8 Nov 2013
John Seely Brown, recipient of the 2013 OII Lifetime Award, discusses some key socioeconomic effects of the Internet and presents ideas of how organizations should adapt to them. He explains the global shift from an “economy of stocks” to an “economy of flows,” contending that this change from a system of managing fixed assets to participating in flows of ideas will compel organizations to focus on the context of technologies. According to Brown, in adjusting to a networked world, organizations have to realise that technologies are just as much contextual as content-based (i.e. concerned with the storing and distribution of content) since they themselves shape meaning. Brown also briefly relates how educational systems could change to better serve the society living in this “economy of flows”.