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One
mile an hour is moving. One hundred miles an hour is really
moving. That "significant mismatch between the
demands of the fast-growing new economy and the
inertial institutional structure of the old
society" is one of the most well-documented
themes in "Revolutionary Wealth" (Alfred
A. Knopf, 2006), the newest look ahead by futurists
Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
The
Toffler’s commentary might help explain even the
most parochial topics, such as the General
Assembly’s special session on transportation due
to convene in Richmond this week. The most
innovative, fastest growing companies, the Tofflers
suggest, are the ones moving at 100 m.p.h. They have
to move fast, because their competitors are moving
fast. So are customer expectations and the smart
regions that are home to both. Just behind at 90
m.p.h. are a broad collection of groups and
interests, which the Tofflers call civil society.
Most are demanding change and many also are opposing
some specific change they don’t want.
At
60 m.ph. follows the institution known as the family
(75 percent of which do not fit the
father-mother-children- under-18 model). Labor
unions chug along at 30 m.p.h., the Tofflers
suggest, while government bureaucracies and
regulatory agencies run at 20 m.p.h. Bringing up the
rear with gaps growing by the second are school
systems (10 m.ph.), intergovernmental organizations
(5 m.p.h.), political institutions (3 m.p.h.) and
the law (1 m.p.h.).
The
details of the Toffler’s "mismatch"
aren’t surprising. Most Virginians could offer
their own examples to the authors, who have been
writing about economic and social policy,
development strategy and business issues for decades
in best-selling books, such as "Future
Shock" and "The Third Wave." This
time the writers are talking about
hyper-agriculture, neurostimulation, nanoceuticals,
flash markets, desktop manufacturing, programmable
money and other emerging characteristics of the
future economy.
The
differences in speed of change and in society-wide
acclimation prompt huge challenges and imbalances,
but also opportunities to understand wealth and
where it is created. Work is not just a job. Value
is more than a measured piece of the monetary
economy. When public institutions struggle to keep
up with rapid change, the Tofflers note,
synchronizing wealth creation across the complex
system that supports it is difficult. But that
synchronization will be a distinct and critical
service in the future. The knowledge economy and its
information technology tools will make it possible if
all parts of the system embrace change.
The
authors quote a defense publication editor on the
ultimate challenge for political institutions.
"Faced with a twenty-year threat, government
responds with a fifteen-year program in a five-year
defense plan, managed by three-year personnel funded
with single-year appropriations." He could have
been talking transportation in Virginia.
Slow-moving
institutions, the Tofflers suggest, remain dominated
by "nostalgia brigades," those whose
successes are anchored in the past and who spend
their time" praising or romanticizing yesterday
and contrasting it with the as-yet-ill-formed,
incomplete tomorrow."
Further,
the Tofflers note, those who know the present only
through the lessons of the fast-disappearing past
can become real barriers to change and to the
promise of revolutionary wealth. "Truth
managers," the authors suggest, draw on
backward-gazing methods of establishing what is
good, right or true by running information through
"truth filters." They substitute a variety
of arguments for a demand for the facts, rational
thought, rigorous testing and analysis.
Sometime
it’s the consensus argument (most agree, therefore
it must be true). Sometimes it’s consistency (this
fits with what we always have believed, so let’s
go ahead). Other times it’s authority, even
revelation talking (political or religious leaders
must know what they are talking about, so there is
no need for us to question). Or it can be the
familiarity and durability of arguments (it has
always worked this way, so let’s keep going).
Listen for these arguments on transportation funding
this week in the General Assembly.
Unfortunately,
these arguments leave science and the scientific
method (in the broadest sense) under attack, the
Tofflers conclude, even though these are the only
courses that look forward, rely on rigorous testing
and ultimately can self-correct. These are the only
courses that accommodate change and make it work
across societies or states.
Take
the knowledge economy itself, which substitutes ever
more refined knowledge for traditional economic
inputs of land, labor, capital. To many, this is a
recent and, therefore, potentially passing
phenomenon. The Tofflers point out the facts. White
collar and service workers have outnumbered blue
collar workers in the United States since 1956.
Fifty years ago is the proper beginning of the
knowledge economy, they conclude, not the 1990s. The
knowledge economy’s transformation of society and
its production of revolutionary wealth, therefore,
did not burst with the dot.com bubble.
In
the end, the Tofflers conclude, an advancing economy
needs an advanced society that keeps up and that
accepts diversity of the people and families that
make it go. Knowledge inherently is
"non-rival." Millions can use it at the
same time. The more that use it, the better.
Knowledge spreads. But knowledge does not fit neatly
yet into traditional economic measurements or
theories.
The
Tofflers introduced in "The Third Wave" in
1981 the concept of "prosuming," producing
what one needs to consume. This optimistic concept
helps one understanding that individuals will
accelerate their creation of "unpaid
value" in services they perform as they gain
more knowledge and the networks to share
information. Energy policy and production will have
to grow beyond the current focus on commercial coal,
oil and gas production, for example, but producing
solar energy for one’s own use and hydrogen from
genetically engineered bacteria already are emerging
alternatives.
More
than anything else, knowledge empowers. So
"revolutionary wealth" as described by the
Tofflers does drive accompanying social and cultural
changes, such as the explosion of the entertainment
industry and the roles of women, minorities, gays
and other groups. Knowledge also is superseded
quickly, so quickly that the authors coin the term
"obsoledge" to describe the obsolete
knowledge we may still carry around long after it is
useful.
Obsoledge
"is why so many of our most cherished ideas
will set our descendants roaring with
laughter," the Tofflers conclude. In a world of
both one and 100 miles per hour, that thought may be
the most liberating knowledge of all.
--
September 25, 2006
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