In agricultural and industrial economies, poverty was justified by shortages. When demand outstripped supply, prices went up and someone invariably went without. That’s no longer an acceptable justification (if it ever was). Information isn’t scarce and it’s easily created and distributed. Information is plentiful, renewable, and nonpolluting; education is the keystone to building equitability in the information economy.
Access to information will become one of the most politicized issues in the coming years. Japan, for example, has already adapted its culture to the realities of access. An island with so little tillable soil and lacking in virtually all other natural resources, Japan bet heavily on its single greatest asset: its own people. The country has hit a few rough spots along the way, but is reasonably well positioned for the coming changes.
According to International Data Corporation, world consumption of information technology exceeded US$1 trillion per year in the 1980s. By the end of the 1990s, information technology consumption is expected to double to US$2 trillion each year. Not surprisingly, North Americans produce and consume roughly one-half of this total.
In the earlier agricultural and industrial economies, political power was wielded based on geography; you couldn’t conquer what you couldn’t reach. In an economy based on intangibles, relationships become more important than geographic proximity. Pyramidal organization charts—the kind enjoyed by most industrial-age corporations—are distortions of reality. The corporation of the future will look very different, becoming much more flat, or at least a less steeply pointed pyramid.
