The Digital Future: Services Oriented Architecture and Mass Customization, Part 3A

From Parts 1 and 2

Part 1 discussed the four ages of mankind.  The first was the Age of Speech; for the first time humans could “learn by listening” rather than “learn by doing”; that is, data could be accumulated, communicated, and stored by verbal communications.  It also transformed the hunting and gathering into an economic architecture of small somewhat settled communities over the course of 300,000 years.   Settlement produced first significant increase in economic activity, wealth per capita, and in the academics in the form of the shaman for tribal organization.

The second, the Age of Writing, produced a quantum leap in data and information that could be accumulated, communicated, and stored.  This was over a period of at least 6,500 years.  During this time, academic activity evolved from everyone working to survive to a diversity of jobs and trades and the economic stratification of political organizations.   Again, the total wealth of humanity took a leap of orders of magnitude as the economic architectures of city states, then countries, and then empires evolved.  The academics evolved from the shaman, to priests, clerics, researchers, mathematicians, and universities (e.g. the Museum at Alexandria ~ 370 BC and the University of Bologna, 1088) and libraries.

The third, the Age of Print, started with Gutenberg’s press in 1455, but blossomed with Luther’s radical admonition that everyone should “read” the bible about 1517.  Suddenly, the quantity of information and knowledge to a leap of several orders of magnitude as all types of ideas were accumulated, communicated, and stored.
 

Part 2 dealt with history of Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) as it developed hand in glove with computing architecture—a natural fit.

This part, Part 3 A, deals with how SOA works with mass customization of products, systems, and services.  Part 3 B, will show where the three economic architectures, infrastructure, mass production, and mass customization will be employed in the Digital Age.

Mass Customization Using Services Oriented Architecture

As I will attempt to demonstrate, Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), while beginning its life as an architecture for computer applications, is really a new economic system that will supplant Capitalism as the economic engine.  That is to say, the prescriptive economic architectures of socialism and communism do not have the ability to create value; just redistribute it so that everyone is in the same economic class…destitute.

Mass Production Architecture

I’m positing that in the Digital Age mass customization will replace mass production for products, systems, and services.  This does not mean that mass production will go the way of the dodo.  In fact there will be three architectures, infrastructure, mass production, and mass customization.

Many times, many people may want and are willing to pay for the same or nearly identical items.  As Adam Smith discussed, the reason the mass production produced so much wealth is that mass production is cost efficient, or as many economists point out, there are economies of scale.  Economies of scale result from turning the process of manufacturing a produce into discrete steps or activities.
    

Adam Smith discussed this concept in the first chapter of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.  He showed how the same number of individuals could make an order of magnitude more pins per day when each one performed only one step in the process and repeated that step of each pin.
 

According to Adam Smith, once the process for creating a product is divided into discrete steps, many individuals will “figure out” how to create tooling to improve their step of the process.  While Adam Smith did not document this step, he implied that the business owner, the one selling the product and employing the personnel, would then purchase the tooling.  Again, the productivity of each worker using the tooling increases. 

Since Adam Smith’s time, economists have been fascinated with these two concepts.  The first Adam Smith called the “Division of Labor”.  The second has no name so I call this effect “process multiplication”.  The reason is that tooling increases the effectiveness of labor the way a gun increases the effectiveness of a soldier—the military calls this effect “force multiplication”.

The more tooling that is used in the process, the more the tooling costs.  The more it costs, the more product is produce (hopefully) and more cost efficiently.  This cost efficiency means the product costs less to produce.

Because the production process has been tooling intensive, it has also become capital intensive—tooling costs money and a lot of expensive tooling costs a lot of money (capital—hence Capitalism).  Actually, there is no such thing as Capitalism; it’s really mass production architecture.  Since it is capital intensive, anyone who does not have the money to purchase the tools can’t produce the product as cost efficiently.  This leads to both the concepts of Economies of Scale, (i.e., the greater the quantity of product you make, the better the division of labor and process multiplication of more tooling), and the Barrier to Entry caused by the need to have the money to buy the tooling to produce the product cost competitively.

The reason for this brief recitation of a significant portion of the mass production architecture is that for the near and mid-terms there will be certain sectors of the economy where mass production will continue to make sense—it will continue to be the most cost efficient architecture for producing a certain class of products.

