How much will two bits be worth in the digital marketplace?
Release Date: January/February 1996 Advances in computers and data networks inspire visions of a future “information economy” in which everyone will have access to gigabytes of all kinds of information anywhere and anytime. But information has always been a notoriously difficult commodity to deal with, and, in some ways, computers and high-speed networks make the problems of buying, selling and distributing information goods worse rather than better. To start with, the very abundance of digital data exacerbates the most fundamental constraint on information commerce – the limits of human comprehension. As Nobel laureate economist Herbert A. Simon puts it: “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Technology for producing and distributing information is usele
