Democratization of "Production" and Establishment of "Economy of Abundance" in the Information Network Economy

Abstract

In the network economymy, information goods have extremely low reproduction costs, do not diminish with use, and can be combined with existing goods to create goods of even greater value by adding slight modifications or combinations. This paper shows that this property is widely applicable to the market exchange of "non-information goods," and that the democratization of "production" and the materialization of "prosumers" arise in the information network economy, moving toward an "economy of abundance. The "long tail" is taken up as an example of this phenomenon.