John Baeyens

Christ could hear me laughing when reading this posting of Steve. While all those darn spoiled oldies will be Flickering and MSNing with their grandchildren, countries like Brazil will be self-sufficient in oil, with plenty of non-spoiled labour who is truly producing? Why is it the intelligent people like Steve can’t do the simple math of calculating what he and his father really spend money on. Services? Really?
The only increasing services cost I see is what I pay to banks, hospitals and insurances. But next to that: nada. My telco spends are actually going down.
The older I get the less I spend on services. Actually, I spend more on sugar (directly and indirectly for processed sugar) than I spend on Web2.0 services. So do you, Steve. Sorry, not, I forgot: lowcarb.

The tires and metal of your car, the plastic of your computer, the aluminium, the soy of your tofu, the plumber for your house,… I don’t see my granny controlling those costs. Translation and graphic arts? I don’t know anybody in my family who ever paid for that.

Fortunately, we are clearly entering an information age for the economy. The basis of competition for most companies and all real GNP growth will come from improvements in information processing. Even in medicine and agriculture, the advances of the future will derive from better understanding and manipulation of the information systems of biology.
There is a wonderful economic asymmetry between those who have money and those who have time, between those who need an answer and those with information. This is a boomer opportunity. Imagine a modern-day Web librarian. Think of professional services, like translation, consulting or graphic arts. The majority of economic activity is in services, much of which is an information service, freely tradable on a global basis. Imagine an eBay for information. Boomers may be the beneficiaries. These are heady times. Historians will look back on the upcoming nano-bio epoch with no less portent than the Industrial Revolution. If we give our aging boomers free and unfettered broadband access, and our scientists free and unfettered access to the frontiers of the unknown, then our greatest generation, when the look to the next, can take pride in knowing that the best is yet to come.

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