ABSTRACT
Kenneth E. Boulding—poet, peace activist, environmentalist, Quaker, co-founder of general systems theory—was author of more than thirty books, many of them positioning information/communication at the very heart of an innovative, evolutionary economics. In Boulding's eyes, while there are important similarities between organic and inorganic processes of production, there are also important differences. This chapter shows how Boulding characterized production as the activation or functioning of a knowledge structure to bring about a more improbable material structure than had existed at the start of the process. Boulding distinguished among three main types of human artifacts or "social species", namely: material artifacts that arematerial structures and objects such as buildings, machines, and automobiles. organizational structures, that is human institutions, ranging from extended families and hunting bands to transnational corporations, governments, and churches; and biological artifacts, under which heading Boulding included not only plants and animals altered by domestication, selective breeding and genetic engineering, but as well human beings.
