[Discuss] Material vs Information Economy

Thu Feb 9 14:04:03 UTC 2017

> On Feb 9, 2017, at 7:47 AM, Marcin Jakubowski <marcin at opensourceecology.org> wrote:
> 
> To specify my question, I think I should be asking "What is the relative size of the material economy vs information economy?" Is this a well-formed question?

I understand the question, and my questions are aimed at helping to clarify it. I don’t think it is particularly well formed, yet. At least, not for my limited understanding of economics, because it seems to contain a few contradictions and requires a bunch of things to be defined.

In order to evaluate it, I’d want to define what industries fall into what sides of the question. I’d guess that it’s probably not a binary. I am not an economist, but I can think of a few industries where it’s impossible to tell whether they are material or information, because their money is generated by both production & sales, and by analysis & speculation based on data. Energy is a big one, which is why I cited it earlier. But so is agriculture (I’m thinking about the amount of money generated by ag futures here, for example).  I’m guessing that the whole “financialization of economies” argument is another way of saying that financiers have figured out how to bind material and informational revenue generation together tightly enough that it’s difficult to separate them. 

I guess if I were asking the question, I’d start by asking an economist to help shape it a bit more. The more I think about it, the less I can separate the two.

> I googled Sectors of the economy and this seems to be useful: 
> 
> http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/12436/concepts/sectors-economy/ <http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/12436/concepts/sectors-economy/>
> 
> 1. Primary sector: raw materials. 
> 2. Secondary sector: manufacturing, buildings, roads, and any physical infrastructures/facilities
> 3. Tertiary sector: services including retail, insurance, banking, tourism, restaurants
> 4. Quaternary sector: education, training, R&D
> 5. Quinary sector: government
> 
> 1 and 2 are clearly 100% materially related. The retail part of 3 is based primarily on natural and manufactured resources, so that is part of the material economy. The parts of 4 that relate to material production relate to raw materials and manufacturing. 5 is not the material economy.
> 
> My question aims at the potential economic impact of open source hardware: is that a billion dollar startup like Google, or is it a trillion dollar startup like nothing prior - in recorded human history?
> 
> Marcin
> 
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 5:35 AM, Tom Igoe <tom.igoe at gmail.com <mailto:tom.igoe at gmail.com>> wrote:
> I think you need to be more specific on that “etc” to get good numbers. For example, is energy hardware or software? Because it’s pretty big.
> 
> 
> Tom
> 
>> On Feb 8, 2017, at 9:37 PM, Marcin Jakubowski <marcin at opensourceecology.org <mailto:marcin at opensourceecology.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> Friends,
>> 
>> I'm researching the size of the hardware vs software economy. What is the latest on the size of the hardware economy (materials, housing, industry, ag etc) compared to the information economy (software, information services, education, etc)?
>> 
>> I heard somewhere that the hardware economy is 80% of the economy. Can anyone point me to sources?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Marcin
>> 
>> -- 
>> Full Disclosure: OSE works openly. All conversations in this email are intended to be transparent and subject to sharing, with due respect. OSE does not sign NDAs in order to promote collaboration. All of our work is libre or open source. If you are discussing potential development collaboration, your work must also be open source pursuant to the Open Source Hardware Association definition <http://www.oshwa.org/definition/>. 
>> 
>> See Global Village Construction Set TED Talk <http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski>. See latest build of Seed Eco-Home <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/622508883/open-building-institute-eco-building-toolkit/posts/1750160>. Subscribe as a True Fan <http://opensourceecology.org/community/#truefans>. See  Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology> for updates. Subscribe to monthly update OSEmail <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSEmail>. Donate to our 501(c)3 <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Other_donation_options>.
>> 
>> Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D.
>> Executive Director
>> Open Source Ecology
>> http://opensourceecology.org <http://opensourceecology.org/>
>> 
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> 
> -- 
> Full Disclosure: OSE works openly. All conversations in this email are intended to be transparent and subject to sharing, with due respect. OSE does not sign NDAs in order to promote collaboration. All of our work is libre or open source. If you are discussing potential development collaboration, your work must also be open source pursuant to the Open Source Hardware Association definition <http://www.oshwa.org/definition/>. 
> 
> See Global Village Construction Set TED Talk <http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski>. See latest build of Seed Eco-Home <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/622508883/open-building-institute-eco-building-toolkit/posts/1750160>. Subscribe as a True Fan <http://opensourceecology.org/community/#truefans>. See  Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology> for updates. Subscribe to monthly update OSEmail <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSEmail>. Donate to our 501(c)3 <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Other_donation_options>.
> 
> Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D.
> Executive Director
> Open Source Ecology
> http://opensourceecology.org <http://opensourceecology.org/>
> 
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