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.

The list below is a description of methods and strategies that have caused abundance to become a reality. It is not necessary that you read the list or understand each of these methods in order to understand the implications of this major change. The rest of the web site gives 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 on our iPods, read and write on the computer using virtual paper or use virtual mail to transfer our thoughts, have virtual meetings and perhaps work in virtual offices available through any network connection.

Digitization encodes data so that it can be 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.

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 a following.

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, MySpace, 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, MySpace, FaceBook, Craig's List, Flickr, del.icio.us 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. 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.

Automation creates goods ever more inexpensively. The increasing functionality with concurrent decreasing cost of computers and peripherals is a good example of this.

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

Disintermediation removes any middleman or step that is 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.

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 are easy to use website creation tools that can allow anyone to contribute their thoughts to the global conversation or become major cultural, political, news or educational websites.

ReMixing is the combining of two or more pieces of digital content to create new content. For example, adding a music track to a home 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 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 virtual 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 methods, 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 programs such as One Laptop Per Child are spreading technology worldwide.