The 'Y' in America
Why should America do as well in the coming Information Age as it did in the Industrial Age?
In the Industrial Era, the countries who rose to the top were the ones who were the most, well...industrial. Winning countries had either a deep supply of natural resources, a transportation system and the innovation to create new businesses (America) or innovation, a navy and imperialism (England and Japan). The resource requirements were big--lots of rivers, coal, iron ore. The transportation needs were met either by exhaustive inland waterways or by a well-protected blue-water navy. Innovation was more or less a byproduct of capitalism.
How about the Information Age? Don't need resources. Don't need rivers (fiber optic cable is plentiful and a lot cheaper than digging canals). Innovation is where it's going to be at.
Any country can become a superpower in the Information Age, regardless of what their terrain looks like, what they import and export or even whether or not they have an effective military. It requires knowledge and most importantly cleverness in marketing and innovation in applied technology.
A handful of tech people and some Thai food is equivalent to an Industrial Age factory.
A software pirate can do as much damage to commerce as the 19th century nautical ones.
It's virtually impossible to use the military to create a trading monopoly a la England.
Innovation is the discriminator. Any country can encourage innovation.
But I wonder, can America be the best? We have several trends that is making us a less than favorite place to innovate. An insanely one-sided intellectual property system biased against the entrepreneur. An ever more intrusive government. An institutionalized lack of privacy. A propensity towards regulating the darndest things ranging from broadcast television to video games. And now comes whatever the reverse of Net Neutrality is. It's like allowing 18th century barons to put toll bridges up on every US river.
If we want to be an Information Age superpower, we have to value the single resource that will keep us at the international power pinnacle--information. Treat information with respect, cherish those who by training or skill can nourish it and above all, stop the bastards who want to monopolize it.
Posted on June 14, 2006
