A Mixed Economy of Industry and Information

Our world has become complicated - it was complicated before, but it is very complicated now - with the Coming of the Computer. Everyone is saying "Nothing has changed!" As loudly as they can, but almost everything has changed - and continues to change.

At the same time, our ability to understand this, has radically decreased. The power centers of our world have moved out of our world, and now reside somewhere else - where they cannot be questioned or examined.

They can only be obeyed. And many specialists have sprung up, to inform us of what the Divine Will wants us to do. .

I will get practical. I got up this morning, and made coffee in my espresso machine. This is my life in the Industrial Economy that has provided both coffee and machine. This is real stuff.

Meanwhile, my Windows Computer is busy updating itself from the Internet - completing thousands of individual instructions, that make my Computer more useful and safer. It is part of the Information Economy - that is not real at all.

You may object, and say you can see this information on the screen of your computer - clear as day! But this, dear friend, is only what the computer wants you to see - everything else it is doing (most of what it is doing) is in another world - inaccessible to the human senses.

Before, we had the Mind and Body question. Now we also have the Software question - just what is it?

I have struggled with this question, ever since I was lured into the Computer Industry in the Eighties - because it had jobs! And there are still plenty of people there, happy with their jobs - but giving no thought to what those jobs are doing to them, or to everyone else.

I have been part of them, resume in hand, rushing from the parking lot, to a job fair - where many companies awaited us with open arms! We all knew we were in the right place, doing the right thing.

But the end result, I was soon to see - was not right at all. But very wrong.