[Discuss] Material vs Information Economy

Thu Feb 9 15:08:51 UTC 2017

Dr. Pearce's paper, Quantifying The Value Of Open Source Hardware, would be
a good start.
https://opensource.com/life/15/2/the-worth-of-open-source-hardware-design

On Feb 9, 2017 6:04 AM, "Tom Igoe" <tom.igoe at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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/
>
> 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> 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> 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
>>
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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
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>
> Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D.
> Executive Director
> Open Source Ecology
> http://opensourceecology.org
>
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