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Technologies of Politics and Control - User contributions [en]
2024-03-29T00:26:42Z
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https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=User:Oscar.howell&diff=2948
User:Oscar.howell
2008-05-28T17:05:25Z
<p>Oscar.howell: </p>
<hr />
<div>Name: Oscar Howell<br />
<br />
Location: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City Mexico City]<br />
<br />
e-mail: howell at fas dot harvard dot edu<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Current projects'''<br />
<br />
* Just beginning a wiki for rural communities: [http://www.brechas.org www.brechas.org]<br />
* A company that is an ASP for electronic invoicing and document storage: [http://www.buzone.com www.buzone.com]<br />
<br />
'''Course Work'''<br />
<br />
* Wikipedia Article: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail The Long Tail] -- [[Assignment_1_Details_and_Reporting|Reporting]]<br />
* [[oscar.howell/Social Capital and Digital Citizenship|Assignment 3: Social Capital and Digital Citizenship]]<br />
* Group Presentation: [[oscar.howell/Labor on the Web|Labor on the Web]]<br />
* Group Presentation Response: [[Group_presentation_and_respondent_sign-up#April_22|April 22 Group 1]]<br />
* [[oscar.howell/Final Project Page]]<br />
<br />
'''Some References'''<br />
<br />
* [[oscar.howell/commons|Essay on Late Capitalism and Commons]]<br />
* [http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/wikipedia/wikipedia07.pdf Cooperation and Quality in Wikipedia]<br />
* [http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/p2p/p2p.pdf Bootstraping the Long Tail in P2P Systems]<br />
* [http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge238.html Social Networks are like the Eye]<br />
* [http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-03/ff_autism Social Networks and derived Social Capital for Autists]<br />
<br />
'''Books I think are relevant.'''<br />
<br />
* Rishad Aiyer Ghosh, Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy<br />
* Marleen Huysman and Volker Wulf, Social Capital and Information Technology<br />
* Karen Mossberger, et.al., Digital Citizenship<br />
* Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, Understanding Knowledge as a Commons<br />
* Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks<br />
* Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation<br />
* Patrice Filchy, the Internet Imaginaire<br />
* Richard Rogers, Information Politics on the Web<br />
* Humberto Maturana, De Máquinas y Seres Vivos<br />
* Rick Levine, The Cluetrain Manifesto<br />
* Steven Johnson, Emergence<br />
* Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet<br />
* Adam Nicolson, God's Secretaries<br />
* Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks<br />
* Stéphane Dufoix, Disaporas<br />
* Nelly Oudshoorn, Trevor Pinch, How Users Matter<br />
* Victor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer, Governance and Information Technology<br />
* Rich Ling, New Tech, New Ties<br />
* Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large<br />
* Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship, the Cultural Logics of Transnationality<br />
* Enrique Dussel, Etica de la Liberación en la edad de la Globalización y de la Exclusión<br />
* Peter Sloterdijk, Sphaeren I: Blasen<br />
<br />
http://www.brechas.org</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/Final_Project_Page&diff=2895
Oscar.howell/Final Project Page
2008-05-13T12:23:06Z
<p>Oscar.howell: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''Final Project: Digital Citizenship and Exclusion'''<br />
<br />
== Digital Citizenship and Exclusion ==<br />
Is there a strong link between the changing idea of citizenship in the digital age and social justice? In this essay I argue that digital citizenship is to be considered a part of the social rights of citizens, and that doing so should limit the impact of exclusion from participation and from governance of the Internet. That is not because digital citizenship changes what citizenship and nation-states are about. I will argue it is because digital citizenship changes the framework in which citizens engage in their social, economical and political activism. This change and its causes are important in the study of the Internet, of the social processes that are within it and helpful to make sure Cyberspace obtains the open and democratic qualities we value.<br />
<br />
== Imagined Communities ==<br />
<br />
I am writing this essay on Pangea Day, the 10th of May 2008. 30 years ago I was a teenager in Costa Rica, Central America. In those last years of the 70s we as a society were rethinking the strategy of import substitution as conductive to economic development, and entering into what was later called the lost decade, the infamous 80s. Costa Rica felt still very much like the last place in the world to be for a teenager discovering what lies beyond: backward, tropical, conservative and with economic problems. Then there was an event that changed my perception of the world around me. It was not another political crisis or the devastating earthquake in Managua or the collapse of the Somoza government. It was technology in its mass media/TV incarnation.<br />
<br />
Until the year 1979 there were 4 open television channels in Costa Rica. One was operated by the government and the others by private companies. But the government, and by extension the Catholic Church, very much dictated what was going on in television. The broadcasting of programs was seen as a public service, and therefore the government had an interest in regulation. Finally in 1979-80 a local cable company came into being that distributed television channels from the US, which it illegally “captured” via satellite. We all rushed to obtain a cable connection and have access to this new world of TV programming. <br />
<br />
The day that our connection was ready and the TV set finally turned on the first thing on the screen was an ad by Eastern Airlines. What struck me first was not the thrill of being a consumer of US TV. The overriding feeling was the realization that at this very same moment thousands of Americans were watching the exact same ad. They did so from their reality and I did so from mine, both very different indeed. At the same time it was not some kind of TV show that got selected, translated, censored, refried and served to us by local TV stations. It was such an original piece of American TV junk. It gave me a sense of belonging, of participation in something bigger than my immediate tropical and dismal surroundings.<br />
<br />
The first years of the 80s were marked then by the coming of MTV, ESPN and CNN. And by the access we had to a wide variety of that American pop culture which became a global reference. To this day I can discuss with people that were teenagers during the same period the details of the original MTV programming that were good and that inspired us. It is a connection we have despite of growing up in different countries and societies. We came to take part in a new society that was becoming global.<br />
<br />
There was a channel from Chicago, which used to transmit the Chicago Cubs games. At the time Wrigley Field had no lights, the Cubs were not exactly one of the best clubs in the NL and the commentator was Harry Caray. The fact that the Chicago channel was available in a regular basis resulted in the Cubs developing a large fan community in Costa Rica (which did not include myself). After a couple of years the Cubs were a household name, as popular as any local soccer team. People discussed the games during lunch and groups of fans were organized to travel to Wrigley Field and see Ryne Sandberg. What is the probability of the Cubs of the 80s developing such a following in a place like Costa Rica, with no baseball tradition whatsoever? In fact, many years afterwards, as the Cubs won a World Series, one of the places they visited as champions was Costa Rica!<br />
<br />
We as a society came to be connected to a larger place, and to be a participant in events that took place in other parts of the world. This “place” I would like to call an imagined community, in the sense that only the media could make it possible for me and us to take part in something that we did not know by experience, but could only imagine and construct in a process of cultural becoming. Arjun Appadurai developed a theory of rupture that “takes media and migration as its two major, and interconnected, diacritics and explores their joint effect on the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity.” (Appadurai, p.3). Imagination is the important part that lets me, as social agent, break my immediateness and become part of something else, which I live out as part of my reality. “It is the imagination, in its collective forms, that creates ideas of neighborhood and of nationhood, of moral economies and unjust rule []” (Appadurai, p.7).<br />
<br />
With time access to a wide variety of TV programming is not a rarity anymore, but a daily fact in Costa Rica as (almost) anywhere in the world. Our society came to recognize that the need to belong was becoming a part of what our place and participation in the world is: to be informed, to have access to different sources, to use technology as a tool, and to get to know each other. The central issue was the growing demand for the ability to participate in a society that very quickly was becoming larger than our own town or country. And we came to recognize that our technological personae was becoming more than simple passive users, it was becoming a complementary part of our personality and of our citizenship.<br />
<br />
“An important fact of the world we live in today (1996) is that many persons on the globe live in such imagined worlds (and not just imagined communities) and thus are able to contest and sometimes subvert the imagined worlds of the official mind [] ” (Appadurai, p.33). The experience was a pre-figuration of the combination of nation-state, citizenship and cyberspace that was becoming possible in the next years. For my argument now I will leave out the related issues of migration, transnationality and “flexible citizenship” (Ong) as a new “mode of constructing identity, as well as new modes of subjectification that cut across political borders” (Ong, p.18), since my focus is in the forms of participation within society enabled by technology rather than in the migrant diasporas that became possible in the same context.<br />
<br />
== Cyberspace and Virtual Society ==<br />
<br />
Then a new and more powerful imagined community came into being in the 90s: Cyberspace. And with it what we now call a “virtual society” or “society online”. What is new is not that we are able to grasp our belonging to a larger community, or that technology enables us to do so but that the medium has become participatory. It is not just broadcasting and consumerism. A new place has been created called “cyberspace” that exists beyond our community and in which we are able communicate and to take action: personally, socially, economically and politically. This place is not “virtual”; it has its proper architecture and rules.<br />
<br />
But why is it that we speak of a society, and not just of a group, a network or an association? Why is it that we regard cyberspace as a social Gestalt? The reason is twofold: first it is an extension of our social surroundings; it is version 2.0 of our imagined communities. Second we understand cyberspace mainly in political terms. One of the founding documents of cyberspace is a political manifesto by John Perry Barlow: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. In it technology is of secondary importance to the rights, social and economic norms of the new digital world: “We are forming our own Social Contract [] may it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before” (Barlow)<br />
<br />
We have established an “independent” virtual society online, and this society has its citizens, sometimes called also “netizens”. But it is not just an expanded and imaginary society; it is also an embedded society. It coexists, due to its lack of geographical location, with other societies and political groups (Barlow: “Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere”). It is not in contradiction to them, but is a complementary social form. <br />
