It was a chance meeting in the brownian motion of human interactions. I recently picked up a 2024 Mac Mini M4 used, and was having what turned out to be a minor problem with it that required an Apple support company’s help.

While waiting for that to get done, I wandered into an old Singer store nearby. It’s a little store full of stuff for homes, and I wander through it when I get the opportunity because… well, because it makes me rethink how I do things at home sometimes. In a world that lacks imagination, browsing through stores allows imagination to run free.

As it happens, they photocopy things as well. A spritely gentleman was busy getting things photocopied, and was talking about economics in the context of China and the United States, and I chimed in that I had heard him say nothing I disagreed with. He put it into a local context as well. He was engaging, what he was saying made sense, and it extrapolated well to some ideas I’ve had.

Time passed, we exchanged ideas on a few things, at first with me asking clarifying questions, and then with me driving slightly about the information economy. Not much, but just a bit. I do think he tested me a bit, too, when we were discussing economic disparity as he threw a question at me and I quickly linked it to geography. He looked at me, an odd satisfaction on his face – not recognition, but as in someone who was used to speaking but not used to being heard. And I felt the same way. We were in synch.

We weren’t competing. We were building off one another’s ideas. Speaking for myself, I often find myself in conversations with people where people seem to think conversation is a competition – and it’s tiring for me, particularly when I am not too interested in ‘winning’ but instead ‘learning’ and fleshing out ideas.

It ends up that I had accidentally met John Humphrey and met him not as a celebrity of Trinidad and Tobago on a platform, but as someone you run into in a store and discuss economics and the future and past with. He’s 40 years older than I, and looks maybe 10 years older than I.

This was a privilege that I expect many didn’t realize was a privilege. Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1980s, his name was in every household I could remember, though never quite as high up in frequency as Basdeo Panday. I was talking to a piece of history that may yet also be a piece of the future, because I believe he understands the future better than most.

My own thoughts tend toward pragmatism across ideologies. His seemed to as well. We exchanged phone numbers, and our conversation prompted me to write a primer on the Information Economy which I intend to follow up on because it adds a context and depth to what we had been discussing. The information economy is something that I have been working on in various ways over time.

A surge of thoughts and ideas had me simply reflecting yesterday afternoon, exploring permutations and scenarios, and wondering how I could better explain it all.

I had grown, new pathways connecting in my mind – still connecting now, building on each other.