1. Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 18:12, 1 September 2006

Content

Summary

Production is shifting from physical products like blue jeans, to decentralized information goods, like articles on the Internet. This gives users more power (they can publish instead of just reading), creates more opportunities for democratic participation, lowers costs for developing countries, and democratizes the creation of our culture.

This book will analyze these changes by looking at what new technologies make easy, applying an individualist economic model, and examining the effects on human beings. As the state's role has largely been to support big companies, this book will largely ignore it, even though it could be used as a force for good.

Sources

Sources cited in the chapter

Barry Wellman et al., “The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism,” JCMC 8, no. 3 (April 2003).

Langdon Winner, ed., “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” in The Whale and The Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19–39.

Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951).

Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Networked Society (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996).

Case Studies

Supporting examples

Global civil society / UN NGO Community

Global civil society

UN NGO community

Counter-examples

Key Concepts

Industrial information economy

Networked information economy

Peer production

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-==Summary of the chapter==
+&uarr; [[Table of Contents]]<br />
-===Overview===
+&rarr; [[Part One]]
-===The Emergence of the Networked Information Economy===
-	First, advanced economies have shifted from an economy based on production of physical goods and services (e.g., automobiles and textiles, mining and construction) to an economy centered on the production of information goods and services (e.g., cinema and software, legal representation and financial planning).	Second, advanced economies have shifted from a communications environment relies on an expensive centralized communicator that broadcasts to a wide audience (e.g., radio, television) to an environment that relies on a multitude of cheap processors with high computing capacity that are interconnected with one another (i.e., the Internet).
+== Content ==
-	These two shifts make it possible to lessen the market’s influence over political values.  The second shift allows decentralized, non-market production.  The first shift means that this new form of production will play a central, rather than periphery role, in advanced economies.
-	The first part of this book explores in detail the economic implications of these two parallel shifts.  The central thesis is that a new stage of the information economy is emerging.  The industrial information economy of the mid nineteenth and twentieth centuries is now being displaced by the “networked information economy.” The networked information economy is characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through willed distributed, nonmarket means that do no depend on market strategies.
+* [http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks_Chapter_1.pdf Full text (PDF)]
-	Several factors allowed for the networked information economy to emerge.  First, the design of computing technologies and the internet allows for user-to-user communication.  Second, the price of computation, communication, and storage has steadily declined and continues to do so.  In the old industrial information economy, the desire to communicate was often frustrated by price constraints on the mode of communication.  Price constraints on printing, mailing, and broadcasting meant that wider the audience one wanted to reach, the larger the price tag.  It was difficult for the average individual, unaffiliated with a commercial business, to broadcast over the radio station and almost impossible to do so via a television network.  In the networked information economy, many of these price constraints have been radically loosened.
+* [[Chapter 1|Full text (wiki)]]
-	There are three important observations about this new economy.  One, non-proprietary strategies have always been more common in the production of information goods than in the production of physical goods.  Examples include public education, the arts and sciences, and political debate.  Because these activities are cheaper in the new economy means, in principle, they should play a more central role in information production.  Two, there has, in fact, been such an increase in importance.  A Google search returns information on almost any subject a user queries.  The list of hits comprising the information good is the result of the coordinate efforts of uncoordinated actions a wide and diverse group of individuals.  Three, there numerous examples of effective, large-scale, cooperative efforts to create information and culture.  This is commonly known as peer-production and is typified by the open-source software movement.  Other examples include Wikipedia and SETI@Home.
+* [[Bulleted Chapter 1|Bulleted (wiki)]]
-	Without an analytic method of understanding these phenomena, which fly in the face of many traditional economic assumptions, we will see them as mere curiosities or fads.  The purpose of Part I of the book is to provide a sophisticated framework that will allow us to understand peer-production for what it really is: a new mode of production, one that is powerful, efficient, and sustainable.
+* [[Sentence-sliced Text Chapter 1|Full text, sentence-sliced (wiki)]]
+* [[Summary Chapter 1|Summary (wiki)]]
+== Summary ==
+Production is shifting from physical products like blue jeans, to decentralized information goods, like articles on the Internet. This gives users more power (they can publish instead of just reading), creates more opportunities for democratic participation, lowers costs for developing countries, and democratizes the creation of our culture.
+This book will analyze these changes by looking at what new technologies make easy, applying an individualist economic model, and examining the effects on human beings. As the state's role has largely been to support big companies, this book will largely ignore it, even though it could be used as a force for good.
-===Networked Information Economy and Liberal Democratic States===
-====Enhanced Autonomy====
-====Democracy: The Networked Public Sphere====
-====Justice and Human Development====
-====A Critical Culture and Networked Social Relations====
-===Four Methodological Comments===
-====The Role of Technology in Human Affairs====
-====The Role of Economic Analysis and Methodological Individualism====
-====Economic Structure in Liberal Political Theory====
-====Whither the State?====
-===The Stakes of It All: The Battle Over The Institutional Ecology of the Digital Environment===
 ==Sources==
-===[[Sources cited in the chapter]]===
+===Sources cited in the chapter===
-===[[Other relevant readings]]===
+[http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/ Barry Wellman] et al., “[http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism],” JCMC 8, no. 3 (April 2003).
+[http://www.langdonwinner.org/index.html Langdon Winner], ed., “[http://www.courses.psu.edu/phil/phil403_pam208/winner/ Do Artifacts Have Politics?]” in [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226902110/102-1896851-0466565?v=glance&n=283155 The Whale and The Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19–39.
+[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Innis Harold Innis], [http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&id=nEXqB_KfxjgC&dq=harold+innis+bias+of+communication&psp=wp&pg=PP1&printsec=0&lpg=PP1&sig=07w8qBfAqicAScKD5oaLFfKEBbE The Bias of Communication] (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951 1951]).
+[http://lessig.org/ Lawrence Lessig], [http://www.code-is-law.org/ Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace] (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
+[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Castells Manuel Castells], [http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISBN0631221409&id=hngg4aFtJVcC&dq=manuel+castells&pg=PP1&printsec=0&lpg=PP1&sig=NBPxhbzO0PMyda3lPEByp1Z5dSk The Rise of the Networked Society] (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996).
+===Other relevant readings===
+Steven Weber's "[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674018583/sr=8-1/qid=1145166266/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3528198-0636147?%5Fencoding=UTF8 The Success of Open Source]" snippet from an editorial review on Amazon... "''...we can listen to Steven Weber and begin to make our peace with the uncomfortable fact that the very foundations of our familiar "knowledge as property" world have irrevocably shifted..."''
+[http://www.cali.org/index.php?fuseaction=conference.ViewAgenda&eventid=1#goto1-2-1 Webcast] of Steven Weber at the 2005 Conference for Law School Computing titled ''Is Open Source the Opening Shot in an Economic Revolution?''
 ==Case Studies==
-===[[Supporting examples]]===
+===Supporting examples===
-===[[Counter-examples]]===
+====Global civil society / UN NGO Community====
+: Global civil society
+: [[UN NGO community]]
+===Counter-examples===
+==Key Concepts==
+: [[Industrial information economy]]
+: [[Networked information economy]]
+: Peer production