The CNMI and the information age

According to futurist Alvin Toffler, the world evolved in three separate and distinct stages, segments, or “waves.” In the “First Wave” of civilization, the world was defined by the agricultural revolution. In the “Second Wave” came the industrial revolution. Finally, in the “Third Wave,” the world embraced the computer and the information age.

During each of these successive stages, the world’s–or rather, since the world did not develop uniformly, a particular nation’s–culture, politics, ideology, institutions and social life matched that of the prevailing wave. In the First Wave, for example, we might say that feudalism prevailed in the age of agriculture. In the Second Wave, we might say that mercantilism, fascism and communism prevailed for a time, until they were mostly supplanted by liberty, democracy and free trade in the globalized, high-tech, new economy information age. The point is that, with each successive paradigm/reality shift, new requirements emerged to surpass and supplant the old, obsolete ones.

Where does the CNMI stand in this three wave historical evolution? Although we still have some backward-thinking politicians who foolishly seek to promote agriculture (farming and fishing), the CNMI has clearly emerged from its “First Wave” agricultural roots. The sugar cane industry is dead. Tourism (indirectly), shipping and garment factories have brought our islands firmly into the
“Second Wave” industrial age. Today, the CNMI is on the verge of the “Third Wave” information age.

Are we ready to fully embrace this new wave of change? By all appearances, the CNMI desperately needs to liberalize and modernize its ways of thinking about the world. In order to remain productive in the Third Wave, the CNMI has to drop all of its cultural baggage and begin anew. Government policies must radically change.

The CNMI will never succeed through a culturally closed, inefficient system. No country in the world can succeed through merit-less, xenophobic protectionism, particularly not in a globalized, high-tech, rapidly changing, dynamic, fluid, new economy, 21st Century information age environment.

This is the CNMI’s great challenge. We are at yet another crossroads in our historical development. It is not merely a simple matter of establishing dubious free trade zones and trying to attract new high-tech industries.

Our very culture itself probably needs to be radically revised. For it may be stagnant and highly resistant toward badly needed changes and reforms. Our culture may not promote maximum productivity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation. It may not foster the kind of free, open and unbridled free market competition vital to postmodern success.

The CNMI may essentially still be operating on an agricultural, Trust Territory cultural premise while the advanced nations rapidly and eagerly embrace the new information age and all that it logically entails. After all, many of our current leaders grew up in an entirely different First Wave environment. (Amazingly, some are still interested in reviving the old copra industry.)

Adapt or fail: those are the choices before us.