The Wealth of Networks

Benkler was at Berkman with me and met him/heard him speak several times. This text, published in 2006 and huge by 2008 is considered a classic (therefore required reading) for internet and digital culture work.

Bibliographic Deets
Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks. Yale, New Haven. 2006.

A Moment for Opportunity and Change
World Shifting toward Two Parallel Phenomena

ONE
 * 1) "Economy centered on information"
 * 2) "cultural production" -- Films, tv, music
 * 3) "the manipulation of symbols (from making sneakers to branding them and manufacturing the cultural significance of the Swoosh)"

TWO "Move to a new communications environment built on cheap processors with high computation capabilities, interconnected in a pervasive network- the phenomenon we associate with the Internet" (3)

"we are seeing the emergence of a new stage of in the information economy... displacing the industrial information economy... [with] decentralized individual action- specifically, new and important cooperative and coordinate action carried out through radically distributed, non-market mechanisms that do not depend on proprietary strategies..." (3)

Important methodological comment on page 17
 * Not to use McLuhan's determinism but something more nuanced

"Different technologies make different kinds of human action and interaction easier or harder to perform" -> But that doesn't mean that a technology has a specific adoption and use that can be counted on (17)


 * Quotes Innis "bias of communications" and Barry Wellman's affordances

Further
Part of At Cambridge.