The Digital Economy

• Bluetooth and WAP push based location-aware mobile advertising system - Advertising on mobile devices has large potential due to the very personal and intimate nature of the devices and high targeting possibilities. We introduce a novel B-MAD system for delivering permission-based location-aware mobile advertisements to mobile phones using Bluetooth positioning and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Push. We present a thorough quantitative evaluation of the system in a laboratory environment and qualitative user evaluation in form of a field trial in the real environment of use. Experimental results show that the system provides a viable solution for realizing permission-based mobile advertising.
• Catalytic Communities: The Birth of a Dot Org - This dissertation describes and analyzes six themes that emerged during the first three years' development of Catalytic Communities, a community development organization meant to operate strictly in cyberspace, thus reaching a global audience, though legally based in the US and Brazil. I founded this organization with minimal experience and, through this dissertation, describe my learning during its pilot and maturation phase, as an idea was transformed into a viable organization, from September 2000 through December 2003. My basic question was: what can be learned about a new type of civil society institution Ð the Dot Org Ð during its early years? The six themes that naturally surfaced, and which I then explore, fall into three broad categories: (1) those that explain its creation (the history of technology, the Brazilian reality, social network theory); (2) those that help describe what the organization came to look like (the concept of the Dot Org, the effect of the development of a physical space on the virtual organization); and (3) those that describe the management processes used to keep and develop such an organization (staff management and fundraising lessons). Rather than attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of Catalytic Communities, I describe the results of a learning process, providing more qualitative and deep knowledge that only the protagonist in an academic function can provide. This dissertation is therefore a study of Òlearning by doing,Ó for which the lessons learned are not only those referring to the six themes that surface but also those that help define a new research approach that I call Protagonist Action Research (PrAR).
• The Internet Economy as a Complex System - Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a rapidly growing segment of the economy, which is expected to increase yet more rapidly over the next few years. Current internet commercial transactions are estimated at hundreds of millions and are projected for billions within the decade. The growth of net transacted revenues will be energized with Visa and Mastercard's release of secure software standards for their cardmembers' internet transactions, and the acceptance of standards for micropricing. All in all, it is reasonable to project that, in a decade's time, the vast majority of economic transactions will involve a significant electronic component. However, traditional economic concepts give us fairly poor guidance in understanding this emerging economic domain. A new conceptual framework is required.
  We believe that an appropriate conceptual framework is to be found in the emerging, interdisciplinary science of complex systems and with this in mind, we sketch here a model of Internet commerce based on dynamical systems theory and the theory of autonomous agents. Among our main conclusion, in practical terms, are that in the emerging information-based economy, a major role will be played by
  
  • artificially intelligent economic agents (AI)
  • tools for guiding intuitive human exploration of market dynamics (IA, intelligence augmentation)
• A Taxonomy of Internet Commerce - This paper attempts to clarify terminology discussing the interface between commerce and the Internet. It is also an empirically derived classification system or taxonomy of existing Internet business models. This taxonomy has two main branches - transplanted real-world business models and native Internet business models. The latter part of the paper discusses the role of business, governments, regulation and ideology in the development of I-Commerce and makes some cautious speculations regarding its future.
• Readings on (the New) Economic Geography, the Geography of the (New) Economy and on Cyberspace
• The Economic Geography of the Internet Age - This paper combines the perspective of an international economist with that of an economic geographer to reflect on how and to what extent the Internet will affect the location of economic activity. Even after the very substantial transportation and communication improvements during the 20th Century, most exchanges of physical goods continue to take place within geographically-limited 'neighborhoods.' Previous rounds of infrastructure improvement always have had a double effect, permitting dispersion of certain routine activities but also increasing the complexity and time-dependence of productive activity, and thus making agglomeration more important. We argue that the Internet will produce more of the same forces for deagglomeration, but offsetting and possibly stronger tendencies toward agglomeration. Increasingly the economy is dependent on the transmission of complex uncodifiable messages, which require understanding and trust that historically have come from .face-to-face contact. This is not likely to be affected by the Internet, which allows long distance 'conversations' but not 'handshakes.'
• The Wearable Warehouse - Want to save time and money tracking products worldwide? Wireless homing devices and wearable computers guide you to the goods.
• An Economic Geography of Information & Telecommunications: Outline & Resources
• Online Class Materials in E-Commerce
• Marketing and Electronic Commerce (Network-Commerce) - Business is experiencing a significant transition. This transition is based on the fact that we are now in a networked environment. Old business models are no longer valid, new business models are beginning to emerge. Things are changing. This course is designed to familiarize students with the emergence of a new economy. The course will give students a clear understanding of the field of electronic commerce (as we understand it now) as well as the skills to develop electronic commerce applications (on the web.)
• Information Monopolies and The WTO - An economy whose information sector has become more dominant than its agriculture or industrial sector may be called an information economy. Earlier, such an economy had been variously called a "post-industrial" economy or "service" economy. Some people today use the term "knowledge" economy. The best example of such an economy is the U.S. economy.
  Information goods are different from material goods as follows: the true cost of producing an information good is concentrated on the research and development (R&D) stage -- in creating that first copy of the final good. Once the first copy is created, it can then be stored and reproduced electronically at very little cost. If digital format is used, then perfect copies of the original can be made very cheaply over unlimited generations of copies.
