What was it like the day after fire was discovered or the
wheel was invented or the first gun was fired or the first printing press
started rolling. Probably not any different than the day before, for the
majority of the human race.
It took thousands of years between the first wheel’s
creation in Mesopotamia and the widespread use of the wheels for carriages; It
took more than 1500 years for gun powder to make its way from China to gain
widespread use in Europe; It took 500 years between the invention of the
printing press and its adoption in all world regions.
These and other inventions have change the course of human
history, speeded up the process of human development and for better or worse
have caused irreparable change when they have been widely adopted.
It is the greatest of understatements that the internet will
pale in comparison, not only the scale of change it will engender but the speed
with which this change will be adopted, so much so that in the next 10-, 20- or
50- years – not few centuries, when we look back we will not recognise the
times we are living in now.
The first I heard of the internet is in the early 1980s that
there was this computer network students off the east coast of Canada, on
Prince Edward Island, would use to access libraries on mainland North America.
That many people could read the same book at the same time. And they would read
this in near real time – computing speed was much slower than, but still to my
little mind at the time this was the stuff of science fiction.
While I grappled with this notion of clairvoyance then, my
sons now, aged 10 and eight, would struggle to wrap their minds around the
concept of a library as we knew it then, where one would go to a big room of
books and borrow a maximum of three books for a week, to read at home. And that
if someone had borrowed the book you wanted you would have to wait for them to
return it before you could read it .
This difference in reality for these little boys – me three
decades ago and my sons today, is
separated by more than time.
"It means for one, that with knowledge now so readily available, these kids can, will and do, know much, much more than we knew at their age; It means that their teachers are no longer the authority figures they used to be in our day, because today teachers standing in front of classroom may very well be spouting old news to a kid who has gone well past the bantu migrations or the rift valley formation or newton’s laws of physics in his random browsing of the internet at home....
It raises the age old dilemma that many have suffered with
their richer parents, uncles or spouses, which is “What do you give a person for
his birthday who has everything?”
Edgar Kasenene who started out as an IT engineer but now
grapples with these questions in helping companies adopt for the new era argues
that, “It’s not any more about facts but about creativity, what you can do with
those facts, because facts have now been commoditized.”
In our day you would hear of a textbook that was the best
for Geography, History or Mathematics and that there was only one copy of it
and you didn’t have it. Facts were scarce. That is not an option now.
Everything we own or use is based on knowledge. If knowledge
is now so prevalent it means the scarcity of things will soon be or is already
in some instances non-existent.
So if there is no scarcity of information or knowledge
leading to no scarcity of goods or services where does that leave economics,
defined as the management of scarce resources?
Kasenene argues that the structures to manage our lives – at
home, at work and in the world generally are designed to cope, manage or
exploit scarcity. The status quo is redundant in a world where scarcity is not
an issue.
Seen in this light, scarcity is a function of a lack of
knowledge or ignorance.
So in my day (see how I refer to my day as if it is long
gone? Because it is gone) having an education, speaking English or knowing how
to do my tables was a competitive advantage. In this brave new world I have no
competitive advantage of anyone with access to the internet, the winners are
and will be those who can access this knowledge and creatively work with it to
innovate and produce more.
"In workplaces all the manual jobs are or will be automated. Which makes one wonder whether factories will really bring jobs to economies like they did in the industrial age. That time is dead...
When we did field trips to the beer, soda and other factories
in our younger days there were always people manning the lines, supervising
processes and generally being around. Thankfully those same factories are still
around. If you went there now there are not only fewer people on the factory
floor but the output of these enterprises are multiples of what they were when
their workforce was thrice or quadruple the size they are now. It is only going
to get worse.
So what to do for us in working life staring into the abyss?
Kasenene says that career planning is out, things are
changing so fast whole careers have been wiped out; Learning plans are in. That
because of the speed of change we have to keep learning to remain relevant and
not only a continued upgrade of our current skills but the acquisition of other areas of knowledge and skills is
imperative.
As is fast becoming evident these days, that no sooner have
you learnt something – got your degree or master or PhD, than it becomes
obsolete.
And finally this speaks to how we work in or run our
companies.
The only way to continue to be relevant is to have an obsessive
focus on the customers’ needs. While
management gurus like Tom Peters have been counselling this since the 1980s, it
is now even more relevant. Because of the aforementioned explosion in
information and options, the client does not need to stick with you – remember
there is no scarcity and your competition can come from anywhere in the world
from unrelated industries.
An innovation driven by evolving customer needs is the only
way to remain relevant.
“Innovation is no longer a department it must become a way
of life,” Kasenene said.
