INFORMATION AS A RESOURCE IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY ERA

Abstract

The article examines the changing place of information in the digital technologies’ development context, the connection of information with digital and information capital. The methodology of the study includes general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis as well as the inductive method and the method of comparative analysis. Based on the analysis of modern domestic and foreign publications, we show that with the evolution of technologies, data collection and information processing are increasingly alienated from human beings and become the prerogative of digital computer systems. At the moment, there is no unity in the modern scientific literature in understanding the role of information in the production process. There are no unambiguous interpretations of the concepts of digital and information capital introduced into scientific circulation and its interrelation. In the research course, the author of this article clarified the concepts of digital and information capital and attempted to build a hierarchical relationship between digital, information capital and information. The paper substantiates the allocation of information as a separate factor of production, alienated from both human and physical capital. Inequality in access to information as a factor of production is the source of a new type of inequality: informational inequality. The results of the study can be used for developing theoretical models of economic growth and economic inequality as well as for justifying economic policy in the process of transition to the digital economy.