Notes on cyber-socialism I

Have you ever wondered why, despite the attack on the Twin Towers, the world economy didn’t collapse?

Like an idea from a James Bond villain, or something out of the mind of Dr. Evil, Bin Laden’s plan was ambitious. The attack on the Twin Towers, apart from showing us once again that reality beats fiction, turned out to be a symbolic act more than an effective one.

The American economy didn’t collapse. On the contrary, it came out of the recession it was in, and there were even unexpected effects worldwide.

One anecdotal case: the United States couldn’t meet its domestic demand for flags, and in 2001 it had to import 51.7 million dollars’ worth of flags from China to cover more than half of that demand.

The insurance business not only didn’t collapse, it has prospered like never before. After September 11 the United States sold cars like never before in its history.

Much of this resilience has to do with rising productivity, and that comes from the use of high technology. Even though the high-tech market has fallen lately, the truth is that it is what holds up world growth. Without information technology, Al Qaeda’s plans would very likely have worked.

But IT doesn’t only raise productivity; it has created new kinds of business, the distribution of the workforce on a global scale, the redistribution of the services market, for example.

If you want to bring down the world economic system, you don’t attack the financial centers, that much has been proven. You have to attack the means that make it possible to improve and sustain productivity, and that is a very complicated job.

Terrorism has been unable, so far, to shake the foundations of the world economy. Terrorism only serves political interests, both the terrorists’ and those of the governments that aim to keep their control with the excuse of protecting us.

The world is safer now, not because G. W. Bush says so, nor because we have better armed forces. The world is safer because information technology lets everything decentralize and move faster. China will probably be the last great world power; after that the term won’t make much sense anymore.