More about “Revolutionary Wealth”

As I leave the subject of what the futurists, Heidi and Alvin Toffler, have to say about the world economy, I'll quote a few passages of their book, "Revolutionary Wealth," that captured my attention enough that I dogeared the pages where I marked the passages for future re-reading. From the paperback printed in 2006 (ISBN: 978-0-385-52207-6):

Page 5

Tomorrow's economy, for example, will present significant business opportunities in fields like hyper-agriculture, neurostimulation, customized health care, nanoceuticals, bizarre new energy sources, streaming payment systems, smart transportation, flash markets, new forms of education, non-lethal weapons, desktop manufacturing, programmable money, risk management, privacy-invasion sensors that tell us when we're being observed – indeed, sensors of all kinds – plus a bewildering myriad of other goods, services and experiences.

Page 109

Beginning with our six billion-plus brains, and based on the rates at which they absorb information and how fast we forget it, Lesk roughly calculated that the "total memory of all the people now alive" is the equivalent of 1,200 petabytes of data. Since a petabyte is equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes, 1,200 sounds like a lot. But, Lesk nonchalantly assures us, "we can store digitally everything that everyone remembers. For any single person, this isn't even hard."

After all, he continues, "the average American spends 3,304 hours per year with one or another kind of media." Some 1,578 hours are spent watching TV, another 12 in front of movie screens – which adds up to about 11 million words. Another 354 hours are devoted to newspapers, magazines and books. The result, he suggests, is that "in 70 years of life you would be exposed to around six gigabytes of ASCII." Today, you can buy a 400-gigabyte disk drive for your personal computer.

Page 355

In the United States and most rich democracies, wave conflict is usually subtler than in the poor world. But it is there nonetheless. It appears at many different levels, ranging from energy policy and transportation to corporate regulation and, above all, education.

Industrial America was built on the back of cheap fossil fuels and an immense infrastructure for distributing energy around the country. Costly and overdependent on imported oil and gas, the American energy-distribution system includes 158,000 miles of electrical transmission lines and 2 million miles of oil pipelines that, because they are heavy fixed assets, are hard to alter in response to rapid change.

The United States is rushing to build an advanced knowledge-based economy but remains saddled with an industrial-age, legacy-energy system politically defended by some of the world's biggest and most influential corporations against a growing, growling public demand for fundamental change in the system. The conflict is not usually posed in these terms, but it is, in fact, an example of Second Wave vs. Third Wave warfare.

Page 356

The U.S. transportation system, on which most business enterprises directly or indirectly depend, is still gridlocked by a politically powerful triad of oil companies, car manufacturers and often corrupt highway-construction firms.

Thus, while America's communication system has introduced a dazzling succession of innovations, making it possible to distribute knowledge in ways never before possible, Americans are still denied energy and transport systems that would be more efficient, safer and cleaner. These key elements of America's infrastructure – and their component subsystems – are de-synchronized and fought over by vested industrial-age interests and breakthrough innovators advancing the knowledge-based wealth systems. Wave conflict again.

The Tofflers go on to show a few examples of similar issues in corporate business practices and mass education (the "factory-focused education system," as they call it). What I see here is opportunity. We will not get rid of the oil dependence infrastructure or interdependent massive road system anytime soon so how do we make use of these systems to take us out of the 20^th Century and place both feet in the 21^st Century? Obviously, the viability of alternative energy has a long way to rise up in the forefront of the national conscious before there's any kind of massive outcry for a personal solar/wind/geothermal power plant in every household. More people are using alternative energy than our last energy crisis in the 1970s but we haven't tipped the balance away from oil and coal just yet.

Therefore, while our elected officials debate the components of the megatron stimulus bill that will supposedly jumpstart our economy, I suggest every one of us look at our place in the economy and see what we can do to put food on the table while lowering our dependence on fossil fuels. Simple things that frugal shoppers have used for centuries like buying dry goods in bulk. More complicated things like switching low-level home lighting from house current to solar panel charged rechargeable batteries (e.g., solar lights in the walkway leading up the house or end table lamps using directional LED lights next to the bed (for those in either houses or apartments)). Some homes in desert/subtropical areas already use solar electrical panels or water heaters disguised as roof tiles. In other words, it doesn't take an act of Congress to change your habits to decrease your dependence on oil.

At the same time, let's encourage each other, as well as young people thinking about their careers, to look at non-traditional jobs, ones that may not have even been invented yet, in order to help build a new future for all of us. Maybe someone out there can create herself a "job" that simply means you're compiling what your network of workers/friends/family are doing online and find a way to build an instant market or product they can all use/buy simply by talking about it (e.g., pose a series of fun questions that invite marketing input on a line of potential Internet products, products that may save lives in a regional emergency ("5. In relation to question 4, if you knew that folks in New Orleans were about to experience another hurricane, how could your cell phone help?")). Based on what Lesk said in the Tofflers' book, it shouldn't take a big disk drive to store the data you've collected and you should be able to use a home computer to process it.

With the increased use in online applications like facebook and twitter, surely we can spend time not only remembering the good old days and chatting about our latest love interests but we can also open a dialogue with each other, asking difficult questions like, "What have you done to make your life better today? I've lost 13 pounds so far this year by asking myself these questions: 1) Did you eat one less doughnut? 2) Did you walk up-and-down the shopping center instead of drive from store-to-store?" Let's have fun but let's also find ways to enjoy our lives together responsibly.