Developing knowledge economy

The new information society will open up opportunities for new goods and services that at present do not exist. Initially, the principal beneficiary will be the USA. Information (the content or software) will be controlled by media giants, of which only a handful are in the public sector. Ownership will be controlled by privately owned transnationals.

The knowledge sector is, by nature, an elite workforce and not a mass workforce. Engineers, highly skilled technicians, computer programmers, scientist and professionals will never be needed in mass numbers to produce goods and services in the information age. Indeed the shift from mass to elite labour forces is what distinguishes work in the information age from that of the industrial age.

With near workerless factories and viral companies already looming on the horizon, every nation will have to grapple with the question of what to do with the millions of people whose labour is needed less, or not at all, in an ever more automated global economy.