The digital marketplace: Winner takes all

Douglas Rushkoff

This article describes how the internet is developing into a highly-centralised and automated marketplace.

The digital marketplace: Winner takes all

Douglas Rushkoff

Early internet adopters expected something socially progressive from the internet and have become disillusioned with what has materialised. What went wrong? How has the internet, which was expected to become a decentralised force, become the opposite? It has transpired that power laws and feedback loops have produced a highly centralised, winner-takes-all automated marketplace, gradually removing humans from the process

Those of us who thought the digital marketplace was going to follow the distributed nature of the net, with its decentralised connectivity and ad hoc social activity leading to an equally distributed marketplace,...

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