It’s been intriguing following the long expected bankruptcy of GM today. While the coverage has been substantial… there is no doubt the long decline and demise breakup of a 100 year old icon of industrial power, with the continued destruction of Americans’ livelihood from fallout of GM and it’s vast supply system, makes June 1, 2009 a day not to be forgotten in American business history… However, I believe the true story is being overlooked. We’re witnessing something more significant than the end of a company… it’s really a metaphor for the death of the industrial age.

I don’t profess to be an expert on the automotive sector. I know the business very well, and I’ve watched it closely for years from the perspectives of both investment and ownership knowledge. And not just cars in America, but around the world.. I current;y own shares in Toyota because I believe they are the global automotive standard in lean manufacturing processes and in continual product development. I invested in Toyota because their cars met my standards and I bought one. Now, I apparently own a piece of the 60% of Government Motors that will emerge from Chapter 11. It’s not an investment I would make, nor do I… at least as of June 1, 2009… expect to buy one of their cars. I stand by what I said on my personal blog last October when I wrote “Exctinction”, suggesting that we do not need GM, Chrysler or Ford any more. For decades, these companies have gazed nostalgically in their rearview mirrors hypnotized by their past glory, blind to  the approaching threat of first German, then Japanese, and Korean manufacturers, ignoring consumers who had long before given up on their products.

So wheat does GM’s  Chapter 11 filing really signify? On the day of the filing, the Dow climbed 221 points or 2.6%. The market at least, is saying that Chapter 11 is good news, that the uncertainty is behind us. That a company, once as large as Microsoft, Toyota and Google combined, that once commanded 50% of  the US automotive market, is no longer capable of maintaining its Dow 30 or S&P 500 status. In effect, the market is saying GM doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t.  We’re not a country  whose might is measured by industrial icons anymore. Steel, rubber, automobiles… they defined the first half of America’s 20th century. The automotive industry, from 1970 to 2000, experienced not only disruption, but distraction from the public focus as seductive new products (electronics, home computing, mobile communications) emerged that diminished the significance of cars in our lives. And with its long, slow decline, we traded our standing as a manufacturer of industrial-age machines, for that of a manufacturer of information-age ideas.

And that is how America is measured today. Not by industrial might, but by information might. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Disney, Walmart, Dominant in their markets, vast in their scope and scale, and broad reaching in influence beyond that of an automotive company… even one as large as GM in their halcyon days. Welcome to the Information Age, good-bye Industrial Age.