My argument is that great gardeners will be high-priced not only because they are scarce and exceptions, but also because they, like everyone else, will be using technology to eliminate as much of the tedious repetitive work as possible, leaving them time to do what humans are so good at: working with the irregular and unexpected.

At the dawn of the industrial age it would have been difficult to imagine how such quintessential agrarian jobs as farming, husbandry, and forestry could become so industrialized. But that is what happened. Not just agrarian work, but just about every imaginable occupation of that period–especially menial labor–was intensely affected by industrialization. The trend was steady: The entire economy eventually became subjected to the machine.

The full-scale trend toward the network economy is equally hard to imagine, but its progression is steady. It follows a predictable pattern. The first jobs to be absorbed by the network economy are new jobs that could only exist in the new world: code hackers, cool hunters, webmasters, and Wall Street quants. Next to succumb are occupations with old goals that can be accomplished faster or better with new tools: real estate brokers, scientists, insurance actuaries, wholesalers, and anyone else who sits at a desk. Finally, the network economy engulfs all the unlikely rest–the butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers–until the entire economy is suffused by networked knowledge.
The three great currents of the network economy: vast globalization, steady dematerialization into knowledge, and deep, ubiquitous networking–these three tides are washing over all shores. Their encroachment is steady, and self-reinforcing. Their combined effect can be rendered simply: The net wins.

• Increasing numbers of inert objects are animated by information networks.
• Once the inert is touched by a network, it obeys the rules of information.
• Networks don’t retreat; they tend to multiply into new territories.
• Eventually all objects and transactions will run by network logic.

One is tempted to add “resistance is futile.” The overwhelming long-term trend toward universal connection may seem Borg-like, as if all things will lose their identity and become part of one large mindless swarm. Two things should be made clear: 1) constant, ubiquitous connections do not per se eliminate individuality; and 2) by “all” I mean an ongoing trend that approaches an asymptote, not a finality.

One might say that industrialization eradicated hand-crafted production to the point where all objects are machine-made. That is true by and large, and it accurately describes the destination of a trend. But the trend has a few notable exceptions. In an era of objects made completely by machines, hand-made items are a scarcity and thus command very high prices. A few–but only a few–shrewd artisans and entrepreneurs can make a living crafting items by hand, items such as bicycles, furniture, guitars, that would ordinarily be stamped out in a factory. Resistance is marginal, but profitable.

The same will be true in the networking of the economy. Resistance will not be futile. In a world of ubiquitous connection, where everything is connected to everything else, scarce will be the person not connected at all, or the company not pushing ideas and intangibles. If these mavericks are able to interface with the networked economy without losing their distinctivness or value, then they will be sought out, and their products priced high. One can imagine a successful idea-artist in the year 2005 who does no email, no phone, no videoconferences, no VR, no books, and who does not travel. The only way to get her fabulous ideas is in person, face-to-face at her hideout, live. The fact that she is booked 8 months in advance only adds to her reputation.

MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte guesstimates that the online economy will have reached $1 trillion by 2000. Most tenured economists think that figure is terribly optimistic. But actually that optimistic figure is terribly underestimated. It doesn’t anticipate the scale on which the economic world will move on to the internet as the network economy infiltrates cars and traffic and steel and corn. Even if all cars aren’t sold online immediately, the way cars are designed, manufactured, built, and operated will depend on network logic and chip power.

The current concern about the size of the online market will have diminishing relevance, because all commerce is jumping on to the internet. The distinctions between the network economy and the industrial economy will likewise blur and fade, as all economic activity is touched in some way by network rules. The key distinction remaining will be between the animated versus the inert.

The realm of the inert encompasses any object that is divorced from its economic information. A head of lettuce today for instance does not contain any financial information beyond a price sticker. Once applied, that price is fixed, too. It doesn’t change unless a human changes it. The economic consequences of lettuce sales elsewhere, or a change in the general global economy do not affect the head of lettuce itself. Instead, lettuce-related information flows through wholly separate channels–news programs or business newsletters–that are divorced from the lettuce itself. The lettuce is economically inert.

The realm of the animated is different. It’s vastly interconnected. In this coming world a head of lettuce carries its own identity and price, displayed perhaps on an LED slab nearby, or on a disposable chip attached to its stem. The price changes as the lettuce ages, as lettuce down the street is discounted, as the weather in California changes, as the dollar surges in relation to the Mexican peso. Traders back in supermarket headquarters manage the “yield” of lettuce prices using the same algorithms that airlines use to maximize their profits from airline seats. (An unsold seat on a 747 is as perishable as an unsold head of lettuce.) In relation to the net, the lettuce is animated. It is dynamic, adaptive, and interacting with events. A river of money and information flows through it. And if money and information flow through something, then it’s part of the network economy.