The four chapters of this second part have a common purpose: they illustrate the impact on contemporary society and the economy of the widespread diffusion and exploitation of electronic communication technologies and services. In practice, the current change that is taking place is affecting almost the entire population of the planet! In the short term, everyone will have reliable, continuous and very inexpensive access to the Internet. No human activity can therefore escape the influence of digital tools and services: trades, services, industry, leisure and all the world’s knowledge are affected!

Chapter 4 emphasizes that interactive services give new drive to cooperative mechanisms which, despite a long and somewhat dormant tradition, still held a marginal place in the modern economy before the rise of the Internet. Godefroy Dang N’Guyen cites various examples of projects that were adapted by the web, which affect a fairly large number of sectors, marketers and non-marketers. It seems that the Internet not only increases the opportunities to exchange a service or a usage tool with third parties, but also allows collaboration or association with others for projects that pursue a long tradition of voluntary and decentralized cooperation, that are sometimes philanthropic, but also profit-making, just like the contributions between peers for the operating and mining of blockchains.

Chapter 5 focuses on another perspective: it highlights the effect of technological change and digital procedures on today’s industrial society and lifestyles. Deeply marked by the industrialization of the environment and morals, our social life quickly integrates the latest avatar of the technical system; that of networks and the Internet. This requires the gradual amendment and transformation of uses, some of the conventions acquired and the adaptation of institutions, Michel Volle underlines, whose reflection extends that of mid-20th Century technologists, at the time when the first electronic calculating machines appeared. The author notes in passing that the iconomy is an opportunity to restore acceptance of risk and commitment, and to treat failure as a form of life learning: all significant signs of the post-industrial economy stimulated by interactive networks and processes.

The subject that Gérard Dréan addresses in Chapter 6 is very different from what precedes it, but it is really its complement: the prodigious performances of computers, electronic communication networks and Internet services are based on a single industry that designs and manufactures electronic chips, without which we would not have a computer, a digital telephone, nor a communication network to connect Internet platforms to their trade. The services of the digital age all depend on the performance and continuity of this industry. As fundamental to the digital age as steam and electricity were during the great industrial revolution, these industries take advantage of discoveries that affect that which is infinitely small, the intimacy of matter and the physico-chemical properties of materials. For barely three quarters of a century, the production of electronic components has been accumulating performance. A small circle of industrialists and financiers spread over several continents have specialized in supplying these strategic components. These companies are extremely automated and highly concentrated, and are governed by economic and managerial laws that completely override traditional rules.

In Chapter 7, which is the final chapter of the book, we have assembled a collection of indications that contribute to demonstrating the representation of socio-economic phenomena that allow us to interpret that the contemporary economy is no longer in line with the characteristic facts of our time, facts that the rest of the book draws a synoptic picture of. This need to renew the measure of the economy is not new: many studies have already commented on and criticized the metrics and indicators that represent human activity, assess wealth creation and describe the exchanges that take place all over the world. The significant impact of digital technology and the disruption that accompanies the iconomy calls for the pursuit of this type of reflection, in addition to preparing the action that will be necessary in the near future to, at long last, adequately describe the world of the Internet, a prominent aspect of modernity.

Introduction written by Jean-Pierre CHAMOUX.