The world is just beginning to undergo a profound change. It is transforming its economies from scarcity based to economies based on abundance. The results of these changes will cause massive social changes. Much of this change is due to the abundance of computers and the internet.

A momentum has developed with the increase in abundant goods and services which now means that if you want to have a voice in the direction of the future, you must be involved in building it and not just trying to control, exploit or stop progress. Any government or group that tries to halt progress or slow it down will be quickly bypassed, or run over. It has become self-defeating to fight progress toward abundance rather than to embrace it and work to increase it.

Some of the methods of achieving abundace are described in this page. The following pages give a brief description of what the changes are and what they will mean to you. There are also discussions about how you can participate in building the future.

The processes which are creating this change are:

Virtualization captures the essence of an action or item but separates the desired essence from the physical objects that may have created it. We listen to virtual concerts, read and write on the computer or smartphone using virtual paper or use virtual mail to transfer our thoughts, have virtual meetings and perhaps work in virtual offices or have virtual classes available through any network connection.

Digitization encodes data so that it can be created, stored, manipulated, duplicated, distributed and used at essentially no cost.

Volunteer Collaboration creates free and abundant resources such as Wikipedia, open source and free software and many other tools and sources of information and entertainment.

Cognitive Surplus is a term coined by Clay Shirky who describes it in a book with the same name. It describes people with free time to create and contribute to established sites like Wikipedia or YouTube or create other documents, videos, services, etc. These are often provided free to anyone connected to the internet.

Freebies are things such as free software, free email, free online storage, freely available web content, free web searches, image searches, maps, directions etc. These may be available through generosity or they may earn money for their provider by being monetized by advertising or by selling an upgraded version or upgraded service for the free item. Musicians may freely share their music to become better known and create fans who attend concerts and increases music sales.

The Network Effect causes some things to become more valuable and useful as more people use them or are connected to them. A phone system becomes more valuable each time a new person connects to it. Each unit that is sold or given away creates more demand due to standardization, interoperability, popularity etc. Notable networks are the telephone system, the World Wide Web, email, ebay, YouTube, FaceBook etc.

Web 2.0 websites enable users to help build useful information by simply using the site (essentially creating by consuming). It relies on most of the above methods and particularly the network effect. The more that it is used, the better and larger it becomes. Some examples are YouTube, FaceBook, Craig's List, Flickr, etc.

The Long Tail is the concept that there are a few products in each category that have high demand but most have much lower demand. This has made it difficult in the past to create an efficient market for low demand items since brick and morter stores only have limited room for relatively few products. Computer networks and search capabilities have solved this distribution and marketing problem. Amazon.com has created a marketplace for millions of book titles, ebay has created efficient markets for unusual and small quantities of items.

Creativity is enhanced by inexpensive, professional quality computerized tools which try to guide users to produce professional quality results. Creativity will rapidly increase as leisure time is increased and creates greater Cognitive Surplus.

Automation creates goods ever more inexpensively. The increasing functionality with concurrent decreasing cost of computers and peripherals and robots are good examples of this.

Nanotechnology is still in its infancy but promises to increase abundance and functionality while decreasing raw material and manufacturing costs.

Disintermediation removes middlemen or steps that are not adding value to a transaction. For example, if you know a stock or bond that you want to buy, an online stock trading service is faster, cheaper and more efficient than a traditional stock broker. An important result is a drop in the cost of servicing customers directly. Examples are in the travel industry and the financial sector.

ReMixing is the combining of two or more pieces of digital content to create new content. For example, adding a music track to a video, or adding a map to a web page or combining two digital photos or other content to create humorous combinations. Search engines combine results from their searches of billions of pages into lists of potential solutions to your search request.

Convergence combines multiple functions into one device. Many cell phones are now capable of taking photographs or videos, accessing the web and performing many other creative functions. Computers can be used to watch videos, make telephone calls and many other functions. Eventually, most digital goods and services will be available on any device. Some will be better for a particular purpose and others will be more portable.

Alternative materials replace costly and scarce resources with abundant and cheap resources or with digitized goods. A number of years ago there was fear that the silver supply would run out due to increased photographic use. With the advent of digital photography, photography has rapidly increased at the same time that costs were decreasing.

Ubiquity of devices to tap the digital cornucopia is progressing. Better devices, networks, operating systems and software combined with lower costs of devices and things like the World Wide Web are spreading abundant technology worldwide. High speed connectivity to the web increases every year and soon will be available to all people in the world.

Online Marketplaces allow consumers to compare many offers in a short period of time and select the best product for their unique needs. They also allow anyone to shop at millions of stores from the convenience of their homes. They have increased competition by vastly increasing the number of competing businesses. They have done this by providing a business "location" for small or new companies at almost no cost.

Blogs and sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are easy to use content creation tools that can allow anyone to contribute their thoughts or creations to the global conversation or become major cultural, political, news or educational websites.

Social Media allows friends, business associates or even people that do not know each other to be able to communicate by text or by video conversations.

Virtual Reality creates the perception of reality through a video device that allows sight in all directions. Equipment is being developed that will allow other senses such as touch, temperature or smell to also be perceived.

Podcasts are interviews or audio programs on various topics.

Videos allow the user to see and hear a wide range of content.