• Future of Spatial Data and Society - New technologies are transforming the industrial economy into a marketplace driven by information and knowledge. In the knowledge age, the customer (or constituent) is empowered to demand increasingly sophisticated solutions (e.g., high quality and low cost) and organizations are required to focus on core strengths and efficient execution. This combination of empowered customers and focused providers creates a fertile environment for partnerships. Partnerships of all kinds (e.g., employee teams, strategic alliances, interdisciplinary research centers, international trade agreements, virtual organizations, and government-business cooperative agreements) are being formed to bring together unique combinations of financial, intellectual, technical, and political capital. The knowledge age will require (and be fostered by) a proliferation of these and many other new and innovative partnerships. This paper discusses how information technologies enable partnerships and suggests a series of institutional partnerships that will dramatically affect the spatial data community.
• Local Access Pricing and the International Digital Divide - There is a growing international digital divide among countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This is contrary to a widespread view that in the area of development of electronic commerce, the gaps between countries are narrowing. The price of access to the Internet and the structure of this pricing are key factors in explaining the relative development of electronic commerce across the OECD area.
• A Cross-border Electronic Trading Service is Possible After 2002 - To overcome the regional limit and to realize the vision of KTNET-end to end trade automation by eliminating the manual trade processes among trading communities and countries, KTNET has been established corporate relationships with computerized trade service providers. "By cooperating with these partners, KTNET trade automation services will be expanded to 'A global based computerized trading network' with seamless full circulation of the trading process" ...
• The difference between a "Telecottage" and a "Telecentre"
• EMERGENCE Home Page - The introduction of new information and communications technologies has been accompanied by major shifts in the location of employment, both within and between European regions, and globally. These developments are leading to a new industrial geography, with increasing regional specialisation in certain types of information processing activities (eg call centres, data processing and software development).
  However, such developments are poorly mapped and documented. In particular, no evidence has been collected on the types of information processing activities which are likely to be outsourced or relocated, the extent of such relocation, or the criteria used in the selection of remote locations. Such information will, however, be of critical importance to policy-makers at regional, national, EU and international levels, in predicting future employment trends, ensuring the competitiveness of industries, combating unemployment, and developing policies for a socially inclusive information society.
  With core funding of euros 2.1 million from the European Commission's Information Society Technologies Programme, and building on past work on teleworking, globalisation, regional development and changing skill needs, the EMERGENCE project will carry out a systematic analysis of the statistics, carry out new research, develop a model for the prediction of future trends and disseminate the results in a user-friendly form.
• Cyber Cafés and Telecottages: Increasing Public Access to computers and the Internet - This is a report of a survey carried out on cybercafés and telecottages currently operating in the UK. Cybercafés and telecottages provide a novel social environment in which people can get access to computers and the Internet.
  Over 300 telecottages and cybercafés in the UK were initially identified. Of these around a quarter were no longer functioning or not yet in operation. Responses to the survey were gained from 62 cybercafés and 86 telecottages. Of those responding 50% have been established since 1996.
  Cybercafés and telecottages are not tightly defined or distinct types of organisations. Nevertheless cybercafés are most often found in urban areas, are likely to be private sector operations and to provide computer and Internet access on a commercial basis alongside café or restaurant provisions. In contrast telecottages are more likely to be in rural locations, they may be within the voluntary sector attracting public support, and may offer subsidised training and access linked to community facilities.
• NetGeo - NetGeo's revolutionary Internet geo-intelligence technology empowers businesses to better serve their customers by delivering highly accurate, real-time information about who is visiting their web sites. From fighting credit card fraud and managing the distribution of online content, to developing more precise Internet marketing programs, companies are using NetGeo's patent-pending InfoScope IP geo-location solution to their competitive advantage.
• The Virtual Business - Using the Net to Leverage Your Business
• Cisco - The Global Networked Business: A Model for Success - The pace of business worldwide is accelerating rapidly. Product cycles are shrinking. Just-in-time manufacturing abounds. Decisions are made on the fly. In this environment, access to relevant information is essential to remaining competitive and will mean the difference between survival and extinction for many companies. Yet many organizations still cling to an outdated model of information technology that builds walls around corporate information and systems, limiting access to a select few. Even when internal systems and information are shared, it is often limited to point-to-point applications such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
• Electronic Commerce and the Web: JCMC, VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2
• Electric Money - a PBS documentary.
• Madhukar Shukla, New Economy, Internet, Networks, Complexity, Chaos Theory, Digital Age, Knowledge Work - "The New Economy" means different things to different people. These Online Resources on Knowledge Economy, Complexity & Chaos, Networks & Virtuality, etc. have helped me to figure out what it is all about...
• KPMG [Canada] - KPMG's handle on e-commerce and the issues it raises.
• The Real Time Economy
• Geographies of Cyberspace and the Internet Economy
• Topoi of E-Space - Here I examine three ways in which the embeddedness of electronic space can be captured:
  1. There is no fully virtualized enterprise nor fully digitalized industry. Leading economic sectors that are highly digitalized require strategic sites with vast concentrations of infrastructure, the requisite labor resources, talent, buildings. This holds for finance but also for the multimedia industries which use digital production processes and produce digitalized products.
