Economy 4.0 and Digital Society: The Participatory Market Society is Born (Chapter 8 of Digital Society)

Abstract

The invention of the steam engine turned the agricultural society (with its “Economy 1.0”) into an industrial society (with the “Economy 2.0”). Later, the spreading of education enabled the service society (with the “Economy 3.0”). And now, the pervasiveness of digital technologies – such as the World Wide Web, Social Media, digital devices, artificial intelligence, robots and the Internet of Things – is driving another technological revolution, creating digital societies (with the “Economy 4.0”). For example, the sharing economy, co-producing consumers (“prosumers”), and the makers community indicate the beginning of an entirely new era, which I call the Participatory Market Society. This society is ultimately characterized by the ubiquity of information, bottom-up participation, co-creation, self-organization, and collective intelligence as organizational principles, furthermore, by user-centricity and -control, personalized products, and hyper-variety markets. Furthermore, many people will engage in “projects,” empowered by social collaboration platforms.