Digital Economy

Interview

Douglas Rushkoff, interviewed by ERIN LYNCH:

* "Much has been said about the “digital economy” and its role on the consumer’s life. How would you describe the current state of that economy? Are we there yet?

DR: Honestly, I don’t think we’re in a digital economy, yet. We’re really just in an amped-up version of the old industrial economy: traditional, extractive, mass-scale corporate capitalism, where the object of the game is to monopolize value creation and promote the growth of capital. In other words, it’s the same old economy on digital steroids.

The true digital economy is in the most fledgling state, a great majority of business – digital and otherwise – is geared more toward thwarting these early efforts. The true digital economy is emerging in the form of platform cooperatives (digital companies actually owned by the participants), crowd-funding, and peer-to-peer transactions directly between people. The way to distinguish truly digital spirited economic activity is to see whether it is distributing value, or just extracting it." (http://www.webvisionsevent.com/2016/01/the-throes-of-change-an-interview-with-douglas-rushkoff/)