The sixth paradigm.
When trying to understand the world as it is (and as it will be) the economic framework developed by Carlota Perez in her book “Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital – The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages” provides an excellent starting point.
Her thesis is that modern economic development occurs in “a certain sequence of events that recurs about every half century”:
…the full deployment of the enormous wealth-creating potential brought forth by each technological revolution requires, each time, the establishment of an adequate socio-institutional framework. The existing framework, created to handle growth based on the previous set of technologies, is unsuited to the new one. Thus, in the first decades of installation of the new industries and infrastructures, there is an increasing mismatch between the techno-economic and the socio-institutional spheres, as well as an internal decoupling of the economic system, between the new and the old technologies.
In her model, the world has experienced five technological revolutions and “techno-economic” paradigms in the modern era, starting with the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, through to the current end of 20th century paradigm – the Age of Information and Telecommunications.
So what happens when we look past the present age to the next – the sixth – techno-economic paradigm? What are the new and emerging opportunities that will present themselves in this “sixth paradigm”? Have we already witnessed the innovation that will lie at the heart of the sixth paradigm or is it still ahead of us? Will the sixth paradigm be the “Age of Markets”?
“The Age of Markets”
“The technology of the digital age is driving an unprecedented explosion in the ability to create markets in anything. Trade anything. Not just physical goods. Not just financial instruments. But ideas. Events. Outcomes.The emergence of these kinds of markets will – over time – impact how we view and interact with the world in all aspects of our personal and professional lives. They will fundamentally alter the current world economic and social paradigm.
I don’t know the answers to these questions yet but I intend to spend the next few years looking for answers.
