SNIP
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>I think there are several aspects that have to be analyzed separately.
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>Are more and more companies using computers to process large amounts of information? Accessing lots of information over the Internet? Actually using this information? Spending money (and human resources) on all this? Let's say, compared with some decades ago. I think the answer is definitely "yes".
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>Does this translate into more jobs - in total? Probably not. That's what I mean with a "change in emphasis" - compared with 100 years ago, companies are probably spending more money on information - but less on some other things.
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>Now, the fact that some computer programmers are jobless may simply mean that there have been overly optimistic estimates in this sense.

Well I *think* that the concept of "the information economy" is a little different than that.
For here the ages have seen the agrarian ecomony, the manufacturing ecomony and the transportation economy.
In the first it was agriculture that was the bedrock of *most* economic activity of a society.
Then it became manufacturing that had the major impact on our society and its economy.
More recently it has been transportation (largely because manufactured stuff must get to its markets and because personal travel became more affordable and easier).
Now the last two have some common threads through them that are themselves pretty big, namely financial (banking and related) and advertising/marketing.

Now the issue here is that manufacturing is more than half gone BUT it was touted as being a GOOD SITUATION because it would be replaced by cleaner more benign higher value (thus higher paying) jobs in the new "information economy". This did NOT mean that more businesses would be using computers more, but it did mean (well, imply to the average listener) that information was to become a VALUABLE COMMODITY THAT COULD HAVE VALUE ADDED IN INNUMERABLE WAYS FOR PROFITABLE RE-SALE. This was fast becoming the new economic model for the future.

I think it was a pipe-dream and has evaporated BUT I also worry that most of us are still plodding along and letting the world happen in the belief that the "information economy" is just a matter of time and it will bail us out real soon now.