Overview

This profile deals with some of the more interesting (or merely influential) writers about the information economy and networked communication systems.

Each page offers a short biography, highlights writing of particular importance and notes some of the major critical studies.

It also provides an introduction to themes in writing about the net, including the information society, mapping the information economy, digital futurists and what one of our clients has characterised as 'the cosmocrats'.

The profile is eclectic and and of course not definitive.

     in this profile 

The following pages deal with -

Fritz Machlup and mapping the production of information in the 'information economy'

Claude Shannon and mathematical communication theory

Ithiel de Sola Pool and the vision of the borderless world

Max Weber and bureaucratisation of the digital revolution

Thorstein Veblen and the 'new class'

Marshall McLuhan and technological determinism

Alan Turing, codes and regulation online

Alfred Chandler, investment and the shape of business in a wired economy

Joseph Schumpeter and 'creative destruction'

Ronald Coase and information economics

Daniel Bell and the 'Information Society'

Esther Dyson and the vicissitudes of power

George Gilder and high-tech futurism, from Toffler to Gingrich

Saskia Sassen and globalisation

Manuel Castells and the GII

     orientation

One of the sillier aspects of recent 'new economy' hype is the claim that the web represents a fundamental change from the past and the 'new rules' have been discovered in the past ten years, generally by men who wear black t-shirts or Armani suits. John Barlow, for example, warbles that

we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire. I used to think that it was just the biggest thing since Gutenberg, but now I think you have to go back further.

In practice some of the most powerful insights have come from the 'pre-digital' era. And many of the slogans mouthed by today's pundits originated in the writing of theorists from the age of black & white television, rather than the 500 channel broadband infotopia.

This profile is an informal tribute to some of those thinkers.

It also offers a perspective on recent developments. We for example consider that the writings of Alfred Chandler or Thorsten Veblen provide greater insights into the new economy and 'being digital' than those of more fashionable gurus such as Nicholas Negroponte, Paul Saffo or Kevin Kelly.





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