(article rescued from the archives of the former nz.internet.com = Jan 2001)
New Zealand’s technological literacy, the fact it is an English speaking nation, the quality of its innovators and its size, beauty, and temperature together give it a competitive advantage as the world becomes increasingly technologically driven.
David Pearce Snyder, lifestyles editor of Futurist magazine and world renowned forecaster and strategist told the Ninth international Conference on Thinking in Auckland this week that New Zealand must make more efficient use of human and information resources.
Its main advantages in the information age he said were that the disadvantage of distance was removed, English would remain the lingua franca of the information revolution for the foreseeable future and the average mean temperature of 68 degrees farenheit.
"The anthropologists tell us the human animal works best at 68 degrees farenheit which will make New Zealand a venue of preference. The country will be inundated by high rollers," he suggested.
The industrial age "which we are just leaving" was about making and moving stuff or physical things which posed a great problems for New Zealand which is a great distance away from raw material and most markets. "The information age will be much more about analysing and using information and transforming it across the infostructure - the internet - making the country equally competitive with every market or producer in the world."
While most people think about Napster and Gnutella in terms of "swiping copyright material on the internet" he believed the same kind of software will enable every employee in an organisation or profession to share with one another the things they’ve learned. Mr Pearce Snyder suggested such packages were idea for small sized nations like New Zealand if every member of a profession for example could share their innovations and help solve problems that everyone has in common
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