Changes in technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in the networked information environment have created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information. These new opportunities mean changes for individuals, democratic participation, the furthering of a medium to engender a more critical and self-reflective culture; and an increasingly information-dependent global economy which will improve human development everywhere.

This economy is centered on information and cultural production, and the manipulation of symbols from those productions. Part of managing this information production was the creation of the networked communications system called the Internet. It is the networked information economy, and has displaced the old industrial economy. Its characteristics are different: it is nonproprietary; non-market production is much more important; and large-scale production efforts of peer production knowledge are growing.

Human beings want social connectedness, and as a result there is a greatly encouraged ethic of open-sharing in the nonmarket sector of information. This is co-relational: our society will affect our information-gathering system and our information-gathering system will affect our society.

Diversity in the ways of organizing information production reflects the societies/individual values and social justice. The networked information economy improves the practical capacities of autonomy: 1.) for people to do more for and by themselves 2.) by enhancing the capacity for common goals without monetary restrictions 3.) increasing the ability of formal organizations.

The networked information economy enables a shift from a mass-mediated public sphere to a networked public sphere, where individuals actually help create culture and manage it. The networked information economy makes cultural production transparent and malleable because it is created by the people for the people: in essence, culture will become democratic, self-reflective and participatory through networked social relations. It opens avenues for addressing and constructing basic requirements of justice and human development globally.

There were four methodological choices made in composing the book: assigning a very significant role to technology, an explanation centered on social relations, a focus on liberal political theory, and an emphasis on individual action in non-market relations.

The policy choices and laws passed need to reflect and allow the priorities of the networked information economy. To conclude, "We are in the midst of a technological, economic, and organizational transformation that allows us to renegotiate the terms of freedom, justice, and productivity in the information society. How we shall live in this new environment will in some significant measure depend on policy choices that we make over the next decade or so" (18).