Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age? Part 2
This is a continuation of “Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age?” by Michael Southon.
In the previous article, we talked about the difference in Agrarian Age, Industrial Age and the World Wide Web. We mentioned how people create wealth in each Age.
Here, we will look at how Information Age is different from Industrial Age.
It began in 1444 when Gutenberg invented the printing press in Mainz, Germany.
But the printing press (newspapers, magazines, paperbacks) belonged to the Industrial Age, not the Information Age.
The printing press is a ‘one-to-many’ technology. The Internet is a ‘many-to-many’ technology. And that was what changed in 1989.
The Industrial Age was about centralization and control. The Information Age is about de-centralization and no control. No government and no media magnate controls the Internet. This is the crucial thing to understand about the Information Age.
As we moved from the Agrarian Age through the Industrial Age to the Information Age, there’s been a steady collapse of the barriers that kept one section of society wealthy and the other section poor.
In the Information Age, literally anyone can become wealthy.
So now that we have a clearer picture of how the Information Age differs from the Industrial Age, let’s ask that question again: ‘Who will become wealthy in the Information Age?’:
(1) People Who are Self-Taught
To explain this better, let’s go back to the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age, and the Transmission of Skills.
In the Agrarian Age, skills were passed on from father to son. If you wanted to learn how to be a blacksmith you had to be a blacksmith’s son. If you wanted to learn to be a stone-mason, you had to be the son of a stone-mason.
With the coming of the Industrial Age, all this changed. You could go to University and learn whatever skills you wanted. Knowledge was freely available.
But in the Information Age, the Transmission of Skills is changing once again.
The skills necessary to succeed in the Information Age are not being learnt from our parents (as in the Agrarian Age), nor are they being learnt in schools and colleges (as in the Industrial Age). Children are teaching their parents computer skills. And many of the entrepreneurs who start hi-tech Internet companies have never been to college.
The millionaires (and billionaires) of tomorrow probably won’t have a college education. They will be high-school drop-outs, self-taught people.
Find out who are the rest capable of striking it rich in the Information Age in the next episode.
Read Part 1 of Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age?
Read Part 3 of Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age?
