Change

In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.

This is spring the time of change, new growth, etc. By now we are pretty use to the idea that things change. The refrain of 'change' runs through our history. That famous hippie poet from Hibbing said 'the times they are a changin' talking about the 1960's. Another poet, the Marquis de Racan said 'Nothing in the world lasts, Save eternal change' He happened to be talking about the 1660's so you can see that 'change', like the poor, 'we have with us always'.

In a very short while we are all going to enter a new century. In a very short while I am going to enter my second half century. These are changes that are interesting to one degree or another but not likely to be of major human importance in themselves.

But there are things that happen that, at least in hind sight, can be seen to cause a major shift in social direction, a true sea change.

1: Most of us were born into Industrial Age, Machine Age, Age of Gunpowder, Modern Age

a: Gunpowder 'did in' the castle based feudal system. As a ruler, if your place did not hold the iron to make guns, the carbon and nitrates to make powder, and the specialists to put it together you could not compete with the ruler whose place did.

Your hundred brave men could not 'hold the fort' against even a similar sized army that had gunpowder. Place was all important. If you did not physically control relatively scarce and geographically fixed resources you lost., pure and simple.

It was no longer enough to control the common commodities of food, water, and shelter. If you did not control significant quantities of the 'new' materials of iron and coal, and the 'science' to use them then someone who did simply came and took your food and water. "BIG" countries meant better likelihood of controlling and protecting those resources.

Transportation advances such as the sextant, clock, then steam and trains gave the advantage to those societies capable of holding and developing ports and or rail systems.

Organized training and information control meant a better chance of controlling and using those resources.

The new power of science displaced the individual effort and skill that had been the backbone of the 'little country' age. Power went to the countries that had

1; the physical control of the resources and

2; the control of the knowledge necessary to use them.

"Big" Companies meant a better chance of controlling the expertise that gave you the edge over the competition. "Big" meant 'economies of scale'. The power source and 'knowledge' that let a shoe factory make 1000 pairs of shoes could just as well make 10,000 pairs. The shoes got cheaper just as long as the material resources did not get too much more expensive.

But 'big' meant something else, too. Transportation had to get better to keep the material resources available and information handling had to get better to handle the ever increasing body of 'knowledge' available to those that needed to have it. And so we get the:

2: : Information Age, Electronic Age, Jet Age, Space Age

b: The pressure gave rise to some major technological 'advances'. Science shifted paradigms. We discovered such things as electricity through the air, things that burned without air, and things that got very very hot without burning at all. We discovered that electricity could be turned off and on by electricity. We discovered that all those things that we thought were 'solid' were made of more 'empty space' than not. We discovered radio, jet engines, rockets, transistors, computers, plastics and more ways to make a wheel turn the way we want it to than you can shake a stick at. We made transportation cheap and fast and information ubiquitous.

3: But what is the proper name for this 'new era'?

c: Is this the Information Age, or the Electronic Age, or the Space Age? NO!!! We banished the importance of "WHERE"!!! We are not in the 'Space Age' we are in the vestibule of the 'Place-LESS Age'!!! In terms of wealth and power "where" is simply not very important anymore. A good clothes designer can live in Sao Paulo, get her designs out in New York, fly to Paris for the spring shows and get the mass market goods produced in Singapore and sell them throughout the world and if she wants to she can skip Paris and see the Sydney opera instead or just stay home and play with her daughter for a few days and oversee the last minute details of the actual presentation by video conference call, which is how half the buyers and reviewers are going to see the show anyway. (Damn those cheapskate bosses anyway. Another perk down the drain!)

If NIKE wants to sell shoes in New York do they have to set up a factory in Flushing? No!! Nikes are made somewhere in Asia and landed in California duty paid for about $5.00 a pair. So why do they cost a hundred fifty? Well darn good profit is one thing, but the fact is that the value of most goods is no longer in the materials and labor that they are of made of but rather in the 'knowledge' that designed them and promoted them. Now think about this! If their shoes are, in fact, any good then anybody anywhere can have a good tennis shoe for about $5.00 a pair!!! Let those rich American fools pay the $150 because Mr. Jordan says they are good. The rest of us can wear them for $5 just because they are or $15 because Rusty Dillweather says they are good or 60DM because Jorge Huter says he can fly like his Pegasus when he wears them.

This is the good side: Live where we want, go where we want, do anything anywhere, have 'anything everywhere'.

4: What is the bad side, because surely there is one?

Well, there certainly some things that are bad to some people. As Richard Hooker said back in the late 1500's "Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better."

Many of the 'BIG' things are already starting to break up, destroyed by their own success you might say. The Soviet Union is dissolving, Canada is almost certainly done for and even the United States probably won't last the next fifty years. Oh, something called something like those names will probably still exist but not countries as we know them today.

Why? Because the advantages of "BIG" are pretty much gone. There is no real advantage to controlling Texas oil from New York's point of view because you can just buy it and if they won't sell, then Alberta, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or Indonesia will. Transportation is cheap so you don't need physical control of the resource. Information is more valuable than material!

Well, do you have "special knowledge" that gives you an edge? I think you can see that if that knowledge were to become available throughout a country as large as Canada or the U.S. than it would certainly be known to all who cared, throughout the world.

If you no longer need to control the material resources and no longer can control the knowledge, what is the advantage to "BIG"? The little differences that were ignored for the 'common good' will gradually pull most large countries apart, probably into comparatively loose affiliations based on common interests. The same applies to large companies. Those that adjust gracefully will survive in some new form, those that can't will come crashing down to the considerable discomfort of those who don't make it out of the way.

The realities of the 'Placeless Age' definitely require some adjustments in our individual and institutional thinking. We must keep in mind the new reality.

Pollution is 'everywhere', 'war' is everywhere, disease is 'everywhere', poverty is 'everywhere'. We can't keep it 'over there' anymore. "Over there" is a hop skip and a jump away! When they get the flu in Shanghai we start barfing in LA. When they have a dispute in New Delhi planes start exploding in Vancouver. When they have a war in Sarajevo widows and orphans need food and shelter in Toronto. When Mexico City has an earthquake, apples fall off the trees in Penticton.

6: The Challenge

We are stuck with it. To mix metaphors we can't put the Genie back in the bottle so there is no point in putting your head in the sand, you'll just get your tail burned. We have to work to make it a net gain.

We cannot afford to tolerate pollution, war, disease, and poverty anywhere because we can't keep it 'over there'. We need to start thinking, both individually and institutionally on a world wide basis. There is no 'second world', no 'third world' there is only one world and we all live in it. If it is going to be a better world for me than it has to be a better world for you, and if it is going to be a better world for you then it must be a better world for "THEM" also.

Remember that when you make your plans, vote your votes, chose your choices. It is the Placeless Age. There is right here and to quote that eminent philosopher POGO "They is us."