Akademik

n.

An extremely efficient market in which buyers and sellers can find each other easily, can interact directly, and can perform transactions with only minimal overhead costs.

"We have waited a long time for broad-based electronic commerce, and it looks like 1997 will be the year that the market gains legitimacy," says Bill Gurley, an analyst with Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, an investment bank. No wonder industry titans such as Bill Gates, the boss of Microsoft, regale the world's leaders with the promise of "friction-free capitalism": the idea that ubiquitous and equal access to information will create the closest thing yet to Adam Smith's perfect market.

— "In search of the perfect market," The Economist, May 10, 1997

Gates has clearly thought broadly about the impact of his technology on politics. He thinks the Internet will create "friction-free capitalism," eliminating the "middlemen." It can do the same for government.

— Howard Fineman, "The Microsoft Primary," Newsweek, May 19, 1997

"Cyberspace and the American Dream 2" (the first conference was held last year in Atlanta) was sponsored by the Progress and Freedom Foundation of Washington, a conservative institute that has a tight working relationship with the House Speaker, Newt Gingrich.

The conference provided some people with their first exposure to Newtonion economics — which appears to be the information-age equivalent of Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics. It is called "friction-free capitalism." ...

Nathan Myhrvold, chief technologist at the Microsoft Corporation, noted that one can now order custom-fit blue jeans directly from the manufacturer. Such "friction-free capitalism is going to create new business models and dramatically restructure some businesses," Mr. Myhrvold said, just as the distribution efficiencies of Wal-Mart are having a profound impact on small stores in scores of communities.

— Peter H. Lewis, "Technology," The New York Times, August 28, 1995