What Is the Digital Economy? - Apr 02, 2007 - Digital Communities

What Is the Digital Economy? - Apr 02, 2007 - Digital Communities: "What Is the Digital Economy? [Add to Bookmarks]
Apr 02, 2007 By Robert D. Atkinson & Andrew S. McKay
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For most people the digital economy refers to the economy conducted on the Internet, but the digital economy is much broader than this. The digital economy represents the pervasive use of IT (hardware, software, applications and telecommunications) in all aspects of the economy, including internal operations of organizations (business, government and non-profit); transactions between organizations; and transactions between individuals, acting both as consumers and citizens, and organizations.

Just as 100 years ago the development of cheap, hardened steel enabled a host of tools to be made that drove economic growth, today information technology enables the creation of a host of tools to create, manipulate, organize, transmit, store and act on information in digital form in new ways and through new organizational forms (Cohen, Delong, Weber, and Zysman 2001).

The technologies underlying the digital economy also go far beyond the Internet and personal computers. IT is embedded in a vast array of products, and not just technology products like cell phones, GPS units, PDAs, MP3 players, and digital cameras.

IT is in everyday consumer products like washing machines, cars"