<br />
When I speak here of society I mean properly a “meta-society” that is formed out of the real-world society, the imagined communities and the online society of Cyberspace, all existing in one place, and in many cases contingent on access to ICTs. It is in this regard that public policy of the “host” governments is in need to deal with this extension to its traditional idea of citizenship, participation and social justice.<br />
<br />
== Digital Citizenship ==<br />
<br />
Karen Mossberg defines Digital Citizenship as “the ability to participate in society online” (Mossberg, p.1.). I will understand it here to refer to society in the sense of meta-society. To participate means to have access to and be able to take action in the social issues that are happening in cyberspace, using the Internet. But why speak of citizenship in reference to the Internet? Cyberspace has become a part of our social lives, it is a component of it just as education, social security or civil rights are, and moreover, it “has the potential to benefit society as a whole, and facilitate the membership of individuals within society” (Mossberg, p.1). As a means of being able to have a wider participation it is a social right and a part of citizenship as a whole, a right of membership in society. Digital citizenship puts the emphasis on the right of access to and skills for use of ICTs.<br />
<br />
The basic idea of citizenship, the set of rights of membership in society, is to ensure that a people within a society have a legal framework for equality and justice. Citizenship is there to prevent exclusion in any of its forms: from political or civil rights, from voting rights or education. In the same manner, digital citizenship could be understood as a legal and regulatory framework to prevent digital exclusion: the fact that a large number of people are prevented from using ICTs because of economical, educational or social reasons. This is today sometimes referred to as the “digital divide”.<br />
<br />
“Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us”: Barlow proposes a Cyberspace where ethical self-regulation will guarantee a kind of freedom from government control. But first of all, we will need the real-world laws and regulations that empower and give the people the rights within a society to be able to access this new world. Then we can begin to explore what are the consequences of a digital citizenship for Barlow’s world.<br />
<br />
== Forms of Digital Exclusion. ==<br />
<br />
“A political society is not, and cannot be, an association. We do not enter it voluntarily” (Rawls, p.4). We enter citizenship not by choice. It is a system of social cohesion and mandatory for all. Therefore we expect that the political framework of citizenship ensures equality, social cooperation and reduces exclusion. Social cooperation is regarded as having the elements for regulating social conduct, ensuring the fair terms of cooperation and of rational advantage. “then we can say without pretense and fakery that citizens are indeed free and equal” (Rawls, p.4).<br />
<br />
Mossberg asserts that “digital citizenship encourages [] social inclusion” (Mossberg, p.1). In the same way that citizenship is not a choice, digital citizenship should not be optional. It is not a “nice to have”. The social agent must be able to ensure his rational advantage and prevent being subject to digital exclusion. <br />
<br />
The Internet and cyberspace has in many cases been understood just as a private business, as in e-commerce. Or as an elitist “world of the mind”, in the words of Barlow, that may be accessed only by the chosen few that are able to understand its uniqueness, and that is not subject government control. But this is not right. The Internet is a social tool and the lack of regulation creates exclusion, which in turn leads to an unjust society, the very opposite of all cyber-utopias, Barlow’s included.<br />
<br />
To better understand the instances of digital exclusion we can explore them starting from the intellectual traditions that give form to the idea of an equal citizen: the liberal and republican traditions, and the tradition of ascriptive hierarchy.<br />
<br />
In the liberal tradition equality of all citizens is that of equal economic opportunity and choice. Its main manifestation is in the regulation of education. Citizens have a right to be educated and to exercise their skills in society.<br />
<br />
Digital exclusion takes these forms:<br />
* Not having the skills necessary to access and use technology<br />
* Not being able to participate in online social networks that develop important new forms of social capital.<br />
* Not being able to perform work online. More jobs and economic opportunities are being offered online as a result of social production networks and business models like crowdsourcing and peer-to-peer production. (Labor on the Web).<br />
<br />
In the republican tradition the main focus is in the political rights of the citizen, its ability to be a good citizen for the betterment of the community as a whole. Education is not seen as a way for economic opportunity but as a way of developing the capacity to demand and exercise political rights.<br />
<br />
Digital exclusion takes following forms:<br />
* Inability to take part in civic and political processes that are happening in cyberspace, like emergent, participatory and semiotic democracy.<br />
* The prevention from taking advantage of property protection and rights.<br />
* Exclusion form exercising the rights of freedom of speech online and of access to information.<br />
<br />
In the ascriptive hierarchy tradition the focus is on the rights of social groups based mainly on ethnic, gender and social aspects. The equality is expressed in rules like civil rights and affirmative action.<br />
<br />
Digital exclusion takes following forms:<br />
* Prevention from access dependent on group membership, like in the cases of indigenous people in Latin America, African-Americans or Latinos in the US. In some cases it can also affect gender groups, like women in Islamic fundamentalist countries.<br />
* In some cases it expands to affect age groups, like the exclusion of school children from use of ICTs.<br />
* Exclusion that is a product of socio-economic groups, as in the case of the poor having markedly decreased options to access the Internet. This is not only an issue in developing countries but in the US and Europe as well.<br />
<br />
The virtual society of cyberspace is a social reality that is here within us and that transcends borders and political groups. This new world has brought a series of new opportunities, but also new form of inequality and of exclusion.<br />
<br />
The spread of the Internet has created an effect of connectedness and of participation in a larger, imagined community. But given the extraordinary opportunity that the Internet brings, it is also a worrying situation that many people are excluded, in one way or another, from the use and benefits of the Internet. It is not a question of access to technology. It is a question of the right to participate, as a digital citizen, in this new instantiation of society. The access to this instance may require from us that we learn new ways to communicate and to connect. But it is a place where in the future a lot of political, civic and economic activity will take place, and the same society must ensure that there are equal opportunities to all, that the technology will not become a new barrier to inclusion and expression.<br />
<br />
The development of a clear concept of digital citizenship can help prevent exclusion. The fault of governments has been that while they profess their support for equality of all citizens, this happens only within the traditional idea of citizenship. In many cases it flatly ignores the digital rights and the growing cases of injustice that digital exclusion creates.<br />
<br />
“When there are only three channels on the television in a nation, being famous means becoming famous to an entire nation; in the age of participatory media, we’ll see thousands of microcelebrities, people who are famous to their own small or large communities” (from Ethan Zuckerman’s blog). Such is the possibility of the new online society. It is to have more opportunities within many kinds of social groups, audiences and spaces. In the end, digital citizenship will foster the possibility of the “micro-celebrity”, the “micro-community” and the “micro-state”, new kinds of self-expression, new political spaces, new kinds of networking and of assertion of my social rights.<br />
<br />
== A framework for Digital Citizenship ==<br />
<br />
The starting point to work out a framework for digital citizenship is to accept that cyberspace is not virtual; it is a real place with architecture and borders, where social participation is possible and where there is property and work. Having this in mind the important questions might be: <br />
* How can I participate? (i.e., Identification as a member of the citizenry, rules for access, taxation); <br />
* How can I obtain the skills needed? (i.e. Education, training); how is property defined and protected? (i.e. copyright, DRM); <br />
* How can I obtain the economic benefits and rational advantage? (i.e., work, commerce, social capital); and very important: <br />
* How can I exercise my political and social rights? (i.e. freedom of speech, activism, democracy, access to information, governance)<br />
<br />
These questions open up wide fields for discussion and possible regulation. I propose the following as key elements to be addressed first when we consider in particular exclusion related to digital citizenship: Education and Governance.<br />
<br />
== Education ==<br />
<br />
When we speak of education in relationship to digital citizenship it means properly the development of new skills “to participate in society online” (Mossberg, p.1). Availability of access to ICTs is not enough if countries don’t prepare people to make productive and creative use of it. Jenkins mentions “a more empowered conception of citizenship” (Jenkins, p.3) in this regard, to “shift the focus of the conversation about the digital divide from questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement” (Jenkins, p.4). What is important is widespread media literacy, not just availability of technology.<br />
<br />
There are many deficiencies in the way we approach education and media literacy today. It starts with the problems of basic use and goes further to issues of responsible and ethical use. Policymakers should endeavor to define a comprehensive approach that enables the young to obtain the needed skills early on while in school, and lagging adults to have the possibility to learn them while in the workforce. “One of the key failures of many programs was that schools were provided with expensive equipment but with little o no support for teacher’s professional development, national ICT-in-education policies, or community involvement” (Hawkins, p.39).<br />
<br />
Education is a social right associated with citizenship, a right to have access to the adequate kind of education we will need to be able to develop at a personal and professional level. Resnick calls it “digital fluency” making an analogy to the need of every citizen to speak the official language for ascription to the group. “In the years ahead, digital fluency will become a prerequisite for obtaining jobs, participating meaningfully in society, and learning throughout a lifetime” (Resnick, p.33)<br />
<br />
== Governance ==<br />
<br />
Governance is at the center of the relationship between the individual citizen and the state. The citizen has a rightful claim to participate in the ways Cyberspace is being governed and regulated. But as the reach of Cyberspace is global, we encounter the fact that “acting independently, a single government is unable to guarantee that a person will be accorded rights in cyberspace” (Rundle, p.15). The regulations being enacted and codified into the internet are defined and decided within international bodies that make the participation of citizens difficult. We encounter a problem where representation at the national level is not helpful to influence decisions made by supra-national institutions, decisions that will ultimately have an impact on how citizens’ rights are going to be handled in cyberspace. “In terms of accountability to the public, there is a basic disconnect between organizations making Net policy and member countries’ citizens” (Rundle, p.16) <br />
