new technology

Mention IP (intellectual property) and most people's eyes glaze over; but start talking about the new wealth, and how to trade it, and most people are very interested.

Yet IP and the new wealth are pretty much the same thing.

In the industrial age we made goods and traded them. In the information age we make information - in the form of content (music, movies etc) and software, and patents (the 'recipes' for pharmaceuticals, seeds etc). And we trade them.

This shift from making goods, to making/creating information and services (which includes education services, financial services etc) has been massive.

70% of Australians now make something at the workplace that you can't drop on your foot. This is amazingly different from last century.

'Most of us make our money from thin air; we produce nothing that can be weighed, touched or easily measured. Our output is not stockpiled at harbours, stored in warehouses or shipped in railway cars.

Most of us earn our livings providing service, judgement, information and analysis, whether in a telephone call centre, a lawyer's office, a government department or a scientific laboratory. ... (or a classroom). Unlike last century - when we did make goods and have the factory system

Our children will not have to toil in dark factories, descend into pits or suffocate in mills, to hew raw materials and turn them into manufactured products. They will make their livings through their creativity, ingenuity and imagination. (Charles Leadbeater, Living on Thin Air. Penguin, 2000 pix)

This new wealth is information based and created from the resources of individuals. It influences every aspect of our lives. Obviously, it shapes the work we now do; it is the basis of the knowledge-products that we create, and it determines the sort of learning and skills we now need - as well as the forms of leisure we enjoy. There is no getting away from it.

This new wealth shapes our culture, our prosperity, our values, our status -- and our choices ….

Yet most of us know little or nothing about it.

This new wealth is not some vague financial figure in the national statistics; it's very personal. For example, like the stock exchange, (or Lotto), the new wealth offers many more chances for individual success and satisfaction than the old industrial age, factory system. In the UK, the rock music industry (IP) now makes more money for the country than the steel industry; this can mean more pleasant conditions for workers - and less damage to the environment.

Just about every one had to mould themselves to fit into a clearly defined job in the industrial era - and most people were paid a set salary; in the information economy, more and more people are creating their own jobs, and generating their own incomes. You can of course go broke - but you can also make a fortune!

You don't need a factory, or a major transport system to start to make the new information products; all you need is a good idea - which can be turned into intellectual property.

Bill Gates - along with so many other IP and IT gurus - began 'experimenting' with his ideas in the family garage. He generated his massive new wealth from his own intellectual and creative resources: designing, building, marketing and licensing Microsoft software:

'The old foundations of success are gone. For all of human history the source of success has been control of natural resources - land, gold, oil. Suddenly the answer is knowledge - or creativity and information …. The world's wealthiest man, Bill Gates owns nothing tangible - no land or gold or oil or factories, no industrial processes, no armies. For the first time in human history the world's wealthiest man owns only knowledge.' (Lester Thurow, 1999, Creating Wealth, pxv)

Not everyone will be as fortunate as Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, (Apple) or Jeff Bezos at Amazon - or the Google boys (Sergey Brin and Larry Page). Though it is increasingly the case, that the person who owns the idea often generates more wealth, than the person who owns the machine - or the sheep, or the cows!

Stockmen are no longer required on many cattle properties; instead, the cows have a chip in their ear, and all it takes is one person to keep an eye on them, and to go out to them only when they need attention.

However, the moral of the story is not about chips replacing workers: it is that the person who owns the chip - the person who had the good idea and commercialised it - without again lifting a little finger, earns more money from the licensing, from the IP, than the person who owns the cows.

Click here to download New Wealth - New Power