WE HAVE BEEN bombarded by people talking about change when what they often mean is a return to the so-called good old days. But we can't go back to a world that no longer exists.

The industrial age in which we all grew up is slowly fading into the information age. And in this new world, intellectual capital is becoming relatively more important than physical capital, and the new source of wealth is not material, it is information applied to work to create value.

The pursuit of wealth is now largely the pursuit of information and its application to the means of production. This shift of perception of what constitutes an asset poses huge problems in maintaining the power of government. The competition for the best information is very different from the competition for the best bottom land. The nature of information--how it is traded and produced, the scope, shape, and protocols of information markets-- will impact government policy, set limits of power, and redefine the concept of sovereignty.