<br />
When we think of governance we have two main issues to consider looking into the future: one is how we can empower local governments to have a greater role in the supervision of supra-national regulators, and second how we can empower global citizens to have an effective participation in the decision processes for governance and the preservation of citizens rights in cyberspace. Both are no easy task, but in order to ensure an online society that maintains democratic values and remains truly open, inclusive and global we have to find new ways of dealing with these issues. In moving in this direction “the international framework for governing the Net could signal the early stages of a global federation” (Rundle, p. 19) <br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
* Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. 1996. University of Minnesota Press.<br />
* Barlow, John Perry. A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. Davos, Switzerland, 1996. http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~zs/decl.html<br />
* Hawkins, Robert J. Ten Lessons for ICT and Education in the Developing World. The World Bank Institute. The Global Information Technology Report, 2001-2002, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2002/The_Global_Information_Technology_Report_2001-2002<br />
* Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MIT.<br />
* Mossberg, Karen, et.al. Digital Citizenship. The Internet, Society, and Participation. 2008. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.<br />
* Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship. The cultural Logics of Transnationality. 1999. Duke University Press, Durham & London.<br />
* Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness. A Restatment. 2001. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.<br />
* Resnick, Michael. Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age. MIT. The Global Information Technology Report,2001-2002, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2002/The_Global_Information_Technology_Report_2001-2002<br />
* Rundle, Mary. Beyond Internet Governance: The Emerging International Framework for Governing the Networked World, 2005, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School.<br />
* Zuckerman, Ethan. http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/<br />
<br />
== Notes ==<br />
<br />
Questions:<br />
<br />
* How can a clear concept of Digital Citizenship help prevent exclusion and foster equal opportunity in cyberspace?<br />
<br />
Issues:<br />
<br />
* People form communities and develop Social Capital online (see social capital)<br />
* People work online (See: Labor on the Web)<br />
* People become politically & economically active online (civil society and e-commerce)<br />
* People are connected globally (internet and borders)<br />
* People today are excluded from taking part in online activities worldwide<br />
<br />
What is digital citizenship?<br />
<br />
* The right to access<br />
* The right to education<br />
* The right to equal economic opportunity<br />
* The right to intellectual property<br />
* Digital ID and Interoperability<br />
<br />
How can it be achieved ?<br />
<br />
* At the local level<br />
* At the international level<br />
* Technologically<br />
* Culturally (as public reason, paradigmatic, Kuhn)<br />
* Legally (Justice as Fairness, Rawls)</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/LOW_and_Long_Tail&diff=2554
Oscar.howell/LOW and Long Tail
2008-04-13T20:45:08Z
<p>Oscar.howell: /* Notes */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[oscar.howell/Labor_on_the_Web|Back to Main Page]]<br />
<br />
Large interconnected groups of people can perform tiny tasks that produce a meaningful whole in collaboration, forgoing monetary motivations. The “work” performed is not evenly distributed among all the members of the community. It follows a Power Law distribution.<br />
<br />
There is a small population of collaborators that perform a large number of tasks (usually the people that make many contributions, that organize the work performed or take the task of assembly). And there is the “Long Tail”, a large number of collaborators that perform a very small number of tasks, many of them only one single task ever. The bulk of the “production” is usually done by the Long Tail.<br />
<br />
The first group may have monetary motivations, apart from just making contributions to the social network. They tend to have a leading role in the community (like in ''Lead User Innovation'', Hippel, MIT). The people in the second group have little or no monetary motivation. They perform the tasks out of social or psychological motivations and forgo any kind of payment (the ''Wikipedia'' collaborator). <br />
<br />
* The people performing many tasks (the head) may have a monetary motivation and expect to be paid or other wise rewarded.<br />
* The people in the Long Tail will mainly be motivated by the contribution to the group, but given the chance to have a monetary compensation, will in some cases take it.<br />
* We expect that at some point collaborative networks will move in the direction of offering some kind of monetary rewards to its members, given that there already are some examples of businesses that are experimentiing with it.<br />
* The issue will be how to mantain the motivation of a largely collaborative workforce, and be able to harness the performance it can accomplish, by introducing some sort of monetary reward.<br />
<br />
== Notes ==<br />
<br />
* "Answerer earnings include a few extreme outliers, including one answerer who has netted some $17,000 from Google Answers for providing more than 900 answers" (Ben Edelman, ''Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers'')<br />
* I find a statistically significantly positive coefficient on the indicator variable for ultimately answering more than ten questions – meaning that the high type answerers already receive higher ratings in their initial answers" (Ben Edelman, ''Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers'')</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/LOW_taxonomy&diff=2538
Oscar.howell/LOW taxonomy
2008-04-13T18:06:02Z
<p>Oscar.howell: /* Business: Amazon.com mechanical Turk */</p>
<hr />
<div>__TOC__<br />
Taxonomy of LOW Business Models and Cases<br />
== Amazon.com Mechanical Turk ==<br />
* URL: http://www.mturk.com<br />
* operation since: 2006<br />
* product or service: HIT (Human Intelligence Tasks) and AAI (Artificial Artificial Intelligence)<br />
* Capital used: Human Labor<br />
* Scope: Worldwide<br />
* Payment: Amazon Payment system, US Dollars, Rupees<br />
* Economic system: collaboration and pricing system<br />
* Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/LOW_definition&diff=2531
Oscar.howell/LOW definition
2008-04-13T17:55:39Z
<p>Oscar.howell: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[oscar.howell/Labor_on_the_Web|Back to Main Page]]<br />
<br />
The widespread use of the internet has made possible for many people to work online, that is, that they are able to perform parts or all of their work remotely (from home or from India).<br />
<br />
It also has made the rise of '''collaborative peer-to-peer production''' (Benkler's definition) possible. In this kind of system people tend to contribute their efforts and use their assets not expecting to get paid for it. It is a non-market production system (as opposed to firm or market systems). They perform this kind of “work” at the same time that they pursue they normal jobs. This I define as "Labor on the Web" for lack of a better term.<br />
<br />
What are the reasons that this kind of "labor" is being done? It seems counter-intuitive that somebody would perform a series of tasks on the Web to produce something, without being asked to do so and not expecting to get paid fot it.<br />
<br />
Reason One: The work performed is '''highly granular''': the units of production are so tiny (and the size of the group performing them is so large), and they can be performed easily. The monetary motivation of the agent diminishes and tends to zero. The motivations are social (social capital) or psychological (recognition). <br />
<br />
Reason Two: Every bit of “work” is meaningless for itself. It becomes meaning only after being '''assembled into a whole''' (the product, the commons). The task of assembly may be undertaken by computers or by the members of the group themselves. <br />
<br />
It is astonishing that given the right technology and the right motivations, so large groups of agents can assemble without central coordination and perform a production effort without any of them ever getting paid for it. The majority of the collaborators only perform a very small number of tasks each. It exhibits a Power Law distribution ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail The Long Tail]).<br />
<br />
<br />
Proposed Definition for "Labor on the Web":<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''It based on non-market systems (collaboration)''': It is present within a system that follows no pricing system (market) and is not organized in the form of a corporation (command). It is mostly in a peer-to-peer production environment.<br />
<br />
* '''It is small to very small (granularity)''': It requires of the person performing the task very little time, and it does not require to fulfill a definite number of tasks to be completed.<br />
<br />
* '''Must be assembled to be meaningful (modularity)''': In most cases one specific task is not relevant for the finished product or service. Tasks can be fitted together.<br />
<br />
* '''Can be performed by a person (human capital)''': The person who does the task is using human judgement and capital.<br />
<br />
* '''Can be performed by a device a person owns (assets)''': A person can use assets she owns (processing power) to instruct them or make them available to perform a computational task required by a third party on a remote location.<br />
<br />
* '''Productivity is measured as accuracy of contribution''': There are no requirements to perform a task in a given time by the lowest possible number of persons. There are no clear quality requirements. Instead a high number of participants is encouraged, and proudctivity is meassured as the time needed to obtain accurate responses, after redundancy and filtering. Redundancy is expected and not eliminated.<br />
<br />
* '''Can be paid, unpaid or "token"''': The motivations to perform the task can be very varied, possibly within the same project. The fact that monetary motivation is not of central importance can cause that agents forgo payment completly or accept "tokens" (i.e. stars system in Wikipedia).<br />
<br />
* '''No contractual relationship''': A formal contract that regulates the work performed and the expenses incurred by the performing agent is not celebrated.<br />
<br />
* '''Exhibits a power law distribution''': A large number of agents perform a small number of tasks, while a small number of agents perform a large number of tasks.</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/LOW_Meraki&diff=2515
Oscar.howell/LOW Meraki
2008-04-12T18:27:20Z
<p>Oscar.howell: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[oscar.howell/Labor_on_the_Web|Back to Main Page]]<br />
<br />
== Notes ==<br />
<br />
* Meraki: the individual as internet access provider.<br />
* The platform is a mesh network technology.<br />
* Individuals can make their internet connection available, integrated in a local network of participants. They become access providers.<br />
* The users that connect to the network don’t pay for the internet service.<br />
* The individual providing the service can display ads on the sign-up and browsing page, realizing some economic gain (paid ads, social capital, networking). It is also possible to bill for usage.<br />
* There is a strong social and community motivation to have a "Free Internet". Some individuals pay for the access, and make it available to others (they use their assets, put them to “work”).<br />
