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Don Tapscott revisits 'The Digital Economy', his internet predictions

From apps to uploads, from smartphones to digital dailies ...technologies have disrupted businesses, society, government and privacy. And 20 years ago, Canadian thinker and business executive Don Tapscott signaled much of the change in his book, "The Digital Economy". We speak with Don Tapscott on what he got right and what surprised him....
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The Current27:30Don Tapscott revisits 'The Digital Economy', his internet predictions - Dec 9, 2014
From apps to uploads, from smartphones to digital dailies ...technologies have disrupted businesses, society, government and privacy. And 20 years ago, Canadian thinker and business executive Don Tapscott signaled much of the change in his book, "The Digital Economy". We speak with Don Tapscott on what he got right and what surprised him.


An educational video distributed on VHS, naturally called "The Kids' Guide to the Internet". It was made in 1997 ... just two years after a seminal book called "The Digital Economy" hit bookshelves and became a New York Times bestseller.

Of course there wasn't much of a digital economy to speak of in 1995. Online shopping was in its very infancy, and the idea of a digital currency such as Bit Coin would have sounded like Science Fiction. But that book, by the Canadian business executive and thinker Don Tapscott, predicted much of the way the exotic "Information Superhighway" would forever change the way we live and work.

And, according to Mr. Tapscott, the ride isn't over yet. He's revisited that 1995 book, updating it for a twentieth-anniversary edition. "The Digital Economy: Rethinking Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence" is out now.

Don Tapscott was in our Toronto studio.



This segment was produced by The Current's Idella Sturino.

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