Content area
Full text
Gazing into the future
Capital For Our Time: The Economic, Legal, and Management Challenges of Intellectual Capital. Edited by Nicholas Imparto. Stanford, CA, Hoover Institution Press, 1999, 448 pp. $14.95, paper.
Working in the Twenty-First Century: Policies for Economic Growth Through Training, Opportunity, and Education. By David I. Levine. Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1998, 64 pp. $61.95, hardback; $24.95, paper
In American society, now is the time to think about the future. Several convergent factors are shaping our present discourse in all areas of society, including the area of economics. First, we are preparing for a mathematically symbolic moment, as the world enters a new millennium, although it is not clear that this moment has any real meaning except to legacy computer systems. We are also in a period of economic prosperity that gives us confidence in ourselves and the ability to shape our future. Finally, the first two events come at a time of technological revolution, perhaps as significant as the building of railroads or the application of electricity to our lives. Technology offers the chance to re-mix the odds of economic players-holders of the new technology have the opportunity to reinvent themselves into the new social and economic elite. A transforming technology has the same effect as reshuffling the cards in poker-everyone has a new opportunity to be a winner.
The shift from "things" to "ideas" is a captivating idea in itself. Is the value of this article a "thing" like the computer that was used to...