Wealth and the Internet

The other day, I saw a CD reviewed as "music for the young and wealthy". The Internet produces staggering wealth, both directly and indirectly, everywhere you care to look these days. There are those who have literally grown very wealthy in the course of a few short years by building and selling a successful Internet company. In reference to my column here two weeks ago, this has nothing to do with producing a remarkably profitable company; it`s related solely to being involved with something that`s regarded as successful, being in the right place at the right time.

There are those who have literally grown very wealthy in the course of a few short years by building and selling a successful Internet company.

Generally, I think the world is becoming wealthier, and the Internet - among other new technologies, modes of thinking and doing business - has a lot to do with it. I think (and I`m sure this won`t be a popular opinion in the SA context) that even the poor are becoming wealthier. In the developed countries - at least those in Western Europe - the working and lower middle classes have all but disappeared. "Class" is denoted by means of education (perhaps) and conduct (definitely), but no longer by income. You remember the old crack about being in the wrong industry when you have to pay the plumber or painter? In Germany, there`s practically no single household that doesn`t have a television set. Talk about technology penetration. Talk about wealth.

The Internet isn`t just a rich-maker for the privileged few, it`s also the enabler for different forms of wealth. Connectivity across form factors, across platforms and in every home and on every desk is a terrific enabler of an alternative sort of wealth. The increasing plethora of life choices - during the 90s and beyond, implies anything from sexual freedom, freedom of association, freedom to learn, freedom to live where you want to live - implies that people can more easily implement (to use an IT term) their kind of wealth. Wealth in the traditional sense meant making a lot of money, usually with hard work, in one place and spending it in another to achieve comfort and to buy oneself the freedom of choice.

Fundamentally, this is perhaps the basic tenet of capitalism as we know it. However, if one is to believe Faith Popcorn (and there are many reasons why she should be read closely by anyone interested in marketing, the Internet, and above all, the future itself), the 90s have been about balance and choice. As the traditional notions of work and wealth are broken down by the ever-increasing disappointments they bring to bear, people are choosing to create wealth differently.

Wealth can be about living in the country while working a lucrative city job. Wealth can imply choosing to use technology to provide a valuable, specialist knowledge service three weeks out of every month and sleeping and watching videos for each remaining week. Wealth can mean to work a few months every year as a highly paid Internet developer and spending the remaining months travelling to India and Australia.

Margaret Thatcher`s saying that "there`s always room at the top" is perhaps despicably 80s in its outlook, but when read against a 90s sensibility, it`s one of many possible choices: naturally, the IT industry has space for those who want to live in a city, work in a corporation and generate traditional wealth. It`s merely one of a multitude of possible types of wealth today, though.

The removal of a geographic centre from the world of work - an achievement that`s resolutely the result of technology, and more specifically the Internet - makes freedom of choice the order of the day, not the exception. I meet more and more people whose dream it is to become wealthy - in the normal sense of the word - by the age of 40, and then to retire. They might dream of moving to the country; or going scuba diving or hang-gliding every day. A senior Microsoft executive recently left on a long sabbatical to hone his bowling skills. I think there`s never been an industry as adept at making both conventional and unusual dreams come true than the IT industry today, and specifically its tremendous Internet boom.

Does the old adage that "the rich become richer, the poor poorer" really hold true, though? I`ve just re-read some of my older columns that I`ve written for ITWeb. On occasion, I`ve been known to lament the fact that South Africans don`t benefit equally from the Internet economy-in-the-making. I`ve worried whether previously disadvantaged South Africans would ever manage to make the jump from an agrarian or manual-labour economy to a knowledge economy. I`ve been known to think that this was a responsibility that fell squarely in the court of the government, where basic investment in telecommunications infrastructure would have to carry further development.

I`m no longer so sure that line of thinking remains relevant. Rather, I`ve begun to think there can be such a thing as a general upliftment, driven by the market and the phenomenal wealth that`s being generated in some quarters of the economy (hi-tech, above all). Our key focus, perhaps, should move from making social investments in technology to generating true reach for technology by making it as commercially ubiquitous as possible.

While I don`t for one minute buy the argument that the staggering wealth that`s generated by the stock exchange is going to do anything for job creation or to the general benefit of society, I think that building sensible businesses that use technology to make their work easier and more effective, thereby once again creating a kind of personal wealth (leisure time, family time), is certainly the route to go.

I saw a streaming media clip of an impressive television commercial this week, and since I can`t show it to you in any reasonable way, I`ll describe it instead. Microsoft in the US flights a TV commercial that goes as follows: "Margy Brown, a rancher`s wife, makes beeswax hand cream in Wyoming. She runs her entire business with Microsoft Windows and a home PC. Margy says: 'You don`t have to be in a city when you have the resources we have.` [Screen shows Margy applying a nicely printed label to a tub of hand cream.] Lately, Margy`s hand cream has been selling like hotcakes. [Screen shows large American truck, ostensibly carrying Margy`s hand cream.] Just shows you what a good idea and a little technology can do."

Of course, now I`ll have those who don`t agree with me quoting the company I work for on my back again - but that`s the way it goes. Apart from doing a good job at creating the warm and fuzzy feeling that technology coupled with a successful small business idea can produce, this advert illustrates a few simple facts: technology, networking and the Internet enable small businesses to be successful. No vendor would argue with that idea. But technology and the Internet also achieve something else: you can be successful wherever you`re trading from. That, resoundingly, is a result of the Internet and better software and hardware tools, anyone, anyplace in SA can be successful. Surely, this will contribute to make the whole country more successful.

Something to think about, I think.