Economy 4.0 and Digital Society: The Participatory Market Society is Born (Chapter 8 of Digital Society)

31 Pages Posted: 19 Dec 2014

See all articles by Dirk Helbing

Dirk Helbing

ETH Zürich - Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (GESS)

Date Written: December 16, 2014

Abstract

The invention of the steam engine turned the agricultural society (with its “Economy 1.0”) into an industrial society (with the “Economy 2.0”). Later, the spreading of education enabled the service society (with the “Economy 3.0”). And now, the pervasiveness of digital technologies – such as the World Wide Web, Social Media, digital devices, artificial intelligence, robots and the Internet of Things – is driving another technological revolution, creating digital societies (with the “Economy 4.0”). For example, the sharing economy, co-producing consumers (“prosumers”), and the makers community indicate the beginning of an entirely new era, which I call the Participatory Market Society. This society is ultimately characterized by the ubiquity of information, bottom-up participation, co-creation, self-organization, and collective intelligence as organizational principles, furthermore, by user-centricity and -control, personalized products, and hyper-variety markets. Furthermore, many people will engage in “projects,” empowered by social collaboration platforms.

Keywords: information society, knowledge sector, digital revolution, sharing economy, economic ecosystem

JEL Classification: A00, O30, P40

Suggested Citation

Helbing, Dirk, Economy 4.0 and Digital Society: The Participatory Market Society is Born (Chapter 8 of Digital Society) (December 16, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2539330 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2539330

Dirk Helbing (Contact Author)

ETH Zürich - Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (GESS) ( email )

ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Clausiusstrasse 50
Zurich, 8092
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://www.coss.ethz.ch

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