On network economy

Brian Zhang Larsen — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:05:38 +0000

With catch phrases including terms like “in the new economy” or “for the information age”, these books often appeal to the less geeky and more business curious side of me. Lately I have enjoyed a lot of these ever so popular semi academic books on network economy, which most of them proclaim to explain a new theory or set of rules which can be used to explain virtually anything in the modern economy. The truth is that these books are easily digested; often direct substitutes with fictional literature. The good thing about reading these on behalf of fiction is the lack of guild. While spending too much time on reading fiction, I often get a sense of bad consciousness because I should be spending my time more efficient, like reading competence building books, analyze something or study a new API for an interesting web service. This is the cause to the effect that I rarely read fiction (although I enjoyed Haruki Murakami’s A wild sheep chase last week). Network economy books, doesn’t give this element of guild, but the feeling of learning something new. The “newness” of these books is though often questionable, and usually to a higher extend just brings a new term in the field, for a long known viral effect or a neat marketing stunt. Of the small selection of network economic books in my array, I recommend the oldest the most. Information Rules by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, describes the key elements of this term excellent, with little need to supplement with the newer bestsellers on the subject.

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Brian Zhang Larsen's Blog » network economy

On network economy