Netocracy was a term invented by the editorial board of the American technology magazine Wired in the early 1990s.
A portmanteau of Internet and aristocracy, netocracy refers to a perceived global upper-class that bases its power on a technological advantage and networking skills, in comparison to what is portrayed as a bourgeoisie of a gradually diminishing importance.
The concept was later picked up and redefined by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist for their book Netocracy — The New Power Elite and Life After Capitalism (originally published in Swedish in 2000 as Nätokraterna : boken om det elektroniska klassamhället, published in English by Reuters/Pearsall UK in 2002).
Alexander Bard describes a new underclass called the consumtariat, a portmanteau of consumer and proletariat, whose main activity is consumption, regulated from above.
Karl W. Deutsch in his book The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control[2] hypothesized about "information elites, controlling means of mass communication and, accordingly, power institutions, the functioning of which is based on the use of information in their activities."