The second economy: vast, silent, connected, unseen, and autonomous
In a few weeks time I’m giving a talk at IAB Engage on ‘Digital Disruption: The next 20 years’. At the same time, I’m also thinking back at my book, and how things have changed a year on.
So, I’m on the hunt quotes and insights from people who are much smarter than me.
First came Marc Andreessen’s Software is Eating The World; and now comes this neat piece in McKinsey Quarterly about the digital world as ‘The Second Economy‘.
I particularly like this description – and the words I’ve put in bold..
I’d say it is vast, silent, connected, unseen, and autonomous (meaning that human beings may design it but are not directly involved in running it). It is remotely executing and global, always on, and endlessly configurable. It is concurrent—a great computer expression—which means that everything happens in parallel. It is self-configuring, meaning it constantly reconfigures itself on the fly, and increasingly it is also self-organizing, self-architecting, and self-healing.
These last descriptors sound biological—and they are. In fact, I’m beginning to think of this second economy, which is under the surface of the physical economy, as a huge interconnected root system, very much like the root system for aspen trees. For every acre of aspen trees above the ground, there’s about ten miles of roots underneath, all interconnected with one another, “communicating” with each other.
via The second economy – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Growth.
