The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 22 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People.

Prosperity in the modern world:

Luck has nothing to do with it

To evade poverty in the modern networked world, you must understand its dynamics in relation to prosperity — in the same way that you understand the current dynamics between the rich and the poor. Although wealth is now conveniently measured in dollars, this does not reflect where we have come from, or point to where we are heading.

In bygone eras, and at the macro level, the rich were those who possessed a title. A person was blessed by birth or election with the title of pharaoh, king, queen, duke, or duchess, and so on. Such titles were reserved for the privileged few, and could only be acquired by those who were born into a ‘great house’ or were elected. Over time, conquerors gave themselves grand titles (sometimes taken from those they defeated), and later it became customary to reward loyal subjects with honours befitting their heroic deeds.

In time, wealth became dependent upon those who appropriated the greatest mass of land. Rich nations were those who extracted the fruits and resources of the lands they conquered, and the people therein. For example, it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire, meaning that at every point around the world, no matter where the sun happened to shine, its rays hit a landmass owned by the Empire.

From land we moved to military supremacy. To defend the land, great armies had to be assembled. In no time, superpowers were formed until the Cold War standoff became obvious, and military supremacy became a game of psychology.

In trying to keep nations productive, energy became the next major measure as reliance on crude oil and other natural resources mounted. Eventually, these became commodities that were bartered or bought with money. Everyone could play the money game because money could be exchanged in the smallest of amounts, and it was easy to understand, store, count, and compare.

As populations boomed, the focus turned to access. Prosperity became dependent upon societies having access to credit, medical services, legal assistance, and general social services. Coping with a consuming world required technology. This fuelled the race toward technological wealth. All sorts of barriers emerged to protect the technologically affluent from the technologically hungry.

Legal frameworks, patents, and trade secrets depend on information. In no time, information became the focal point where espionage, theft, and trade found customers who were eager to stock up on vital information. Justice had little value in complex court cases where those with superior information could challenge even the most logical of arguments to the point of destroying the notion of right and wrong in light of quality information.

At such a pace, time became the next differentiator. Nations that had time could (and still do) use it to produce material through clever use of labour. Others saw time not as a resource that could be turned into output, but one that could be isolated in the form of leisure. Very often, the materially rich were also time-poor.

With such a string of tangible and intangible wealth indicators, the question arises: ‘What will be the next wave?’ Nations, organisations, and individuals who can pre-empt the next major wave, and learn about the forthcoming dip-stick of wealth, stand to gain from the networked world.

Brace yourself for the next wave

The next major wave is one of ‘infrastructure’. The strangest feature of this wave is that infrastructure requires equilibrium between the rich and the poor. Infrastructure, the very thing that will determine who is rich and who is not, has to be accessible by all. A facsimile machine is only useful if the party to be contacted has one as well. One telephone is useless until a second one is produced for the person at the other end of the line.

Understanding the truism does not mean that you can rush into constructing an infrastructure because often the biggest obstacle to developing a new or better infrastructure is the existing infrastructure. Existing barriers hinder development because current infrastructures might force technologies to plateau. There are many examples of plateauing technologies — where things cannot be improved upon owing to limitations of the current system, the existing law, the modern taboo, or the status quo. Improvement becomes as challenging as trying to change an aeroplane’s jet engines and electrical wiring while the aircraft is in flight — hardly a plausible proposal. From these revelations springs the question of the Internet and its role within a technological infrastructure.

The Internet is everything — yet it is nothing

Gurus of the networked world have placed extra emphasis on the Internet and its peripheral technologies. Although many new opportunities have surfaced, and much confusion surrounds them, the basic elements of information technology have not changed.

People’s fascination with the Internet is a weird one. Perhaps it is the mysterious nature of the technology that makes it so intriguing for so many. The point is that the Internet (and all the technologies that surround it) ought not to be the focus. This is the toaster/toast challenge posed in Characteristic 10 of Chapter 23, ‘Characteristics of the modern world’.

In time to come, people will use the Internet without knowing it — just like they use electricity. Today, when they reach for milk, they don’t stress that it was in the refrigerator, much less that the refrigerator was powered by electricity. When they receive a letter, they don’t mention who delivered it and how. When they go to a film, they don’t emphasise how they drove there, or the fact that their car was fuelled by petrol. The important item of focus is the content of the subject at hand, not the medium through which an activity takes place.

The Internet is not about communication — any more than a motor vehicle is about communication. It is not about entertainment — any more than a telephone is about entertainment. It is not about liberation — any more than a book is about liberation. The Internet is everything — yet it is nothing.