What Age Is It?

I originally wrote this blog post in 2008 for the Free Digital Universe, but I think it is just as useful today (13 years later), so people understand what is happening. I’ll let you be the judge of its educational value.

Generally speaking, humanity claims to be “in” the Information Age, and for the most part it is true, but not completely.  It may be that we are still in the “transition” or pressurization period that comes just before a new age is born.  The period we are experiencing today is a transition between the Industrial and Information Ages, we call this period “Globalizaton.”

We will be fully immersed in the Information Age once there are global commerce spaces where everyone is treated equally, compensated equally (without harming the planet,) and can better his or her lives – starting with nothing but access.

What we lack is an appropriate global law forum with a commercial model that can benefit everyone, including the poor to trade their way out of poverty, and which addresses our long-term environmental responsibilities. We need an Information Age economic (commercial) model that is globalized to the benefit of the individual (versus corporations) if we wish to complete the transition and thereby truly enter the Information Age.

Ages are defined by their commercial models, each Age is distinguished by 3 core-comprising elements of the commercial model, these are:  

1)     Governing Element (Who “enforces” the Rules and how? – Can we do it differently?) 

2)     Currency Type (Who’s money do we use? What is it? Can we use our own?)   

3)     Law Forum (Who “makes” the rules and laws to be enforced? Can we make our own?)

Together, these three elements create a unified or holistic system called an “economic,” “commercial,” or “social” model.   The previous Agricultural and Industrial Ages models reflected the socio-economic structures of their places in man’s evolution, appropriate to their time periods.  As compared below, the new age of information will be truly something different.  One purpose of the SPADES Community & Token is to help direct that change towards something more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous for the individual people of our planet.