Summary
(From Wikipedia)
Part 1: The Networked Information Economy
Benkler describes the current epoch as a "moment of opportunity" due to the emergence of what he terms the Networked Information Economy (NIE), a "technological-economic feasiblity space" that is the result of the means of producing media becoming more socially accessible. Benkler states that his methodology in the text is to look at social relations using economics, liberal political theory, and focuses on individual actions in nonmarket relations.
Benkler sees communication and information as the most important cultural and economic outputs of advanced economies. He traces the emergence and development of various communications (radio, newspapers, television) through the 19th and 20th centuries as functions of increasingly centralized control due to the high cost factor of production, and believes that media was thus produced on an industrial scale.
With the emergence of computers, networks, and increasingly affordable media production outlets, Benkler introduces the concept of the NIE, which sees media access as a form of power, and recognizes decentralized individual actions in said media as a result of the removal of physical and economic constraints to the creation of media. To Benkler, this is due to a new feasibility space: lowered costs of access via digital production and radical decentralization rather than centralized messaging ("coordinate coexistence", 30).
This results in emerging productions of information that use non-proprietry strategies (such as GNU licences and collaborative production formats, like Wikipedia).
Goods
The forms of cultural productions — music is an example Benkler uses frequently — are either rival or nonrival. Rival products decrease as they are used (e.g. pounds of flour), the consumption of nonrival products (e.g. listening to a song) does not decrease their availability for further consumption.
Static vs. dynamic efficiency: one premise of exclusive rights has always been that only financial incentives can facilitate participation in information production. Benkler argues that in an age where computers reduce the cost of production, that the equation of innovation-to-rights shifts as well.
The declining cost of communication means that in the networked society there are less barriers for individual cultural production that are "meaningful" to other users. Thus, in network economy, "human capacity becomes primary scare resource".
Peer production
To close this section, Benkler argues that the networked environment makes possible a new modality of organizing production: that of commons-based peer production. He discusses the parameters of the commons and gives the example of FLOSS Free/Libre/Open/Source/Software. He discusses shared acts of communication (utterances, reviews, distribution of information) and goods (like server space). Lastly, he draws a contrast to the regulation and rival resource of radio spectrum bandwidth and the sharability of space in a digital commons.
The economics of peer production
Benkler argues here that the networked society allows for the emergence of non-hierarchical groups that are committed to information production. Open software is one of the ways we can view the emergence of this new form of information production. "Commons-based" peer productions eschews traditional rational choice models offered by economists. Benkler details some of the key components of this new economy based not on financial remuneration but on user-involvement, accreditation, and tools that promote collaboration between individuals.
In order to understand why people engage in production aside from financial incentives, Benkler argues that we can distinguish two types of motivation:
- Extrinsic motivation: motivation that comes from outside in the form of financial reward, punishment, etc.
- Intrinsic motivation: motivation that derives from within ourselves, such as the pleasure involved in completing a task.
Part 2: The Political Economy of Property and Commons
In this section, Benkler examines the relationship of individual access to participation in the dissemination and creation of information via communication systems, building on his earlier ideas of commons based peer production.
He examines the historical emergence of the mass media, looking at the relationship between print and radio and ever-broadening, industrial broadcast models of production which became supported by advertising. The criticisms of mass media which Benkler brings up include:
- its commercialism, because he sees that as supporting the development of programs that appeal to large audiences rather than specific interests, in the name of mass broadcasting;
- limited intake of information, due to the relatively small amount of people gathering information;
- too much power assigned to too few people.
Benkler moves from this overview and criticism to exploring what this text describes as the potential for networked communications to do:
- "Better access to knowledge and the emergence of less capital-dependent forms of productive social organization offer the possibility that the emergence of the networked information economy will offer up opportunities for improvement in economic justice, on scales both global and local."
Individual freedom: autonomy, information, and law
Unlike the prior period of industrial production, the costs of entry in terms of communication technology are low and no longer is this technology centralized. Benkler argues that this provides additional autonomy, as people can do for themselves what before required access to centralized communication and technology infrastructure. At the same time, because we are more autonomous in our engagement with these communication technologies, we are no longer subject to their domination. Proprietary media forms like television are slowly being replaced with more diffuse forms of engagement and entertainment, which is less mediated by dominant corporate interests.
This diffusion is accompanied by a new constellation of sources such that we have access to a more plural public sphere and more alternative voices not controlled by dominant institutions. For Benkler, the accessibility of alternative views provides for more critical thought among users.
From passive to active
For Benkler, another key component of the network society is that individuals are more active in producing their education and cultural production. Online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia allow for users to create rather than just consumer knowledge and information.
Part 3: Policies of Freedom at a Moment of Transformation
Benkler begins chapter 10 stating two early views on the anticipated social impact the internet would have on the users and their community:
Firstly, the internet removed the user from society and allowed the individual to lead a life that was no longer molded by the interactions and experiences of a physical tangible civilisation with others. The second view was that using the internet would widen the field of a user’s community by providing a novel system of communication and interaction.
He observes that users show enhanced relationships with their close contacts while increasing the numbers of less close contacts with relationships maintained through internet mediated interaction. He believes this latter change stems from the shift from the one-to-many model of media distribution to a many-to-many model where it is more user centered and controlled.
Benkler remarks that the early views were made on the premise that internet communication would replace real world forms communication rather than co-exist alongside it. He introduces the idea of the networked-individual who govern their own interactions and microcommunity roles in both real and virtual space and dynamically switch between when needed, eventually concluding that the early views were nostalgic and somewhat fatuous.
A definition is offered whereby cultural freedom occupies a position that relates to both political and individual autonomy, but is synonymous with neither. Benkler then goes on to add that culture is significant because that is the context within which we exist – these are our shared understandings, frameworks, meanings and references.
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