New semesters bring challenges, for sure. I was expecting that. What I wasn\u2019t expecting was how disorienting my economics class would be. This semester I am taking \u201cThe Networked Economy\u201d from Dr. Garcia. After enjoying her lectures in our Communication, Culture and Technology course last semester, I decided to take her course and see if economics was as interesting as her lectures and Freakonomics had made it seem. <\/p>\n
I have never participated in any activity that even resembled \u201ceconomics\u201d, unless you include the countless evenings during my childhood when my father would round up my siblings and I and take us to his office. Together we would fold flyers and glossy brochures featuring banner style headers proclaiming \u201cRetail\/Warehouse Space for SALE or LEASE!\u201d all while my father preached about the costs of running a business. These conversations seemed to imply that we should be running businesses of our own. For a six year old who was only focused on folding flyers so that \u201cAvailable Now!\u201d appeared above the fold, this was a simultaneously self-evident and daunting proposition.<\/p>\n
With only my childhood to support me in this new class, Garcia\u2019s opening question was equally daunting: \u201cIs there a new economy?\u201d Apparently the explosion of technology has created a networked market that has, to some extent, challenged traditional economic theory. On that first day she stood silently in front of us all, her question hanging in the air. Perhaps it was for dramatic effect. I was praying it was for dramatic effect. After all, I didn\u2019t even know what the old economy was, let alone if we had discarded it. And then it happened. Garcia turned to me, and evoking the same anxiety as my father when he would catch me taking a break from feeding the postage meter, she asked, \u201cJed, do you think we are in a new economy?\u201d My attempt to produce an answer resembled the jammed postal meter of my childhood, spewing words like half stamped brochures.<\/p>\n
Several weeks later, following my fair share of extra reading, I have found my footing in the most reduced amount of economic theory. Generally speaking, these theories are the lessons from my father\u2019s office. Retail buildings cost more than warehouses; people will pay for buildings in the right location, price is based on quantity: these were the lessons delivered as axiomatic truths across buckets of mail, stamped and ready for the post office. It doesn\u2019t take a degree in psychology, however, to see how complicated the systemic understanding those simple effect can be. Moreover, with computers, software and digital distribution, the market is no longer based on Adam Smith’s fish or bread or even my father’s buildings. So I am left with the more important question for this semester: Are we in a new economy?<\/p>\n
Help me out if you can! (Garcia, if you read this, feel free to comment.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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