HomePage RecentChanges Discussion

Discussion on WealthOfNetworks

We are using this page to discuss the book The Wealth of Networks as we read it together. Go here to download it for free. We will begin reading and discussing this book on the week of January 22nd, but feel free to jump in and out of the discussion at any time.
Scroll to the bottom of this page and enter your thoughts into the “Comments” box and it will append them to this page. Everyone is welcome to distill thoughts onto the WealthOfNetworks wiki page and to archive the ongoing discussion as you feel appropriate.

The beginning of chapter one is ok.

MattisManzel 2007-01-11 22:11 UTC


No much discussion here lately. That’s why I’ll add this perhaps a bit void comment: it was whole OK (perhaps the chapter on solving world hunger problem by peer production is somehow weak) - but it’s faded already in my memory.

ZbigniewLukasiak 2007-01-12 08:37 UTC


This is a good idea, this reading and commenting thing.

I disappeared from here because I was trying to get OpenContentBusinessModels WikiHive off the ground, plus some work with P2P Foundaiton behind the scenes.

However, there are still a few pages that I want to make sure I write here very soon.

Plus, back on-topic, I am already at about chapter 3, I think, in this book.

But, we can start over at chapter 1, because it’s kind of a tersely-written book, and I think our discussion can help us all.

I think the book turned out to be actually rather controversial. It’s not easy to make sweeping generalizations in the emerging areas that Benkler is covering here. The book has sparked quite a few debates on the P2P foundation weblog, too.

So, I ‘ll go back and re-read the intro and chapter 1, and report back here.

SamRose 2007-01-13 01:06 UTC


I think we can use this discussion format. Although, I am open to changing it if desired by others/newcomers. – SamRose

SamRose 2007-01-20 03:29 UTC


I am a bit tied up today. But, I did start re-reading, and will post some thoughts as soon as I have chance. (I like the new logo :)

SamRose 2007-01-22 20:15 UTC


I tackled chapter 1 this week (I’m now onto ‘part I’ - not sure the nuance, here). Initial comments:

His writing style seems unnecessarily verbose and convoluted. I caught myself more than once having to read a sentence three or four times before I felt that I understood what he was trying to say. Am I spoiled by popular non-fiction and this academic writing is schooling me? Or is this writing style just bad? Here’s just a random example:

 ...the overarching constraint represented by the seeming necessity of the industrial model of 
 information and cultural production has significantly shifted as an effective constraint on 
 the pursuit of liberal commitments.

You could argue that I’m dense or this was taken out of context, but this is a typical sentence. There are also very few examples used in his writing - either real world or as metaphor - to help illustrate his points. This fact helps me doubt this as quality writing. There is also a shocking lack of citations and references, particularly in places where he’s making obvious claims. Since this is merely an introduction of sorts, I assume that will clear up as I proceed into the meat of the book.

Having said all of this, there were moments of clarity and truth in his points which were enlightening. Like this one:

 The actual practices of human interaction with information, knowledge, and culture and with 
 production and consumption are the consequence of a feedback effect between social practices, 
 economic organization, technological affordances, and formal constrains on behavior through 
 law and similar institutional forms.

I’ve been looking for that list of factors!

KeithHopper 2007-01-27 21:34 UTC


Yes, chapter1/Intro is mostly an overview of the whole book, and an overivew of the emergence of “open” paradigms, and te beginning of a shift from MassCulture? (production, media) to distributed-networked culture, commons based reources, ubiquitous computing and networks. he’s also talking about networked civic engagement, and general enhanced Autonomy. I know that he gets into more references later on in the book. In fact Part I The Networked Information Economy is full of quotes from all over the place.

It’s quite true that the writing is overly verbose/convoluted/terse. I just picked up a whole stack of books from the library recently, that have to do with social and cultural change. Unfortunately, this writing style is all too common in this area of study. I actually think that these poli-sci/socialogy/cultural anthroplogy/whatever scholars have to write this way to be taken seriously by their peers. One thing that popular non-fiction has taught us, IMO, is that it is not necassary to write this way to actually be credible.

SamRose 2007-01-28 18:35 UTC


More summarization of the intro:

(not yet done, more later)

SamRose 2007-01-31 17:01 UTC


 "...much of the knowledge/info/culture consumed is still produced by an increasingly highly 
 centralized group of media conglomerates." -Sam

This seemingly contradictory simultaneous fragmentation and consolidation of media production and consumption is much discussed in several popular recent sources, most notably “Convergence Culture” by Henry Jenkins and “The Long Tail” by Christopher Anderson.

KeithHopper 2007-02-01 02:22 UTC


Although I should probably wait until the end of Chapter two to see if the author redeems himself, I am curious what the good arguments are for information property law. He makes such a compelling case against it, and being a knowledge commons junkie (hence the CPS blog), I am having trouble getting my head around the argument for information enclosure. I would love to read a compelling argument, for example, for extending the copyright protection period. In the face of what the publishing industry had to gain for making a claim to extend the protection period and the arguments he presents against it, it seems laughable!

