Sara Schoonmaker
A range of social theorists have maintained that technological changes in microelectronics have given rise to a new kind of post-industrial or information society. An analysis is made of the role of international flows of computerized information in the global economy as a way to evaluate debates about the nature of contemporary society. Two kinds of flows that provide distinct advantages to transnational corporations as their major users are identified. Corporate flows between branches of the same firm facilitate existing business activities. Commercial flows sold from one firm to another make up a new form of trade in digital commodities, produced and exchanged according to the logic of the market. Rather than introducing a qualitatively different type of information society, microelectronics technologies have made it possible to extend the process of commodification into digital forms of production and exchange.