venezuela, and Brazil. American production in this beat is currently limited to talented ex-Cubans in Miami.

Philadelphian musicians have a base salary of US$75,000. They are on strike because they want a raise to eight percent in the extra recording fees ($6,000) they receive -- in advance. Big hope. The Philadelphia orchestra, which has a budget of US$28 million, is finally forced to draw the line between income and expenses. They can no longer keep increasing the debt load. Sound familiar?

With talk about globalization of trade, the first thought to hit most minds is, "Oh great! Now we can sell our products and services all over the world without costly tariffs." We never dreamed that people on the other side were saying the same thing! Bear in mind that 95 percent of the world population lives outside North America.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the once-poorer East Europeans flowed into Western Germany and the rest of the world -- and their music followed. Now readily, even eagerly accepted, foreign-recorded music is replacing some, maybe much, of the music formerly recorded by the now highly paid (on the global musical scale) American and Canadian musicians. If your music is not as goods and as cheap as that from elsewhere on the planet, you are toast.

Current contracts are running out. Not many will be renewed. (Philips just cancelled a proposed Boston Symphony recording of a Ravel opera.) No one will renew them when extremely skilled Russians will play for US$150 -- a month! Noted international conductor Seiji Ozawa says today, "All my own recording offers come from Europe."

Is there no quality level any more, you ask? The answer is "yes." And it's coming from elsewhere! If your skill, your art, your profession is not capable of being marketed globally, if it is not competitive in Karachi, Kinshasa, or Kota Kinabalu, it is not competitive anywhere. Mter living the protected high-life for the last 50 years, it is a tough high tone to reach, when the rest of the world's musical stars march onto what was once your stage.