The use of knowledge in computers: introducing nanoeconomics

By Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson, Jason Potts and Bill Tulloh

In his 1945 essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society”, Friedrich Hayek first drew attention the knowledge problem. Information is distributed throughout an economy. No central planner can effectively bring it together.

Hayek, obviously, was talking about a human economy, where people exchange with people. But machines suffer from knowledge problems too. This is the domain of nanoeconomics — which we suggest is the study and evaluation of the…