In Richard Barbrook’s definition, the digital economy is characterized by the emergence of new technologies (computer networks) and new types of workers (the digital artisans). According to Barbrook, the digital economy is a mixed economy: it includes a public element (the state’s funding of the original research that produced ARPANET, the financial support to academic activities that had a substantial role in shaping the culture of the Internet); a market-driven element (a latecomer that tries to appropriate the digital economy by reintroducing commodification); and a gift economy element (the true expression of the cutting edge of capitalist production that prepares its eventual overcoming into a future “anarchocommunism”).