•Someday--perhaps at the start of the next decade,
perhaps at the start of the
decade after that--it will become clear that computer and communications technologies have triggered as big a shift in the set of commodities that
can be traded across oceans
as did the coming of the iron-hulled
ocean-going steamship a century and a half ago.
•The iron-hulled ocean-going steamship meant that for the
first time not just precious goods
but staple agricultural and industrial
commodities--wheat, wool, furniture, rubber, machinery, and so forth--could be made on one continent and profitably shipped to another.