MachineMachine /stream

The Internet, arguably the most influential digital medium, has sparked an explosion of debate throughout recent years, regarding its economic, political and social status; a space where its structure is constantly criticized and its potential nurtures new and contradicting ideas. British scholar Richard Barbrook (University of Westminster) is the instigator of one of such ideas, which finds its groundwork on Marxist critical analysis of capital. According to Barbrook, the new economy of the Internet era is called "the digital economy"; its workers are "the digital artisans," and their "tools" the new technologies, that is, computer networks. [2] Barbrook believes that this is a mixed economy that fosters a successful symbiosis of the public, the market and what he calls the "gift-economy," which he understands as a representation of anarcho-communism in cyberspace.