"The Medium is the Message!" - Marshall McLuhan

"The Medium is the Massage!" - Marshall McLuhan

"First we shape our tools, and thence our tools shape us!" --quoted by McLuhan

In case you hadn't noticed it, a very fundamental shift has been wrought around us in the very nature of things. That shift has transformed our world as you and I moved into the medium we are now using at this very moment, the Internet.

Please indulge me in a simple "thought experiment" (thank you, Einstein!), through several brief steps of attention, because this will make so much more of what's going on in your world make sense to you.

Let us imagine that there exist two distinct sets of natural law which govern forms of energy. One of these is The Laws of Abundance. The other of these is The Laws of Scarcity. Both sets of law govern throughout these types of energy, but in varying proportion.

Let us range these forms of energy along a continuum:

Each form of energy along this continuum is governed by both sets of natural law, but in greater or lesser degree according to which set it is closer to. Which end of this continuum do the Laws of Abundance govern from? --and which end of the continuum do the Laws of Scarcity govern from, according to what you know or perceive about the behavior and nature of each of the above forms of energy ranged along that continuum?

(1) Funny thing: we didn't have to tell you which set of laws went at which end. What does this tell you?

(2) As best you can, describe the Laws of Scarcity.

(3) As best you can, describe the Laws of Abundance.

(4) Please Freenote as best you can (5-10 minutes) within this topical context. (To "Freenote:" write whatever comes to mind in this context for you, as rapidly as possible and without pausing. Purpose is to expand the "pull" on your faculties and on your deeper, broader stock of information, to get to and bring up levels of understanding you otherwise couldn't get to, and didn't know you have. Write rapidly enough without pause in this context for 8-10 minutes - so fast there isn't time to stop and think what next to say and what next not to say, no time to judge. The rule: if it occurs to you in the context, express it regardless. The first page or so you can throw away afterward, most of the rest will astonish you with its high quality and depth of understanding.)

If you did your Freenoting on computer, and care to share your surprising results, you can e-mail the results directly to Win Wenger. If typed or handwritten on paper, or effusively poured into a tape recorder, feel free to send us a copy at Project Renaissance, Box 332, Gaithersburg, MD 20884-0332 USA.

(Freenoting is one of the many accelerated learning techniques taught, in far greater step-by-step detail, in my book Beyond Teaching And Learning.)

Here we are on the Internet, which among the various energies ranged along that continuum is virtually pure information. Even though the Internet started under the grim urgencies of the Cold War industrial-military complex, which set of natural laws describes how most of the features of the Internet came to be?

A lot of companies have lost their shirts on the Internet. A lot have prospered radically, such as Bill Gates and Microsoft. Whatever the motivations of the latter, their winning moves are best described by which set of laws?

--And the losing moves of those losing companies by which set of laws? Nearly everyone coming in, was still under the old set of assumptions: rationality is the effort to maximize your gains at everyone else's expense; for one to win, others have to lose, allocating scarce resources to one's own best advantage amidst alternative possible uses.... --But what works here is mainly the other set of natural laws, the laws under the Law of Abundance. THAT is why we're giving away so many hugely major inventions for free, posting up so much free information.....

> Free way to inexpensively protect, rebuild and build beaches and shorelines, as much beach as you want for less than one cent on the dollar of what communities up and down both East and West Coasts now routinely and desperately spend: see Beachbuilder.

> An astonishingly obvious way to starve hurricanes and typhoons right down to harmlessness! Protect American, Japanese, Philippine, Chinese, Bangladeshi and other shorelines for less than 1% of the cost of one major landfall! See the details how to, posted up freely at the Project Renaissance website as Hurricane Stopper.

> Throughout Project Renaissance, we've posted a lot of information which is even more remarkable, for free. Go take a good look!

Bill Gates and Microsoft we certainly are not, but we know a good set of natural laws when we see them. Live long and prosper!