Forget The Information Economy. Make Stuff
"The wheel has turned. What was up is down, and what was down is up," said San Francisco investment executive Frank Husic. "And it's all because an emerging world wants to eat, drive and live in houses — things we take for granted and have for well over a century."
Dan Basse, president of AgResource, a Chicago agricultural-forecasting company, agreed. "The tech industry offered us things to occupy our minds and entertain us. But we're moving back to a world of stuff, whether that's vegetable oil or copper or zinc or cotton. Stuff that you can hold in your hand and drop on your foot."
The twin turns of fortune for the nation's Old and New economies are letting once-struggling behemoths such as U.S. Steel put modern marvels such as Microsoft to shame. The price of U.S. Steel's stock has shot up 1,000 percent in recent years, while Microsoft's has essentially flatlined.
And the changes are lifting much of America's geographic middle at the expense of its coasts. Personal income in the nation's manufacturing, mining and farming states, which are concentrated in the heartland, has been growing at an average annual rate of 6.5 percent in the past five years. The rest of the country has managed only a 5.4 percent pace, according to government statistics assembled by Moody's Economy.com.
Maybe all the people talking into iPhones along both coasts will have to stop calling the middle of America "flyover country" if this keeps up.
Comments
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You can't eat digital food and live in the digital world. Although some people may try while playing their MMOs... |
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This is going to be renamed the energy age rather the information. Don't forget since the rate of information has sped up so does time therefore a 30 year or 20 year time line (even 10 just generalizing here) splits in half or more (probably more I'd say it travels at least 4 times faster) but even at double it splits it in half. So 30 years is 15 or 10 years in a continuum. So the information age moniker will be forgotten as soon as the add guru's forget it. Then the main concentration is going to be on different energy forms I say Hydrogen it beats gas and coal by far and electric pretty profusely as well with it's output ratios (I'd love to drag race an electric car in a Hydrogen fuel cell one wouldn't you! Give it 4 years I think it will be a reality) and it conserves resources and by default lowers our waste input and output quite considerably. SO I'd say by 2010-12 it will become the energy age. Think about it!!!!!! Planes Trains and car's run on Hydrogen electrical energy is way less efficient but can have the same end product as well :) |
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Interesting analysis, rapid and I think you're partly right. Energy, information and securing information are the future. And you can't convey the messages of the "energy age" without having big information infrastructure (and business) behind it. It's the one constant that will always grow. It's just a question of the medium it comes to you in. :) |
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