Speed, The New Capital

If you are getting your information from mainstream media, especially from TV, it is time to rethink that strategy. If you depend on The New York Times and/or The Wall Street Journal for your view of what's really happening and its future impact, think again.

Here are five things to think about that you won't see, hear or read about in the "Official Version:"

• Speed: The front page angst over the relative merits of capitalism or socialism is beside the point. The math does not work for either one. The point is that private and social capital moves faster than our business, political, educational and religious institutions. And, it is accelerating. Crises form, occur, and begin to ease much faster than our political and media organizations can think or act. Red/Blue, Left/Right, TV/pulp are all too slow to predict or react meaningfully. They are stuck in the past.
• Time: Because communication of information is getting faster and faster, time is compressed like information. Our days are packed, because we never go offline; we are connected. Consequently, we will need more time. There goes the quaint idea of The Weekend. We will need six or even seven days to repay our debts, keep up with emerging- market citizens, hold our jobs/clients, and re-educate ourselves.
• Connection: The woman across the aisle from you on the train can't let go of her BlackBerry; she wants to be connected. The man waiting impatiently in line for a quick sandwich, cannot stop searching in his BB: his boss might need him. Once, we enjoyed our freedom to disconnect, even if for a short period of time. Today, we see being connected as freeing us to do more. It may be an illusion, but it is a fact.
• Engage: We connect because we want to become engaged. We cannot talk back to a piece of paper. Letters to the Editor take forever. We want to have a conversation and be part of the process, not just be a recipient of information, but to participate. Newspapers and magazines were slow to get this. Congress and the New York State Senate do not get this. Obama got it, still gets it, but the old system will try to crush him from both the left and the right. They do not like engagement, because it is so much more immediate and transparent, exposing their constant and massive embezzlement of the US economy.
• Search: Google is in the advertising business and may already be obsolete, but search is here to stay for a while. We are desperately searching in order to be connected, in order to become engaged in a conversation. The speed at which we search compresses even more searches into our days. Speed has become the new capital.

This is not an endorsement, just an observation. Have a nice "weekend."