Long before motorways, the were “salt roads” like Italy’s Via Salaria and West Africa’s Timbuktu route. Caravans of camels and mules carried slabs of rock salt hundreds of kilometres, exchanging them for gold, kola nuts, or slaves. In other words, salt was a reserve currency, like the dollar.
Salt was a meat preservative, necessary for winter survival and long voyages. It also carried immense superstitious value as an antiseptic and painkiller. Geopolitical lines, borders and cities formed around salt routes, providing advantages to those who controlled them, much like we understand oil and data today.
In the 19th Century, at the height of the industrial revolution, steam technology undermined the commercial value but, critically, not the importance of salt. I mean, salt remained necessary as it does today. However, first steam technology removed the scarcity of salt, and later refrigeration undermined the utility value of salt, both of which eroded its commercial value.
Fast forward to the period shortly after the Second World War. Much of the world was in tatters, and countries were rebuilding. Driving reconstruction and economic dominance were commodities like oil, and less spoken of, intellectual property expressed in complex government and commercial institutions. The rise of complex societies induced the rise of knowledge workers like doctors, lawyers, economists, and later, software engineers and graphic designers. The few who went to universities and acquired this knowledge occupied and controlled the economy, much like the historical salt workers.
Like the introduction of steam technology, which undermined the scarcity of salt, we have Artificial Intelligence, which produces synthetic knowledge, thereby undermining it. Innovations like robotics and AI itself threaten to apply the knowledge, thereby undermining its utility value, at least to us. Therefore, I wager that knowledge will lose its commercial value like salt. Teachers, lawyers, and software engineers like me will cease to exist, much like the riches and politics of salt routes, which exist only in history books today.
In light of this, what is to be done?
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