The Day before Mass Customization

In the early 1990s, I worked with the Strategic Supply Chain Management (SSCM) Project.  The goal of this team was to find ways to improve the cost efficiency of mass production systems.  This included the development and implementation of products.  The reason for the formation of this project was to counter the gains in market share by the Japanese and other foreigners.

The team came to several conclusions.  First, Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing was an imperative.  JIT means that the subcomponents of a product are manufactured as they are needed for the assembly of a product in response to a customer order—all of this in near real time.  JIT means that warehousing costs are completely eliminated.

I had already worked on two projects of this type.  The first in 1984 and 85 created a paperless product line for a major office furniture company (The design of this line won the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Lead Award in 1987).  In 1986 and 1987, I worked on a program for the US Navy, called Rapid Access to Manufactured Parts, (RAMP).  It too, was using JIT concepts.

The SSCM team came to two other conclusions.  First, that standardized contractual clauses should be agreed to by contractor and subcontractor before any contracts are bid on.  In other words, there should be a team, built by and around the contractor to “go after” proposed projects.

Second, that a better customer requirements identification and management process is needed to effectively and cost efficiently manage a supply chain.  These are two items that are required for the digital age and mass customization.  While the first has gained a very small amount of traction, businesses in the US, at least, have paid no attention to the second.  Sometime in the near future it will become self-evident that this is a problem.

While the static and dynamic architecture of mass production, as described by Adam Smith, and incorporated into the US Constitution, has served the United States and the rest of the world well, it will be supplanted by the mass customization using Services Oriented Architecture in the Digital Age.

Mass customization is creating products, systems and services tailor-made to the customer’s requirements.  Actually, this was tried by the US automotive industry after WWII with limited success. In the 1950s and 60s the “option list” for automobiles was quite long.  For example, you could order a car only with power steering but not power brakes, with an AM or with an AM/FM radio.  Every option was individually priced.  So each customer could get a vehicle that met their exact requirements.

However, the Japanese took advantage of the inherent costs in terms of time to fulfill orders, defects caused by not meeting the customer requirements, etc., by reducing the costs of their vehicles and decreasing the delivery time through offering bundled packages of options, among other things.

Now, customers could only order a sun roof if they accepted a power seat on the driver’s side, even if they didn’t want because the seat was part of the bundle or package that include the sun roof.  In the future, this will not be the case.

Mass Customization

In the 1990s, I became a member of several international standards committees.  The first was the Agile Manufacturing Enterprise Forum, at Lehigh University.  Their definition of agile manufacturing was “an organization that has created the processes, tools, and training to enable it to respond quickly to customer needs and market changes while still controlling costs and quality.”  The team determined that this is accomplished by assembling a consortium of small organizations (businesses, consultants, and possibly academics).  This consortium would as a team on create products, systems, and services.

The next team that I joined, The Next Generation Manufacturing Project (NGM), elaborated on the consortium concept.  This project focused on how to create an agile manufacturing enterprise.  It concluded that there are two ways to create design/development/implementation/manufacturing consortiums.  These happen to be identical with the ways that programming languages were implemented in the 1960s and with the ways services are assembled in SOA.

The first method for assembling services into a program is called “Orchestration”.  Orchestration is gathering all of the needed software functional components together, then ordering and structuring them into the program that performs the task require by the customer.  In the older programming technology this would be called compiling a program; that is, converting all of the instructions into machine code before executing the program.

For mass customization, orchestration is assembling a team or consortium of small and entrepreneurial organizations, then creating the product, system, or service.  Because it’s mass customization and not mass production the team creates only one item.

Currently, one of the better examples of organizations that use the orchestration form of business architecture, are custom car shops.  In fact, there is one television channel where half its shows are of shops that create custom cars.  In these shows, a customer starts with something that was well used, badly abused, to complete junk.  The customer tells the custom car shop owner his or her requirements and the owner tells the customer the approximate cost.

When the vehicle, in whatever condition comes into the shop, the shop’s team disassembles it entirely.  They send all of the metal body components to a member of the consortium that functions as a “sand” blaster and epoxy coater, send the engine and other mechanical components to a shop that functions as the engine and mechanical parts rebuild center, send seats and other interior components to a shop that functions as the interior restoration and customization center, and tosses the parts that can’t be salvaged.

