1. Introduction

Since at least the 1990s the sensation has been that digital technology, as with the printing press in the past, is transforming the whole information and communication chain in society: the production and distribution of information and data, and the adaptation and storing of it. The earlier analog model had one sender, a TV or radio station and many receivers, and it was dominated by unidirectional communication, which mirrored industrial society itself, dominated as it was by large companies, managed by elites of white-collar engineers and middle management, exploiting a working mass of blue-collar workers. This hierarchical media landscape was transformed, it was widely claimed, by digital technology and the popularization of the Internet and the web in the 1990s. On the web, interactivity, and two-way communication, was the rule. It was said to be inherent in Internet technology and its infrastructure. The earlier dichotomy between senders and receivers, between producers and consumers was loosened up and the categories started to merge with each other, giving rise to new possibilities according to intellectuals of the time. In this introduction we present this shift as a shift from industrialism’s profit from enclosures, like copyright law, to cognitive capitalism’s new business models built on profit from openness—an openness that always exists in hybrid combinations with new enclosures. The chapter provides an answer to why this is a matter of concern, and outlines the chapters of this book.