* Issue: A powerful idea for expanding internet aceess, making it universal. But how to regulate a network in which every individual contributes a variable share of his computational resources. How could a fair compensation be reached in a system of complex (mesh), very small, distributed and widely differing contributions?<br />
* [http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19260/?a=f A Free Mesh Network for San Francisco]<br />
<br />
Complexity: "As many as 100 people can comfortably share a DSL line; Meraki calculates they're getting 1 megabyte per second on average. As with any network, speed drops as more people log on, but heavy traffic automatically reroutes to nearby, less-trafficked connections." (Fast Company)</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/LOW_AMT&diff=2510
Oscar.howell/LOW AMT
2008-04-12T18:19:14Z
<p>Oscar.howell: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[oscar.howell/Labor_on_the_Web|Back to Main Page]]<br />
== Notes ==<br />
* About the business model: “Behind the scenes, a network of humans fuels this artificial artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work” (from Amazon's Website)<br />
* About the workers: “For people who want to earn money in their spare time” (from Amazon's Website)<br />
* About Redundancy and error filtering: “to auto-approving them when they receive two answers to the same HIT that match” (from Amazon's Website) - Requesters may rely on redundancy to filter out errors, or they may reject a task.<br />
* About Payment for the services rendered: “The account holders can choose to have this money transferred to their U.S. personal bank account or to their Amazon.com gift certificate balance, where they can use it to pay for purchases. Workers in India have the option of receiving bank checks denominated in Indian Rupees” (from Amazon's Website)<br />
* About International Providers: “To sign up for this service you need to provide birth date and your passport number, Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number or Permanent Account Number (PAN). A scanned copy of your passport, EPIC or PAN card is also required. Once we've verified your information, you'll be able to withdraw your earnings in Indian Rupees” (from Amazon's Website)<br />
* Payment is in “Prepaid HITs”, a kind of token currency (like Linden Dollars) that must be bought by Requesters and redeemed by workers (Providers).<br />
* About the Token Currency and its expiration: “If no Prepaid HITs are purchased or paid to workers for at least two (2) years and six (6) months, consecutively, the balance in the Prepaid HIT balance will be automatically converted into an Amazon.com gift certificate". (from Amazon's Website)<br />
* Payment to foreign (non-US workers): "Requesters may redeem Prepaid HITs to purchase Amazon.com Gift Certificates to pay non-U.S. workers for services provided through Mechanical Turk" (from Amazon's Website)<br />
* Sign Up conditions: " I am over 18 years of age. I will comply with all applicable laws, including without limitation tax and filing requirements." (from Amazon's Website)<br />
* Who is the employer? “This Participation Agreement (the "Agreement") is between you and Amazon Mechanical Turk”<br />
<br />
== Participation Agreement – Role of AMT == <br />
(taken from the Mturk Participation Agreement, see References)<br />
* "Amazon Mechanical Turk and its Affiliates are not involved in the transactions between Requesters and Providers<br />
* "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the Services"<br />
* "Your use of the Site is at your own risk. Because Amazon Mechanical Turk is not involved in the actual transaction between Providers and Requesters, Amazon Mechanical Turk will not be involved in resolving any disputes between participants related to or arising out of the Services or any transaction"<br />
* "Funds will only be disbursed in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including without limitation the United States Patriot Act and the regulations of the Office of Foreign Assets Control."<br />
* "We reserve the right to terminate or suspend any Payment Account, or to delay the availability of any Prepaid HITs, transfer or disbursement of any amounts, in each case for any reason in our sole discretion"<br />
* "Taxes. You agree that it is your responsibility to determine any and all taxes and duties, including without limitation, sales, use, transfer, value added, withholding and other taxes and/or duties assessed, incurred or required to be collected, paid or withheld for any reason in connection with any request for, or performance of Services, or your use of the Site, or otherwise in connection with any action, inaction or omission of you or any of affiliate of yours, or any of your or their respective employees, agents, contractors or representatives ("Taxes") and to collect, withhold, report, and remit correct taxes to the appropriate tax authority, and to otherwise be responsible for the collection and payment of any and all Taxes. YOU ALSO AGREE THAT AMAZON MECHANICAL TURK AND ITS AFFILIATES ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO DETERMINE WHETHER TAXES APPLY AND ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO COLLECT, REPORT, OR REMIT ANY TAXES ARISING FROM ANY TRANSACTION."<br />
<br />
== Participation Agreement – Role of Requester ==<br />
(taken from the Mturk Participation Agreement, see References)<br />
* "You acknowledge that, while Providers are agreeing to perform Services for you as independent contractors and not employees, repeated and frequent performance of Services by the same Provider on your behalf could result in reclassification of that employment status. If you have any questions about your obligations to comply with local laws and regulations pursuant to Section 6, you should seek independent legal advice."<br />
* "Further, you agree that you will only accept work product from Providers that has been submitted through the Site."<br />
<br />
== Participation Agreement – Role of Provider ==<br />
(taken from the Mturk Participation Agreement, see References)<br />
* "any Services you perform is deemed a "work made for hire" for the benefit of the Requester, and all ownership rights, including worldwide intellectual property rights, will vest with the Requester immediately upon your performance of the Service"<br />
* "in your personal capacity as an independent contractor and not as an employee of the Requester"<br />
* Provider "will not use robots, scripts or other automated methods to complete the Services"<br />
* "you will not be entitled to any of the benefits that a Requester or Amazon Mechanical Turk may make available to its employees"<br />
<br />
== Comments from a Blog: ==<br />
<br />
Taken from the Coding Horror Blog (see References)<br />
<br />
"1) I visit (and buy things at) Amazon's site regularly (as Jeff said, primarily because of the reviews). Until this article, I'd never heard of their Mechanical Turk program.<br />
2) I keep all my Amazon reviews in a big Word document here. Over the years, it looks like I've contributed 213 pages (or 97,055 words) of free reviews to Amazon. If they want to give away money, I'll gladly accept 5 cents a word :) ."<br />
<br />
"We thought that most of the MT workload would come from overseas, namely China, Korea, and Indonesia, where paying 1 cent for a few seconds of work might be a good deal for both parties. However, we found that most of our workers were in the US, and as a group, they really wanted to get paid a lot for doing very little. There were some exceptions, of course, but most of my correspondents were somewhat indignant that they were not able to make a living off of determining not-so-subtle characteristics in data."<br />
<br />
== References ==<br />
<br />
* [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000828.html Is Amazon's Mechanical Turk a Failure? Coding Horror Blog]<br />
* [http://mechanical-turk.blogspot.com/ Mechanical Turk Monitor]<br />
* [http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=15879911 Amazon's Webservices Page]<br />
* [http://www.mturk.com/mturk/dashboard Mechanical Turk Main Page]<br />
* [http://www.mturk.com/mturk/conditionsofuse Mturk Participation Agreement]</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/LOW_types&diff=2448
Oscar.howell/LOW types
2008-04-08T11:13:58Z
<p>Oscar.howell: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[oscar.howell/Labor_on_the_Web|Back to Main Page]]<br />
<br />
There is no exact definition as to what "Labor on the Web" (LOW) is. In the preceding slide a provisional definition is given. It is difficult to group the different kinds of LOW, but following the definition made in this presentation, we would like to group the instances of LOW in the following form:<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Crowdcasting''': A request is sent to a large community of users to solve a specific problem or perform a task. The community responds and performs the task, via a small group or a single person. Examples: Innovation by Lead Users, InnoCentive.<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Crowdsourcing''': It is the tapping of a community to obtain the performance of discrete jobs, that would otherwise have been outsourced in bulk to a single vendor. Examples: the Open Source Community, Goldcorp mining project, Texas border surveillance. ("Crowdsourcing" is a term that has been used broadly to cover many forms of business models, which may be misleading).<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Artificial Artificial Intelligence''': It is the integration of tasks performed by humans into a process performed by a computer algorithm. It derives its name from the fact that it is not another computer performing the task, but you can't know from the result (a kind of inverse [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test Turing Test] ) --- Examples: Amazon's Mechanical Turk, NASA Clickworkers program.<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Assembled Distributed Computing''': A Person makes their computational assets available to perform processing work coordinated by a third party. The accumulation of processing power enables projects to complete complex tasks or other. Examples: SETI@Home project, Meraki mesh networks.<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Mass Collaboration''': These projects are the ones that are widely known. A large group of online collaborators come together to perform a task that would have otherwise required a company to perform. Examples: Wikipedia.org, Apache Web Server Project, Gutenberg Project.<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Avatar Agency''': People that participate in the games and virtual worlds (MMORPGs) can organize and perform tasks within the environment. The tasks may vary from taking part in a battle as a mercenary to build a house.<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''"Buzz" Marketing''': It is a method used to spread information regarding a product to a large audience using agents that do not reveal their identity. It takes the form of commisioned recommendations to affinity groups. It is regarded to infringe the ethical rules of maketing, like subliminal messages. Example: Facebook's Beacon System</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/Social_Capital_and_Digital_Citizenship&diff=2367
Oscar.howell/Social Capital and Digital Citizenship
2008-04-04T02:31:57Z
<p>Oscar.howell: /* Elevator Pitch and H2O Playlist */</p>
<hr />
<div>__TOC__<br />
<br />
* I selected the form of a wiki page to allow contributions from the group. Please feel free to edit the content. [[User:Oscar.howell|Oscar]] 06:52, 13 March 2008 (EDT) <br />
<br />
== Elevator Pitch and H2O Playlist ==<br />
<br />
* The H2O playlist is here: http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/245345<br />
<br />
<br />
Widespread availability of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Information_technology Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)] have made possible that citizens become economically active in collaborative and peer production networks, and develop new forms of Social Capital. ICTs also may strongly exclude a large group of citizens who are not computer literate or don’t have access to technology. The exclusion happens not only in developing countries.<br />
