Yochai Benkler is giving a talk about his new book, the aptly named the Wealth of Networks. He asks: What can we say about the new economics and understand it as something stable, not a passing fad? What does the change mean to our core commitments to democracy, etc. [As always, these are notes and thus are not accurate, complete or reliable.]

Between 1835 and 1850, Yochai says, the cost of starting a mass circulation paper rose from $10,000 and $2.5M (in current dollars). This signalled a “stark bifurcation between producers and consumers.” Readers became passive. This lasted for 150 years.

In 2002, the fastest supercomputer was Japanese. In 2004, IBM just barely inched it out. Meanwhile, the SETI@Home project enabled 4.5M to share their spare cycles, creating a far bigger computer. “We’re seeing a radically decentralized capitalization” of computation, storage and communications capacity. “Every connected person on the planet has the physical capcity to create information, knowledge and culture.” Human creativity, intuition, experience and motivation are widely distributed. Put together the capitalization and the human capabilities, and behaviors that used to be on the edge move into the core: Commons-based production and peer-production. Commons-based production is production without exclusion: Everyone can use the product. Peer production is large scale collaborative production without price or management. Peer production obviously works, as proved by Apache’s 70% market share. Or Wikipedia. Or DMOZ…

There are new opportunities, he says, most importantly shifting from finished information and cultural goods to platforms for self-expression and collaboration. Social production is a fact, not a fad. It is “the critical long term shift caused by the Internet.” But it is a threat to, and threatened by, incumbent business models.

Why should we care about the outcome of this political debate, he asks? Because of our core commitments to autonomy, democracy, and justice & development.

Autonomy: In shifting from consumers to users, we have to do more for ourselves and in looser association with others. But we get pages such as the lead hit on “viking ships” at Google, which is produced by a 5th grade teacher in GreenlandGander, Newfoundland. Or you get Project Gutenberg.

Democracy: Our democracy is a mass mediated public sphere. What do you get when you have peer production in such a democracy? You used to get The Pentagon Papers, which required several newspapers and the Supreme Court to get published. Now you get Bev Harris at BlackBoxVoting.org exposing Diebold. The Diebold code is opened up to public inspection. By the time Diebold sues the various places it’s been posted, it’s been distributed widely via email and Freenet and Overnet…

Does the Internet democratize or fragment? The first generation critique (Cass Sunstein) is that the Internet “Babel-izes” culture. The second generation (Clay Shirky) says that power laws mean that only a tiny number of sites actually get read; it’s the same as with broadcast. But, the claim needs to be assessed not against the utopia but against the access provided by mass media. And the claims are empirical and need to be examined. Yes, there are topical clusters. But thereare many entry points for discussion, there is something like “peer review” of claims, and some superstars who are known across clusters. The Internet, Yochai concludes, is indeed more democratic than what we’ve had.

He sees the re-emergence of a new form of folk culture based on active participation. This he views as a return to norms of the pre-broadcast world.

Justice: Much of what makes for human welfare depends on information, knowledge and culture. Commons-based and peer production can help. E.g., open source, open academic publishing, open source agricultural innovation, bio informatics, open source biomedical innovation, etc. He gives three quick examples: Free High School Science Text. The International HapMap Project. Biological Innovation for an Open Society.

We’re in a battle of institutional ecology, he says: DMCA, Net Neutrality, “trusted” computing, etc. Law is pushing in favor of the incumbents, he says. But that doesn’t mean they’ll win. E.g., the market doesn’t want “trusted” machines. (He says they’re trusted in that the content creators can create it not to do what customers want.) The sharing culture is increasing. The battle has begun and is worth waging. [Fantastic talk.] [Tags: yochai_benkler digital_rights berkman]

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