When the metal body comes back to the shop, generally, there is rust and damage, which didn’t show prior to the blasting that will need to be repaired.  Additionally, if the job is to “customize” as opposed to “restore” the vehicle a body shop function will need to change the bodies shape to enable the customization.    Frequently, this is the function of the shop.

If, for example, a fender is in too poor condition to be repaired, then the shop may go to a junkyard to find the part or may go to an organization that just manufactures metal components that are no longer available.  This is yet another function of the consortium.

When the body work is completed, the shop will send the vehicle’s body, sometimes it engine and mechanical components out to a paint shop; and if there are chrome parts, they may be sent to a shop specializing in chroming parts—two more functions of the consortium.  Frequently, for customized vehicles a new exhaust system needs to be constructed—yet one more function; and finally the vehicle is assembled in its restored or custom form.

Since these custom car shops (especially those with good to great reputations) have a fairly constant stream of customers, they can set up agreements (read contracts, with standard contractual clauses) as to who does what part of the work, the timeframes required, and the costs, prior to starting a job.  In effect, the consortium functions as a single unit, the way services assembled for execution function as a program.  So we could call this organizational architecture, the Orchestration Mass Customization Architecture.

The second method for assembling software services is called “Choreography”.   Choreography differs from orchestration in that the core organization—the one accountable to the customer for the product, system, or service—organizes the team on an as required basis.  At the start of the effort it does not have a consortium in place.  Instead, the core organization adds functional services as it deems necessary.

Most times, core organizations engaged in research and development or creative content activities use choreographic organizational architecture.  This would include research institutes, creation of exotic materials, the initial development of an entire new field of engineering, like ocean engineering or space engineering, and, most familiar to most people, the creation of entertainment content.

The motion picture and now the video content industry have long used choreographic organizational architecture.  To start, a “screenwriter” authors or adapts a story from a book to the “must meet” requirements for a video or movie; that is, that it fits within a time-frame, that much of the background of the story is told dialog and so on.

Once the screenwriter has a script, he or she will send it out to producers.  If a producer likes the script, that is, in general “make money”, he or she will assemble a team to produce the film or video.  This team is assembled as needed, not like the old studio system where a team has been preassembled. 

Actually, these days and going forward, more videos will be produced by “amateurs” using current and near future technology.  This is very likely going to undermine the entire “entertainment industry”.  This is the next step from the studio system, to customer centric entertainment.

The Three Economic Architectures of the Digital Age

In Part 3 B, I will describe how the three architectures that I have defined will work together in the Digital Age to provide unprecedented value to the largest number of people possible.

The Digital Future: Services Oriented Architecture and Mass Customization, Part 2

From Part 1

There have been four ages of mankind.  The first was the Age of Speech; for the first time humans could “learn by listening” rather than “learn by doing”; that is, data could be accumulated, communicated, and stored by verbal communications.  It also transformed the hunting and gathering into an economic architecture of small somewhat settled communities over the course of 300,000 years.   Settlement produced first significant increase in economic activity, wealth per capita, and in the academics in the form of the shaman for tribal organization.

The second, the Age of Writing, produced a quantum leap in data and information that could be accumulated, communicated, and stored.  This was over a period of at least 6,500 years.  During this time, academic activity evolved from everyone working to survive to a diversity of jobs and trades and the economic stratification of political organizations.   Again, the total wealth of humanity took a leap of orders of magnitude as the economic architectures of city states, then countries, and then empires evolved.  The academics evolved from the shaman, to priests, clerics, researchers, mathematicians, and universities (e.g. the Museum at Alexandria ~ 370 BC and the University of Bologna, 1088) and libraries.

 

The third, the Age of Print, started with Gutenberg’s press in 1455, but blossomed with Luther’s radical admonition that everyone should “read” the bible about 1517.  Suddenly, the quantity of information and knowledge to a leap of several orders of magnitude as all types of ideas were accumulated, communicated, and stored.  

This created for many changes in sociopolitical organizations and cultural upheaval.  After major wars (e.g., the 30 years, the 100 years, WWI, and WWII, with continuous warring in between) and “the age of exploration and exploitation (colonization)” which created the footings of globalization, in 1776 economic architecture was formalized into the mass production industrial architecture called Capitalism.  Capitalism, with its risk/reward, and mass production has created far more wealth for humanity, though several new religions have destroyed a significant percentage of this wealth; religions, like Fascism (a throwback to feudalism), Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism (All which replace “personal responsibility” with “social responsibility” as their major article of faith).