  2. The sharpening inequalities in the distribution of the infrastructure for electronic space, wheter private computer networks or the Net, in the conditions for access to electronic space, and, within electronic space, in the conditions for access to high-powered segments and features, are all contributing to new geographies of centrality both on the ground and in electronic space.
  3. Commercialization of public networks and hierarchical concentrations of power in private networks are producing what I think of as cyber-segmentations--instantiations of dynamics of inequality and of power.
  After an examination of these three subjects the final section incorporates these issues in a larger discussion about space and power.
• Net Future - The author states that the Internet is causing a revolution in ALL aspects of business. He visualizes 7 trends that make up the "Net Future".
• Information Society for All (Report of IST Conference, Nice, November, 2000) - a pdf document. IST 2000 topics ranged over cybercrime, entertainment and nano-technology. The information society's global aspects were debated by representatives from all over the world and the Internet generation met the 68 generation. The conference was concentrated on building an Information Society for All, as reflected in the eEurope initiative, and had four themes: a chance for everyone, strengthening competitiveness, technological challenges and changing rules.
  The global message was that technology alone is not enough to create an information society with a chance for everyone. Inclusiveness must be encouraged and Europe is achieving this goal. Old social problems such as unemployment and new ones like the digital divide must be solved. Lack of general awareness leads to exclusion and skill shortages slow down technology development. But as well as posing problems , technology gives us the means to solve them. Technology can bring education to everybody, strengthen democracy and help everyone into a global society. The leisure industry is also important and IST 2000 did not forget games, culture and entertainment.
  Many discussions focused in the New Economy. ICT can bring business transformation, changing work environments and global economy; changes with unique prospects for strengthening competitiveness but bringing questions about privacy, security and accessibility and the fundamental issues of education and training. ICT can improve skills and knowledge creating an educated and knowledgeable workforce, a fundamental requirement for a successful economy. Creating competitive advantage from intangible assets was recognised but so was the need to measure the value of intangible assets such as knowledge.
  Gaston Zongo addressed the theme of building the Information Society for all but wondered how people in a remote African village could be included in a society that truly was for all. But there are already real examples of how this revolution is coming about such as e-mails being sent in connection with buying sheep for the family back home, teleworking already being used in Africa to support work on the Paris Metro and the provision of a teleservice in Senegal transcribing the minutes of Canadian courts. The three main issues currently facing Africa are capability building, the weak development of local content and the sustainability of CT projects.
• The Internet and the Small Business - This paper is taken from a study of the use Information Technology in a range of small and medium sized businesses in the UK and elsewhere during late 1996 and early 1997. It focuses on the impacts brought about in these businesses by the introduction of the Internet. In particular, this paper describes the construction of an impacts model built as a part of this research that enables a structured approach to cross business analysis of impact. It describes two cases of application of the model in real businesses and gives some details of other cases undertaken and of the findings of the wider study that are useful to those considering or assessing the use of the Internet in commercial environments. The paper also gives some details of future research that is being undertaken to extend the understanding of business impact of this technology in the small business sector.
• World: Expert Sees Electronic Commerce Enhancing Liberty, Democracy - An expert on the Internet contends that its users are now organizing electronic communities that will, among other things, offer the same economic services traditionally offered by nations. He explains his views in an interview with our correspondent.
• What Will Replace The Internet? - So many appliances, vehicles and buildings will be online by 2020 that it seems likely there will be more things on the Internet than people. Internet-enabled cars and airplanes are coming online, and smart houses are being built every day. Eventually, programmable devices will become so cheap that we will embed them in the cardboard boxes into which we put other things for storage or shipping. These passive "computers" will be activated as they pass sensors and will be able to both emit and absorb information. Such innovations will facilitate increasingly automatic manufacturing, inventory control, shipping and distribution. Checkout at the grocery store will be fully automatic, as will payment via your digital wallet.
• A weightless economy - The weightless economy - also described as the knowledge economy, the intangible economy, the immaterial economy or simply the "new" economy - comprises four main elements. First, there is information and communications technology (ICT) and the Internet. Second, intellectual property, which includes not only patents and copyrights but more broadly, brand-names, trademarks, advertising, financial and consulting services, financial exchanges, health care (medical knowledge), and education. The third element consists of electronic libraries and databases, including new media, video entertainment, and broadcasting. The fourth element comprises biotechnology, traditional libraries and databases, and pharmaceuticals. These four elements constitute the fastest-growing sectors in modern economies­whether measured in value added or employment and job growth. Everything on the list contains elements of intangibility and can be regarded as knowledge. However, we should not over-emphasize the importance of ideas and knowledge in trying to understand the weightless economy. Economies have been knowledge-based for at least five thousand years. Sumerians in the Mesopotamian river basin began carving cuneiform financial records onto clay tablets 5,000 years back. During the first Industrial Revolution, deploying spinning Jennies and steam engines significantly boosted economic performance. Such machines were the physical embodiment of new knowledge. But while steam engines or clay tablets are physical objects which contain knowledge, they do not resemble knowledge in their use. Their uses are bound by geographical and physical constraints. An oil supertanker is not part of the weightless economy, but computer software is.
