The cost of physical capital was, for over 150 years, the central organizing principle of information and cultural production, from the introduction of high-cost, high-volume mechanical presses, through telegraph, telephone, radio, television, cable, and satellite systems. These costs largely structured production around a capital-intensive, industrial model. The declining price of computation, however, has inverted the capital structure of information and cultural production.

—Yochai Benkler, Coase’s Penguin