Business in Participation Age Can Privacy Be Protected in the Information Age: Entering the Participation Age. The last twenty five years have been called the Information Age because information technology has had a big impact on our everyday lives and has fueled the growth of entire new industries through the commerce of information. Millions of people produce information, store it, and distribute it. And billions of people consume it in the same way we consume air, food, and water.

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Entering the Participation Age

The last twenty five years have been called the "Information Age" because information technology has had a big impact on our everyday lives and has fueled the growth of entire new industries through the commerce of information. Millions of people produce information, store it, and distribute it. And billions of people consume it in the same way we consume air, food, and water. However, the Information Age was one of passive consumers who essentially viewed the Internet as a database.

As technology has continued to advance, more open and ubiquitous access to information has begun to change the ways that people use technology. This is leading to the dawn of a new era that Sun calls the “Participation Age” — an age where participants aren’t just acquiring information, but are also contributing to the information, refining it, and sharing it. More and more people are using technology to connect with each other to participate and to share work flows, to compete for jobs, to purchase goods and services, to learn and create.

Business models in the Information Age were protectionist and proprietary in nature with an emphasis on controlling the creation and distribution of information in an attempt to maintain competitive advantage. The Participation Age is the antithesis of that, bringing a focus on open access to information. It is through this open access that the pace of innovation is accelerating and new value is being created by communities of people. Networked human beings who share, interact and solve problems are generating meaningful content, connections, and relationships using the network as their medium of contact.