One Perspective !

I have been literally going full throttle for the past week plus.

I will try and do an update over this weekend on a lot of what is happening but for tonight I just wanted to share something with my readership from an aquaculture industry perspective.

I have written often about the technology we have developed and the capability our system has to produce copious amounts of marine protein in a sustainable, eco-friendly, highly efficient manner. 

About two weeks ago one of the key members of our financial team forwarded a link to me that directed me to an article written over a decade ago. 

I read (scanned quickly) the article in a superficial fashion when he first sent it to me. 

It's content really did not sink in to my consciousness at that time.

A few days ago while flying from DC to Dallas, Texas I had time and occasion to re-visit the article as well as the synopsis of the major points in the article as detailed by our financial team member. 

Published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1999 this article appeared in the same year I was doing the initial biological work on recirculating aquaculture systems for growing jumbo shrimp in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Reading the article on the plane now over 13 years later I was struck by the parallels of what the author was saying in the article and where my own thinking was at the time. 

The article even briefly mentions fish farming in its predictive speculation.

Hopefully you can clink on the link and go directly to the article if you are interested. I would suggest you read the article and then read the summation of the salient points made by the individual who forwarded the article to me.

I think the author was definitely "on to something" thirteen years ago. 

I also think our technology developed and proven over the past thirteen years is a strong and powerful example of exactly what the author was predicting. 

Click on link below or simply "cut and paste" in your browser window to read the article in its entirety. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/10/beyond-the-information-revolution/304658/

Synopsis of article's highlights :

1.       We will change from hunter and gatherers of the sea to “Marine Pastoralists”

2.       Like biotechnology and fish farming each will emerge from its own unique and unexpected technology

3.       Industrial revolution changed economics by creating the “entrepreneur”…. small brave and intrepid investors will be pioneers!

4.       In retrospect it is difficult to imagine why the invention of the railroad took so long (we believe they will be saying the same about our emerging aquaculture  technology).  

5.       The impact of the Information Revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, has been enormous.  Both have enhanced goods and services that were in existence all along.  (Our technology was developed from research and data in the public sector, it was literally "just out there for all to see")

6.       The railroad was the truly revolutionary element of the Industrial Revolution, (today maybe it will be an "Aquaculture Revolution" and perhaps our technology will be the 'new railroad"), for not did it only create a new economic dimension but also changed what one would call the Mental Geography.

7.       There is only one economy and one market, one consequence of this is that every business must become globally competitive

8.       Dynamics of technology shifted to totally new industries that emerged almost immediately after the railroad was invented, not one of which had anything to do with steam or steam engines

9.       The one thing (to say again) that is highly probable, if not nearly certain, is that the next twenty years will see the emergence of a number of new industries.  At the same time, it is nearly certain that few of them will come out of information technology, the computer, data processing, or the internet.  This is indicated by all historical precedents. But is true also of the new industries that are already rapidly emerging.  Biotechnology, as mentioned is already here.  So is Fish Farming.

10.   Twenty five years ago Salmon (Shrimp) was a delicacy… today it is a commodity…

11.   But probably a dozen or so technologies are at the stage where biotechnologies was twenty-five years ago and are ready to emerge.

12.   The true spirit of a real "venture capitalist", not a "vulture capitalist" has the means and mentality to finance the unexpected and unproved (our technology will be unexpected,  but not unproven!)

13.   The key to our future is not electronics; it is cognitive science.

14.   Industries that emerge from now on will likely be from years of hard work, of struggle, of disappointments and failures, of thrift.  It has taken us 12 plus years to bring our technology to its first commercial application).

The closing comments by our financial member were: 

"I hope you enjoy reading between the lines like I do and are as excited as I am about this project.  Thanks for being the pioneers in helping shape Aquaculture in the 21^st Century!!"

I could not say it better myself. That is why I am giving you his words verbatim here.