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There are three books which have changed my thinking about economics over the last few years. I originally questioned whether these books are revolutionary but they have added to my thinking in very basic ways. These books all look to address the economics of information, or the wealth unleashed by I.T. and the internet. My thinking about this started in the early 1990’s, Dan Remenyi at Henley Management School introduced me to the ideas that Information was the 4th Factor of Production, that Industrial Age economics was insufficient as it was unable to explain why companies that invested in negative or zero profit IT projects, as measured by ROI, outperformed those that didn’t, and that an industrial age balance sheet was incapable of evaluating an information system asset.
The three books all relate to the evolution of society and its economics, the empowering of knowledge workers and their relationships with Capital, and hence capitalists.
Benkler explains in the Wealth of Networks, how the massive increase in wealth (in the USA and the West), capital productivity, and hence the falling cost of productive capital enabled a revolution in the power of the knowledge worker, enhanced by acts of collaboration. I see the crux of his argument is that we no longer need joint stock companies to raise the capital to innovate our society and its…
