Collective Action and Decision-making

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Syllabus


February 22

Mass collaboration and the aggregation of information enable potentially profound changes in business and politics. In this class, we will compare and contrast the transformations in economic life and collective decision-making processes brought on the information revolution. The discussions will also explore the role of open information systems on business and the scope for greater transparency and participation in government, politics and public life.

Assignments

Assignment 2 due


Readings

Optional Readings

  • Federalist Papers published under the pseudonym Publius.
  • Divided They Blog - a paper showing trackbacks between political blogs, mentioned by Ethan Zuckerman in his review of Cass Sunstein's Infotopia


Class Discussion

I think that the posted below concern about the purpose and structure is fair enough to draw our attention to the meaning of the curriculum; the meaning that makes a difference between well-informed person and well-educated person. No objections, of course, to the administrators of this course, they did marvelous research on relevant literature, but as some of us began noticing, the material does not follow logically to build up a skill. In order to guess on our own what pedagogy could be behind this giant sheer volume, we must align the material in order so that each concept will serve as a preamble for the next one, and all key terms then will be connected to the main pipe. --VladimirK 00:27, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Link to article in today's NY Times regarding Egypt's shut down during the revolution of internet within its borders: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp <<sjennings 15:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)>>

In reading the Surowiecki excerpt and the summary on Zuckerman's Infotopia I think it is apparent that they are discussing apples and oranges. Surowiecki is concentrating on the crowd's ability to accurately determine a correct answer to a specific question governed by a certain criteria (e.g. how many beans in this jar or which one of these four possible answers is correct). Zuckerman, on the other hand, is looking at the human behavior and ideology aspect which has no defined criteria or "right" answer. When asking the crowd what their opinion is regarding a particular issue the answers will undoubtedly depend on the individual's personal beliefs and past experiences which vary greatly from person to person. If the ideological question is framed in such a way that there is a limited selection of answers, such as in polling, the individuals will gravitate towards the answer which most fits their personal belief. While this will allow for an analysis of what the "majority" of the crowd prefers it does not necessarily mean that majority is correct. Once the human condition is allowed to enter the equation the ability to determine what is correct vs. what is preferred is gone. --Rakundig 10:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear Fellow Internet and Society Classmates:

I am writing with a proposal. February 22 will be our forth meeting as a class which marks the milestone that we are more than one quarter of the way through the material we will study during the semester. During the last several classes we have studied examples of commons based production including Wikipedia and we are using a wiki based tool for asynchronous class discussions. Not to take anything away from the quality of the content of those contributions, one thing that has been missing is a structure and purpose.

My proposal is that starting this week we begin to put into practice some of the things that we have learned to date. That is, below I have constructed a set of notes on what I have taken away from the class. I invite you in the spirit of Wikipedia to edit, comment upon, contribute to and in other ways improve what I have written in a collaborative search for a common understanding of the materials presented in this course. If you are so inclined, I ask you to follow a small set of basic tenets that are described on the Discussion page.

I hope that you will join me in this project. I believe a commons based approach to summarize what we have learned so far will benefit us all in translating the great information Rob and David have introduced to us. No two of us have walked away from any class discussion nor reading, nor listening, nor viewing with the exact same perception of what has been discussed. Below presents a opportunity for us all, those who gather in Cambridge and those who participate at a distance, to come to a closer mutual understanding.

Join me below to flesh out what I have begun. Add references that I have missed, correct statements that are in accurate, add your unique insight so that we can all come to a better common understanding. Thank you in advance for your willingness to participate.

Guy --Gclinch 04:06, 20 February 2011 (UTC)


You can certainly count on my support and participation! I think it's a great idea to summarize what we have learned 'in a mass collaboration approach'; nonetheless, I consider that it would be much better if we can create another page to aggregate all the information from lectures apart from opinions or questions of the discussion section. I might have interpreted your purpose in an unexpected way, so please do not hesitate to share your brilliant ideas! Thank you. --Yu Ri 08:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear Yu Ri , Thank you for your kind words. You have interpreted my purpose exactly. Are you suggesting that the topic of Internet and Society would make a good Wikipedia article? If so, I agree. I checked and someone looks to have begun one on this exact topic, but contributed only a small amount and has not been modified the informing since 2009. Would you suggest we pick up where that author left off? --Gclinch 00:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

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To use the term from economics, this course is built “on the shoulder of giants.” The three main giants are Jonathan Zittrain, Lawrence Lessig, and Yochai Benkler. The course is also supplemented by a number of other influential thinkers who will be mentioned below.

Each of these individuals has contributed a block in the foundation of a set of tools that we students can use to understand the effects that digital technologies are having on our society, culture, government and personal lives today and into the future.

Rob told us that the best way to absorb this material is to begin with Zittrain, progress to Lessig and build to Benkler. Along the way we will interject relevant references to other influential thinkers.

In his book, The Future of the Internet: and how to stop it Jonathan Zittrain begins by describing how the Internet emerged at a time when inexpensive fully customizable multiuse computers became available to large numbers of technology tinkerers. The proliferation of these plastic (in the sense of the word that means malleable) platforms combined with unexpected success of the Internet Protocol for connecting these powerhouses of innovation together to link people across time and distance allowed the property of Generativity to emerge.

