This morning’s Observer column.

Need a crash course in digital capitalism? Easy: you just need to understand four concepts – margins, volume, inequality and employment. And if you need more detail, just add the following adjectives: thin, vast, huge and poor.First, margins. Once upon a time, there was a great company called Kodak…

LATER: It occurred to me that “Digital Capitalism” would make an interesting university course. One of the textbooks I would use is Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System by Dan Schiller, plus his How to Think About Information.

This recent seminar presentation gives a flavour of Dan in action:

Another essential text would be Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian. It’s now relatively old, and yet still seems highly relevant.