Chris Anderson has built a career out of making bold pronouncements that the economics of Silicon Valley - the way in which software and digital technology are built and distributed - are likely to spread to, and ultimately conquer, the rest of the economy.

His first claim, in The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling More of Less , was that consumption patterns were being fundamentally altered by the plentiful and cheap shelf space provided by digital technology. Instead of most dollars being spent on hits, consumption would instead skew towards thousands of niche products.