• Virtual Networked Teams in Future Organisations - Building Blocks for a Knowledge-based Culture - Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work in a team that speaks different languages, eats and sleeps at different times, and has different views on the world and getting things done? A Virtual Networked Team (VNT) includes all the above characteristics, born of a blend of different cultures, business perspectives and motivations and enabled by Knowledge Management approaches.
  Globalisation, increased competition, shorter time to market and pressure to innovate are some of the drivers for organisations to adopt a knowledge-based culture. One of the consequences of this is the need to change organisational structures and behaviour: creating VNTs for specific purposes is one way of achieving the necessary organisational change. This brief article aims to explore VNTs as a viable form of organisational structure for enterprises committed to adopting a knowledge-based culture and to provide some hints and tips for establishing successful VNTs.
• Citizens of One Economic World - You tend to think of those people who look at screens all day and all night and watch the movement of numbers as seamlessly currencies change and resources flow across nations in this borderless, seamless economic environment in which we operate. But in so many ways now, we are all citizens of the one economic world and there is no turning back. Any idea that any of us might have that you can go back to some kind of comfortable, more cloistered domestic economic environment is totally unreal. The nature of the world in which we live now means that all countries can no longer do other than simply compete and compete and compete again in order to stay in front of or at least equal with their economic rivals. It's of no comfort to say to yourself we're doing better than we were doing 10 years ago or 20 years ago. That's irrelevant. The only thing that really matters now is whether you are doing better as against those that seek the same markets as you seek in these early years of the 21st Century.
• Internet Genome - This Web site is the home of the Internet Genome developed by Xqsite. It is a project intended to serve as the preeminent forum on the current and future state of the business Internet through recognition and examination of its component parts.
• The Internet Age: Latin America's Borderless Future - Since the language is not a missing link but rather a unifying factor, the Web is undoubtedly the keystone to this profound change in the world's economy ­ a change as significant as the very discovery of the New World. Countless surveys show that Latin America is the one market where the Web grows at the fastest rate. Brazil in particular is firmly ensconced in third place, right after the U.S. and China, with prospects of receiving billions of dollars in investments over the next few years.
  The most revealing finding in the latest survey, made by the Laredo Group for StarMedia, in which 22,000 Internet users were interviewed between December 1999 and January 2000, is that 90 percent of respondents feel that the Internet is already breaking down the barriers between Latin American countries. This may not be all that surprising, but it should give food for thought to those who claim that Brazilians have no cultural affinity with Argentines, that Argentines have little in common with Chileans, etc. And there is more: two-thirds of the respondents said that the Internet was going to fuel economic and political changes in Latin America - proving that, in the common perception, the world is to be restructured not in a future revolution, but in the present. And the revolution is driven by the power of the Internet as a compelling new business media, in a geographically unlimited economy.
• Borderless Worlds: Problematizing Discourses Of Deterritorialization - The digerati see state bureaucracies, old-fashioned border builders, as a threat to progress on the bioelectronic frontier. Governments in the cybernetic knowledge age need to get out of the way of the pioneers of the information age. Their industrial policy should focus on "removing the barriers to competition and massively de-regulating the fast-growing telecommunications and computing industries". Freed from the constraints of the old spatial order, cyberspace promises to open up closed markets and liberate repressed peoples, to unify an increasingly free and diverse world. In another irony lost on the neoliberal digerati, the future of human freedom lies in cyberspace, that most machinic and surveillant of domains.
  These different examples of discourses of deterritorialization are, of course, sweepingly superficial representations of the complexity of boundaries, territory and the world map at the century's end. Seriously flawed as conceptualizations of the contemporary world, the confident hyperbole of these discourses nevertheless has considerable ideological power and rhetorical force. This paper seeks to problematize such discourses of deterritorialization in a general way by examining one of the more precise articulations of the phenomenon of deterritorialization, the so-called 'end of geography' in the domain of financial markets. On the face of it, the case of global financial integration would seem to be a particularly strong instances of deterritorialization. Rather than understanding the issue, however, as a mere confirmation of an unproblematized deterritorialization, this paper makes three arguments about deterritorialization discourses generally using the case of global finance. The first argument is that discourses of deterritorialization are ideological discourses that do not describe actuality but seek to discursively constitute and represent certain complex tendencies as both inevitable and positive developments in contemporary capitalist society. Discourses of deterritorialization, in other words, are part of the self-interpretation of contemporary informationalized capitalism. They combine elements from many longstanding Western discourses (con)fused in a contradictory and unstable unity. For example, digital culture discourses combine a strong humanistic inheritance emphasizing human freedom, liberation and fulfillment; a capitalist discourse concerning the virtues of open and transparent markets, and a discourse of technophilia which celebrates technological systems as wondrous entities which enhance human capacities and capabilities.
• Infotronics in a global knowledge-based economy - The important thing to note is that linkages are constantly emerging between and across forms. In our current technology, the linkages arise from digitization.
