According to Toffler (1980), the first three great waves of technological change (and the eras of their greatest social, economic, and political impact) were the agricultural age, the industrial revolution, and the information age.
Agriculture Age
People began to shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture between six and ten thousand years ago. We had the agriculture age in the 18th century. Agriculture was primary source of employment in the early 18th century. The economy of the nation could be broadly classified as primary sector (predominantly based on agriculture. By the early 1900s A.D. nearly 90 percent of people were involved in an agricultural pursuit. Presently, however, the number is between two and three percent in America
Industrial Age
Factories and assembly lines powered the economy. The wealth of the nation came from industrial output. Agriculture faded into background. (low end manufacturing & mineral extraction) and tertiary sector (high value added services. In industrial age right brain thinking was irrelevant. The industrial revolution began in approximately 1650 A.D. with the mechanical gardens in Europe The percentage of people in the U.S. working in industry peaked in the 1950s, and the number has been declining since
This was also called the knowledge based economy where left brains skilled were more valued than industrial production. The Information Age covered a wide gamut of activities like trading, banking & finance, infotainment, real estate, transportation, security, management & technical consultancy among several others. The information age began around 1965 and peaked with respect to the percentage of people working in this information technology around 1985.
The information age has made the society extremely wealthy. The globalization has resulted in the Left brain activities are all being outsourced from western world to third world countries. Even software programming jobs are being outsourced. In short, any human activity which can be codified based on set rules is being outsourced. In Information Age right brain thinking was considered secondary as the preferred mode of thinking was the left brain.
Conceptual Age
The present age, following the Information Age, is known as the Conceptual Age. The most important success factor in this age is creativity and innovation – the right brain skill sets. The main driving force of the rising wealth of the society has been exponential growth of technology and increased globalization. . There is no sector of the economy which is not effected by rapid change of technological advancement. Conceptual age began in the early 1990’s and is, as of this writing, involving more and more people in the production of its products and services.
The growth of the conceptual age has brought with it accelerating demands for workers who are equipped not simply with technical know-how, but with the ability to create, analyze, and transform information
Conceptual age is an age of abundance. Improvements in products have no upper limits. As soon as you reach your goals, another set of goals are developed for which you have to target. Innovation is an never ending process and you never reach your destination
With the increasing wealth of people, as technologies become more powerful, and world becomes more connected, these three forces are pushing us into conceptual age..
In the western world the role of purely left brained tasks are numbered. All jobs in western world to survive must have some elements of right brain thinking. The nations have progressed from nation of farmers, to nation of industrial workers to nation of knowledge workers. We have moving from left brain tasks to right brain tasks. In western societies innovation and creativity has become key factor for them to compete. All left brained tasks are outsourced to third world developing countries.
In India all three ages (Agriculture, Industrial, and Information) are existing in parallel.
Of India’s total population, 212 million are dependent on agriculture ( 18.5% of India Populations 1.15 billion in 2010). Compare this with American population in agriculture is just 3.08 million people (1% of American Population of 308 million in 2010). We are living in a flat borderless world with free flow of goods and services. Geography, while not irrelevant, is no longer the obstacle it once was, and companies can stretch their manufacturing, customer service and other business processes around the globe. This dispersion of the supply chain creates tremendous opportunities to change the way we do business in this world, how we design and run our companies ?
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