New economy

Since the publication of Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic 73) and Fritz Machlup's The Production & Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 62) we've been living in a 'post-industrial' 'information society'.

That's one in which information is a primary commodity, data processing and communications technology is of fundamental importance, and 'knowledge workers' drive growth in a global economy marked by volatility and constant innovation.

As Frank Webster points out in Theories of the Information Society (London: Routledge 95) many have come to see the information society and information economy as synonymous. That's evident in major programs within the EU, Canadian and US governments or Australia's National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE). One of our less generous staff refers to it as the "just add bandwidth & stir" school.