Setting the Standards: The USA and Capitalism in the Digital Age

Abstract

The term “digital capitalism” (Schiller, 2000) is one among several that have been coined over the last three decades or so to characterize the prevailing global system by which economic, social, and cultural activities are increasingly organized. Others include the “knowledge-based economy”, “information society”, “weightless economy” or simply “new economy, or struggle to describe the new socioeconomic landscape using terms like “prosumption” or “co-creation”. The emergence of this new terminology indicates a widespread need, among academics and policymakers as well as the general public, to find some way of grasping the immensity of the changes that have been taking place, their interconnectedness, and the forces that appear to be driving them. In their different ways, most of these terms acknowledge a tight interlock between technological and economic developments in shaping the contours of what some might regard as a new world order.