The Hinge Of History
November 14, 2008

RADIO 2CBA FOCAL POINT COMMENTARY BROADCAST ON FRIDAY MAY 12th, 2000 ON RADIO 2CBA FM.

We are living in a period of great change. The change is occurring so quickly that we are often taken by surprise. Indeed this is a hinge of history.

On May 9 I spoke at the Graduation Ceremony at the University of New South Wales. I spoke on the Knowledge Economy.

There have been three technological revolutions in history. The first one occurred thousands of years ago when people in the Middle East ceased being nomadic and settled down to cultivate the land. That agricultural revolution was followed by the Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain in 1750. The third revolution is now underway: the Knowledge Economy. We will still grow food and make things in factories but the numbers of people to be employed in these ways will continue to go down. The growth areas for employment are in the personal services and knowledge-based sector.

The key worker in the first era was the farmer. Then we had the factory hand. In this new era it is the “symbolic analyst”. This is a person who handles data – they do not actually use their hands for farming or manufacturing. A symbolic analyst is a person who spends a lot of their time on the telephone during the day and cannot describe to their children what they do for a living.

Technology will continue to change our lives. For example, there is a computer in the fridge and one in the car. In the future, the computers will be able to communicate directly with each other. The fridge will tell the car that you are running out of milk and the car, though communicating the global positioning satellite overhead, will tell you where you can buy the next lot of milk.

There is also a suggestion on creating intelligent underwear. The act of going to the doctor to be checked for blood pressure, in itself elevates blood pressure. But by placing a chip in the underwear, your health could be monitored constantly and the chip can tell the doctor’s computer what sort of day you have had.

There will also be the impact of genetic engineering. There has already been a “silent revolution”. We have gained as much life expectancy in the past 100 years as we did in the previous 5,000 years. In essence, people died aged about 50 a century ago and now the norm is closer to 75.

But none of this is due to genetic engineering. The improvements have been in health care, better sanitation and water and people taking better of their own health. The genetic engineering revolution has yet to get going. The human brain, for example, is designed to last for 300 years – and so in a sense we are all dying prematurely.

Finally, the world has been run on a limited source of energy: white male middle class brains. The Knowledge Economy will benefit from the fact that women and people of colour are all now being given the opportunity to participate in society. We will be able to mobilize the brain power of 6 billion people for this new era. We will need all that brain power to deal with all the problems that the world confronts.