Netocracy

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Netocracy was a term invented by the editorial board of the American technology magazine Wired in the early 1990s as a standard replacement for the clichéd term the digital class, the concept of netocracy was later picked up by the Swedish philosophers Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist for their book "Netocracy - The New Power Elite and Life After Capitalism" (originally published in Swedish in 2000, first published in English by Reuters/Pearsall UK in 2002).

A word-play on the terms internet and aristocracy, the netocracy refers to the emerging global upper-class of the interactive age. The netocrats base their power on a sharp comparative technological advantage and networking skills (in the social sense of the word, albeit aided by technology) in comparison to what is portrayed as a bourgeoisie of a gradually diminishing importance.

The netocracy concept has been compared with Richard Florida's concept of the creative class, but overlaps the latter since netocracy refers not only to the creative arts as an urban career and lifestyle, but merely as one component of many necessary to gain and maintain power in an interactive world where virtual identity is of increasing importance. In true Marxian style, Bard and Söderqvist have also defined an under-class in opposition to the netocracy, which they refer to as the consumtariat.

Although Bard and Söderqvist were reluctant to name any early individual netocrats as examples of their futurological distinction at the time of their book being published, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have later been referred to as examples of netocrats.

Usage

However the word is used by others as a portmanteau of Internet and democracy and not a portmanteau of Internet and aristocracy:

• "In Seattle, organized labor ran interference for the ragtag groups assembled behind it, marshaling several thousand union members who feared that free trade might send their jobs abroad. In Washington, labor focused on lobbying Congress over the China-trade issue, leaving the IMF and the World Bank to the ad hoc Netocracy.
• "From his bungalow in Berkeley, he's spreading the word of grassroots netocracy to the Beltway. He formed an Internet political consulting firm with Jerome ..."

References

Further reading

• Organs without Bodies ; ISBN 978-0415969215
• Images of Organization; ISBN 978-1412939799
• A Hacker Manifesto ; ISBN 978-0674015432

External links

• The Netocracy and the Consumtariat. Speech by Alexander Bard

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Last updated on Monday February 18, 2008 at 21:00:47 PST (GMT -0800)
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