First published 2 months before Twitter was publicly launched, Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks hit stores in May of 2006, but still provides a startlingly accurate picture of today's 2009 world. In a world where Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace receive over 250 million unique visitors every month, where traditional advertising revenue is in double-digit decline, where 95% of all songs downloaded last year weren't paid for, and where Wikipedia has 13 million articles in 200 hundred different languages--it is clear that old ways of creating and disseminating information are breaking down and being replaced. Wealth of Networks provides a lucid analysis of this upheaval and the competing forces struggling with in it, as well as elucidating the consequences that might result from dominance by just one of these forces.
In Wealth of Networks Yochai Benkler discusses the emergence of a new "networked information economy" that breaks much from earlier industrial modes of production. The rise of technology innovation in creation, distribution, and storage of digital information creates an environment more conducive to the rise of effective non-market, non-proprietary forms of production. Benkler sees the shift provided by the falling marginal costs of creating, distributing, and storing informational goods as an opportunity to rethink the institutional structure by which the information economy is governed. Rather than attempting to harness these changes that fly in the face of conventional economic logic, Benkler advocates opening ourselves to the potential provided by peer production, and a commons based approach to the information economy. He argues that there are both economic and social benefits to the emergence of a significant non-market space in the information economy, but cautions that existing intellectual property laws could serve to retard this growth. Based on his belief that the rise of non-proprietary models will enable greater personal autonomy, personal freedom, expanded political democracy, and more extensive cultural transparency, he advocates for the creation of an institutional structure that will support the emergence of an increasingly non-market informational economy.
Benkler's argument gains strength by utilizing arguments based on both economic efficiency and on normative social desirability. Benkler demonstrates that a commons based and not proprietary approach to informational goods may result in increased efficiency because it reduces the cost to future innovation. He points out that extensive licensing may limit future advancement because so much of informational technological growth relies upon work that has come before. Moreover, he explains that this commons based approach will result in a more equitable distribution of informational goods in the future. Not only will it encourage future innovation in advanced societies, having low-cost informational products will enable lesser developed nations to access key informational goods enabling them to address issues of specific relevance in their nations. He uses the development of medical treatments for diseases plaguing the 3rd world as an example of this by pointing out that in a proprietary model the economic incentives for 1st world pharmaceutical companies to research these is minimal, and that the cost for 3rd world companies or non-profits to do so on their own is prohibitive. A frequent criticism of an informational commons argument based only on reason of equity is that it would be economically detrimental to the major pharmaceutical companies. Thus, by addressing the economic efficiency component as well as social benefit Benkler provides a much stronger and multi-faceted argument.
Benkler clearly articulates the benefits of the networked information economy, but spends very little time on the costs. His prognosis seems positive when viewed from the light of personal freedom and democracy, but for those of us who do have some concern over money the issue of what will happen to the information based economies of the developed world remains somewhat fuzzy. If the model of non-proprietary production comes to dominate it seems it will result in a tremendous transfer of wealth out of the monetarily based market. Will we reap the benefits of increased democracy, and more ability to function autonomously only at the cost of a downward change in our standard of living? How will we replace the monetary value lost to the non-proprietary market? Benkler basically ignores these questions because he is much more concerned with answering questions about the normative social costs and benefits, as well as refuting claims that information is not efficiently produced in a non-proprietary system. However, it seems that there are very real economic implications in terms of monetary cost that would result in significantly shrinking the industrial information economy, and Benkler could have benefited by acknowledging this problem even if it were just in a brief nod to the wrenching effects they may have.
In conclusion I highly recommend Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks because it hits upon the core tensions at the center of the modern informational revolution that is occurring and still rings uncannily true despite the rapid changes that have occurred in the years since its publication. While it lacks acknowledgment of the monetary cost adopting an information commons approach might exact this is largely due to the face that Benkler is more concerned with non-monetary social gain, and in this arena Benkler mounts an impressive, detailed, and incredibly persuasive argument. In many ways this book reads as a call to action with Benkler reminding us to be vigilant because in this moment of transition the choices we make will decide much more than the future of copyright, but the future of our own freedom, and even the future of democracy the world over.
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