Emerging Trends

VISION: MONEY AND VALUE 

In the coming 5-I0 years, the nature, importance and the very concept of money will change in ways unimaginable today. As it is, because of ubiquitous credit cards, Internet purchases, direct bank deposits, B2B,C2C (who knows what the next alphabet soup combo will be) we are being taken further and further away from actual paper money. Most people today see or touch an extremely small fraction of the money they earn and spend annually. Now companies like First Data are experimenting with tags called Go-tags that when tapped on a sensor attached to the item on sale completes the transaction. No credit cards or cash. How fast is that. And with the ability to download virtual money from ATM onto PDA, in the works as we speak, “money” may have to be replaced by some other term. Be the first to coin the new term for the digital currency of tomorrow and become immortalized.

The shift: stocks, barter, future worth, ability to earn as opposed to money owned, and all kinds of other highly volatile less tangible forms of value have replaced the greenback in daily usage at all levels of transaction. Companies like You Tube fetch a billion dollars based on future value. This means that what you think you have today will have a different value tomorrow, but can have a projected value today based on its value tomorrow. Makes sense ? This has become true of an idea, stock options, real estate, or the smart company you just bought using stock options. Money has therefore become a concept that is highly versatile in form, extremely volatile in nature, and as a concept it is abstract at best,  and defined mostly by what it can get you right NOW.

So where does that leave you? Constantly create, add value to whatever form of currency you hold, be it stocks, real estate, domain names, or the nano concept.  There are no long term blue chips in this New Economy. If it’s real estate, make sure you understand what location, location, location means to today’s highly mobile and multi-cultural workforce and to the particular niche market you serve. There are no absolutes here either, a location that is valued today will change tomorrow.

In a nutshell, unless you are willing to sleep with all your money under your mattress, value is a highly shifting concept. Keep up with the market, the technologies, the social changes, and where you fit into all that. It’s a complex picture, get all the help you can in making sense of this volatile picture of money vis a vis value.