Benkler

Unfortunately, this post is late, but I'll do my best to bring some originality to the table in my response to chapter one of "Wealth of the Networks." Most obviously, there is definitely an overall optimistic tone to Benkler's writing concerning social development and the incline of technologies. Benkler title's his first chapter of this book as "a moment of opportunity and challenge,” and that is precisely what he makes the present feel like. He makes us feel the potential we all have with this vast technology at our hands.

He starts off by realizing the great way in which our technologies are constrained and regulated by the powers at large, and the next decade of battles over these very regulations will inevitably shape our future mediums of information as well as the information consisted within those mediums. This reminded me of one of the first conflicts I ever read about dealing with the Internet, the peer to peer network of music file sharing, Napster. The creator had started a simple music file sharing website and program that would let you trade audio files with any other user signed onto the network. This meant massive amounts of file sharing, and massive amounts of copyright laws being broken. This was the initial push that set off the rolling stone that is now ‘file sharing.’ Rock star musicians and record executives alike would love to hault this perpetual phenomenon, but it only seems to grow stronger. Within the last few years, I have even come across ‘torrenting a file,’ which is basically downloading larger sized zip files that can contain whole albums of music or even audiobooks. This allows everyone to access every creative format out there. There are files available for games, books, audiobooks, music, art galleries, basically any creative medium you can think of, all at the click of the mouse.

If this sort of creative swap keeps happening and growing, I imagine we will be in a place where creativity and innovation in all areas will not only be celebrated but it will be distributed through the masses. I am not necessarily saying that this is a good thing, because I am certainly glad that I don’t have a huge amount of crappy music that I have to thumb through in order to find bands that I like. There would have to be even sub-genres of the genres we have now for music in order to even classify a type of music. I digress, but I am just pointing out the way I see the authorities attempting to constrain the distribution of knowledge and creative thought.

The “networked information economy” Benkler refers to is the Internet and the pervasive linked network of users across the world. We each have decentralized individual action that has been brought about by the cheaper models of Internet devices we all have. I see half of the kids walking to class with their heads down looking at their phone, and I would bet that quite a few of them are accessing web on their phones. They have websites at the touch of the fingers everywhere they go. My mother would have never believed that was possible at my age. This allows us to have SO much potential for knowledge not only by looking up terms or phrases we are unfamiliar with in everyday life, but also debating points of view and creative ideas with each other. There is a video online titled “Did you know?” and it goes over the exponential expansion of the internet and the dramatic incline of information that is being put out into the world.

One assertion Benkler makes in the chapter and the one I most firmly believe in is that there will be a “rise of effective, large-scale cooperative efforts—peer production of information, knowledge, and culture (5).” This reminds me of a group my friend is in on Facebook called “Global Conscious.” It is a group with over 30,000 members that all are agnostic and feel as though we are on the horizon of a new kind of collective consciousness. I even read on their board the other day that they believe the whole “2012” end of the Mayan calendar thing is actually the mark of the new wave of consciousness. I indeed think it is extremely out there but it does show the fascinating way in which proximity shows no bounds for the creative thought and collective voice of the people. I feel as though the Internet is the only way in which we would have the potential to rise above a certain authority in order to accomplish the peoples’ goals.

Overall, I really like the chapter and thought that Benkler did a great job of reflecting the ways that our “networked information economy” has potential to shape the scope of our future concerning the sharing of creative thoughts and knowledge.