As world leaders gather in Canada this weekend, the nations with
the most influence won't be the high-tech mavens. Joel Kotkin on why
traditional industries still matter in the post-information age.
Are we entering the post-information age?
For much of the last quarter century, conventional wisdom from some of the best minds of our times, like Daniel Bell, Alvin Toffler and Taichi Sakaiya—in both East and West—predicted that power would shift to those countries that dominate the so-called information age. At the time, this was the right call, but it may increasingly be, if you will, old news. Although there’s no question that iPhones and 3-D movies are nifty—and hedge funds generators of massive wealth for investors and operators—we now may actually be entering what might be called the post-information age.
As the ministers gather in Toronto this weekend for the G-20, we can see how overblown the efficacy of a virtual economy might be. The current star players on the field in terms of economic growth and fiscal strength generally derive their power not from information technology, media, or financial savvy but by the mundane but still important basic underpinnings of economic growth: agriculture, manufacturing and energy production.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The G-20's New Balance of Power | Joel Kotkin
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