Notes on Benkler

Abstract The Internet has produced an unprecedented wealth of information production, observes Yochai Benkler in chapters 1 and 7 of The Wealth of Networks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) that is reshaping culture, personal expression, democracy and individual freedom even as it redefines how people communicate about those very topics. His book is more than a discourse. It offers a real-time example by being available freely through its own wiki and providing a paradigm for how authors and readers may collaborate on works in the future.

Outline

I. How we define laws related to interactive media communications in the next decade or so will shape how people understand and communicate about their world for a long time to come.

II. Effect of networked information economy on personal freedoms

III. Liberalizing effects of the Internet not as extensive as once thought, but more powerful than mass media in the long run

Related Links

http://www.benkler.org/

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail776.html