I think this guy was on to something, when he wrote this in 1980:
In the information society (1) information, the axis of socio-economic development, will be produced by the information utility … a computer-based public infrastructure … (2) self-production of information by users will increase; information will accumulate, (3) this accumulated information will expand through synergetic production and shared utilization and (4) the economy will change structurally from an exchange economy to a synergetic economy …
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November 13, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Marie-Eve
Interesting. This ties in well with the notion of “networked information economy” of Yochai Benkler ( http://benkler.org/ ). Benkler situates this type economy as a ground-up opportunity for smaller producer to compete with telecoms… and “information economy”, in contrast, is the top-down reign of telecoms…. I think i’ll need to read Masuda… might come in handy for a presentation i’m giving on this topic… thanks!
November 14, 2008 at 9:16 am
Hugh
heh … except written 25 years earlier before mass adoption of computers, an well before the www !
November 14, 2008 at 9:26 am
Marie-Eve
yeah! that’s why I’ve put this book on hold last night. found it at my faculty’s library.