BISA Magazine - Quarter 2, 2017 - 18

FEATURE STORY

an anonymous cell
phone texting capability. A message could be sent
and subsequently vanish. Nontraceable. No retribution possible.

He dealt with unique
problems in that role:
Eight or nine years ago,
for example, murder rates were
soaring in Mexico as the result of
cartel-driven violence. Things were out
of control, he said. But people were no
longer reporting crimes to the authorities because the cartels had infiltrated
the police. Meanwhile, new communications technology had penetrated
Mexico, as it had much of the world -
even grandmothers were texting messages on their cell phones, Ross said.
Ross and his group had an idea to outfit those grandmothers and others with

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Using a range of levers, his group and
their government partners put these
new phones into the hands of Mexican
citizens in drug-plagued regions. Citizens texted to authorities the information they saw and heard. The government quickly took out several key drug
cartel leaders, he said.

New raw materials
A question has since obsessed Ross. If
the internet was the story of the period
from 1996 to 2016, what would be the
story for the next 10 to 20 years? He
traveled extensively in an attempt to
find an answer to this question, visiting
some 40 countries and logging more
than one million miles to glimpse the

forces that were shaping the future.
He recounted his findings in his book,
"The Industries of the Future" (2016), a
New York Times hardcover best seller.
He observed:
* Land was the raw material of the
Agricultural Age.
* Iron was the raw material of the
Industrial Age.
* Data is the raw material of the
Information Age.
Indeed, 90 percent of the world's total
data was produced in the past two
years, Ross said.
Moreover, if we sum up all the data
from the beginning of recorded history-from the first paintings on the
cave walls of Lascaux, up until 2003,
that total would be equivalent to the
amount of data we generate now every
two days.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BISA Magazine - Quarter 2, 2017