Day 43 - Investment Story

 Investment Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

They called it “Information Capitalism.”   Rapid technological development depended on rapid access to information of all kinds at all times.  Borders, political alignments, and battle factions meant less and less and less.  The free flow of information knows no boundaries.

With more and more data online and available at a moment’s notice, it only made sense to monetize the information itself.  As put forth by Emmanuel Winston Woods, Sc.D. in his dissertation on the need for an information and data trade and sharing commission, “Why invest in a company when you can invest in the person behind the company?  Why invest in the person behind a company when you can invest in their idea?”

Industries of all sorts were using data and technology intensive techniques to reshape their companies and the way they did business.  It truly was the information age like never before.  Anything from history to theory to the future was available.  Always.  Technology doesn’t sleep and neither does the money that can be made from a good idea.  Knowledge and the application of that knowledge had never been so powerful.  Industry and society at large demanded more and more instant access.

“Information, communication, and application.” Those were the key words to the new economy and the promised better world of tomorrow. The principle was simple – fund the idea and make sure the theoretical found its way to becoming the concrete.

Political and economic theorist, part-time blogger and regular cable news contributor L.B. Fernando propagandized this new economic shift, proclaiming “Just imagine what Tesla could have done with crowd funding as a sponsor instead of having his ideas stolen and shackled by Edison.  Think what sort of world we could live in now if Oppenheimer and Einstein had been publicly backed to develop ideas and their applications as opposed to working for the government and the military?  Who is to say just what sort of world we wouldn’t have?  Imagine a well informed and engaged society rather than one of ignorance that fears and rejects of science.  One must safely assume that this world would be a more technologically advanced, innovative and peaceful place.”

When the people were more interested in investing in ideas of leisure instead of intellectual stimulation, Fernando expediently forgot his previous advocacy of the Information Investment System and writing in a op-ed piece condemned its failure in part because “They married information with capitalism, for better or worse and conveniently chose to ignore capitalism’s more base desires and ugly step-children that are consumerism, hedonism, and exploitation.  Information investment seemed like a very good idea, but when it’s the idea that makes money, the idea gets watered down into pop culture nonsense pretty quickly.

When the people spoke again and failed to reinvest in L.B Fernando, the former newsman of supposed integrity quickly adapted and found work as a gossip columnist.