<br />
In this regard it is interesting to explore if access to ICTs should be regulated by government to ensure equal opportunity. Should a Digital Citizenship be regarded as the ability to participate in the new non-market processes and assets? Related to this issue, I would propose to review the positive effects of the development of Social Capital using ICTs and the negative effects of exclusion. This should give us an idea of the desirability of regulation by governments.<br />
<br />
== Definition of Social Capital (SC) ==<br />
<br />
Introduction to '''Social Capital''': The idea of sharing is central to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital Social Capital]. Sharing and the methods of obtaining value from the shared objects are part of how we understand a Commons, a commonly held good. We don’t share just because we want to give something away. We share and we expect something in return. As it is in every social and economic transaction. Behind this process is the ethic principle of reciprocal behavior.<br />
<br />
<br />
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_%28cultural_anthropology%29 Reciprocal behavior] has a distinct social value, apart from any normative value. In the case of the [http://www.wikipedia.org Wikipedia] or [http://del.icio.us del.icio.us] one obtains the right to make use of the common knowledge and effort of the whole community.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the case of [http://www.facebook.com Facebook] and other social networking sites it is the value of the network itself, of the “weak ties” that lie behind much of the economical possibilities. How much does it cost to build up Social Capital? It is an important cost (time, effort, transaction, sharing). The Internet can lower this cost significantly (see Shirky, Here Comes Everybody). Nevertheless, the fact that it is a form of capital remains.<br />
<br />
<br />
* Huysman and Wulf define Social Capital as “a network of ties of goodwill, mutual support, shared language, shared norms, social trust, and a sense of mutual obligation that people can derive value from” and further say that “communities will foster social capital, thereby increasing people’s motivation to share knowledge” (Social Capital and Information Technology, 2004)<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Traditions and ideas in Social Capital'''<br />
<br />
* '''Marxist Tradition''' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu (see: Pierre Bourdieu)]: sees Social Capital as accumulated and potential labor units. This accumulation is pivotal in shaping social relations and leads to separation and class struggle. In this tradition exists the figure of the capitalist that accumulates the social capital in his own pecuniary benefit (in the form of bondage and contracts, and relationships)<br />
<br />
* '''Communitarian Tradition''' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam (see: Robert Putnam)]: this distinctly American tradition sees social capital as the shared effort of a community for the public good. The emphasis is on collective work and on civic engagement. It is a socially normative and utopian view that is heir to the Calvinist tradition of “communities of work” and the covenant. This tradition is the support for much of thinking behind the social network and its collective good.<br />
<br />
* '''Ethical Proposal''' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama (see: Francis Fukuyama)]: Centers on the social values that make up the glue of the community. Puts emphasis the ethical and trust aspects of social capital above class and community.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Social Capital and the Internet.'''<br />
<br />
There are several instances on the Internet where the formation of networks of people with “weak ties” (as opposed to “strong” or “family ties”), enable them to leverage the social value of the network to achieve some economic, civic or political result. The main characteristic of these examples is that the accumulated social capital of the clusters enable the performance activities that would otherwise be too costly to perform in an organization (in the sense of Coase) or a traditional market system.<br />
<br />
== Definition of Digital Citizenship (DC) ==<br />
<br />
The concept that gives form to the idea of citizenship is that of participation. A citizen of a community has the right and the civic ability to participate in every aspect of the community or nation she is a citizen of. The person that is a citizen is expected to take a part in the ''res publica'', the public affairs of the state: its management, political norms and defense. The citizen is also expected to take part in the process of formation of public reason and justice. A citizen is more than just an individual person, it is the idea of the political and public person.<br />
<br />
The citizen enjoys the protection and benefits of the state. The individual person surrenders a series of rights to the state in order to become a citizen, in exchange for protection and social acceptance.<br />
<br />
In a democratic form of government the idea of citizenship is closely linked to the concepts of equality and opportunity.<br />
<br />
When we speak of Digital Citizenship we mean the possibility of the person to take part in the digital society, with the same implications as the foregoing concept of citizenship, including security and equality.<br />
<br />
Digital Citizenship has also an international and global perspective. The online society is part of a global network, and the space of influence of the digital citizen is seen as global in reach too.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Traditions in Citizenship and Participation'''<br />
<br />
* '''Liberalism: The equality of opportunity'''. Society must guarantee that every citizen has equal opportunities to realize its potential. Under circumstances government regulation and intervention is needed to counter the inequalities of distribution. It is an economic proposal, and is possible that it does not aim to attain political equality (a form of exclusion)<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Republicanism: The public good'''. The citizen must be endowed with the elements, like education and economic means, to work towards the public good. In some cases can be an elitist position. The aim of the government is to ensure the democratic citizenship and the participation, with the public good as guiding principle. Equality of economic opportunity is secondary (also a form of exclusion)<br />
<br />
<br />
* '''Ascriptive Hierarchy: The class society'''. The rights to participate and the opportunities are based on class or racial memberships. Under this idea the most cases of exclusion are found. The person is in some cases denied the right of citizenship on grounds of social ascription.<br />
<br />
== The intersection of SC and DC ==<br />
* ''Participation.'' The use of ICT opens new possibilities for persons and groups to develop SC, with new ways for them to participate socially, economically and politically. The creation of SC means better opportunities for income and development. It also means new ways to express oneself artistically. SC and ICT enable collective civic action that has a growing political meaning.<br />
<br />
* ''Equality''. The political sphere recognizes the growing influence of SC and the formation of clusters online. This means that a form of DC has to be created and regulated. DC means rights and responsibilities. And it means some form of government regulation. The aim of DC has to be to ensure equality of opportunity and civic liberties. But it also means regulation of identity online and the free expression of political rights. When we are faced with “emergent democracy” that happens online, the political sphere and government are involved.<br />
<br />
* ''Exclusion''. In the special case of exclusion, a solution must be found to the new forms of exclusion from DC and SC. The fact that a large percentage of the population has a low level of literacy, and a lower still level of computer literacy, creates a situation in which a group of persons will be excluded from opportunity and political action. The internet could be considered a Commons, a public good. A democratic government should enact regulations that ensure that the majority of the population can become an active Digital Citizen. This would mean to regulate and promote access, identity, security, borders and education.<br />
<br />
* ''Emergent Democracy''. A new form of direct democratic system, instead of representative democracy, may result from the intersection of SC and DC. Where groups have accumulated SC (have invested in, "clustered"), they will be interested in exercising political rights trough DC to protect, establish property rights and make use of SC ("coping"). The widespread use of ICT to exercise political rights may lead to a form of direct democratic system, an “emergent democracy” (Johnson, Ito) or “electronic agora” (Rheingold). The Digital Citizen participates directly in the management of public affairs and the forming of public reason.<br />
<br />
== The Issues of Government Regulation ==<br />
<br />
* Education - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND7_BZeUftc Educación y Exclusión]<br />
** The government should ensure the digital citizen´s equal access and opportunity to education<br />
** Technology education should be included in the program of every school<br />
<br />
<br />
* Property - [http://www.creativecommons.org Creative Commons]<br />
** The regulation of property online, and copyrights is key to the use of the internet<br />
** This is a global issue<br />
<br />
<br />
* Security and Policing - [http://www.w3.org/2006/WSC/ Web Security Context Working Group]<br />
** Identity theft, SPAM, Malware - Should the state police the internet?<br />
** Is the Digital Citizen interested in security online?<br />
** A new way to make identification on the Internet is necessary to participation and freedom of speech<br />
** Should local governments enact separate regulations or should an international proposal be alloewd to emerge?<br />
<br />
<br />
* Globalization, the international digital citizen?<br />
** Is the Internet borderless?<br />
** Can Social Capital be exported or converted into global goods?<br />
<br />
== Inclusion and Exclusion, Law, Economics and... Politics (links) ==<br />
<br />
(1) Inclusion<br />
<br />
* [http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-03/ff_autism Social Networks and derived Social Capital for Autists]<br />
* [http://www.youtube.com/user/thedavosquestion The Davos Question (youtube) i.e. inclusion ?]<br />
<br />
(2) Exclusion<br />
<br />
* [http://lawrie.jiscinvolve.org/2007/11/23/towards-digital-exclusion/ Towards Digital Exclusion (Blog)]<br />
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGWzIbOCfuc EverybodyOnline Northern Ireland Project Officers, (video 8 minutes)]<br />
<br />
(3) Law<br />
<br />
* [http://www.prodiversitas.bioetica.org/nota26.htm "Usos y Costumbres" Law in Chiapas, México]<br />
<br />
(4) Economics<br />
<br />
* [http://www.cepal.org/cgi-bin/getProd.asp?xml=/revista/noticias/articuloCEPAL/0/19970/P19970.xml&xsl=/revista/tpl-i/p39f.xsl&base=/socinfo/tpl-i/top-bottom.xslt Equity and Exclusion in Latin America]* [http://www.dirsi.net/espanol/content/view/47/47/ Digital Poverty]<br />
<br />
(5) Politics<br />
<br />
* [http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/ The Zapatistas, a guerrilla movement and the internet]<br />
* [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/malaysian_bloggers_become_politicians.php In Malaysia, Bloggers Become Politicians], ''ReadWriteWeb,'' February 26, 2008 link by --[[User:Zsaulkalns|Zsaulkalns]] 13:12, 27 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Some Additional References ==<br />
<br />
* [http://www.btplc.com/Societyandenvironment/PDF/Digitaldivide2025.pdf The digital divide in 2025, a document by BT (PDF)]<br />
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nem9KYWVoE0 Democracy, Poverty, Growth and Social Exclusion, Alejandro Toledo, Columbia University (video, 84 minutes)]<br />
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5s3Z0iesRM&feature=user Howard Rheingold: Way-new collaboration TED (video, 18 minutes)]<br />
