All Knowledge is Pooling Into Aficionados?

★

All Knowledge is Pooling Into Aficionados?

The network economy has the potential to enable a civilization of aficionados. As customers get smarter, the locus of expertise shifts toward affiliates and home-brew groups, and away from large corporations or the solo academic professional.

If you really want to know what works, or where to find it, ask a hobby tribe. And not just in the realm of high-tech knowledge.

All knowledge is pooling into aficionados.

Because of shared obsessions among horse lovers, there are more horseshoers working today than a hundred years ago, in the age of cowboys.

There are more blacksmiths making swords and chain mail armor this year than ever worked in the medieval past.

A network of aficionados is already here.

Kevin Kelly, in New Rules for the New Economy.

The discussion we seem to be having is “how do we fix the old economy”, while a radically new economy is springing up all around us. An economy based on information, on niche expertise…on fandom.

Is success in the future dependant on which tribes, which aficionado groups, you belong to? Or which aficionado groups your products and services can successfully tap?

Food for thought.