Information management is a key of this new world.
As an example: take any painting that hangs on a wall that costs $1000.
After having it authenticated, we find out that it was painted in the middle ages. Its price is immediately increased several-fold.
Then we find out that it was painted by someone in Rembrandt's circle. The price spikes to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And then suddenly you find out that it was painted by Rembrandt himself. Now we're talking about dozens of millions.
The painting itself hasn't changed, nothing happened to it. So why did the price go through the roof? To answer that question, you can use a lot of descriptive words, from "narrative" to "provenance". But all of it together, from financial and technical point of view, is simply information. The price of the art object lies not in the object itself but in the information surrounding it.
Information affects directly the art market pricing.
Note: a dynamic-price system could be able to turn this information stream into a coherent price builder .
Cognitive capitalism as the shift towards intangible/cognitive/intellectual labour, producing intangible products in highly flexible markets.
This "knowledge economy" is responsible for generating value through interaction with information and communication technologies.
It has been associated with post-Fordism.
By Fordism we understand the system formulated in Henry Ford's automotive factories, in which workers work on a production line, performing specialized tasks repetitively, and organized through Taylorist scientific management.
Some attributes of post-Fordism are: Small-batch production. Economies of scope. Specialized products and jobs. New information technologies. Emphasis on types of consumers in contrast to previous emphasis on social class. The cognitive commonly has been divided into three schools of thought: The Regulation School: The Regulation approach (also called the neo-Marxist or French Regulation School), was designed to address the paradox of how capitalism has both a tendency towards crisis, change and instability as well as an ability to stabilize institutions, rules and norms.
The theory is based on two key concepts:
Regimes of Accumulation refer to systems of production and consumption, such as Fordism and post-Fordism. Modes of Regulation refer to the written and unwritten laws of society which control the Regime of Accumulation and determine its form.
According to Regulation theory, every Regime of Accumulation will reach a crisis point at which the Mode of Regulation will no longer support it, and society will be forced to find new rules and norms, forming a new Mode of Regulation.
This will begin a new Regime of Accumulation, which will eventually reach a crisis, and so forth.
Proponents of Regulation theory include Michel Aglietta, Robert Boyer, Bob Jessop, and Alain Lipietz. Flexible Specialization: proponents of the flexible Specialization approach (also known as the neo-Smithian approach) to post-Fordism believe that fundamental changes in the international economy, especially in the early 1970s, forced firms to switch from mass production to a new tactic known as flexible specialization.
Factors such as the oil shocks of 1973, increased competition from foreign markets (especially Southeast Asia) due to globalization, the end of the post-World War II boom, and increasing privatization made uncompetitive the old system -mass-producing identical and cheap goods through division of labor.
Instead of producing generic goods, firms now found it more profitable to produce diverse product lines targeted at different groups of consumers, appealing to their sense of taste and fashion.
Instead of investing huge amounts of money on the mass production of a single product, firms now needed to build intelligent systems of labor and machines that were flexible and could quickly respond to the whims of the market.
The technology originally associated with flexible production was the numerical control technology(CNC), which was developed in the United States in the 1950s; however, the CNC developed in Japan later replaced it.
The development of the computer was very important to the technology of flexible specialization. Not only could the computer change characteristics of the goods being produced, but it could also analyze data to order supplies and produce goods in accordance with current demand.
These types of technology made adjustments simple and inexpensive, making smaller specialized production runs economically feasible.
Flexibility and skill in the labor was also important. The workforce was now divided into a skill-flexible core and a time-flexible periphery.
Flexibility and variety in the skills and knowledge of the core workers and the machines used for production allowed for the specialized production of goods.
Likewise, the production structure began to change on the sector level. Instead of a single firm manning the assembly line from raw materials to finished product, the production process became fragmented as individual firms specialized on their areas of expertise.
As evidence for this theory of specialization, industrial districts, or clusters have developed in places like Silicon Valley, Jutland, Småland, and several parts of Italy. Neo-Schumpeterianism: the Neo-Schumpeterian approach to post-Fordism is based upon the theory of Kondratiev waves -also known as long waves. The theory holds that a "techno-economic paradigm" characterizes each long wave. Fordism was the techno-economic paradigm of the fourth Kondratiev wave, and post-Fordism is thus the techno-economic paradigm of the fifth, which is dominated by information and communication technology.
Notable Neo-Schumpeterian thinkers comprise Carlota Perez and Christopher Freeman, as well as Michael Storper and Richard Walker. Changes from Fordism to post-Fordism Post-Fordism brought on new ways of looking at consumption and production. Rather than being viewed as a mass market to be served by mass production, the consumers began to be viewed as different groups pursuing different goals who could be better served with small batches of specialized goods. Mass markets became less important while markets for luxury, custom, or positional good became more significant.
Production became less homogeneous and standardized and more diverse and differentiated as organizations and economies of scale were replaced with organizations and economies of scope.
In the economic realm, post-Fordism brought the decline of regulation and production by the nation-state and the rise of global markets and corporations. Mass marketing was replaced by flexible specialization, and organizations began to emphasize communication more than command.
The workforce changed with an increase in internal marketing, franchising, and subcontracting and a rise in part-time, temp, self-employed, and home workers.
Italy One of the primary examples of specialized post-Fordist production took place in a region known as the Third Italy. The First Italy included the areas of large-scale mass production, such as Turin, Milan, and Genova, and the Second Italy described the undeveloped South. The Third Italy, however, was where clusters of small firms and workshops developed in the 1970s and 1980s in the central and northeast regions of the country.
Regions of the Third Italy included Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.
Each region specialized in a range of loosely related products and each workshop usually had five to fifty workers and often less than ten.
The range of products in each region reflected the post-Fordist shift to economies of scope.
Additionally, these workshops were known for producing high quality products and employing highly skilled, well-paid workers. The workshops were very design-oriented and multidisciplinary, involving collaboration between entrepreneurs, designers, engineers and workers. Japan After World War II, Japan was somewhat isolated because of import barriers and foreign investment restrictions, and as a result, Japan began to experiment with production techniques.
Technology for flexible production was significant in Japan and particularly necessary for smaller producers. The smaller producers also found it necessary to reduce costs. As a result, Japan became one of the main users of robots and CNC(Computer Numerical Control). Over time, these changes in production were institutionalized.