In both the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Covey and "Money In Your Mind" seminar by Lodchowski, they talk about the topic of the ages of man. Lodchowski just enhances it more by relating it to the value exchange shifts in each age to highlight how the mindset of money came about. But his discussion did not go further to the Knowledge Worker age which Covey had covered. I'd like to contemplate on the value shift of this age today.
The age of man starts of with the HUNTER. A being that would hunt for his survival. Value is subject only to what he considers as his own needs. There is sone value on the hunted animal that they are fighting for as they need the prey to survive. But there is no exchange or trade in this age. Thus an objects importance is relative to how it's owner prizes it. At this point I believe that one's survival is the most valued necessity.
Then the hunter evolves into the FARMER, after much experience and dliberation. The Hunter realizes the effort of looking for, tracking, and then killing/catching prey. He eventually realizes that he can breed and he can plant. To the individual, a shift on how much he values his resources is starting to take place. Besides realizing that stock that he keeps is easier to access than hunting for it, he also realizes that this is a reasource that he can grow / breed, cultivate, and then harvest. He starts planning on for his future by consuming just what he needs, and re-investing the rest.
As man learns how to sow and reap, he also gets to realize that with the excess of what he is growing, he'd be able to barter goods with other people. He'd be able to exchange what value he has in return for items he regards to of same or more value. For example a sack of wheat that he has in excess, he can exchange for a leg of cow thst another person may have. And the person to whom had exchanged the sack of wheat can now exchange half a sack for a bowl of honey, and so on.
Similarly at this time as man begins to explore, he starts to discover items in nature that though cannot be cultivated or made many, can be harvested. These items which are hard to find and to cultivate are harnesses and made into trinkets which made them more valuable to people. Precious stones, hard to find shells, and other items shaped to attract became the new basis for bartering. Now a new level of value is set, and items which are hard to find or exhibit certain characteristics are now considered as precious. The trading process was further simplified as heads of state, emperors and chieftains moved towards making coins out of the precious metals and gave denomination value to each kind of coin created. This has become the start of how man perceived value to money.
Then during the time of the Crusades, when people had to travel long distances to the Holy Land, it had made travelling with people's money very risky. Just imagine travelling hundreds of miles with bags of gold and silver coins. The Knights Templar had conceptualized a process wherein people could deposit their coins in one of their keeps in one city and be issued a piece of parchment that can be authenticated by other Templars in other city keeps. And give the depositor the ability to withdraw the sane amount of money in any other city where a Templar keep is located. These "Founders of Banking" not only revolutionized business commerce through this process, this also led the way to trading with paper bills.
As man transitions from Farmer to INDUSRIAL age, governments have now come to standardize both bills and coin tokens to have equivalent values based on their precious metal reserves. And this is how we go about trading and bartering using paper bills and coins. This had hightened during the industrial age as we start to have the facilities and machines of molding and the technology of printing. Now when you come to think of it, the sack of wheat that we used to trade before is being traded off now via paper bills. And if you further think about it, it is actually us who put in the value to these bills. With this realization, we would be able to come to the deduction that to be able to earn these bills, there should be a value exchange that should take place. We now make use of paper bills as a representation of value, thus it is only right that to be able to earn more of these bills, we must be able to provide the most value.
Now besides the paradigm shift in the valuation of paper bills. Another important value shift during the industrial age is the technology of printing. The printing press had given man the power to not only write down texts of knowledge passed down from generation to generation, but gave man the facility to mass prosuce and distribute knowledge through books. Just imagine and compare as an example how the teachings of the Bible were spread through word of mouth only through gatherings. This compared to being able to print a thousand Bibles and these sent across for anyone to access. Value has now transitioned from how many you can make, to how intelligent you can make it.
Now in the KNOWLEDGE WORKER AGE, man puts weight to not just "how many" can be.made, but also to factors of how fast, how reliable, how efficient, how much improvement, and so on. The knowledge worker age brings us to individuals who specializes and brings forth value via the service that one provides. This had given a more defined individual state to people. We have doctors, lawyers, engineers, drivers, etc, each defined by their individual skills. And for each skill that a person puts forward, is the value that they provide to society.
This brings me to the thought of the next age we are transitioning to. An age defined by a new technology as with each age in the past. During the HUNTERS AGE, hunting tools and weapons, the FARMING AGE, farming tools, the INDUSTRIAL AGE, machines, and the KNOWLEDGE WORKER AGE, books and the printing press. Iam talking about the INTERNET AGE, and the internet. As compared to the time of the knowledge worker age wherein knowledge is regulated and spread based on a specific standard. The internet on the otherhand is a deregulated medium wherein any individual can contribute, and yet is left to each and every individual to decide if these contributions are legit.
In this age and time a degree can be earned online. Knowledge is spread and provided to all, but it does not really take into consideration the ramifications of this knowledge that is shared. Just imagine individuals who feel sick, would rather search online for the symptoms and a cure based on number of votes/likes as compared to seeking professional opinion. Similarly we have people interacting through social media more, as compared to face to face interaction. And with regards to money, just note its transition from paper bills to plastic cards (credit cards) to online points / tokens which are exchanged to virtual "stuff".
Ledochowski had argued that there is one thing that removes value from things and that is consumption. Becoming the hunter and consuming things without providing anything back in return. At this point I disagree as I have identified another process of devaluation. And this is creating a virtual counterpart and making people perceive these items as valuable. I do believe that we will be seeing the end of thr knowledge worker age soon. I just fear that the next age of man that we are moving into is becoming less and less human.
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