Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age?
I have a friend by the name Michael Southon. He wrote an article about the Information Age and who are those who will strike a fortune in this Age. Let me share with you…
As you know, we’re now well and truly in the Information Age. It began about 10 years ago. In fact, many economists say it began in 1989, with the Fall of the Berlin Wall (and the start of the World Wide Web).
To understand who will become wealthy in the Information Age, first we need to understand how the Information Age differs from the Industrial Age (born about 1860, died about 1989).
In fact, let’s get a complete overview and go back to the Agrarian Age.
In the Agrarian Age, society was basically divided into two classes: the landowners and the people who worked on the land (the serfs). If you were a serf, there wasn’t much you could do about it: land-ownership passed down through families and you were stuck with the status you were born into.
When the Industrial Age arrived, everything changed: it was no longer agriculture that generated most of the wealth, but manufacturing. Suddenly, land was no longer the key to wealth. A factory occupied far less land than a sheep farm or a wheat farm.
With the Industrial Age came a new kind of wealthy person: the self-made businessman. Wealth no longer depended on land-ownership and the family you were born into. Business acumen and factories were creating a new class of wealthy person. But it still required enormous capital to build a factory and start a business.
Then came the World Wide Web (in about 1989) and globalization. Suddenly, everything changed again.
Factories (or real estate) were no longer necessary to run a business. Anyone with a website could start a business. The barriers to wealth that existed in the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age were completely gone. People who could never have dreamed of owning their own business were making millions from their kitchen table.
Of course, the Information Revolution didn’t begin in 1989….
Read Part 2 of Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age?
Read Part 3 of Who Will Become Wealthy in the Information Age?
