Great minds and all that.
In mid-January Ms. Kaminska's confreres at The Economist did a review of The Internet Is not the Answer that I was going to post as an intro. to the Guardian's piece.
And I forgot.
But, the thing to remember about all this stuff is: nobody knows what's going to happen. Some may have greater insight or be better guessers but nobody knows.
So it's all opinion, informed though it may be and that means its in the realm described by the quote fragment:
"...it is difference of opinion that makes horse races"
-attr. to Mark Twain
Meaning this is in our wheelhouse; we can bet on this stuff.
Ha!
From Izabella Kaminska at Dizzynomics:
I’m reading Andrew Keen’s book, “The internet is not the answer” (really enjoying it, and do recommend it), and something has just occurred to me regarding the shape of global imbalances to come. It’s in keeping with the point I was getting to in the Nesta essay I wrote.We did link to Motherboard in Jan. 23's "A New Book Claims the Internet Has Bred a Different Type of Capitalism".
So here’s a prediction based on that revelation.
The great global imbalances of the last few decades have been caused by an unequal distribution of energy. So, those countries which had control of large easy-to-tap energy resources — whether they were fossil fuels, as per the surpluses of the oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia, or sweat fuel, as per the surpluses of the under privileged human capital countries like China — held those countries which demanded those resources or had the know-how to employ those resources under a type of bondage.
But technology has and will continue to disrupt that power imbalance, and in the process it will transfer the power and leverage that comes with ownership of a resource that everyone wants to the technology companies themselves.
On that basis, I predict, as the global imbalances that have plagued the global economic system for decades inevitably begin to unwind, they will inadvertently be transferred from sovereign balance sheets to corporate ones.
In some way we already see this happening in the great cash piles of Apple and Google. The stock of these companies can as a consequence equate to a quasi corporate currency — a public currency float....MORE