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt1rdqf6mHA&feature=related Bridging the Digital Divide in Uganda (video, 7:44 minutes)]<br />
* [http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/fukuyama.htm Francis Fukuyama, Social Capital]</div>
Oscar.howell
https://cyber.harvard.edu/is2013/?title=Oscar.howell/commons&diff=1810
Oscar.howell/commons
2008-02-19T04:08:40Z
<p>Oscar.howell: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
<br />
Globalization, Late Capitalism and the New Commons<br />
By Oscar Howell - Harvard University, may 9th, 2007<br />
<br />
Enclosure and Industrialization in the XIX century<br />
<br />
In most countries, the process of industrialization did not begin properly until a significant reorganization of traditional agriculture was well underway. The farming units of the pre-industrial system had to become more productive to be able to feed a growing industrial workforce and the new urban dwellers, none of which were involved in the production of their own food. They were the new labor and consumer classes. <br />
<br />
To be more productive, the prevailing farming units (the small farm and the Commons) had to give way to bigger properties that could be managed for efficiency and rational use of new technologies. A process known as enclosure accomplished this. The changes meant the disappearance of the Commons as an economic unit, its transformation into private property and its enclosure to prevent nonproprietary use by the community.<br />
<br />
The Commons was until then the economic center of the community. Its was comprised of lands for pasture, water resources, forests and cattle. It was for the use of the community. No member had a special claim over its resources. The community as a whole was responsible for its conservation, development and for the rules of use. The Commons was as much a part of the social community as well as of the geographical definition of the town. This arrangement, while central to the social lives of the people, had important disadvantages when it came to the use of new technologies and to maximizing the use of resources. Cameron writes regarding the Commons in pre-industrial Britain : “Under the traditional open field system it was difficult, if not impossible, to obtain agreement among the many participants on the introduction of new crops or rotations; and with livestock grazing in common herds it was equally difficult to manage selective breeding. Notwithstanding strong incentives for enclosure, it had many opponents, predominantly cottagers and squatters who had no open field holdings of their own, but only customary rights to graze a beast or two on the common pasture” (Cameron, pp. 1666-167). This process uprooted many peasants, who in turn fled the farmlands for the urban centers, creating the masses of dispossessed labor.<br />
<br />
The enclosure of communally owned land was a process that created social tensions not only in industrializing England, but in many other countries as well. During the regime of Porfirio DÃaz in México (1876-1911), the legislature enacted laws that provided for the enclosure of the communal land. The result was the creation of very large Haciendas, with the explicit goal of maximizing agricultural production and helping the industrialization of the country. This process was known as “Desamortización” and it had started earlier with the Reform Laws of Juárez and Lerdo de Tejada. Friedrich Katz relates in his biography of Francisco Villa, the Mexican revolutionary leader, that this political decision enabled Luis Terrazas to amass huge land holdings in Chihuahua, a northern Mexican state. Francisco Villa was a butcher in this area, and he relied on the community cattle he was able to find and slaughter in the Commons. The process of enclosure deprived him of his livelihood and forced his decision to take arms against the government. The Mexican revolution was in large part a reaction of the impoverished peasants to the enclosure measures of the Porfiriato.<br />
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Mendoza writes, regarding the economic organization of Oaxacan communities before the “Desamortización” in the Mixteca: “During the colonial period the communal goods of the pueblos de indios were the most important part of their economy. It enabled them to complete the amounts for the tribute, finance the political commissions, and pay for the expenditures of the local church and for the religious festivities. The communal goods consisted of lands, orchards, salt mines, mills, market places, magueyes, and big and small cattle. The sale of the communal production went into the communal trust, and was a fund for use in the case of famine or epidemics. Moreover, the communal property of the goods was essential for the internal social cohesion of the pueblo de indios” (Mendoza, p.157) <br />
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The role of the Commons in the modern economic system<br />
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The Commons as an economic unit, and as a form of economic organization for communities, disappeared almost completely with the advent of the industrial world, and in its place emerged a system of private property, markets and capital. This happened in the countries, developed and developing, that introduced the capitalist market system. In the communist countries, a Commons properly did not exist, since “communist” meant the expropriation of the lands and its transfer to the centrally controlled economy and government. <br />
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Within the modern capitalist economic system, the Commons survived as a form of organization tied to government activity and authority or even national interest. Forms of Commons are present in the areas of public use, like parks and recreational green areas, under the administration of the local governments. In addition, a Commons is the public transportation infrastructure (some of the highways and public streets). The role of the government is to insure the equal rights of everybody to the use of the Commons. It also plays a central role in the maintenance of the areas, its construction and development by means of taxes, expropriation and adjudication.<br />
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A modern kind of Commons that emerged at the start of the 20th century is the Environmental Commons. Environmental Commons are spaces that are not always free to access or use. Behind their creation is a special national interest of the government, be it military in terms of sovereignty, or economic, for the conservation of nature and resources. The Environmental Commons are the beaches, the national parks and forests, the oceanic area (for fishery and oil resources), alternative energy resources (geothermal areas, for example) and the historical and archeological sites.<br />
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Some instances of Information Commons subsisted, mainly as access to information services in the form of public libraries, public education and universities, and government controlled broadcasting systems like the VOA (Voice of America), the Deutsche Welle, the PBS (Public Broadcasting System) and the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation). The participation of the individual is mostly in the role of user or consumer, but not as owner and co-creator. There are few rules for co-participation. A public bureaucracy manages these Commons.<br />
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One outstanding example of the convergence between a government controlled Commons and the creation of a private business is the eco-tourism industry in Costa Rica. This country in Central America has achieved a special symbiosis between the interests of the business community and the conservation of the Environmental Commons, with a focus on productivity and sustainability. It has been so successful that today the income from the eco-tourism industry surpasses the income from every other export activity in the country, including that of coffee and bananas, the staples of old. In the words or Oscar Arias Sanchez, President of Costa Rica, in his Address to the Chamber of Representatives on the 1st of may 2007: “We shall never forget: a productive and developed Costa Rica in the future will be green, or it will no be” (Arias, Presidential Report Address 1st of may 2007, p.13)<br />
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A Definition of “Commons”.<br />
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The standard economics dictionary does not delve deep into Commons. The terms to be found there are “Common Market” or “Common Agricultural Policy”, all of them in reference to the prevailing market economy.<br />
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A Commons is an institution covering a group of shared endowments or resources, that is owned and managed by a group of individuals with a social capital in the Commons.<br />
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Yochai Benkler adds a perspective on freedom and welfare to the Commons: “Commons are another core institutional component of freedom of action in free societies, but they are structured to enable action that is not based on exclusive control over the resources necessary for action. [] Each institutional framework – property and commons – allows for a certain freedom of action and a certain degree of predictability of access to resources” (Benkler, p. 24)<br />
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There is definitely a strong social component in how we define and treat a Commons. This has its roots in the ability of social groups to participate in their use, and decide on what kind of organization they are willing to establish for a shared resource. Benkler’s observations are very close to the writings of Amartya Sen regarding the possibility to choose one’s participation in the market as a kind of fundamental freedom of the people.<br />
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Sen writes : “While emphasizing the significance of [market] transaction and the right of economic participation [], and the direct importance of market-related liberties, we must not loose sight of the complementarity of these liberties with the freedoms that come from the operation of other (nonmarket) institutions.” (Sen, p.116)<br />
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This is an important part of the definition of a Commons. It is not only an economical strategy for the management of a shared resource. It is an economic institution that is non-market, and that coexists with traditional market institutions in the political organization of a state. Furthermore, the Commons is a key element of the economic liberties of a people. The mere possibility of being able to choose to be part of a Commons is a sign of economic freedom. The New Commons happens within a Social Network that chooses to follow a nonmarket strategy for its economic activity. It is enabled and changed by technology, and it is fully connected and extends globally.<br />
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Types of Commons<br />
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When typifying a Commons, there is an important difference to be made depending on the intrinsic economic characteristics of the goods or resources that form part of it. The goods can be substractable, that is, the use by one individual precludes the use by another, as is the case of water or energy. In this case, it is a Shared Resource System or Common-pool resources. When the goods are non-substractable or non-rival, as information or knowledge, it is a Property-Rights regime or Common Property system. The Common Property system is more of a legal regime, that governs the use of the information or knowledge in the Commons.<br />
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As Elinor Ostrom writes, the degree to which a Commons can be formed around a resource is dependent on the characteristics of the goods themselves: first is the degree of subtractability, mentioned above, and second, the degree of exclusion or prevention from use by an interested party. That is, the possibility of appropriation.<br />