I see the arguments that people might not produce innovation and might not bother being creative if they can’t control the information as property, and that culturally we might see this as a ‘fairness’ thing. But really, our sense of property fairness is so skewed by our long-standing cultural norms, this seems like hardly a robust and logical argument. I have mentioned this before, here

It is from these protections that we culturally have reinforced what fairness means, not the other way around. For example, if you grew up in a society that firmly reinforced the fairness of sharing, then you might find it ‘unfair’ when a property owner tried to control how their property was used by others.

KeithHopper 2007-02-01 02:38 UTC


Hmm…what good arguments are there for information property law?

Or rather, I guess you’re asking what good arguments are there for information enclosure? I think it really depends on the nature of the economy that the information is active in. There are huge growth/production-based economies built up around copyright law, and the arguments for information enclosure sound much better from the perspective of those economies, then from the emerging “commons” based economies.

In the growth/production/consumption-based economies, people can/could argue that hundreds of thousands of lives would be ruined, and whole industries and sectors employment and economic stability would potentially be destroyed if precedent were set to allow for people break information enclosure. This argument may have made more sense in, oh let’s say 1908, than it does today.

In the increasingly mixed economies that exist today, it is harder to make the argument for highly exclusive information enclosure, because the bulk of money that is actually made often does not come from exclusive control of content. Instead, it comes from controlling distribution channels of information. The real reason why people want exclusive control of content is generally usually to control the image, to coerce, frame, and guide perceptions.

Any rational argument for information enclosure would have to come from the growth/production/consumption-based economy perspective. The assumption that people are entrenched int these economies, and removing enclosure without a drop-in alternative would be too harmful for the people employed in those economic sectors. (Sorry , that’s the best I can do :) )

SamRose 2007-02-05 23:34 UTC


Also, wanted to add this table 2.1 from Chapter 2. it discusses:

Ideal-Type Information Production Strategies

Cost Minimization/Benefit Acquisition PublicDomainIntraFirm?BarterAndSharing?
RightBasedExclusion? (make money by exercising exclusive rights)RomanticMaximizers? (authors, composers)MickeyModel? (Disney re-uses inventory from derivative works)RCAModel (small number of companies hold bosking patents)
NonExclusionMarket? (make money from infromation production, but not by exercising exlclusive rights)ScholarlyLawyers? (write articles to get clients)KnowHow? (building on existing resources. Internal and external)LearningNetworks? (sharing infromation with similar organizations)
NonExclusionNonMarket?JoeEinstein? (give away information for free in return for status)LosAlamosModel? (total “inhouse” sharing to produce PublicGoods?)LimitedSharingNetworks? (release paper to small number of colleagues for feedback, share info on formal condition of reciprocity (like “CopyLeft”).

I think he uses this language (“mickey”, “JoeEinstein?”, etc) throughout the book, or at least in this chapter. They can be useful metaphors for this discussion, anyway.

SamRose 2007-02-09 20:48 UTC


You make a good point Sam that the argument for/against information enclosure is relevant to the economy you’re in, rather than a stand-alone issue. I don’t totally understand the ‘controlling distribution channels of information’ as the profit center argument. Is this like Google providing the search results and cnn providing the news channel kind of thing?

More comments on Chapter 3 as I complete it this week.

KeithHopper 2007-02-13 03:50 UTC


Kieth,

What I was getting at was what LawrenceLessig talked about in FreeCulture: that the nature of the digital medium makes it harder to create an economy around exclusive control of content, because computers make perfect copies of everything, (virtually) every time, by default. So, it becomes harder and harder, to impossible, to chase around all of those copies and make sure they are all legal.

So, you see the content industries trying to pressure the hardware industries to put controls on computers, and stop them from beign able to freely copy content. That is controlling the distribution. Related, also, is the issue of NetNeutrality?, and who controls the whole “backbone” of network digital distribution.

But that won’t even last that long, really. I think the telcos are going to lose the NetNeutrality? battle, personally.

Anyway, about: the bulk of money that is actually made often does not come from exclusive control of content. What I meant is that ABC makes less money from exclusive control of the IntellectualProperty of the Television show “Lost”, than they do by controlling the huge ABC network distribution channels, that give them a huge audience for advertisers. ABC likely makes most of it’s money from advertisers. They are really not hurt if “Lost” is copied and distributed across the internet, or if people make “remixes” of “Lost”, based upon the raw ABC content. They are only hurt if that copying and “remixing” works to steer people away from watching “Lost” on ABC.

SamRose 2007-02-23 19:43 UTC


This book “The Wealth of Networks” is so great. I love most Chapter 8,Cultural Freedom: A Culture Both Plastic and Critical. I’ve learned so much from it. The different cultures and culture discrimination. I hope everybody would read about this interesting and full of knowledge book. This would help them enlighten their mind on cultural freedom.

__________ jhazline_20

EditNearLinks: IntellectualProperty FreeCulture PublicDomain CopyLeft ZbigniewLukasiak LawrenceLessig