Now humanity is on the cusp of the Digital Age.  It too, will create orders of magnitude more data, information, and knowledge.  And, it promises another giant leap in the wealth, but with commensurate risks of barbarianism and wars, from all sides, unless there can be integration of cultures, not “cultural diversity”.  History graphically demonstrates that cultures always clash and that “diversity” cultures implode from the clash.  I will discuss these later, but first Part 2 will discuss the inception and gestation of the Digital Age.

Part 2: The Digital Age: A Personal Perspective of How Services Oriented Architecture Evolved

“Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away”.

A saying by computer software developers circa 1975

From its start to today, the Digital Age could be called the Age of Assembly.  I know because I was there.

Starting in earnest sometime in the late 1960s, humanity has entered a new age, the Digital Age!  And, as in the past three occasions, humanity has not realized the potential of this change in information technology.

Computing Power

In 1965, Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, observed that “the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.”  Effectively, what this means is that raw computing power doubles approximately every two years.

Coding Cost Efficiency

But, the digital age requires three technologies.  In addition to faster and more powerful hardware, it requires the same abilities of the other ages, the ability to accumulate and analyze the raw datum and to communicate both the data and store the results of the analysis.

The ability of a digital system to accumulate and analyze data is based on its programming.  In 1956, I played with my first computer, or what was referred to at that time as a computer.  This computer was programmed with a wire board—a board with a matrix of connectors; the programming came of wires connecting the “proper” connectors together.  Data was inserted using Hollerith cards (referred to as punch cards).

 By 1960, programming had graduated to computer coding using the punch cards.  I coded my first program in Symbolic Programming System (SPS), a form of Assembler—the first step up from coding in machine language (1s and 0s)—as a member of my high school’s math club.  An Assembler is little more than a useful translator of machine code to make it simpler of the coder to create code and to more easily identify bugs—both, greatly increasing the coders and codes effectiveness and also the cost efficiency of creating code.

By 1964, I started taking the first of three computer courses offered by the Math Department of the university I attended.  This class included programming in machine code (literal ons and offs), SPS, and Fortran 1.  The latter was the first use of the concept of Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). 

Fortran 1 (Formula Translation 1) was among the earliest scientific programming languages.  These languages were made of a set of computer commands (functions), read (getting input), print (provide output), do mathematically calculations (add, subtract, etc.) and perform some logical step (loop, branch, and so on).  Actually it’s much more complex than this, but I’m not quite ready to take a swan dive into the minutia of computer software and hardware design and architecture.

By 1965, a coder could create hundreds of instructions per hour, rather than a couple of dozen like in 1956.  Since the computing power of the hardware was (and is) dramatically increasing, making the coder more cost efficient makes sense.  Additionally, it meant that computers could handle much larger and more complex tasks.

Data Storage and Data Communications

Between 1964 and 1980 two other technological developments occurred that have led to the start of the Digital Age, data storage devices, and data communications. 

In 1964, I first saw, wrote code for, and used a storage device called a disk drive.  Prior to this data was stored either on cards or on tape drives.  Like the CPU, data storage hardware has continued to follow Moore’s Law.  Today, the average smart phone has 100 to  1000 times the storage that the “mainframe” computer had when I was working on my Ph.D. and that storage 300MB costs tens of thousands time more and took up more than a basketball court sized room.

So the abilities to store and analyze data and information have become much more effective and cost efficient.   So has the technology’s ability to communicate data, information, and knowledge.

In 1836 Samuel Morse demonstrated telegraphic communications, the first machine language method for communicating information.  It took until the mid-1970s telegraphic communications to evolve into a wide variety of data communications hardware, software, and communications protocols.  Then it took the next 20 years to coalesce into the hardware, software, and communications protocols we know as the “Internet” and the “web”.

During the same 20 years the final element for the digital age evolved, Services Oriented Architecture. 

Services Oriented Architecture

At the dawn of the digital age programming, all programs were simply an order set of machine instructions, no loops and no logic.  When computer languages, like FORTRAN 1 first evolved, they were created with a good deal of branch logic to allow code to be reused.  Why: because the memory and data storage on the machine was so small.  So, at the time it made sense to reuse sections of code that were already in the program, rather rewrite the same code.