  Recording technology provides us with a very straightforward example. In 1877 Thomas Edison pioneered a form of analog sound recording. To record a sound, a membrane in a microphone is used to copy that wave onto some surface. To replay the sound, a needle is forced through the groove created by the recording process. This needle is attached to another membrane in a speaker. When the speaker membrane vibrates, the membrane sets nearby air molecules into oscillations and the original sound wave is recreated. The process is entirely analog. No numbers are involved, the process is completely mechanical, and there is infinite precision, but very limited accuracy and much room for error in the sound recording and reproduction process. Compact disk technology uses digital means to record and play sounds. The sound waves are read by a computer which analyzes each instance of the sound, and assigns it a numerical value. When the music is played back, it goes through another computer, which retranslates the numbers into the sounds that the numbers represent. Since they are recorded at such frequent tiny intervals, the lack of precision is not a problem, and we find digitally recorded music more accurate.
  The above is, but one example. Because of digitization, linkages across forms emerge constantly. Industries for decades not related to each other suddenly find themselves in the same sector, and with it comes a redefinition of competitors. Thus we see Silicon Graphics Computer Systems (started as a graphics computer company) swallowing up Cray Computers (a number crunching supercomputer company), AT&T acquiring Digital Cable Network, Napster Inc. using MP3 technology to change the landscape of music industry, and other examples.
• The 10 Driving Principles of the New Economy
• Twelve dependable principles for thriving in a turbulent world
• Power of Digital Connectivity - It is virtually impossible to separate technology from the act of living in today¹s world. We are all connected to our work, to our product and service providers, and to each other in myriad ways that could never have been predicted just ten years ago. Out of this vast degree of interconnectivity spring networks - and nodes of contact within networks - that add momentum to the pace of still more technological opportunities and developments.
• The Developing Digital Economy in Ireland - E-commerce offers the opportunity to overcome many of the trade, enterprise and employment challenges with which Ireland has been faced in the past, such as peripherality, small scale, regional differences in enterprise distribution, and on-going transition from agrarian economy. It also provides the opportunity to build upon many of our strengths, such as craft and cottage industries, tourism, extensive diaspora, music, media, software, customer care, and European operations management.
• Metamorphosis of Information Society and Evolution of Intelligent Industry: Role of Hosting Environment and Locus of Intelligent Park - In the information society, the Greek polis-city exerts a great influence on the evolution of intelligence, largely owing to its hosting environment. From Greek Polis, politics and police were both driven. Region came from the same Latin root as regulation, regent and regal. And the organization of space evolved through the political process. A city of some size is an extremely complex, multifaceted, and multipurpose entity, which easily generates and transfers information on the local, national and global scene, even though the political authority wants to regulate the flow of information and technology. The Technopolis is a Japanese response, which illuminate the close linkage between information and technology in order to incubate, innovate and evolve the intelligent industries in the region, the nation and in the world.
• Internet: The End of Geography ? - The advent of the "new economy", embodied by the expansion of the internet, would be the signal of the end of geography and space. Distances are reportedly abolished as markets are from now on at a click away. E-trade and the advent of Enterprise Ressource Planning (ERP) systems would provide firms with the tools they can use to free themselves of space. In fact, the internet and ERP for sure change the relationship between firms and their space and their markets, but they do not disrupt them: location choices are still geographic. The need to transport faster and efficiently, brought about by the expansion of E-trade, establishes transportation as the effort of mastering space. It translates into the fast expansion of cargo airliners in logistics.
• A chicken in every pot, broadband in every home - Britain, Ireland and Australia have also adopted aggressive Internet strategies to get a leg up in this transforming new technology. Focused programs are in place to expand technological literacy and establish early positions in global e-business. The race for eminence exists among the world's most advanced countries, which possess basic infrastructure, wealth and educated populations. The question is, how is Canada faring among them? The answer is somewhat encouraging, given our low expectations for initiative in Canada, especially from government. The file rests primarily with the Department of Industry, under John Manley, which sponsors a group of Internet development programs under the rubric, Connecting Canadians.
• EMERGENCE the Project - The introduction of new information and communications technologies has been accompanied by major shifts in the location of employment, both within and between European regions, and globally. These developments are leading to a new industrial geography, with increasing regional specialisation in certain types of information processing activities (eg call centres, data processing and software development).
• E-commerce and Business - The Global Swap Meet: Better Living Through Online Barter - The Internet has a knack for shaking up the traditional ways people buy and sell things. Suddenly, it's commonplace to buy groceries without leaving the house, let airlines fight for your patronage, and have people bid on your knickknacks. But the latest craze isn't a new idea; in fact, it's the oldest business plan of all: barter. Surprised? If you think online bartering is the most recent scam cooked up by venture-capital-hungry Net entrepreneurs, think again. Both consumer-to-consumer swapping sites and business-to-business (B2B) bartering sites are so uniquely suited to benefit from Internet that it's a wonder it took this long for things to heat up. This underground economy won't merely change the way a few business deals are done; the cultural impact could affect everything from the book and music industries to global economics.
• Consumer Project on Technology (CPT)'s Page on Electronic Commerce - Lots of e-commerce related links.
• Understanding the Digital Economy - A public conference was held on May 25 and 26, 1999, at the Department of Commerce, to review recent research on implications of the digital economy and examine the agenda for future research, including the need for and possible sources of new data, indicators, and tools.
