10 years ago, at the birth of the e-business revolution, there was much talk of a "new economy", or a "knowledge economy" (the European Union made a big bet on this one at its 2000 Lisbon summit - it's all gone rather quiet recently), or even an "attention economy" (Accenture, were there many takers?)
Given the grim realities of the noughties, from 911, through climate change, to the credit crunch, to talk of a global depression, such utopian ideals may ring hollow, but now - lo and behold - another version of the new economy is being heralded, built supposedly on a recognition that the only thing too big to fail is the Earth itself.
The latest issue of YES! magazine reports on early signs of this economy's emergence: worker-owned cooperatives that distribute the benefits of hard work to employee-owners; new means of exchange that work even when there is a global shortage of credit and local banks rooted in the communities they serve; new jobs being created to install renewable energy and weather-proof homes, producing food through more labour-intensive and less damaging means; building public transit systems and inter-city rail, and rebuilding schools, bridges, water systems and neighbourhoods.
However, YES! also cautions that such an economy is not inevitable and that we could revert to a winner-take-all system in which a few benefit and everyone else fights over the scraps, rather than an economy that works for all.
So, is this the real deal, new window-dressing for the old "New Deal", or merely yet another utopian view of a new society? And whose economy would this particular iteration be anyway? The YES! vision focuses mainly on the US, but what about developing and to-be-developed nations - is this a realistic, or even fair model for them to try and pursue now?
You can join the debate about these latest visions of the "new economy" on Twitter, or by commenting on others' views about e.g. how new criteria for measuring the success of the economy must be different from the old ones.