Inevitably this led to what “computer scientists”, people that taught programming rather than writing programs for a living, called officially “unstructured” programming, or in the slang of the day “spaghetti code”.  In production at the time, unstructured programs were much faster in execution on the hardware available.  However, they were also much more difficult to understand especially if they weren’t properly documented. This meant that they were hard to debug and hard to update or upgrade.

According to the computer scientists, the chief culprit of unstructured programming was the unconditional branch, called the “goto” statement.  This statement indicated the location of the next coded statement that the computer should execute, and this, in general, was back to some location earlier in the program.  This meant that in following the program, it jumped around, rather than going from top to bottom, making it easier for the inexperienced to follow.  So, like all liberal bureaucrats they outlawed unconditional branching.

Then they replayed the goto statement with an unconditional branch to another program, initially called a subroutine.  This fragmented the program and intuitively created what could become the services of SOA, but didn’t.  Instead, they became the Dynamic Link Library (DLL) of computer functions; utilities of the operating system that can be used to support all programs on a computing system.

Instead of structured programs, I opted for modular programming.  These were programs that performed a given function for the program.  For the application that I wrote as part of my Ph.D., I used this architecture; and I submit that it’s the basis for the SOA-based applications.

Be that as it may, I’ve described how I see by the concepts for SOA evolving from machine language of the late 1950s, to assembler, then programming languages with DLLs, and then modular programming.

Each time, the number of machine instructions increased by orders of magnitude, meaning that a single instruction to call a “subroutine” or function could generate 50 to 500 or more instructions and each of these instructions could generate 1000 to 10,000 instructions.  Actually, one time I did some research and found that one 20 line program actually generated 63 mega-bytes of code.

There was still a problem.  It really helped the cost efficiency of the coder to be able to create massive amounts of code fast, but many times the customer for whom the program was being created wanted to interlink that program with other programs.  Most often these programs were created in different computer languages (e.g., FORTRAN, COBOL, PL1), and on various brands of computers (e.g., IBM, DEC, HP, Sun, Silicon Graphics).

Obviously, the problem was that all of these various software and hardware suppliers were competing for business and therefore making it hard to interlink their products with competitors’ products.  The reason was simple; to force their customers to buy only their products.  Today you can see the identical strategy, with Apple, Microsoft, and others building their own “ecosystems” to ensure their customers stay their customers.

In the early 1980s, customers began to recognize this, especially with the advent of data networks.  This set off a series of international standards committees for all components, from data and how to store it, to data communications.

For example, I was on a number of Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) data communications committees starting in 1982.  One of the team members of the team I led had been a coauthor of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).  Both HTML and XML, the languages of the web, were derived from SGML.  I was peripherally involved with STEP (PDES) for engineering data, X.400 for e-mail and X.500 Directory Services from which LDAP was derived.  This was all between 1982 and 2009.

Another step in creating SOA for information and knowledge-based system (the so called “Big Data” systems) is a standardized interface for the Services (i.e., components or functions).  Various organizations including the W³C worked on this issue and came up with Web Services.  Web Services uses XML in a defined and standardized manner to enable the software functions to communicate without having to write an interfacing routine between and among functions.\

The final step in creating SOA was the design and development of a reference architecture or model denoting the components of its supporting infrastructure, assembly process, and functions needed to create a robust application using SOA.  I was a team member on the OASIS Team the created this model.

So from personal experience, I’ve seen the international standards for data formats, and data communications develop.  All of the above are the precursors for Services Oriented Architecture as used for a new economic architecture.

Mass Customization Using Services Oriented Architecture--Part 3, Coming Soon

Part 3 will discuss an economic version of Services Oriented Architecture and how it will reformulate business organizations in the Digital Age.

The Digital Future: Services Oriented Architecture and Mass Customization, Part 1

Part1: The Digital Future

I was challenged to forecast changes in economic systems based on both my knowledge of spatial economic systems and on my experiences with computers, data networking, and automation.  What I have come up with is a four part article on the digital future.

Since I normally tend to build to a thesis like any good engineer designing a product, instead of stating my thesis and then defending it, like lawyers, and journalists normally do, I will take a shot at the thesis of this paper first.

