Talk:Information economy

Might help to mention Fritz Machlup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Machlup. Gaintes (talk) 18:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

In the following, this issue is roughly divided into three areas: production, consumption, and transaction of information. Each section deals with the economic changes pointed out by some, as well as their consequences for our economy and society.

1. Production of Information
   1. Production of information goods and services are said to be increased over the last decades.
2. Consumption of Information
   1. Increased consumption of information symbolic/semiotic dimension of consumption.
3. Transaction of Information
   1. Increased role of communication

Please add this content back in when it is ready to be expanded. --Viriditas | Talk 12:08, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There are nine definitions of information and another nine for knowledge in my Webster's Dictionary. Both can mean pretty much whatever someone wants them to mean. That's why we defined more than 400 terms in our work on knowledge services. But these relate to the nature of the stuff that is being traded. I think that this discourse is on a higher plane.

There are identifiable economic sectors, national economies, and a global economy. To me, the "information economy" and "knowledge economy" represent economic sectors that trade intellectual property within national and global economies. They both underpin the service sector of a national economy. Although I don't know how big something has to be considered an economic sector, both, in my opinion, are big enough to be so classed. I agree that both are subsets of the broader "Information Society." This, then considers the first of your valid defitional arguments.

Information is a "final valued product" that is traded through "provider/user (seller/buyer) transactions. A lot of people are making a lot of money by trading intellectual property in the form of information (just ask Google), so it is worthy of continued inclusion as an identifiable economic sector, along with agricultural produce, industrial products, and services. However, I personally feel that "information economy" is a transitional term that will gradually be subsumed within the "knowledge economy."

The magnitude of the knowledge sector of the US economy was first described by Machlup (1962), and the nature of knowledge work were first described by Drucker (1974). Although information (meaning within a context) is a lower-order form of IP than knowledge (understanding that enables prediction), that is not the main reason why the two are different from an economic perspective. Knowledge is the only commodity that has increasing returns of scale and, more importantly, begets more of itself; information cannot do this. Our work on knowledge services (regrettably deleted from Wikipedia as too avant-guarde) shows that knowledge is processed and used through a nine-step value chain and that knowledge markets are circular in nature. (see: [1]) It is the fundamentally different form of knowledge markets as well as their growing size that warrants their separate inclusion.

Many related terms (digital economy, Internet economy, network economy) refer to the nature of the infrastructure that underlies a national economy. They are also subsets of the informatiom and knowledge economies. I, for one, would support merging all these terms under economic infrastructures (which I confirmed does not exist, at the cost of loosing my original, unsaved comments)

You also considered the notion of economic traisitions, of which we are currently in the midst. No one knows what the new economic order will look like in a few decades, but I am confident that it will incorporate elements of everything that has been discussed here. However, economic transitions may be an appropriate term (for which I have no intention of searching!). Beyond that probably belongs in an "encyclopedia of speculation" and not wanting to be deleted again, I'll stop here.Albert Simard 21:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC) --

Radrik 23:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

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