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For example, at the one end of the classification are the resources that have low subtractability and high difficulty of exclusion. These are the General Public Goods, like Knowledge, Language or the Ocean. At the opposite end are the Private Goods (i.e. Property), that have a high degree of subtractability and an easy method of exclusion. <br />
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Common Pool Resources, like energy, have a high degree of subtractability but a difficulty of exclusion. Another important Commons, Information, has a low subtractability and an easy exclusion. Legal regimes, like copyrights and patents, attempt to move Information towards the high subtractability side of the spectrum, and convert it into a private property, a form of exclusionary resource, that can be artificially depleted. In fact, this is the driver behind the business model of modern media companies.<br />
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Most resources can change in their ability to be managed in a Commons or not. This is the drive towards the restriction of access of common goods that the market system encourages. Ostrom writes : “New technologies can enable the capture of what were once free and open public goods. This has been the case with the development of most “global commons”, such as the deep seas, the atmosphere, the electromagnetic spectrum, and space, for example. This ability to capture the previously uncapturable creates a fundamental change in the nature of the resource, with the resource being converted from a nonrivalrous, nonexclusionary public good into a common-pool resource that needs to be managed, monitored, and protected to ensure sustainability and preservation” (Ostrom, p. 10).<br />
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With the formation of a Commons, there are some forms of governance associated. The guiding principle in the methods of governance of Commons, as in Ethics, is reciprocity, and the possibility to enforce reciprocity.<br />
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A Commons needs to be very explicit in defining rules that cover its fair use, contributions by <br />
Peers and compensation for use. In the case of Information, the rules need to address the property rights situation of the resources and be very explicit about its violations. Commons are also subject to abuse. Abuse is an issue in the sustainability of a Commons. A Commons seeks to attain sustainability by regulating free-riding, over harvesting, depletion and copyright infringement. The individuals that form part of a Commons, every element of the Social Network, have an amount of social capital invested in the Commons. This social capital and its conservation is part of the governance of the Commons. Commons rely heavily on this social capital, and therefore on collective action and self-governance. <br />
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Benkler writes about the forms of nonmarket peer production and sharing: “The salient characteristic of commons, as opposed to property, is that no single person has exclusive control over the use and disposition of any particular resource in the commons. Instead, resources governed by commons may be used or disposed of by anyone among some (more or less well-defined) number of persons, under rules that may range from “anything goes” to quite crisply articulated formal rules that are effectively enforced” (Benkler, p.61)<br />
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Globalization and Late Capitalism<br />
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Since the late 1970s a series of economic and political developments have taken place, all of which are summarized under the somewhat diffuse term of “Globalization”. These trends have been instrumental in what today is seen as the New Commons, the reemergence of the Commons as viable economic and political option to function and develop along market capitalism. <br />
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Frederic Jameson, a professor of Literature and writer of postmodernism, has termed the actual period of development as “Late Capitalism”. He sees the period starting in 1973 with the oil shock, the end of the world economic order based on the Gold Standard, which led to a “strange landscape”, culturally as well as politically. By this term he means not the demise of Capitalism, but the introduction of a period of a mature or “third stage” capitalism, that contains key elements of social democracy, technology and a global presence, and that supports the drive of the postmodern cultural logic of remaking the structures of reality and of integration of diverse social and cultural groups. It also contains an explicit acceptance of American political and economic domination, which is a key component of the Globalization trend. The one important aspect is the pervasiveness of the economic system in the everyday life of most of the people, and its impact on the cultural production.<br />
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Jameson: “As widely used today, the term late capitalism has very different overtones from these [the definitions of the Frankfurter Schule and Weber]. No one particularly notices the expansion of the state sector and bureaucratization any longer: it seem a simple, “natural” fact of life. What marks the development of the new concept over the older one (which was still roughly consistent with Lenin’s notion of a “monopoly stage” of capitalism) is not merely an emphasis on the emergence of new forms of business organization (multinationals, transnationals) beyond the monopoly stage but, above all, the vision of a world capitalist system fundamentally distinct from the older imperialism, which was little more than a rivalry between the various colonial powers”.<br />
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Somewhat analogous, Francis Fukuyama argues for the “End of History”. By this term, he means another characteristic of a mature or late capitalist system, the idea that we have reached the end stage of the human development towards political and economic liberty. That we are at the point in which, with minor imperfections, a global democratic and liberal economical system prevails. This condition can be improved, but not fundamentally changed without reverting to a much worse human condition. <br />
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In their book “Empire” Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri take a different perspective on Globalization. They accept fully the reality that the world is integrated along the economic and financial world-systems, that new technologies are here that enable people to participate in this global world and take advantage of the reduction of time and space, and the price you pay for it. But they also remark the diminishing importance of the nation-state, its surrendering of economical and financial sovereignty to the global markets. This creates a new global “Empire”. The ultimate reason and legitimacy of the “Empire” is the maintenance of the global economic system. They regard the wars in the world today as “civil wars” within a unified system. The result is a new global civil society with international concerns. But there is also the issue of exclusion. The global system creates a class of outcasts from the global system that are not able to take part in the advantages of globalization.<br />
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Enrique Dussel, a philosophy professor in México, goes further in analyzing the political and ethical problems of exclusion in the globalized economy. He questions the ethical reasons for excluding a group of people from the global system, and sees in it a sign that we are as a whole moving towards a new system of injustice. This system creates a new global village of the poor. And here is where movements like the Theology of Liberation find their support base.<br />
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What is striking is that both Hardt/Negri and Dussel speak of a kind of new global, borderless civil movement, in both cases within the classes in disadvantage, the losers of globalization and within the winners of globalization. It seems that the movement towards globalization has not only economical and financial aspects. There are also characteristics that pertain to global Social Networks. There is a new civil movement with global aspirations, interests, and above all, connections.<br />
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In this context is that the Zapatista Movement in Chiapas, México, is regarded as the first global guerrilla movement. Their political reasons are in sync with the perils of globalization, their claims are broadcasted to this new global civil society, and their propaganda methods make extensive use of technology and the Internet. A civil society that makes its political problems global, in a viral form within a Social Network, and at high speed.<br />
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The trends of the globalization period of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that have an impact in the development of the New Commons are:<br />
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1. The formation of truly global markets, with the dominance of the global corporation<br />
2. A decline in the power of the nation states to conduct independent monetary policy. This creates a greater sense of an integrated world, for better or for worse.<br />
3. A new interconnected and global civil movement, both within the losers and the winners of globalization, that exploits the collaboration possibilities of the new technologies for its social and political agenda<br />
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The New Commons<br />
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In this context of economical globalization, the emerging global civil society and technological advance, a form of New Commons emerged. The global environmental movement made the first step towards a new concept of the Commons.<br />
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The environmental movement created a sense of the earth as a global shared resource that has to be protected and managed. The earth as a whole was the first New Commons, and in its development, it created new forms of collective action. The result was the creation of a series of global organizations and agencies, that represented the interests of the global civil society and strove to measure and manage the welfare of the environment and the people living in it.<br />
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The World Watch Institute issues a “State of the World Report”. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) issues the “Global Annual Forest Report”. In it the WWF reports on the extent of the world covered by forests, the rates of annual forest loss, and issues comments about countries with questionable efforts at reforestation. Together with the World Conservation Monitoring Center (WCMC) they issue the “Living Planet Index”. “This index uses three measures: the extent of natural forests (without plantations), and two indices of changes in population of selected marine and freshwater vertebrate species” (Lomborg, p.17). Taking this efforts to monitor and report on the state of the environment on a global basis, and regarding the crusades of organizations like Greenpeace, that seek a worldwide appeal, one can only feel part of this emerging global civil society and the world as a Commons. This is one of the important developments of the last half century.<br />
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Together with this effort to build a managed New Commons that covered the whole Earth, there also grew a sense of mismanagement, and the imperative to do something about it on a local and a global level. The latest expression of this view is the book “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. Diamond explains how societies that failed to manage their natural Commons properly failed to survive and ultimately collapsed. The book is a powerful message for the new global civil movement. <br />
