The Rise of the Information Age

submitted by jwithrow.
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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
The Rise of the Information Age

February 23, 2016
Hot Springs, VA

“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”
-Thomas Jefferson

The S&P closed out Monday at $1,945. Gold closed at $1,208 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $33.30 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 1.77%. Bitcoin is trading around $423 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

The world has undergone a massive change over the past several decades… The type of change from which there is no return.

This change has been the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. A transition which is still in its infancy.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in the mid-18th century, lifted more than a billion people from the shackles of poverty… Raised standards of living exponentially… And created the world in which we live today.

Even people of the most modest means in the developed world today enjoy far more comforts and luxuries than the wealthiest kings and nobles of the pre-industrialist era. Continue reading “The Rise of the Information Age”