Who will get rich in the information age?
As you know, we are now well and truly in the
Information age. It started about 10 years ago. In fact,
many economists say it started in 1989, with the fall of
the Berlin Wall (and the beginning of the World Wide Web).
To understand who will get rich in the
information age, we first need to understand how
The information age differs from the industrial age (born
around 1860, died around 1989).
In fact, let’s get a full description and go back to
the agrarian era.
In the Agrarian Era, society was basically divided
into two classes: the landowners and the people who
worked the land (the serfs). If you were a servant,
there wasn’t much you could do about it:
ownership of the land is passed from father to son and you
you were stuck in the state you were born into.
When the Industrial Age arrived, everything changed:
it was no longer agriculture that generated most of
wealth, but manufacture. Suddenly the earth was not
is no longer the key to wealth. A much less busy factory
land than a sheep farm or a wheat farm.
With the industrial age came a new breed of rich
person: the self-made entrepreneur. wealth no longer
it depended on the ownership of the land and the family that you were
born in. Business acumen and factories were creating
a new kind of rich person. But still required
huge capital to build a factory and start a
business.
Then came the World Wide Web (circa 1989) and
globalization Suddenly, everything changed again.
Factories (or real estate) were no longer needed to
run a business. Anyone with a website could start a
business. The barriers to wealth that existed in the
The Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age were completely
missing. People who could never have dreamed of owning
their own business they were making millions from their
kitchen table.
Of course, the information revolution did not start
in 1989.
It started in 1444 when Gutenberg invented the printing press.
press in Mainz, Germany.
But the printing press (newspapers, magazines,
paperbacks) belonged to the Industrial Age, not the
Information age.
Printing is a ‘one-to-many’ technology. Tea
The Internet is a ‘many-to-many’ technology. and that was
what changed in 1989.
The industrial age was about centralization and
check. The information age is about
decentralization and no control. No government and no
The media mogul controls the Internet. This is the
something crucial to understand about the information age.
As we pass from the Agrarian Age through the
industrial age to the information age, there has been a
constant collapse of the barriers that kept a section of
rich society and the other poor section.
In the information age, literally anyone can become
healthy.
So now that we have a clearer picture of how the
The Information Age differs from the Industrial Age, come on
ask that question again: ‘Who will become rich in
the age of information?’:
(1) People who are self-taught
To explain this better, let’s go back to the Agrarian
Age and the Industrial Age, and the Transmission of
Skills.
In the Agrarian Age, skills were passed down from the father
to his If you wanted to learn to be a blacksmith
you had to be the son of a blacksmith. If you want
learn to be a mason, you had to be the son of
stone mason
With the advent of the industrial age, all this
change. You could go to college and learn anything.
skills you wanted. Knowledge was freely available.
But in the information age, the transmission of skills
is changing once again.
The skills needed to succeed in the information age
are not learned from our parents (as in the
Agrarian Age), nor are they learned in schools
and schools (as in the industrial age). The kids are
teaching their parents computer skills. and many of
entrepreneurs who start high-tech internet companies
I have never gone to university.
The millionaires (and billionaires) of tomorrow
you probably won’t have a college education. They will be
high school dropouts, self-taught people.
(2) People with New Ideas.
Once again, it is the people who can think outside the box.
of the existing structures that will be enriched in
the age of information. Often it’s just a simple idea
that launches people to success in Information
Age.
Take Sabhir Bhatia, for example, the man who invented
Hotmail. Bhatia was a computer engineer who worked at
Silicon Valley. He had no previous business.
experience, whatever.
But one day, while returning from work, a
friend called him on his cell phone and told him that he
had an idea: How about starting a free web-based service?
email service? Bhatia knew that this was the idea that he had been
hoping for. He told his friend to hang up immediately.
and call him at home on a secure line.
Three years later he sold Hotmail to Microsoft for
$400 million.
(3) writers
The third group to get rich in the
Information Age are writers.
In the industrial age, writers depended on large
editorials to be published (remember that the
the printing press is a technology of the Industrial Age – it is
centralized and controlled). and the publishers
took the lion’s share of the profits.
In the information age, writers are doing their thing.
publish – and keep most of the profits
themselves. In fact, writers are flourishing in the
Web: Mainly through electronic books and articles from electronic publications.
But even if you don’t write e-books or magazine articles,
if you have a website, you are a writer.
Why?
Because the Internet is basically a written medium. It’s
favors writers, people who are able to communicate
effectively through the written word. Remember, it’s
It’s not the graphics on your website that sell, it’s the
words you use
In the information age, we are all writers!
