Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again
By Bruce Abramson
The MIT Press, May 2005 368 pages, $34.95
The retelling of the collapse of the information economy—most notably the bursting of the Internet stock bubble—is less interesting than what consultant Abramson thinks the future will look like.
He argues that the next phase of the new economy will be shaped by public-policy decisions to create the necessary technology infrastructure and by entrepreneurs responding to that environment.
The key variable? Intellectual property rights. Clearly, it benefits society to have ideas flow as unencumbered as possible. Yet unless there is something in it for the creators of those ideas, they have no economic incentive to propose anything. How that issue is resolved, Abramson says, will go a long way to shaping the new new economy.
His position? Keep those ideas flowing.