The market logic of information |
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Authors: | Philip E Agre |
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Institution: | (1) UCLA, USA |
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Abstract: | Futurists have imagined the Internet as a separate “cyberspace” and as a force for an idealized marketplace. Business practice
and economic theory, however, lead to a different picture. (1) “Always-on” connections bring new interface problems and social
skills. (2) Reduced transaction costs and increased economies of scale bring outsourcing, concentration, and globalized economy
of focused monopolies. (3) The economies of scope inherent in modular computing systems bring “shallow diversity”: processes
and products generated by a common underlying framework. This new picture omits many countervailing factors. Even so, the
very existence of alternative scenarios should sharpen questions for research.
He received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 1989, having conducted dissertation research in the Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory on computational models of improvised activities. Before arriving at UCLA he taught at the University of Sussex
and UC San Diego, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and the University of Paris. He is the author
of Computation and Human Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and the coeditor of Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape (with Marc Rotenberg, MIT Press, 1997), Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Studies in Computing as a Social Practice (with Douglas Schuler and Ablex, 1997), and Computational Theories of Internation and Agency (with Stanley J. Rosenschein, MIT Press, 1996). His current research concerns the role of emerging information technologies
in institutional change; including privacy policy and the networked university. He edits an Internet mailing list called the
Red Rock Eater News Service that distributes useful information on the social and political aspects of networking and computing
to 5, 000 people in 60 countries. |
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