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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chronicling the commons' contribution to culture, January 4, 2009
This review is from: Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (Hardcover)
We needed someone to chronicle the creative ferment and astonishing changes whipping around us in the Web 2.0-enabled commons. And now David Bollier has done so in his meticulous and very readable new book, "Viral Spiral" (New Press). For newcomers to the world of Web 2.0, the Long Tail and crowdsourcing -- the social Web would have been a more apt term for the phenomenon Bollier describes -- Viral Spiral serves as an indispensable primer, laying out in rich detail the birth of Creative Commons, the role played by such seminal figures as Lawrence Lessig, Jimmy Wales, Hal Abelson, Tim O'Reilly and others, and the underlying dynamics of law and culture that are powering the rise of user-created media. But even those of us deeply familiar with these subjects will come away with a deeper understanding of the social Web and the critical role that the commons -- the notion that we all benefit when we're free to build upon others' works -- plays in the massive upheaval now taking place in media, business and politics. Bollier is perfectly suited to assay this landscape as the editor of OntheCommons.org and co-founder of Public Knowledge. He writes early in the book: Individuals working with one another via social networks are a growing force in our economy and society. The phenomenon has many manifestations, and goes by many names--"peer production," "social production," "smart mobs," the "wisdom of crowds," "crowdsourcing," and "the commons." The basic point is that socially created value is increasingly competing with conventional markets, as GNU/Linux has famously shown. Through an open, accessible commons, one can efficiently tap into the "wisdom of the crowd," nurture experimentation, accelerate innovation, and foster new forms of democratic practice. This is why so many ordinary people--without necessarily having degrees, institutional affiliations or wealth--are embarking upon projects that, in big and small ways, are building a new order of culture and commerce. Bollier provides a broad lens to the commons, taking it out of its legalistic straitjacket and showing how it's relevant to our daily lives. And he brings us up to date, outlining the important new initiatives that Science Commons is bringing to the scientific community and that Open Education is bringing to the cloistered, often stultifying world of academia. Bollier's previous books, "Brand Name Bullies" and "Silent Theft," were important contributions to the ongoing policy debates over intellectual property and creative freedom. "Viral Spiral" provides the overarching framework that helps us appreciate how and why the forces of disruption are changing our lives -- mostly for the better.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
excellent early history of the "digital commons" / "free culture" movement, January 1, 2010
This review is from: Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (Hardcover)
David Bollier's Viral Spiral is the first major history of the "digital commons" / "free culture" movement, and despite my many person disagreements with him and this movement, it is an excellent treatment of the topic. Bollier surveys this growing intellectual movement from its early open source days to the rise of the Creative Commons and on into the present. The cast of characters in this drama will be well-known to anyone involved in modern tech policy debates: Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, Yochai Benkler, et al. There is absolutely no doubt that this intellectual movement is winning the war of ideas in cyberlaw front today. Personally, as a cyber-libertarian, I find myself occasionally at odds with these guys and this movement on a variety of policy issues, but that didn't stop me from enjoying David Bollier's treatment of this movement and these issues. It's certainly one of the 10 most important Internet policy books of 2009.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
history of the sharing economy, August 4, 2010
This review is from: Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (Hardcover)
The Internet today seems to promote, as well as be the source of, our current culture of sharing - a disruptive culture that can sometimes seem as threatening as it is empowering. However, the story of how this came to be is no accident and is actually more interesting and complex than you might expect. Viral Spiral by David Bollier traces the roots of modern free culture to the open-source software movement (namely, Linux, with its freely-accessible code) and why Larry Lessig, Richard Stallman, and Eric Elred are considered its founders. You'll learn how Creative Commons (CC) licenses facilitated new Internet genres and business models. (Authors and artists use CC licenses to make their work legally "shareable" - forfeiting parts of copyright in advance so others can freely reuse, remix, and distribute.) "Precisely because a commons is open and not organized to maximize a profit, its members are often willing to experiment and innovate; new ideas can emerge from the periphery...businesses see these communities as cost-effective ways to identify promising innovations, commercialize them more rapidly, tap into more reliable market intelligence, and nurture customer goodwill" (Bollier, 142, 247). This book also helps lay readers appreciate how debate over fair use has moved center stage and why definition of the public domain, while intricate, is too important not to tackle in this Internet Age. According to the author, we can thank the concept of open networking for giving us: * reduced barriers for new music dispersal * greater access to research databases and scientific collaboration (e.g., the Human Genome Project) * the revolution in classified ads (Craigslist) * open-access academic journals * user-generated content in the form of online recommendations and rating systems * the ability of blogs and micro-blogging (Twitter) to influence mainstream news-reporting and even shape public policy These are just a few examples of ways the "Great Value Shift" (as Bollier calls it) is re-framing our world and our place in it. Although a bit one-sided in its defense of the information commons, Viral Spiral's sweeping context lends valuable insight into the effects of sharing digital knowledge and why certain protections are necessary if it is to enhance economic growth.
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