Work is best done by  combining software and human touch, where software does routine and human touch does fun and creative tasks. In customer service, software answers questions and resolves complaints. In accounting, software pays bills and acepts payments. In sales, software generates leads and contracts, and finalizes deals. Humans resolve complex and/or rare customer questions and/or complaints. Humans set policies for bill paying and receiving payments. Humans meet prospective customers, signs contracts, and negotiates terms of contracts.

                Technology will never solve the ills or injustices of society. Technology brings an increase in opportunities. Creating and seizing opportunities is what drives the economy. The ability to solve social and economic problems will be limited primarily to lack of imagination in seizing opportunities, rather than trying to optimize solutions. The future of technology is networks, large, wide, deep, and fast. Electrified networks of all types will cover our planet and their complex nodes will shape our economy. There is no doubt that technology's march is clearly aimed toward all things networked. The new economy is global, favors ideas, information. and relationships, and is intensely interlinked.

                The collapsing microcosm of silicon and the exploding telecosm of connections form the matrix through which the new economy of ideas flow. Computer chips are becoming cheap and tiny enough to slip into every object we make. There are now six billion computer chips embedded in manufactured objects, with ten billion non computer chips projected by 2005. The great benefits reaped by the new economy in coming decades will be due in large part to exploring and exploiting the power of decentralized and autonomous networks.

                Leading growth sectors of the economy will be bioscience, computing, energy/environment, nanotechnology, and telecommunications. The traditional sectors of the economy will be transformed and perhaps eliminated as these new sectors converve. With nano computer chips embedded in manufactured goods, plants, animals, and able to communicate with other computer chips and sensors in the environment, networks will have been created whose value will increase expotentially as embedded computer chips are added.

                Knowledge reduces need for raw materials, labor, time, space, capital, and other inputs. Knowledge becomes the ultimate substitute- the central resource of an advanced economy. In such an economy, value of firms lies in capacity for acquiring, generating, distributing, and applying knowledge strategically and operationally. Knowledge industries are computers, electronics, biotechnology, finance, software, entertainment, media, advanced communications, medical services, consulting, training and development.

                Wealth creation is increasingly dependant on exchange of data, information, and knowledge. New information technologies enable many things, such as de-massified products, electronic information becoming medium of exchange, goods and services becoming systems, and de-massified work units with free-flow information systems. More organization units created by smaller work units mean more information generated and communicated.

                Knowledge becomes means of production as innovators combine imaginative knowledge with action. Wealth creation becomes circular process with wastes recycled into inputs for next cycle of production and computerized monitoring and ever-deeper levels of scientific and environmental knowledge. Producer and consumer become reunited in cycle of wealth creation, with customer contributing money, market, and design information. Customers become vital for production process, by sharing data, information, and knowledge. Thus, data, information, and knowledge become vital elements of high-tech economy.

                Wealth is no longer stockpiled. Wealth has been reusable assets, becoming ultimate paper assets, money, and certificates. Wealth becomes ability to make connections for networks. Knowledge becomes most valuable, and wealth is increased when knowledge is shared. Such knowledge is of technologies such as computers, electronics, biotechnology, software, communications, and medical services.

Wealth was made recently by acquiring knowledge of technologies and using such knowledge in employment, earn money to invest in profitable corporations. In emerging economy, wealth from corporations is transferred to networks. The values of networks are increased through addition of connections. For networks to attract connections, they must contain knowledge. They must also be easy to access to retrieve and share knowledge.

People should be free to do what they want everyday and every hour. They should get paid to do things that they enjoy doing. What is needed is to create technologies and processes to enable payments for the endless variety of things that people enjoy doing. People who already get paid for doing things that they enjoy can become consultants to teach others how to get paid for doing things that they enjoy doing.

Time quickens as changes accelerates. In Hunter/Gather Age, there was slow pace of time and no forms of wealth. In the Agricultural Age, there was a gradually faster pace of time, with stockpiles of grains and metals as forms of wealth. The Industrial Age has faster pace of time, with paper certificates symbolizing grains and metals as forms of wealth. Hunter/Gather Age had clans to organize resources, Agricultural Age had castles to organize resources, and Industrial Age had businesses and governments to organize resources.

 The emerging Network Age has ever accelerating pace of time, access and contribution to networks as forms of wealth. While the Industrial Age was dominated by Physics, the Network Age is dominated by Biology. Understanding how Physics concepts dominate Industrial Age led to accumulations of paper certificates that symbolize grains and metals. Understanding how Biology concepts dominate Network Age leads to access and contributions to networks.

In dawn of Agricultural Age, clever people control land and cultivate farms. In dawn of Industrial Age, clever people learn industrial processes, labor, save, and invest. In dawn of Network Age, clever people learn network processes, access networks, and contribute knowledge to networks. Concepts, ideas, and images are real items of value in the emerging Network Age, while wealth is vested in human imagination and creativity.

In the Network Age, the importance of markets is replaced by the importance of networks, and the importance of ownership is replaced by the importance of access. Property continues to exist, but is far less likely to be exchanged in markets. Suppliers of property lease, rent, charge admission fee, subscription, or membership dues for its short term use. The exchange of property gives way to short term access between servers and clients operating in a network relationship. Ownership of physical capital is regarded as mere expense of operations, something to borrow rather than own.