INVERSION OF VALUE OF PHYSICAL TO VALUE OF MENTAL CONTENT OF PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Economics has historically focused on "goods" in the form of physical objects: production of food, manufacturing of widgets, buying and selling houses, and the like. Physical objects have some particular properties: they can be transferred, destroyed, bought and sold, but not copied... But on the internet, very different rules apply. Copying is che... See more

Technology has gradually shifted from the material to the abstract—from physical goods to information. This, too, is democratizing in its way: we can’t all access or shape steel, but we can spout and relay facts and opinions. Just as significantly, it means that revolutions are increasingly mental, reshaping our relationship to space...

There’s simply no deep reason that economic growth requires increasing use of any physical resource. Economic value is all about the configuration of stuff, not the amount of stuff. If you took a hammer and smashed your phone to pieces, the resulting pile of trash would still contain the same amount of silicon and cobalt and gallium arsenide and so... See more