Yochai Benkler’s the Wealth of Networks explains and describes the mechanics of a new model, the Information Economy, that instead of being powered by the forces of capitalism is, at least in its current non-monetized stages, powered by the force of altruism.
It is my belief that Benkler’s book does a good job in explaining the rules of this new model, sometimes even too good a job as you’ll see below.
However, I also do believe it’s yet to be seen how this model will fare once the lowercase ‘wealth’ of networks and crowds clashes with the individual desire to create actual wealth.
In the book, Benkler speaks of a new model of consumer-created content and crowd-engineered information distribution, which in turn displace the traditional elites in charge up until a few years back of distributing content.
By putting these tasks in the hands of the many instead of the few, Benkler may be accused of being an anti-capitalist or a socialist. However, right away he states he is not after the wiping out of capitalism via this new model. He goes as far as to state he is not anti-capitalism and that placing an information economy in the hands of the state would be as unsuccessful and just as unpopular as traditional state-run economies were.
In an information economy, Benkler says, capital is just as necessary as it was in an industrial information economy –the type of economy that dominated the twentieth century, and in an industrial economy, the model borne after the Industrial Revolution.
At the same time, a different, less tangible reward, -reputation- also takes a front row seat in this economy.
For people who grew up with the image of the United States as the cradle of capitalism and the exploitation of man by man, this notion is informative and eye-opening. The concept of a democratized access to knowledge fueled by the actions of people wanting rewards other than money contradicts any stereotype people might have of the United States as an imperialistic society of cash-hungry, ruthless citizens.
One of Benkler’s examples of this new democratization is Wikipedia. To Benkler, as it is also stated in his own Wikipedia entry, the “Free Encyclopedia” has managed to turn consumers into users. It has also allowed these newly empowered consumer-users to do more for and by themselves. Not only can they produce new content by writing articles, but they can improve the existing content by editing the works of others.
By putting the crowds in a position to dictate the content, Wikipedia broadens its own scope of topics, thus besting competitors such as Encyclopedia.com and Encarta.
A more specific example of this can be found in the video Open Source Economics, where Benkler compares the three encyclopedias mentioned above and the way they cover a simple topic such as Barbie dolls. While Encarta is succinct and Encyclopedia.com only mentions Klaus Barbie, Wikipedia’s article is 2,872 words long, and that’s not including the list of references and external links, as well as five related articles.
It is this phenomenon of masses collaborating while at the same time displacing the traditional means of information, morphing the traditional hoops through which said information has had to travel (e.g. copyright versus Creative Commons) and taking the power of content creation away from elites what Benkler calls the “Wealth of Networks,” a play on the title of Adam Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations.”
Benkler’s book is not an easy read, not meant for an afternoon on the beach or a long flight. It is thorough to the point of being dense and its vernacular is thick with long sentences that for the rookie reader such as myself require reading at least twice over.
Also, I wish Benkler had mentioned how this new empowerment of the masses via participatory social production will handle the production of tangible goods. I wish he had mentioned whether this ‘wealth’ will stay in the realm of information technology or move on to other areas of our lives.
Perhaps not to how it will affect the purchase of the ingredients of a family’s holiday meal but how those ingredients will make it from the manufacturer to dinner tables all over the world.
What it lacks in colloquial speech and futuristic views of traveling food, it makes up for in honesty. Benkler has the guts to state that two of the great unanswered questions of this information economy model are 1) how it will fare when these same people participating want to make money out of it, and 2) how, if at all, will money ever be made out of it.
These are, undoubtedly, fair and important questions as they deal with the struggles between a new economic model based on altruism and people’s selfish instincts.
Although they remain unanswered, the mere mention of them in Benkler’s book should ease the fears of people who see in Benkler’s people-first, money-second model a return to more extreme views such as those espoused by 1960 guerrilla icon Che Guevara., who suggested that a society’s main means of recompense should be the psychological satisfaction of a job well done and not necessarily any tangible economic benefits.
Overall, although difficult to read and layered with over-inflated sentences and an academician’s pomposity, Benkler’s book offers an honest view of the benefits and problems posed by this new model, in which at least for now, altruism is king.
I recommend it for anyone willing to learn more than they ever wanted to know about this topic. If you are looking for a quick once-over, this is not the book for you.
However, if you’re looking to understand the equation of technology plus crowds equaling the fuel for the economy in the twenty-first century, then Benkler has a wealth of knowledge to share, and does just that through the pages of this tome.
References
Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks, How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Benkler, Y. (2008) Open Source Economics. YouTube video TED Talks.
Wikipedia (2009) . Yochai Benkler entry. Retrieved Dec. 12, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yochai_Benkler
