The Wealth of Networks

Having taken a little time to digest the wealth of information that is Jochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks, I can identify the main point of the book that has stuck with me. Benkler presents an excellent description of how information production is different in this late modern era, compared to information production in the earlier modern era. Just as the production of physical goods has changed (somewhat) from the Fordist command and control model, the production of information is also changing. Controls placed on the production of information can have a chilling effect, hampering the ability to create something new based on the old (Herald's discussion of copyright and copyleft is much clearer now after having read Benkler). By extension, creativity can be enhanced by the free, or freer, flow of information and by opportunities for collaboration.

If I were to sum up what the quarter's readings were all about, I would say that they were about information and collaboration. Industry, government, and media -- and our experience of interacting with them -- suffer when information is closed off and collaboration is discouraged or eliminated. Inventive capacities multiply when information is made accessible and people are given the ability to work together. This, according to Benkler, is what the networked economy is about -- sites of production located with individuals who come together on their initiative, who have the tools to do the work they want, and who do not depend on formalized structures to produce that which they want to produce.

For someone who does not participate fully in the software open commons and who just dabbles with producing a "blog" on "The Internets," these descriptions of the present and future of production still seem a bit foreign. As an academic, I do see how collaboration and access to information are important but when I think about how this might apply to how everyone else participates in the economy, with government, or interacts with the media I am less certain of how transformative the new economy is. We still have heavy manufacturing in this country. We still have coal mines. And we have exported our heavy manufacturing to the developing world. Being a consumer of media and of government is still how many people interact with those institutions, for better or for worse.

Bottom line, though, the access to information that we have today and the ability to use that information to new ends, to distribute it widely, and therefore to participate in knowledge construction is like no other time.