Knowledge Market

What is the knowledge market, the recent paradigm of the Net Economy? To understand it, let’s start from a small dilemma of many readers’ everyday life. At last, friday afternoon I decide to start the weekend with a dinner at home and I make some phone calls to invite friends.

I take the chance (opportunity) to ask for suggestions in the matter of the menu and the more frequent answer is a diplomatic “Your choice, dear!”. This time I want to cook something that can amaze them. As a lover of international food I think that an excellent paella valenciana would hit the mark; if only I had the recipe! But in the age of the global information, it’s easily done. I turn my computer on and I visit one of those Web sites where, with a few clicks, you can request the opinion of an "expert”, so called since his response to a particular question has been considered the best one by the users of that site itself. In sites like this, the various "problems" are generally categorized on the basis of the subject: they range from business and finance to art and culture, from food and drinks to school and education, from beauty and style gradually up till consumer electronics, discussing about all topics, each one with its own "experts" on universal suffrage. For each opened discussion a ranking of “experts” has been set and who collects the highest number of votes succeeds in reaching the summit. Vox populi, vox Dei ("People voice, God’s voice").

This simple story, (obtained) from a common experience of everyday life, helps to clarify the functioning of a recently acquired paradigm of the (as it is usually called) New Economy: the Knowledge Market.

Economic paradigm in the limelight of Web 2.0, Knowledge Market aims to distribute knowledge-based resources, as well as to improve, support and facilitate the movement, sharing and exchange of knowledge. Thanks to the Internet, in fact, products or services that constitute the so called knowledge sector are accessible just as if you were in a real market.

There are two main types of web sites concerning the Knowledge Market. On the one hand, there are sites like for instance Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Reference Desk, Ask Metafilter , that use a model in which the knowledge - and intellectual property - is seen as an unmarketable public resource to share. On the other hand the Knowledge Market with fee - the first one to use a virtual currency was Expert Exchange, in 1996; today the most famous site of this kind is Elance, with its "experts on hire”- which are focused on the keying in of a question by the user, who is willing to pay a sum of money for the valid response, and both on the request for a specific parcel by those who are able to meet the desires and the needs of the user himself. Finally, there are also "hybrid" services - like ChaCha.com and Answerly.com – in which the expert is paid despite the service remains free of charge for those who use it. The Knowledge Market conceptually covers a spectrum of services designed for both the public and the private, for provision of assistance, spread of answers for every kind of questions, counseling and so on.

Therefore, in the Knowledge Market - especially in the free one- unlike what happens in the traditional economies- the commodity is represented by an untouchable good: knowledge. Inspired by the work of Alvin Toffler, the idea of Knowledge implies for the Knowledge Market the awareness that its spread does not decrease the value and does not drop the bid. According to the above paradigm, this "knowledge" does not run out, but preserves, reinforce and renews its value every time we are using it. In practice, knowledge creates knowledge, in a circular and never-ending process.

Knowledge has always been considered important in order to produce, but it becomes a primary requirement and a productive force only in the Modern Age. Thanks to technology - particularly to the advent of the Internet - the real economy has at its disposal a formidable resource constructed so as to be duplicated ten, hundred, thousand times, and always in different contexts. Knowledge produces and acquires economic value thanks to the advent of effective and efficient ways of communication, which let information travel all over the world and reach in real time each single user.

William Ralston Balch, Book of Knowledge - Cover

Knowledge rises to the status of "new product" because its distribution’s ways are clearly new, and so also his conception. The technology has the merit of having drastically reduced the product’s setting up and spreading times, as well as its cost. Moreover, it makes possible to reach the potential consumer and the target almost everywhere. Shared and multiplied knowledge, which has an almost null and void cost of reproduction ( it depends on the Knowledge Market it belongs to), began to circulate in the virtual form and uses the Internet as a conditio sine qua non in order to expand its sale’s "circuit"

Today technology is more important than ever in the social, political and economic life. It is a companion who helps us in everyday affairs, it helps in many situations and lets information cross boundaries to enter into every home. But above all, if it were not for the technology, this evening I could not prepare the paella.