Technology and Economics

It's a sunny, but mildly chilly day in San Francisco. My room, on the 23rd floor of the hotel, looks out at the staggering TransAmerica building that reaches for the sky with the ocean in the background and the Coit tower, acting as a stone sentry guarding the whole maritime scene. It is breathtaking.

I flew out earlier in the week, where I testified on an Internet related matter in defense of a prominent silicon valley company. None of which seems relevant to politics and economics. Almost. But get this.

On the way out, I sat in my airline seat, sending email from my laptop, reviewing documents on iCloud, downloading other documents from my DropBox - all the while searching the web for other materials. I opened my spreadsheet application to update my billing, after grabbing my billing template from a remote website. When I looked up, I had arrived. I did throw down two gin and tonics, 4 sacks of peanuts, two sacks of pretzels and 1 sack of Lorna dune cookies.   

But the Internet, heretofore, relegated to a ground level transaction is now possible at 40,000 feet at 500 MPH. It's magical. As I move through the sky at approximately 650 ft/sec, the Internet signal stays right with me. Even if I move 3 miles between keystrokes, I am still connected. The technology, to accomplish this action, is so totally transparent that it is seductive. Yet, hundreds of companies, millions of investment dollars and the efforts of thousands of people, all working, to an extent, in an unrelated fashion, have made it possible for me to sit in my SWA seat and send an email, and much, much more. 

Of course, I linked into flightaware.com to follow my plane traverse the sky with its image on my laptop display screen, complete with its ground shadow. As the plane moved, the shadow moved on my screen too. A clever piece of mathematics, but it makes the whole exercise a bit more fascinating. 

In the broadest sense, electronic communications is pervasive and  we can only be surprised at what new opportunities it will open. And when it does, a la the Internet in the sky, we will never remember how we got along with out it.  The shift in economics and politics will not escape its impact too, not that it already hasn't. But dramatic change is yet to come.  Understanding, accessing and leveraging this technology is the new political career ticket.

Go back to school and learn it if you do not know it. Or learn it on line with the Net.