We are facing a kaleidoscope of issues and ills across what Neal Stephenson called the Anglosphere in his 1995 science fiction novel The Diamond Age. The term has entered the mainstream since then via authors like John Lloyd and James C. Bennett. In the three decades since it was coined, many proposals have been made for Canada and the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to work together as an economic block. Despite it not gaining ground with policy makers, the concept is not so new. The shared interests and practices of these countries is self-evident but what's to be done about it and what's the necessity at play?
In the 1800s various British thinkers recognized the emergence of something different from the Empire itself, a metastasizing of the English world into a Greater Britain, a globalization of the English-speaking peoples with direct legal inheritances and common ethnicities that were producing a diverse but common culture across continents. There is no universal definition for who's in or out but Ireland, South Africa, some Caribbean states and even Singapore have been included in this, so far, imaginary friendly federation. Beyond the English element and beyond the Common Law frameworks, the third aspect to this informal family is the shared experience of what we can now call "early industrialization" as we witness South America, Asia and Africa fire up their engines. The prototyping of the industrial society happened in the Anglosphere and across all of Europe first, passing through several stages, World Wars, and financial restructuring phases, which then led to a marked deindustrialization phase, bringing us to this new moment characterized by the cry for re-industrialization, advanced manufacturing, re-shoring, and the sovereign society.
At the precise moment that national independence is being emphasized like never before, with supply chain risks and artificial intelligence autonomy acting as driving forces, on what possible grounds can we pursue cooperation among these like-minded countries? And is it possible to do so in ways that provide models and mechanisms for our many trading partners so that we can foster political stability and material prosperity abroad, ultimately putting less stress on our borders and our budgets? I think there is a path for impactful cooperation that doesn't rely on the fickle rhetoric or permissions of our national governments but nonetheless helps each national economy return to and surpass its former glories.
My proposal below is not a panacea but it does take dead aim at one of the valves pumping life throughout each national economy. Reviving our productive capacities in the very places that pioneered the spirits of mass production and advanced machining is the first but critical step for economic and cultural recovery across the West, for which the term Anglosphere was only ever a proxy, a placeholder and signifier for the extended family of peoples who closely share ideas about the good life and therefore how business should be organized and regulated by the State.
If we are to succeed beyond our imagination and break through into a new era in which the concept of managed decline is remembered as a stop gap measure, we must turn our attention back to the regional ecosystems of producers and processors of every size, seeing through the poster boy Shenzhen back into our own origin, where extreme intra-regional reliance produced the small-scale resilience and momentum which led us into our uncontested positions.
Re-shoring is of course not simply bringing large industrial operations back into our countries. It's about simultaneously reviving and unleashing the creative capacities of the ecosystems of small and medium makers and inventors that assist big actors, all the while generating the new approaches and processes that the re-invention of traditional sectors requires. This is a return to the wild west, the wild mid-west and to the mania of Manchester where rules and reporting took a back seat to the values of rapid adaptation and adoption, to the seizing of momentary opportunities in the supply chain that could produce temporary gains or recurring revenues. It didn't matter which at all, the order of the day was to build the economy and country in one messy, swift chaotic storm of collective effort.
These gaps between demand and supply were of a specific sort which seems to be misunderstood in our age of services and knowledge work. As the industrial economy advanced, especially in the mid 1800s, the gap between what people intended to produce and what the machinists and fabricators could create resulted in differing amounts of output-drag across regions. Wherever this backbone was the most adaptive and most skilled, all other industries closer to the consumer accelerated, feeding back in on themselves as manufacturing advanced to new levels of capability. The large factory isn't the issue, the bottlenecks lay elsewhere, in the supplier of parts and products which enable the big players to ramp up operations. The businesses in need of the most assistance are often too saddled with reporting requirements, thinned out management, and back orders to engage in strategic planning and relationship building. Instead of asking more from these fragile contributors, the answer is to pursue what I call Ecosystem as a Service.
We can create profitable entities that help individual producers operate better on their own and within their regions while reducing the need for government interventions and investment which are absolutely not producing outcomes anywhere near the speed which the pressures we are facing require. So what does that look like and what are the lynchpins we can build around?
In the 1800s and early 1900s electrification was the agenda of the day, helping manufacturers and related industries move away from complicated and limiting drive systems to dispersed motors that powered individual parts of their pipelines. Today the equivalent is the computerization of production. But we can't stop our intervention there, we must take a more holistic approach.
We've lived through a few rounds of electronics adoption and despite the current frenzy, the next stage isn't a cut and dry matter of embedding AI. In these kinds of workspaces where humans and mechanical systems interact in complex and unique ways, the real challenge is to integrate computers in highly tailored ways that meet the needs of the human operators. These systems must support role evolution and product line pivoting without cost prohibitive re-tooling of the digital systems. Until now, these enterprise software systems often ended up being no different than the dinosaur metal machines that chain businesses into their past. Serving what exists but incapable of meeting the emerging moment. It's time to support these companies like never before, literally. We can do so in three major ways by giving birth to a new kind of company designed to serve.