• OECD Information Technology Outlook 2000 - Information Technology Outlook 2000, a report from OCED. Provides comprehensive and up to date statistics and analysis of ICTs, e-commerce and the Information Economy. March 2000.
• Internet Industry - Strategic Alliances, Joint Ventures, and Other Partnerships - Internet Industry Map by Valdis Krebs.
• TheStreet.com: The Hottest New Buzzword: 'M-Commerce' - The real point is that m-commerce-enabled smart phones are going to be utterly ubiquitous. For many people, five years from now, a smart phone is going to be their primary means of communicating over the Net. For many people, three years from now, a smart phone is going to be their primary tool for what we today call "e-commerce." Sure, this means a lot of retooling of today's e-commerce sites. Successful e-commerce companies will split their customer access between more conventional pages and smaller pages, organized very differently, with better and sharper searching, optimized for m-commerce machines. The whole role of these pocketable smart phones is going to change. We'll use them constantly -- for everything from checking stock prices and making trades to buying movie tickets and Cokes from vending machines (already commonplace in some parts of Europe), as well as for sending short messages to one another.
• Internet links for researchers of Internet economics - Useful links presented within categories in a 4x5 table.
• Books on Internet Economics
• TOC: Internet Economics - Research on Internet Economics attempts to improve our understanding of the Internet as an economic system. The lack of accepted metrics for economic analysis of the Internet is increasingly problematic, as the Internet grows in scale, scope, and significance to the global economy. This introduction brings together interdisciplinary research on the Internet--a network of networks employing common standards to achieve the technical goal of statistical sharing, the economic goal of positive network externalities, and the policy objective of interoperability.
• Internet Economics - A large number of articles on various aspects of internet economics.
• Second Berlin Internet Economics Workshop - More downloadable papers in pdf format.
• The Internet and Economics - A number of interesting links on this topic.
• The Information Society and the Information Economy - Does either exist? It may seem very stupid to ask such a question on a Web page. (Indeed, some good friends have told me as much.) Pretty clearly the economic and political situation of the world today is very different from what it was, say, twenty or thirty years ago; one of the most popular explanations for these changes is that information technologies, especially computers, have in that time become powerful and ubiquitous, and so changed everything. Nowadays (goes the tale) we either have, or will shortly have, an information economy, as opposed to an industrial economy, and consequently an information society, as opposed to an industrial society. (We are all historical materialists now.) The Great Change is supposed to have happened since the end of the Second World War, and mostly since the 1970s.
  I used to buy this notion without many reservations. In the last few years I've become more skeptical, mostly after reading Beniger's book on The Control Revolution. Beniger's key point is that you cannot have an industrial economy without a massive information-processing apparatus, just to keep track of things and make sure that everything gets where it's supposed to, when it's supposed to. Carriages or caravans might be able to run without timetables, clerks, and tracking; railroads cannot. The great innovations of information-processing were not so much machines as procedures: standardization, interchangable parts, printed forms, record-keeping, regularity, advertizing, management.
• Rules, New and Old, for Tomorrow's Economy
• New Rules for the New Economy - Kevin Kelly
• Intermediaries and Cybermediaries: A Continuing Role for Mediating Players in the Electronic Marketplace - The advent of nearly ubiquitous information infrastructures has led many to predict that one effect of electronic markets will be the bypassing of intermediaries in electronic markets. The ability of electronic networks to reduce transaction costs is the theoretical cause of this supposed trend. We suggest that, on the contrary, not only is it likely that widely available information infrastructures will reinforce the position of traditional intermediaries, but that networks will also promote the growth of a new generation of intermediaries. These new players, which we term "Cybermediaries," are organizations that perform the mediating tasks in the world of electronic commerce.
• What Do We Mean By "Universal Access?": Social Perspectives in a Canadian Context - This paper outlines some of the key policy concerns around access to the information infrastructure. In particular, it examines issues of access from social as well as technical perspectives. To account for the complex interplay of social and technical aspects of an overall architecture of the information infrastructure, a multi-layered model of access has been delineated.
• E-commerce resources - Primers and tutorials
• Internet: Networks, Business & Organisations - These scenarios take the evolution of the information society as a central theme and explore its effects on issues as diverse as the future of ideas, the future of the workspace, the future of organizations to the future of broadcasting and retail shopping.
• Price-War Dynamics in a Free-Market Economy of Software Agents - One scenario of the future of computation populates the Internet with vast numbers of software agents providing, trading, and using a rich variety of information goods and services in an open, free-market economy.
• Net Fallout: A Chaotic Economy - The report forecasts "a free-market information economy in which billions of software agents exchange a rich variety of information goods and services with humans and amongst themselves ... [which] will inevitably occur as agents assume an ever more pervasive and responsible role in electronic commerce." The problem, the researchers said, is that software agents are not subject to the restraints that normally rein in economic activity. "Their transactions take place almost instantaneously, cost next to nothing, and distance is irrelevant," Kephart said. The researchers found that the rapid reaction of agents to price changes meant "devastating price wars rage constantly, and providers' profits varied wildly as they fought for business."
