G-khan
09-26-2003, 02:15 PM
Gold in the Information Age
We depart from the usual Zeal fare to wax philosophic on the future for gold in the Information Age. Will gold wither or thrive in the next macro-stage of human technology? For the most part, the six millennia or so of human history has progressed in a fairly slow and relaxed manner. Borders changed, technology evolved, time relentlessly marched on, and people coped, but generally at an almost imperceptible pace.
For most of human history, the world into which an average person was born looked pretty much the same many decades later when the cold, boney fingers of death finally came knocking. It was exceedingly rare for enough radical change to transpire within a single human lifespan to dramatically alter the reality of daily living for most of the people who have ever lived.
If we can isolate one macro-strategic factor that changed the world more than any other, I believe the best candidate is technology. Typically, however, technological innovations took centuries to fully infiltrate and permeate societies and their impacts were slowly absorbed over this long time frame.
Many thousands of years ago when most humans made a living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, simply wandering around leisurely following big-animal migration routes and living off the land, the development of agriculture was a quantum leap forward in general technology levels. In shifting the typical lifestyle from nomadic to planted, the technological ideas of static agriculture and irrigation forever altered the course of human history. The technological change was incredibly slow, however, taking millennia to fully run its course.
As humans gradually began to forsake the nomadic lifestyle in many parts of the world and settle in towns and cities, the technology of agriculture spawned innumerable other major innovations. With irrigated fields, farmers could grow far more than their own families could eat in a single season. As such, surpluses were born, a concept virtually unknown in the hunter-gatherer days when the accumulation of wealth was not even an issue since all possessions were simply deadweight that had to be constantly hauled around.
The surplus of food led to other huge technological innovations, including the specialization of labor, writing, accounting, and money.
As agricultural technology evolved and yields rocketed, fewer and fewer citizens from any given city needed to grow food. This allowed other occupations to specialize in diverse technological fields, including building better farming equipment and trading. The surplus of food necessitated the development of writing and accounting, so the surpluses could be traded and written records kept of the transactions.
Money also became very important in the fixed agrarian societies with specialization of labor so a farmer or a blacksmith or a baker could easily trade his wares without specifically searching for someone else who wanted to take the opposite side of a straight-up barter for goods.
Click on the link for the rest of the article....
http://www.zealllc.com/2002/digigold.htm
We depart from the usual Zeal fare to wax philosophic on the future for gold in the Information Age. Will gold wither or thrive in the next macro-stage of human technology? For the most part, the six millennia or so of human history has progressed in a fairly slow and relaxed manner. Borders changed, technology evolved, time relentlessly marched on, and people coped, but generally at an almost imperceptible pace.
For most of human history, the world into which an average person was born looked pretty much the same many decades later when the cold, boney fingers of death finally came knocking. It was exceedingly rare for enough radical change to transpire within a single human lifespan to dramatically alter the reality of daily living for most of the people who have ever lived.
If we can isolate one macro-strategic factor that changed the world more than any other, I believe the best candidate is technology. Typically, however, technological innovations took centuries to fully infiltrate and permeate societies and their impacts were slowly absorbed over this long time frame.
Many thousands of years ago when most humans made a living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, simply wandering around leisurely following big-animal migration routes and living off the land, the development of agriculture was a quantum leap forward in general technology levels. In shifting the typical lifestyle from nomadic to planted, the technological ideas of static agriculture and irrigation forever altered the course of human history. The technological change was incredibly slow, however, taking millennia to fully run its course.
As humans gradually began to forsake the nomadic lifestyle in many parts of the world and settle in towns and cities, the technology of agriculture spawned innumerable other major innovations. With irrigated fields, farmers could grow far more than their own families could eat in a single season. As such, surpluses were born, a concept virtually unknown in the hunter-gatherer days when the accumulation of wealth was not even an issue since all possessions were simply deadweight that had to be constantly hauled around.
The surplus of food led to other huge technological innovations, including the specialization of labor, writing, accounting, and money.
As agricultural technology evolved and yields rocketed, fewer and fewer citizens from any given city needed to grow food. This allowed other occupations to specialize in diverse technological fields, including building better farming equipment and trading. The surplus of food necessitated the development of writing and accounting, so the surpluses could be traded and written records kept of the transactions.
Money also became very important in the fixed agrarian societies with specialization of labor so a farmer or a blacksmith or a baker could easily trade his wares without specifically searching for someone else who wanted to take the opposite side of a straight-up barter for goods.
Click on the link for the rest of the article....
http://www.zealllc.com/2002/digigold.htm