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The governance efforts have also been extended beyond the environment. As Lomborg explains: “But how do we measure human welfare? [] The UN introduced the so-called Human Development Index for this very purpose. The index attempts to elucidate what kind of surroundings people have in which to make a good live for themselves. The intention is to measure how long people can expect to live, how much knowledge they can acquire, and how high a living standard they can achieve” (Lomborg, p.45). Yet another management report on the state of affairs of the Earth Commons.<br />
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And then in 1999, Rick Levine started his book “The Cluetrain Manifesto” with following words: “People of the Earth A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter – and getting smarter faster than most companies. These markets are conversations.” (Levine, p. xi)<br />
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This is one of the inception points of one of the New Commons today: the Information Commons. At this time Levine did not term it Commons, he used the more general concept of “Conversations”, denoting information flow more than a static resource type of structure. Note how he opposes what is going on in the conversations to what the traditional business is doing. He refers to it as “smarter markets”, but quickly makes the difference clear, these are no markets in the traditional sense, “these markets are conversations”. Also note the formulation of “to share relevant knowledge” : this implies a sense of common property, of social capital invested and of utility.<br />
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Levine goes on to write down the 95 Theses of the Manifesto. The number 9 reads: “9: These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.” (Levine, p. xiii). In general, Levine stresses the need for companies to harness this new development. It was a business book, written for business heads. But its insights into how the New Commons would develop are very interesting. In a somewhat cryptic formulation he states: “7: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies” (Levine, p.xii). This meaning from the perspective of today: if I can link up information freely, I can subvert the economic system that makes information exclusive and artificially substractable.<br />
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These developments and proposals gradually build up to the tools and possibilities available to the emerging global civil society. We see the emergence of Social Networks, New Commons and, logically enough, new forms of association and production. They are not the traditional market system. People find new spaces for work, for information exchange and meeting with peers. They define new rules for the shared use of resources. Also new rules for governance and collaboration are developed, not mandated or imposed, but opt-in and consensual. The results are powerful collaborative actions that rival corporate production models and structures. Benkler calls it “commons-based peer production”, a model were the resources are shared, not owned, and the hierarchies of production are substituted for a networks of equals. This system displays a form of collective intelligence, stemming from self-governance, that enables the production and management of complex assets: a group of “loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or managerial commands” (Benkler, p.60). The future implications for the traditional production models are going to be significant, not only in the world of interconnected people and avatars, but also in the very real world of rural, indigenous and urban communities, which will have a strong local bond but a global projection.<br />
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Examples of New Commons<br />
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1. Information Commons<br />
a. The Wikipedia and The Citizens Compendium. Today one of the most visible working examples of a New Commons. In its website Wikipedia explains: “ [] is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world”. There are more than 1,763,000 articles in the Wikipedia today. It is a widely used website and reference. The rules are simple but compelling: you can contribute, review and read freely. The total amount of free content that an individual gets more than offsets the costs of sporadic contribution and revision. One of the problems with Wikipedia is it openness. There is incorrect information and abuse. For that reason the founders of Wikipedia created the new Commons “Citizens Compendium”. Here the rules are stricter. A person can’t contribute anonymously, and every contribution is review by a group of experts. (see www.wikipedia.org and www.citizendium.org )<br />
b. The Project Gutenberg. The project makes electronic books freely available on the web. The books have to be in the public domain. From its website: “The Project Gutenberg was produced by tens of thousands of volunteers”. The people taking part in this effort produce the books, upload them to the website and finally review them for error and quality. The result has been an important collection of literary work, that is freely available for anyone, man or machine, since the books are held in an easily machine-readable plain text format. In Gutenberg individuals do not contribute their own content, but they share their labor effort to build an Information Commons. (see: www.gutenberg.org )<br />
2. Social Network Production<br />
a. Open Source Software Development. The most influential case for Open Source software development is the operating system Linux, although the method has been used in a variety of other projects. The Open Source Community is a network of programmers dedicated to the idea that software should be free, and that it should be developed collaboratively. The developers get no monetary compensation for their efforts. They get the professional satisfaction and the right to use the finished product. The GNU license further allows anybody to use the software under certain conditions. The result has been projects in which thousands of programmers collaborate to create pieces of software that today are able to compete in the open market with versions produced by companies with real employees and copyright and patent enforcement.<br />
b. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This Social Network is an example of a nonmarket ecology dedicated to micro-jobs. It is a new form of human-machine interface. In the Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT in September 2006 Amazon.com’s CEO Jeff Bezos presented this new “product” that is named after the famous chess playing automaton know as the Mechanical Turk. Bezos described it as “artificial artificial-intelligence”. It is a Social Network formed of real people around the world, that do micro-jobs requested by computers. For the receiving computer it seems as if another computer would do the task. Therefore the term artificial AI. One task could be: “Tell me if in this picture there is a car”. One person would receive the task, respond with “Yes” or “No” and return it to the requesting party. All this delivered as a Webservice. For that micro-job the person gets some sort of micro-payment. The possible implications of that kind of nonmarket system of micro-jobs is not yet fully appreciated. It could impact remote villages and urban centers.<br />
3. Social Organization Commons<br />
a. Kiva – loans that change lives. Kiva is a Social Network that enables individuals to bypass the all the market intermediaries and make a “personal” loan to a person in need anywhere in the Third World. The Commons is maintained by the people that are part of the Network an uses a set of rules of self-governance to monitor payments and projects. From their website: “Kiva is using the power of the Internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive” The Network created is built by the sponsors, the recipients and associated micro-finance institutions that enable the “last mile transaction”. It is a New Commons in the sense that the shared resource is not only the loans available, but the shared information about micro-develomnet projects and access to funds. (see www.kiva.org )<br />
b. Usos y Costumbres. In the state of Oaxaca in México there has been a new development regarding Commons. In this case is not a Commons globally active and enabled by technology. It is a New Commons of ancient roots, enabled by new legislation. It is about the right of indigenous communities to organize following their Customary Laws. The communalities are built anew, the community has a say in the economic management of the Commons and in their political organization. Communal Goods, like the ones referred to by Mendoza, are possible again, and are in fact enforced. The local power of government is held by people not connected to any political party or to a political institution of the state. They have a local independent government of consensus within the community. They have community specific customary laws and community specific forms of production and exchange. All this nested within the political constitution of Mexico, without loosing any of their citizen’s rights. <br />
c. Timebank.co.uk. This website supports a Commons of people that pool resources for the help of communities and other members, on a local and global scope. The resources are normally work hours that are made available to the recipient. The Commons is built around a pool of available labor hours. The management is achieved by strict rules and closed participation. (see www.timeban.co.uk )<br />
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Bibliography<br />
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Diamond, Jared. 2005. Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Penguin Books, New York.<br />
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Dussel, Enrique. 1998. Ãtica de la Liberación en la Edad de la Globalización y de la Exclusión. Editorial Trotta, Madrid.<br />
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Eichengreen, Barry. 2007. Global Imbalances and the Lessons of Bretton Woods. MIT Press, Cambridge.<br />
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Frieden, Jeffry A. 2006. Global Capitalism. Its Fall and Rise in The Twentieth Century. W. W. Norton and Co., New York.<br />
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Friedman, Thomas. 2005. The World is Flat. The Globalized World in the Twenty-first Century. Penguin Books, London.<br />
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Fukuyama, Francis. 1992, 2006. The End of History and The Last Man. Free Press, New York.<br />
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Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio. 2000. Empire. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachussets.<br />
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Katz, Friedrich. 1998. Pancho Villa. Ediciones Era, Mexico City.<br />
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Küng, Hans. 1997. Una Ãtica Mundial para la EconomÃa y la PolÃtica. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City.<br />
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Landes, David S. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Norton & Co., New York.<br />
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Levine, Rick and Locke, Christopher and others. 1999. The Cluetrain Manifesto. The End of Business as Usual. Perseus Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts.<br />
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Lomborg, Bjørn. 1998. The Skeptical Environmentalist. Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.<br />
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Mendoza GarcÃa, Edgar. 2004. Los bienes de la comunidad y la defensa de las tierras en la Mixteca oaxaqueña. Cohesión y autonomÃa del municipio de Santo Domingo de Tepenene, 1856-1912. Senado de la República, Mexico City.<br />
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Sen, Amartya. 2001. Development as Freedom. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.<br />
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Von Hippel, Eric. 2005. Democratizing Innovation. MIT Press, Cambridge.</div>
Oscar.howell