With the establishment of industrial capitalism the machine was the capital, and it was privately owned. The machine as means of production is for quite some time now -unexpectedly?- replaced by mind!
So in Service/Information Capitalism the capital is now the information and the mind. Mind as the machine, and information the currency (and patent offices the banks), though we could well be already shifting to its financial counterpart, the "Patent" Capitalism.
But these evolutions pose a paradox, what about the individual interest the self pursuit and privacy? the other pilar of capitalistic systems. Are we in for another transformation? Back to the feudal age? keep the capital privately owned? or keep self pursuit and publish the capital? The capitalists of old had never such problems, their machines stayed where they placed them, their machines didn't join the competition, their machines didn't work for free for a third party, and generally their machines had no other agenda.
The third way could be to stage the drive for the privacy of capital and self pursuit in one man shows, ie freelancing as the only way to make bussiness in the service industry, but that would stress the current exchange infrastructure to the point of paralysis.
Either way capitalism is about to retire.
Hail Shift All Hail Noosphera
