O'Reilly Radar: The Rise of One Person Businesses
What we're seeing though is the erosion of one of the pillars of society as we knew it, the industrial corporation. One effect of the internet and what Thomas Friedman calls "the flat world" is the re-empowerment of the individual as economic unit. These people aren't working alone — it's just that they don't need to work in the same place or for the same company. It's not just companies like eBay and Google AdSense that support this rise — it's also ubiquitous communication infrastructure, the ability to take orders over the net, the ability to deliver products anywhere in the world via global overnight shipping. Sole proprietors were formerly village or neighborhood based. They can now be non-local players.
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