Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND THE MARKET
order. As such, it is regarded as vendible, subject to the price mechanism, and
hence a commodity to be bought and sold by one party or another. It is reasonable
to ask why this should matter since no one, certainly not Herbert Schiller,
suggests that information, still less ICTs, come free of cost.
Much of the objection to commodification comes down to what Oscar Wilde
disparagingly termed knowing ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’.
There is a lengthy tradition of thought, by no means all radical, that voices this
concern about the limits of the price mechanism. For instance, in the early 1990s,
a Conservative minister, David Mellor, warned against too strong an imposition
of commercial practices on the arts when he advised his audience that they might
do well to remember that in ‘the long run a society is judged not so much by its
economic achievements, but by its cultural ones’. This is a salutary reminder that
we recollect the nineteenth century less for its cotton and coal barons, though
they ruled supreme in those days, than for its artists and architects. Mellor’s was
a speech delivered during a period of enthusiastic and determined advancement
of capitalist principles, when entrepreneurs and private enterprise were much
praised, yet still a Cabinet member could warn of its limitations.
Nonetheless, in recent decades we have witnessed an accelerated commodification
of the informational realm. More of this will be considered in the
following chapter, including in the realm of television where it is especially
evident, but at this point we may also instance the heightened price valuation of
‘brands’ (de Chernatony and McDonald, 2003). Products still matter, of course,
but the value of a brand, from the Nike swooshes to the Virgin label have developed
an increased significance in recent years. Thus even British universities now
assiduously market their brand, eager to recruit students from abroad since
they can be charged much more than domestic ones and the fees are lucrative.
The process has extended even to the commodification of a name, famously so
in the case of footballer David Beckham whose transfer to Real Madrid from
Manchester United owed much to the selling power of his name in the Far East
promising increased merchandising opportunities. It is striking that nowadays
such intangibles as a ‘name’ carry economic weight beyond the actual technical
capabilities of the player.
Accompanying this has been a heightened concern for intellectual property
and its protection by way of copyright and patenting, processes that Lawrence
Lessig (2000) regards as a form of enclosure (Boyle, 2002) – a drawing into market
relationships arrangements that may once have been excluded. They are all
dedicated to ensuring that the correct proprietor is identified and the price of the
information maximised. Consider, for example, the complaint of John Sutherland
(1999) regarding the digitalisation of reviews and articles he has written in the
Times Literary Supplement and the Times Higher Education Supplement over many
years. Previously, the pieces were hard-copy published, Sutherland received a fee
for the job, and that was the end of the matter. If readers wanted to consult his
writings, they either bought or borrowed the original periodical or, if after an
old edition, consulted it in an academic library where bound copies (or possibly
microfilms) were stored. Digitalisation, however, makes the backlog readily accessible
from anywhere to those with a subscription and communications facilities.
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