What Is The Information Economy, Anyway?
April 30, 2022 10:13 PM Subscribe
Does anyone have some good recommended reading on the information economy - I'm looking for book-length, specifically, but really interesting articles or blog recommendations would also be welcome. Academic works or books written for a popular audience are both great.
I may be using that term - "information economy" too broadly or incorrectly, so I'll spell out what I'm looking for a bit more clearly here: the buying and selling of pure information for profit. The most obvious people doing are companies like Facebook, of course, but part of what I'm interested in is how widespread it is. Are insurance companies selling the information they collect? Are banks? Are companies that run video games?
What about the buyers? The obvious candidates are advertisers, but are they the only ones?
How does the buying and selling actually work? Does someone call up someone else and say, "I've got seven million data points about footwear sales, send over a bag of $100,000 in unmarked bills"? I'm being facetious there, but what's the marketplace for this sort of thing? Is there even a marketplace? How is this stuff priced and, well, verified? How do you know that million data points wasn't procedurally generated or something, rather than actually collected?
Looking mainly for information on the legal economy, but also open to particularly interesting/detailed stuff on the illegal trade in information (hackers, darknets, et cetra). It was actually reading about information theft in Misha Glenny's McMafia that helped pique my interest. But poking around for more about that made me realize how little I knew of the broader economic context.
I may be using that term - "information economy" too broadly or incorrectly, so I'll spell out what I'm looking for a bit more clearly here: the buying and selling of pure information for profit. The most obvious people doing are companies like Facebook, of course, but part of what I'm interested in is how widespread it is. Are insurance companies selling the information they collect? Are banks? Are companies that run video games?
What about the buyers? The obvious candidates are advertisers, but are they the only ones?
How does the buying and selling actually work? Does someone call up someone else and say, "I've got seven million data points about footwear sales, send over a bag of $100,000 in unmarked bills"? I'm being facetious there, but what's the marketplace for this sort of thing? Is there even a marketplace? How is this stuff priced and, well, verified? How do you know that million data points wasn't procedurally generated or something, rather than actually collected?
Looking mainly for information on the legal economy, but also open to particularly interesting/detailed stuff on the illegal trade in information (hackers, darknets, et cetra). It was actually reading about information theft in Misha Glenny's McMafia that helped pique my interest. But poking around for more about that made me realize how little I knew of the broader economic context.
Maybe also We are Bellingcat for the volumes of data available that can work for a voluntary/open source intelligencr outfit.
posted by k3ninho at 12:53 PM on May 1, 2022
posted by k3ninho at 12:53 PM on May 1, 2022
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posted by humbug at 4:09 AM on May 1, 2022