 

We have entered the Digital Age in which Capitalism, which describes the economic system of the Age of Print will be succeeded by Economic Services Oriented Architecture producing Mass Customization.  It will be an age where consortiums are formed small and entrepreneurial organizations to produce products, systems, and services the customer wants.  This architecture will replace the current organizational architecture of a single large organization producing a large quantity of products that “satisfice”, that is, they come somewhat close to satisfying the customer’s requirements—they suffice.

The article is constructed in five parts.  This part, Part 1, discusses the economic history of humankind based on how they have communicated and stored data and information.  I feel it’s important to provide the context for my forecast.

The Second Part is a discussion of the coming of the Digital Age based on my experiences seeing it over the past 50+ years.  I’ve found a structure in pattern in the seeming chaos of change in data and information storage.  This pattern leads me to architectural pattern changes that lead to my forecast.

The Third Part is a more detailed discussion of this new architectural pattern called Services Oriented Architecture (SOA).  I will give a couple of examples to demonstrate how SOA will work economically.

The Fourth Part will consider how SOA and the Digital Age will change an individual’s life by giving three examples.

The Fifth Part will show how converting to SOA will create changes as drastic as the changes from the feudal economic architecture to the Industrial architecture.   In this part, I will forecast the change to a number of industries.  Most of these changes are already starting to occur, though in a very minor way.

An Exceedingly Brief History of European and American Civilization

There have been four ages for humankind. 

The Age of Speech

The age of speech (verbal communication), from circa 300,000 BC to circa 6,000 BC  was when for the first time data, information, and knowledge could be transferred and store within and between generations.  This was the first time when clans and tribes formed.  And, according to archeologists, there was a glacially slow revolution from hunting and gathering and stone to agriculture and metals.  This was the economic architecture of the time.  During this period, the shaman, or priest was holder of the tribal information base.

The Age of Writing

The age of writing (written communication), from circa 6,000 BC to 1455 AD, was when data, information, and knowledge could be more accurately transferred longer distances and stored for much longer time periods (in fact, there are documents and records over this entire period).  Political institutions increased from tribes migrating all over the landscape to settled (or at least apparently) settled city states, and then to regional and national states.  This was the second form of an economic architecture.

During this age the first known libraries and colleges formed; for example, the library and museum (college/research center) at Alexandria.  And again, more than 600 years later, after the various barbarian tribal invasions sent Europe back to the talking age, (during the dark ages) up to 900 AD when Carolus Magnus (or Charlemagne) manage to very slightly reintroduce writing and then colleges were formed in what is now Italy.

The Age of Printing

 The age of printing, (printed communications), from 1455 AD to between circa 1942 to 1992, data, information, and knowledge, became much more readily available to humankind.  Thanks, in large part to Martin Luther insistence that everyone should be able to read the Bible, Northern Europe learned to read and read ideas and concepts that were not part of the Catholic Church Doctrine.

By 1776, Adam Smith had described how wealth was created, together with the growth of engineering knowledge, and the ability of individuals to take risks and fail or succeed, Humans entered the era of Mass Production and Liberty.  This is the basic economic architecture of the Age of Printing.

Included in the mass production was mass production of education, based on a school for all teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.  This has led to the mass production educational systems of today.

Knowledge and Wealth

You should note that with the speech, humanity grew significantly wealthier than other animal species.  The reason is that they could accumulate more and better data, information, and knowledge through speech.

With writing, humanity accumulated a much more wealth.  This wealth was exceedingly badly distributed. Nonetheless, looking at places like Pompeii, even some of the slaves could accumulate small wealth (while “the bread and circuses” form of socialism led to the eventual destruction of the Roman Empire).

With printing, a much large chunk of humanity created orders of magnitude more wealth.  The accumulation of knowledge of how the Universe works has led to mass production, which meant mass wealth.  For example, if there is a disaster now, people expect the restoration of power, water, fuel, and communications immediately; this was never true for even the “wealthiest in the age of speech, writing, or even for most of the age of print.  This demonstrates how exceedingly rich even the poor are today, when compared with the rest of human history (This is something the liberal entitlement generation has forgotten).

The Digital Age: The next Age

The next Age has begun.  It began, in a real sense with WWII.  It gestated throughout the 1950s to the mid-1960s.  I will discuss this period and beyond in the next part of this article.