• Defense and On-Line Economy
• Buying into the Internet Economy: Introduction
• France on the Internet: Economy
• The New Economy Index - Many people talk about the emergence of a so-called New Economy. Few have been able to define it. What's new about it? In The New Economy Index, we provide a new set of economic indicators, gathered from existing public and private data, to illustrate fundamental structural changes in the U.S. economy, to show what those changes mean in the lives of working Americans, and to measure the nation's progress in several key foundation areas for future economic growth.
  The indicators in The New Economy Index are divided into three groups. The first group tracks some of the elemental stuctural changes that collectively mark the transition to the New Economy: industrial and occupational change, globalization, the changing nature of competition and economic dynamism, and progress of the information technology (IT) revolution. The second group examines the implications of this transition for working Americans: what is happening to incomes and economic growth, jobs, and employment dynamics. The third group assesses the nation's performance in terms of three main foundations for growth of the New Economy: the pace of transition into a digital economy, investment by business and government in technology and innovation, and progress on the development of education and skills.
• eDirections: Interactivity: The Heart of Online Business - All businesses interact with customers. Soda machines are interactive. Store clerks and telephone operators interact. Interactivity is the life blood of business.
• Electronic Commerce and Development
• The Information Technology Enabled Organization: A Major Social Transformation in the U.S.A. - We show in some detail how firms are integrating processes with new information technologies and systems, and discuss the resulting implications for workers and managers.
• Intelligent Viewpoint: What you don't know can hurt - As automated systems become increasingly pervasive in all aspects of our lives, we need to be cautious about taking humans "out of the loop" and allowing automated systems to work without proper oversight.
• Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - We know something's happening, and we're beginning to sense what it is. We're speeding up; our technology is speeding up; our arts and entertainment and the pace of invention and change -- it's all speeding up. And we care. If we don't understand time, we become its victims.
• The Role of Regional Venture Capital in the Development of the Internet Commerce Industry
• Distance, More and More, Means Less and Less - And as with many human endeavors, there is also the dark side to this force. Consider that instant global access to information and the ability to remotely monitor and control devices over the Internet also opens the door for new forms of electronic terrorism. The Nov. 6 CMP TechWeb News reports that the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection's report, "Critical Foundations: Protecting America's Infrastructures", found that,
  "The development of the computer and its astonishingly rapid improvements have ushered in the Information Age that affects almost all aspects of American commerce and society. Our security, economy, way of life, and perhaps even survival, are now dependent on the interrelated trio of electrical energy, communications, and computers."
  "Potentially serious cyber attacks can be conceived and planned without detectable logistic preparation. A personal computer and a simple telephone connection to an Internet Service Provider anywhere in the world are enough to cause a great deal of harm. ... We are quite convinced that our vulnerabilities are increasing steadily while the costs associated with an effective attack continue to drop."
• Web Commerce Today Research Room on Electronic Commerce
• A Knowledge Economy For The Many Or For The Few?
• Turns of Phrase: Weightless economy - Several decades ago, William Tenn wrote a science-fiction story in which alien creatures, interstellar traders, claimed on their business cards to be "dealers in intangibles". Professor Danny Quah of the London School of Economics argues that doing that is now the only option open to developed societies that want to continue to increase their standard of living. He has given it the name weightless economy, in reference to economic activity whose value does not lie in a physical end-product. Examples are intellectual property such as ideas and designs, computer software, entertainment products, telecommunications, and better ways to transmit information, all of which he calls dematerialised products or, putting it another way, intangibles.
• The Invisible Hand And The Weightless Economy
• The Emerging Digital Economy - Chapter 1. A Publication by the U.S.Department of Commerce, April 1998.
• Von Neumann's Legacy: 'Intelligent' Capital in a Weightless Economy
• Approaching Convergence in the Information Age
• Diane Coyle, The Weightless World
• New Economy Master Page
• A Framework for Thinking About Our New Knowledge Economy
• The Global Food Chain - The structure of modern high-tech commerce and industry is very fragile. The entire global industrial complex is interconnected, and really built on a foundation of shifting sands.
• CyberCarnage: Everything We Own Is Obsolete
• The New Economy: Where Is It Taking Us?
• 12 Themes of the New Economy
• Global Knowledge Economy - Our analysis suggests three interlocking driving forces are changing the rules of business and national competitiveness:
  • Globalization - markets and products are more global. Products by Nike and Virgin are known the world over. Today, even resourcing is becoming global. Thus many companies outsource manufacturing and software development to distant locations.
  • Information/Knowledge Intensity - efficient production relies on information and know-how; over 70 per cent of workers in developed economies are information workers; many factory workers use their heads more than their hands.
  • Networking and Connectivity - developments such as the Internet bring the 'global village' ever nearer.
• The Emergence of the Virtual Enterprise? How Austrian Companies Use the Internet
• Bandwidth Colonialism? The Implications of Internet Infrastructure on International E-Commerce
• Building Infrastructure Capacity for Electronic Commerce
• Electronic Commerce and Internet Service Providers in Canada
• Commerce on the Internet: Cover Page
• Knowledge-Based Economy and Society Pilot Project - The first workshop of this pilot project on the knowledge-based economy and society was meant to examine the evidence available on the emergence of a new economy and society, the dynamics of this new world and the changes it requires from individuals, firms, institutions, and society as a whole. This first workshop was organized in three sessions (on firms, individuals and society) followed by a round table where the policy issues emerging from the sessions could be discussed by representatives of various departments.