Defined as, “an independent ability to create, generate, or produce new content unique to that system without additional help or input from the system's original creators” the generative properties of the Internet allowed it to attain “mainstream dominance over proprietary barons such as AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy.”

Zittrain describe the following five properties of generativity as important to our discussion: Leverage, Adaptability, Ease of mastery, Accessibility and Transferability. Important to beginning to build our model, Zittrain describes how the “hourglass architecture” of the internet facilitated generativity through a layering property that broke the network into three logical layers. The hourglass is an intellectual concept and not a tangible thing. It helps people who wish to create innovations to focus on their specialty without needing to be concerned how other pieces of the puzzle that are necessary to make things happen work. Layers communicate with each other based on a set of properties that are native to each layer and understood by the others. In essence a digital Esperanto or commonly understood language between layers.

The model features “an ‘application layer,’ representing the tasks people might want to perform on the network.” The foundation of the hourglass is “the ‘physical layer,’ the actual wires or airwaves over which data will flow.” The middle layer is where the true ingenuity of the model lives. It is “the ‘protocol layer,’ which establishes consistent ways for data to flow so that the sender, the receiver, and anyone necessary in the middle can know the basics of who the data is from and where the data is going.”

Combined the power of the plastic processing platforms on the edge and unrestrained flow of information across the digital network unleashed a wave of innovation and creativity never before seen in the history of humanity. There is more important information in Zittrain’s about how the combination of economic, cultural security concerns and other forces are today combining to extinguish the generative nature that the Internet created. I am sure we will return to these topics later in the course.

The next element of our foundational model comes from Lawrence Lessig. In his book Code: version 2.0 professor Lessig describes that the Internet is what it is because of decisions that have been made by the designers of the system about how the system will work. This means that the Internet is not of some natural evolution or from some divine design, it is a creation of human invention.

In the early days of the Internet there was an overriding ethos that the Internet was ungovernable and beyond regulation. Notable thinkers including John Perry Barlow spoke “behalf of the future” to say, “no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement .“

Lessig defeats the claim of no methods of control by describing a combination of factors including commercial motivations, user acquiescence to improve convenience, security, regulatory and other concerns that have resulted in innovation in the application layer that in turn has resulted in the implementation of features that are creating the opportunity for significant control.

We also discussed how Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and Columbia Law School Tim Wu showed not only do laws of local jurisdictions impose regulation on the internet and its users so do local geographical cultural and other factors [1].

Lessig describes how the cumulative effect of Markets, Laws, Social norms result in the equation that Code = law. In other words, the decisions made by those who create the underlying code that makes the Internet possible result in a cumulative effect of establishing governance. The format of that governance is a direct result of the conscious choices made by those who design and implement the system. The decisions on what goes into the code are a result of Markets, Laws and Social norms.

The third element of the foundation of the way we are describing the effects of digital technologies on our society comes from the seminal work by Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks. Benkler informs us that digital technologies are creating an environment in which a, "radical decentralization of capitalization and computing resources is allowing every connected person, some 600 million to a billion people, to have the means to engage in info knowledge and cultural production.” Benkler argues that the “industrial information economy” is giving way to a new model of human contribution based upon a “commons” approach to innovation.

He painstakingly documents how the system for protecting what is commonly known as intellectual property that was originally meant to foster economic growth is actually considerable less efficient on a macroeconomic level than a model in which innovation is freely contributed.

Benkler argues that the prevailing theory of protecting an individual and organization’s right to control how their innovations are used (and influence how they are compensated for such use) creates such considerable transaction costs for those who might otherwise build upon previous innovations to create new products, services, works of art and other contributions to the betterment of society as a whole that they choose not to do so because of the imposed cost burden. Benkler provides numerous examples that show how a commons based approach has resulted in significantly better, richer and more beneficial layers of innovation.

Kevin Kelly demonstrates that in a “Benkleresque” world where information might be freer and ideas less subject to the artificial scarcity created by “Intellectual Property and Copyright” laws overall wealth in the economy would be greater due to the generative effects discussed by Zittrain. Kelly states that producers would still be enriched because people are still be willing to pay monies associated to various factor involved in the conveyance of information. In additional new forms of distribution would further increase overall good.

Along the way we have also talked about several recurring themes. These include:

- Internet infrastructure which is foundational, multipurpose; - Innovation and public spaces - Networks, openness, distributed, decentralized - Digital disruption: challenges to existing institutions

Under the topic of Digital disruption, we talked about how the "dot-com bubble" a surge in financial speculation in digital technologies from roughly 1995 to 2000 resulted in a financial market crash that disrupted economies across the globe.

We discussed how Chris Anderson, author and editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine has shown how digital technologies have unleashed a “long tail of innovation” that is resulting in fundamental shifts in markets.

Eric von Hippel shows, in relative parallel to the Benkler proposition, that digital technologies are empowering society and increasing social welfare by shifting innovation up into the user layer. That is digital technologies are shifting the source of innovations from the traditional manufacturer to user generated creation. He shows how end users, who know intimately more about the ways something is important and how it can be improved are becoming a dynamic source for new creation and improvement.

Links

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