Posts Tagged ‘Internet’

The Wealth in Networks

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Yochai Benkler’s”The Wealth of Networks” is the Old Testament of social media.  It’s long, a bit dry, and nobody ever gets through it – despite the fact we all talk about how important it is anyways.  It’s not nearly as exciting as some newer books, those metaphorical New Testaments of social media – books that preach pleasant gospels of untold riches to be had by those businesses who get involved in the groundswells of crowd wisdom, where everything will someday be free.  Nevertheless, the Genesis (pun intended) of just such newer gospels is to be found in Benkler’s seminal 2006 achievement.

Moreover, a closer examination will reveal that The Wealth of Networks has a vengeful deity, too, one akin to the god found in the first thousand-odd pages of that most famous of Books.  Benkler’s jealous Being is seen in the fundamental message of, at least as I read it, Benkler’s text – that the social production of an information commons and the existence of an alternative to the industrial models of the twentieth century, a networked information economy, does not always have to be about the bottom line.  That, it would appear, is a scary message for some, indeed.  But for those small few of us who have joined with the covenant people and followed Benkler as our Moses in to the World Wide Wilderness of Sinai, there’s a message of freedom and a better world to be had in networks, the kind of wealth in networks that I feel inspires the greatest economic motivation: sharing knowledge, and lifting others thereby. (more…)

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The Internet is Unstoppable

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

This is a video presentation I put together for my Net Economics course, as well as to inspire my co-workers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and everyone else for that matter, to “get in there and play” when it comes to building the information commons through social media.

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Reading reflections: The ethics of the future

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

Monty Python cartoon: Television is Bad for Your Eyes

Why is technology always viewed so negatively?  And why is the future always bleak?  Why does it feel like the future-thinking theorists and prognosticators of the late 20th century as well as the present day always seem to be pointing out how present technoproblems automatically mean future pains?

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Neuromancer

Friday, January 30th, 2009
Fair use image from Wikipedia

Fair use image from Wikipedia

Neuromancer, the acclaimed novel from William Gibson published in the eerily appropriate year of 1984, stands as a precursor to not only so much popular speculative fiction which followed, everything from Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Holodeck concept to the virtual world of The Matrix, but in many ways postulates the technological ideas seen in plenty of real world concurrent developments, so many of which are taken for granted today, from virtual reality to immersive multi-player online games to ‘predictive’ financial and military database systems to the entire conceit of cyperspace (a term which Gibson first coined) itself.  I’m certain countless authors and theorists have studied the book and its story top to bottom, connecting it with so many different science fictions and science realities, that to try to summarize all the potential connections here would be exhaustive.  Instead, I hope to focus on artificial intelligence as a potential threat to humanity in this review, a question which lays at the center of the book.  I also hope to connect that threat concept to the way cyberspace exists today as a human communications medium, and what potentials our future may hold.

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Reading reflections: looking at the Internet

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Perusing an in-depth study written for business decision makers on just exactly why people use the Internet, I have developed these three questions, one of which is an older question I posited on Twitter but I wish to reinstate here:

Question 1 – Why is it useful for researchers to continually develop quantitative analyses of Internet behavior and use, and what challenges are presented therein, considering the rapid-fire evolution of Internet technology?  Is it a waste of time; will publications already be out-of-date at the moment of publication, much like the latest hot software often seems to be?

Question 2 – New media is not experienced in the same way old media is, though there is major overlap.  Why do we so often apply old media styles of critical analysis to new media, thereby discounting the new?

Question 3 – From my old tweet late last year: Is the Internet in any way to blame for some of the current economic climate, and if so, how?

Some of my thoughts herein have been spurred by the aforementioned article, referenced below.

Reference

Stafford, T. F., Stafford, M. R., & Schkade, L. L. (2004). Determining uses and gratifications for the internet. DECISION SCIENCES, 35(2), 259-288. Retrieved from Blis database.

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