WE ALL REMEMBER THIS AD DURING THE CAMPAIGN:
AS A SAVVY PERSON MYSELF, I THOUGHT I'D OFFER THE PRESIDENT-ELECT'S TRANSITION TEAM SOME COMMUNICATIONS SOLUTIONS: 3AM CRISIS CALLS ON LAND LINES, AND 'GOVERNING VIA TEXT MESSGES" Joe the Plumber would freak out on this one!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_Revolution
Fiang Irving (1997) identified six 'Information Revolutions': writing, printing, mass media, entertainment, the 'toolshed' (which we call 'home' now), and the Information Highway. In this work the term 'information revolution' is used in a narrow sense, to describe trends in communication media.
The following fundamental aspects of the theory of the informational revolution can be given (Veneris 1984, 1990):
1. The object of economic activities can be conceptualised according to the fundamental distinction between matter, energy, and information. These apply both to the object of each economic activity, as well as within each economic activity or enterprise. For instance, an industry may process matter (e.g. iron) using energy and information (production and process technologies, management, etc).
2. Information is a factor of production (along with capital, labour, land (economics)), as well as a product sold in the market, that is, a commodity. As such, it acquires use value and exchange value, and therefore a price.
3. All products have use value, exchange value, and informational value. The latter can be measured by the information content of the product, in terms of innovation, design, etc.
4. Industries develop information-generating activities, the so-called Research and Development (R&D) functions.
5. Enterprises, and society at large, develop the information control and processing functions, in the form of management structures; these are also called "white-collar workers", "bureaucracy", "managerial functions", etc.
6. Labour can be classified according to the object of labour, into information labour and non-information labour.
7. Information activities constitute a large, new economic sector, the information sector along with the traditional primary sector, secondary sector, and tertiary sector, according to the three-sector hypothesis. These should be restated because they are based on the ambiguous definitions made by Colin Clark (1940), who included in the tertiary sector what was not included in the primary (agriculture, forestry, etc.) and secondary (manufacturing) sectors. The quaternary sector and the quinary sector of the economy attempt to classify these activities, but they are not based on a clear conceptual scheme, although the latter is considered by some as equivalent with the information sector [1].
8. From a strategic point of view, sectors can be defined as information sector, means of production, means of consumption, thus extending the classical Ricardo-Marx model of the Capitalist mode of production (see Influences on Karl Marx). Marx stressed in many occasions the role of the "intellectual element" in production, but failed to find a place for it into his model.
9. Innovations are the result of the production of new information, as new products, new methods of production, patents, etc. Their diffusion manifests saturation effects (related term: market saturation), following certain cyclical patterns and creating "economic waves", also referred to as "business cycles". There are various types of waves, such as Kondratiev( 54 years), Kuznets (18 years), Juglar (9 years) and Kitchin (about 4 years)(see also Joseph Schumpeter) distinguished by their nature, duration, and, thus, economic impact.
10. Innovations cause structural-sectoral shifts in the economy, which can be smooth or can create crisis and renewal, a process which Joseph Schumpeter called vividly "creative destruction".
The information revolution is not a stage of capitalist development per se, since it can occur under non-capitalist conditions. In a similar manner, the industrial revolution took place in countries with various social and political systems.
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