• Moving towards the Virtual Economy: A Major Paradigm Shift
• Towards The Knowledge Society
• The Red Herring - Is there a new digital economy of ideas? - February 1997
• The Changing Economy, Information Communication Technology, and New Forms of Business Management: What They Could Mean for Education Systems
• Some Notes on the Cyber-Economy
• The Net And Emerging Markets
• The Evolution of a Cyber Economy
• As Business And Households Embrace The Cybereconomy
• Canada in a World of Rapid Change: Future Choices and Consequences
• Towards A Political Economy of Information
• A Political Economy of Computer Networking
• Encyclopedia of the New Economy
• eCommerce
• An Analysis Of The Effect Of The Digital Economy On Labor And Global Capitalism
• Assessment of Electronic Commerce Developments in Singapore
• Management Education for the Digital Economy
• Visions of the Information Industry - Dreams or Nightmares?
• The Internet and Web-Based Commerce
• The Connected Economy: Beyond the Information Age
• How Has The Internet Changed The Rules On Business And Economics?
• CyberEconomics
• New Economy
• A Tour of the New Cybereconomy
• Understanding the Blur of Today's Economy
• Siliconia
• Some Thoughts On Complex Systems And "Hyper-Economy"
• The Next Economy? [DRAFT!]
• Internet Marketing Discussion list archive: The New Geography Of Cyberspace
• The Emerging Digital Economy
• WIRED 5.09: New Rules for the New Economy
• Program for Research on the Information Economy
• Electronic Commerce
• Monopolistic Capitalism and the Information Economy
• Managing in The Information Age
• Cyber Money
• Development and the Information Age
• The Changing Role of Electronic Messaging
• Monitoring the Future of Electronic Commerce
• Mining the Online Economy Industry Report
• The Computer and the Economy
• Internet's Future - Cyberlords: The Rentier Class of the Information Sector
• Virtual Economy
• Beyond 2000: From Electronic Commerce to Virtual Economy
• Preparing Canada for a Digital World
• Wealth Creation in the Digital Economy
• The Informational Space Economy
• Smart cards on the Superhighway: Introduction
• The Emergence of the Virtual Enterprise? How Austrian Companies Use the Internet - This paper discusses the global computer network Internet and the way it is utilized by companies in Austria. At a theoretical level this new infrastructure is related to the discussion of the "global economy", of the "information society", and of the advent of "virtual corporations". It can be demonstrated that the Internet is a key element in this development, but because of its characteristics may also modify its implications. The hypotheses that can be derived from theory are tested in an empirical study of Austrian companies that use the Internet. By use of a WWW-based electronic questionnaire we have collected information about what type of companies use the Internet and how they use it.
• Electronic Commerce World (ECWorld): On-Line Journal For Electronic Commerce - Articles, Resource Directory, Discussions
• Cyber-Marketing
• Introduction to TeleGeography 1996/97
• The Economics of the Internet, Information Goods, Intellectual Property and Related Issues
• Electronic Commerce In The 21st Century
• CyberCity InfoLink: Canada's Business Directory
• Cybermarketing To The Japanese ... In The Year 2010
• Cybermarketing - an online book
• A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce
• Project 2000: Marketing in Computer-Mediated Environments
• A Descriptive Framework For The Extended Enterprise
• Internet Marketing Discussion List Archive: The New Geography Of Cyberspace
• The Internet Business Journal
• Coalition for Electronic Markets
• The Multinational Enterprise in an Age of Electronic Commerce
• Electronic Commerce
• The Coming Software Economy
• Tomorrow: San Luis Valley: Can the Internet Help Improve Rural Economies?
• Digital Business - an online book.
• The Venus Project II
• The Venus Project - an experimental cybernated space-economy.
• E-Money and other ideas for a cyberspace economy
• The Internet as a Catalyst for a Paradigm Shift
• The Internet Economy Indicators - The Internet Economy has grown more rapidly than anyone could have envisioned even five years ago, opening up new vistas of communication, collaboration and coordination between consumers, businesses and trading partners. What started out as an alternative marketing channel has quickly turned into a complete economic system consisting of (i) ubiquitous, low cost communication networks using Internet technologies and standards, (ii) applications and human capital that enable business to be conducted over this network infrastructure, (iii) interconnected electronic markets that operate over the network and applications infrastructure, (iii) producers and intermediaries providing a variety of digital products and services to facilitate market efficiency and liquidity, and (iv) emerging policy and legal frameworks for conducting business over the Internet.
• Virtual Economy Home Page - Welcome to the Biz/ed / Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Virtual Economy. This has been produced with the generous support of a grant from the Nuffield Foundation. At the heart of the Virtual Economy are sophisticated computer models which are very similar to those the Chancellor and his advisers use to prepare the Budget and to keep the economy on track.
• The Economy of Ideas - Throughout the time I've been groping around cyberspace, an immense, unsolved conundrum has remained at the root of nearly every legal, ethical, governmental, and social vexation to be found in the Virtual World. I refer to the problem of digitized property. The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?
• The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net - After capital in the Industrial Age, attention becomes the key scarce commodity in the Information Age.

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