As a baby boomer, many of my peers have spent the last 10 to 15 years trying to find a job which would fully utilise our talents. Some of us have not been able to find any job at all, while many others have ended up in underemployment where years of education, experience and wisdom have largely been wasted.
This is not good for the individual and it is also a sad waste of a potential community resource.
I believe that with a bit of vision and commitment from around the world, with the help of the internet, we can overcome this challenge and in the process, we can create a quantum leap in global productivity.
Perhaps it is time to dust off Karl Marx dream of everyone working to his or her full potential to deliver goods and services which satisfy our real need.
Give Before We Get.
Firstly, we need to emphasise a paradigm shift created by the copious volume of free information on the internet. Success on the internet requires us to give before we receive. The typical success story started by doing lots of complex work, basically for the love of it. In the process, these people cultivated the trust of others as well as a cutting edge set of skills and understanding in themselves. It was only later that they were able to monetise these advantages of unique know-how.
So be prepared to volunteer in one or more of the voluntary projects that are popping up all over the net. Write for a Wiki. Help cut code for a public domain software project. Teach others what you know, pro-bono. Help write better documentation. Contribute to the various blogs and knowledge banks. Promote the diffusion of new ideas among the various political groups.
Paradigm Shifts.
History is likely to show that the Information Revolution, like Steam and Electricity before it, was one of the largest evolutionary steps ever taken by humanity. Cheap information has the potential to change almost everything it touches. Photographic processing is a small example of how radical these changes are likely to be.
The real challenge is change our thinking to better align with what is now possible.
I love the story of the poor share cropper in Mississippi in the 1920’s, who won a Ford pickup in a raffle. He was so proud of his new toy that he liked to drive it up and down the main street of his local town. So each Friday morning, there he was driving his new car; pulled along by his trusty draught horses.
This man was unable to comprehend the full potential of the internal combustion engine. After 50 years of IT innovation, we may well be just as naiive about our new found power to transcend our traditional human limitations.
The most promising source may well be in our courage to dream new dreams.
A New Global Community.
Apparently China is not far off having the largest number of English speaking citizens in the world.
Probably of greater economic significance is the emergence of a new enlarged global middle class. After 50 years of spectacular growth in Asia, much of it facilitated by the internet, many former Indian, Chinese and South East Asian peasants have now achieved middle class incomes. They are ready to acquire the quality of life, currently taken for granted by the American and European middle classes.
We now need to explore new trading patterns between this hugely enlarged group of consumers.
What new goods and services will they require? What new patterns of distribution will emerge to satisfy this demand. On-line shopping and just-in-time production strategies are early examples of what is to come.
Recently, I was down at my local harware warehouse. A stranger approached me in the parking area, hoping that my pick-up truck indicated that I was a plumber. “Did I know of a glue that would work underwater in his swimming pool?” Alas, I am not a plumber. However, my suggestion that he Google the problem seemed to raise his level of optimism considerably.
Up to now, if the hardware shop could not help that was it. Now he could join a forum and see what came back by way of a solution to his problem.
Surely, this is an exciting ray of hope.
By working together we can speed up and multiply our ability to solve problems. Our ability to stand on each other’s shoulders just took a quantum leap forward.
We can take advantage of this new found human potential if we are willing to bring our imagination, our sense of global community and our volunteer ethic to the table.
Yes, we can make the global cake bigger and in the process we can give every citizen a chance to participate fully in the global economy.
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