The Power And Value Of Information
On the time continuum of the evolution of human civilization, invention, innovation, and distribution has been largely a slow and painstaking process. Who knows how many eons it took humans to discover, create and use fire? It certainly took hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years to go from manufacturing fire to manufacturing with fire. Along the way came tools, the wheel, and other ways to leverage muscle power.Things started speeding up around 3,000BC, when stone tools were replaced by bronze implements. After only two thousand years, bronze gave way to iron, and then steel helped usher in the Industrial Revolution, which lasted a little more than a couple of hundred years and brought us to our current age. And each new major innovation not only created new possibilities for humans, but also compressed the waiting period until the next innovation.
Presently, the innovation element-of-choice is silicon, as the Computer Age, now quite mature after only a handful of decades, has morphed into the Information Age, where humans seek ways to leverage the brain more than the muscle. And talk about innovation compression: In 1965, Moore's Law was born when Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, observed that the amount of capacity on a computer chip was doubling about every 18 months.
The Power Of The Written Word
The sharing of information, contributing significantly to the compression of each era into a shorter time span, has been greatly facilitated by the written word. In his 1776 classic, The Wealth Of Nations, Adam Smith proposed that the written word is one of the three most important developments of humankind. The other two are money and what Smith called the "oeconomic tables." The spelling is correct.
I like the story about the man-on-the-street survey, where pedestrians were asked to name the most significant human development. Some said electricity, some the automobile, some penicillin. Finally, one man said he thought it was the thermos bottle. When the questioner asked why, he responded, "Because it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. How does it know?"
Thermos bottles notwithstanding, I propose that the single most important development of the modern age was first put in service in the year 1454. During that year and the next, Johannes Gutenberg first employed his mechanical moving type to print 180 Holy Bibles, and the pace of human creativity, enlightenment, wealth, and liberty has been accelerating ever since.
If You Build It, Will They Come?
Of course all of the stuff that God and mankind hath wrought over the past half millennium is the brick-by-brick foundation of our modern society and marketplace. But the enormous undertaking of creating each of these things was actually only the first small step on the way to success. What good does it do to build it if no one comes?
All of the great human developments of the modern age, many of which are now esoteric, if not artifacts, owe their proliferation and success to the written word, more specifically, the mechanically printed word. First in the formulating and sharing of the idea and concept of an invention with co-developers and manufacturers, then in the dissemination of the news of its existence, and finally in the directions for its use.
The Value Of Information
In the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank's 1999 Annual Report, titled "The New Paradigm", I found this quote from my friend, Dr. Robert McTeer, Dallas Fed Bank President, "In the New Economy, knowledge is more important to economic success than money or machinery."
Possessing information has always been valuable, but could it be so much more valuable than other things that it has it's own age? Well, consider this: If I discover something today and choose to share it with my community, within minutes, via email, thousands of people around the world would know my thoughts. Imagine how the pace of human development would have changed if virtually everyone on the planet could have learned how to create fire within minutes of it having been done the first time. If that had been possible, would fire have been the big deal, or would the big deal have been the fact that everyone could know about it almost immediately?
The Landscape is Changing, Are You Ready?
The Information Age is changing our culture and the landscape of the marketplace, literally and figuratively. Here are a few examples to get you thinking about where the threats and opportunities are for you.
Information is available almost anywhere we are or want to be.
If I don't need massive corporate infrastructure to leverage my entrepreneurial vision, I don't need to rent space in, or build, a tall office building. Cheap steel imports isn't the only reason more than one U.S. steel company has filed for bankruptcy this year. After the 9-11 attacks, the NYC Fire Chief was asked if the WTC Towers should be rebuilt. He answered with another question, "Who would occupy them?" I predict that 50 years from now, many tall buildings like the WTC Towers will be empty. Not because of terrorism, but because of technology.
Take a lesson from Boeing.
Why is Boeing moving its headquarters to Chicago? There's nothing wrong with Seattle, it's home base since it was founded. The reason is to begin the process of distancing the future of the company from part of it's past, the airline industry. The primary reasons business people travel is to conduct business. The culture of the Information Age is less demanding of the need to "press the flesh" in order to do business. The Virtual Marketplace is real and it is flourishing in the Information Age, and that's bad news for airlines.
Learning isn't changing, but the acquisition of it is.
Colleges and universities aren't where knowledge resides as much as they are platforms for the delivery of knowledge. As our culture catches up with the increasing capability of distance learning, the knowledge delivery method of the Information Age, there will be less need for traditional classrooms and dormitories. Memo to professors: Take a computer class.
Steam, steel, and the assembly line, classic symbols of the last age of innovation, worked best with lots of capital and infrastructure - the slow and plodding trappings of big business. But those trappings also funded, developed and controlled much of the information of that era.
The Information Age is custom-made for small business. Information in the current age is stored on the heads of pins, travels at the speed of light, can be shared by individuals worldwide in multiple forms, and acquired at very little expense by anyone who seeks it. Capability perfectly suited for the nimble small business.
Write this on a rock... I don't know when the next "age" will arrive or what element will create it, but I believe we will be in this one for a while. Every example of change created by the Information Age is good news for small business. Our challenge is to make sure we understand how those changes are occurring, and position ourselves to take advantage of them.
