#internetimpact

Vast Study Discounts Adverse Effects of Internet on Mental Health

The important of internet in workplace

There is a reasonable critique to be made of the internet economy, to which Mr Douthat glancingly refers in mentioning Tyler Cowen's book "The Great Stagnation". Mr Cowen makes the point that the highly educated rich are better able to capture both the producer and consumer surplus associated with the internet economy. The web, in increasing the extent of the market, amplifies the superstar effect; the difference in earnings between great producers and the best producers, who dominate the global market, is enormous. As supply chains break up, it may become easier for knowledge workers to capture much of the value-added in a product or service; designers and inventers with original ideas can capture monopoly returns to those ideas while sourcing production to workers in a highly competitive manufacturing sector. Apple employees get rich; manufacturing employees earn their marginal product. And educated workers may benefit most from the flow of cheap information over the web. The problem with the internet economy isn't that it is unimportant or jobless, but that its benefits are highly unequal in their distribution. Perhaps. It is a little early yet to say. It would not be surprising, however, if something as transformative as the internet economy provoked a demand for institutional change to mitigate distributional consequences. That is precisely what occurred during the industrial revolution, after all, when the rise of the urban manufacturing economy prompted the corresponding development of the labour movement, the social welfare state, and the environmental movement. Similarly, the internet economy may encourage a rethinking of the nature of the welfare state and the importance of progressivity in taxation. If the knock-on employment effects of high-tech are the most important way in which the gains from the internet economy are transmitted to low-skilled workers, then suddenly the scope and expense of metropolitan areas become a critical factor. Just as important as the economic impact of the internet economy will be the social and political response it provokes. Social change is a measure, in many ways, of economic importance. And of course, one has to remember that the web is still in its infancy. It wasn't very long ago that most Americans lacked an email address. A majority of Americans have yet to purchase a smartphone or order broadband internet. I suspect people will underestimate the importance of the internet economy right up to the point at which they simply start referring to it as "the economy".