Information Economy

he information economy is not a new thing, it has been evolving for the past 100 years.

Benkler argues that the shift from an industrial economy to the current information economy explains how power has been given to the individual.

An information economy's key features are:


 * It produces information: Examples, financial services (stocks, bonds and numbers), software, accounting etc. Each one of these are producing information.
 * Cultural Production: Individual users are cultural producers, filmmakers are no longer the only people who can have an affect on pop culture. Individuals can also affect today's cultural through tweets, flickr accounts etc. This will only expand over time.
 * Manipulation of symbols: Today it is not about selling a product it is about branding a symbol. The Nike "swoosh" is a good example, Nike is not only about making shoes anymore they are branding a symbol that will influence society.

New Communications environment:


 * This allows for non-market production: This means that you do not need to be within a specific market economy in order to sell or buy products.  [Essentially Benkler is talking about the internet but, will not say it because he does not want it to be only secluded to the internet, in case this environment expands in the future.]


 * This also allows for decentrailzed patterns to emerge: This means you can have multiple centers of production. An example of this would be the way in which the news is collected.  People can now be dispatched to multiple locations and communicate via laptops.  This allows for multiple locations of production.

Additional features are:


 * The Networked Information Economy: There are multiple ways to share information; we are no longer reliant on one form. Capital is distributed to many people and due to the fact that it is on a computer you cannot block out a specific individual.
 * All of this is made possible through the declining costs of communications equipment, computation and storage, thus, allowing an individual to grow stronger.
 * All of this is made possible through the declining costs of communications equipment, computation and storage, thus, allowing an individual to grow stronger.

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