The Internet Economy: the World's Next Growth Engine

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|The Internet Economy: the World's Next Growth Engine                                                                                                 |
|Starting with the Middle Ages, the story of the human race has been marked by accelerating economic growth. In the 1400s, global per capita income   |
|rose at only 0.1% per year, estimates economist J. Bradford DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley. Over the next five centuries, that   |
|rate moved steadily upward, finally hitting nearly 3% in the second half of the 20th century. Now, it looks as though the global growth rate may be   |
|on the verge of ratcheting up again.                                                                                                                 |
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|Why? We have entered the Age of the Internet, a globe-spanning technology that has taken hold amazingly quickly. Just as data flows across the Net in|
|easily digestible packets, knowledge, in the broadest sense, can now be easily tapped and exchanged by people in every corner of the earth. The       |
|result: an explosion of economic and productivity growth--first in the U.S., with the rest of the world soon to follow.                               |
|The dynamics of global growth are changing at least as profoundly as they did with the advent of railroads or electricity. The evolution of the       |
|Internet as a pervasive phenomenon means that the traditional factors of production--capital and skilled labor--are no longer the main determinants   |
|of the power of an economy. Now, economic potential is increasingly linked to the ability to control and manipulate information.                     |
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