The Informationist

Opportunities and Challenges in the Global Information Age

The Commonwealth Club invited me to speak a few days ago. I was pleased to draw a full room (about 40 people), and I prepared my comments for a general audience. My title, with a none-too-subtle nod to Digital Phoenix, was: Phoenix Rising: Opportunities and Challenges in the Global Information Age.

The basic thrust of my comments started with my belief that we are living through a global transition from an industrial age to an information age. Different parts of society will undergo that transformation at different paces, but each one will navigate a predictable pattern of opportunity, displacement, backlash, and reassessment. Selected digital industries (specifically software & entertainment) made the transition early. We should therefore be able to learn valuable lessons by studying their transitions and applying them, albeit in general terms, to areas of greater significance. My first goal in this talk was to show how a pattern that has emerged very cleanly in the debate over music downloads can inform our understanding of the debates over offshoring/protectionism and globalization/terrorism. My second goal wasto outline specific lessons that we can learn from these parallels--and actions we can take to improve both our individual lots and the world as a whole.

I have attached my PowerPoint slides below. Perhaps, soon, I will have a podcast link to share.

Feel free to use my slides subject to the following conditions:

1. You attribute Bruce Abramson as the author.
2. You direct listeners/viewers to http://www.theinformationist.com, where they can get their own set and see my other musings.
3. You let listeners/viewers know that I discuss these issues further in both Digital Phoenix and The Secret Circuit.

Note that my name and the website appear on every slide, and the book information appears on the last slide. Simply incorporating my last slide and leaving my footer information untouched will satisfy these minimal requirements.
Here is a link to my slides.

For those who see some irony in my placing conditions on distribution of a talk that takes a sanguine view of copyright law, I can only say three things:
1. Removing my name and claiming independent authorship constitutes plagiarism--an issue entirely independent of copyright law.
2. None of my conditions interfere with market conditions.

And most of all. . .

3. A little bit of common courtesy never hurt anyone. People who like my presentations might also like my books.

Posted by Bruce Abramson from on 03/10 at 11:53 AM in The Not-Quite-Yet Information Economy, American Government, Politics, and Domestic Policies, Foreign Affairs and the World beyond Our Borders