Wealth of Networks Communication (General) it Is

Wealth of Networks Communication (general) It is said that the Western culture is going through some sort of cultural war in terms of communication and technology (Braman 153-182). The battlegrounds are seen in the courts, the legislatures, international bodies, local communities, and distant countries that individually may not have much power to affect the outcome though they do have a vital interest in who wins. The war is global -- and is one that has little to do with gay marriage, abortion, terrorism, Darwinism, or religion.

It is, in one sense, a war going on above our heads, as it is largely concerned with law and policy, and society and property; this is all in connection to the new media and technology (Doyle). In another sense, it is very much a war in the trenches, as it affects our ability to choose how we will live and interact with each other as consumers, creators, and citizens.

Media policymaking has been said to navigate an increasingly complex technological environment, with new media technologies not only introducing new forms and sources of content into the media mix, but also providing new mechanisms for the delivery of traditional media content (Braman 153-182). McQuail devoted an entire chapter to this in his book Mass Communication Theory, where he believes that the new media reformations call for a new theory on mass communication.

In such an environment, effectively defining media markets becomes increasingly difficult, as does maintaining an accurate sense of the roles and functions of the different media in the lives of the citizenry, therefore the need for new theories, along with this, new policies. This was also discussed in Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks where he believes that policymakers must come to grips with how the migration to increasingly interactive media platforms, and the associated increased prominence of user-generated content might impact policy approaches to media.

To the extent that we are witnessing technology-driven "de-institutionalization" of the media, the question arises as to how this process should be reflected in media policies, which traditionally have been directed at large-scale media institutions and traditionally have been formulated with such institutions in mind, as Benkler believes.

These increased analytical challenges facing policymakers (and policy researchers) are accompanied by changing dynamics regarding the placement of the burden of proof in the assessment of individual policies, these individual policies are to be reviewed and re-thought with the dynamics of how media is quickly changing in because of new found technologies (Doyle).

That is, individual policies are coming under increased scrutiny by policymakers, stakeholder groups, and the courts, in terms of the extent to which they legitimately achieve the objectives that motivated their introduction, where culture is being influenced more by media, rather than the other way around, also discussed by McQuail. No longer is much deference granted to the predictive judgments of policy professionals.

Rather, contemporary media policymaking involves increasingly ambitious efforts to systematically assess the impact of individual policies, as well as to test the underlying assumptions upon which individual policies may be based (Hetsroni 439-451). This coincides with McQuail's theory on the new policy paradigm, where there are three paradigmatic phases of communication and media which was seen in the Western culture (van Cuilenburg and McQuail 181-207).

Such developments, of course, point to an increasingly influential role for research in the media policymaking arena -- particularly in relation to the stakeholder battles -- for example, between industry groups and public interest/advocacy organization - that remain a prominent component of media policymaking (Entman and Wildman 5-19).

But such developments also raise the question of whether the full range of policy impacts always will be discernible by available empirical methods, and if not, do policies reflecting values that perhaps should be considered self-evidence potentially suffer in the face of increasingly evidence-based policymaking? The implications of such questions become magnified in the face of contemporary dynamics involving the role of research in policymaking that suggest that a fairly narrow spectrum of research perspectives contribute to policymaking and that resource imbalances among the various stakeholder groups can further skew the nature of the research that ultimately impacts policy decision-making.

This in turn affects the communications and media as an economy, which is said to be the baseline for Benkler's book.

Yochai Benkler, who reports this and other stories in his erudite and expansive book The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedoms; this is where he says we are in "a battle, in the domain of law and policy, over the shape of the social settlement that will emerge around the digital computation and communications revolution." What do stakeholders, politics and voting machines have to do with computers and communication? As Benkler believes, they are part of a new economy -- a networked economy -- centered around information and structured by rules of ownership for intellectual outputs (McChesney).

The question is whether this economy will be mostly proprietary and tightly controlled by corporate interests or if it will give meaningful space to non-market social production? The answer to that question has significant implications for individual freedom, the public sphere, and the shape of our future economy (Fallery, Ologeanu-Taddei, and Gerbaix 37-53). Which McQuail refers to as the new media, where there are general consequences for the traditional mass media.

The new media is making it possible for people to access media and communication for personal use as communication devices, also how there are needs for it in the government as well as the economy. The sections in Benkler's book are generally divided into two different aspects, the industrial information economy -- a one-way, capital-intensive, and professionally-produced model that has held sway for 150 years -- and the networked information economy (NIE) -- a many-tomany, low-capital, and cooperative model that has been emerging in the last 15 years.

Newspapers, record companies, and broadcasters are members of the former; bloggers, file sharers, and decentralized programmers and encyclopedia writers are members of the latter.

The infrastructure that the NIE shares is, of course, the internet, which Benkler describes as "a communications environment built on cheap processors with high computational capabilities, interconnected in a pervasive network." This environment is characterized by (1) non-proprietary strategies, (2) rising non-market production, and (3) more effective, large-scale cooperative efforts; in other words, "peer production of information, knowledge, and culture." Benkler identifies the third feature as the most revolutionary because it challenges both our economics and our politics (Entman and Wildman 5-19).

McQuail also has three general principles for mass communication and media which he mentions to be: "The three primary objectives: to update and take account of recent theory and research; enlargement, to reflect the continuing expansion of the field; clarification and improved presentation." Benkler sees peer production as an inversion of the conditions Ronald Coase explored in his investigation of the relationship between the market and the firm in his publication, The Nature of the Firm.

Coase pointed out that firms, while they compete against other firms according to the rules of the market, are not themselves organized according to market principles. Markets are organized largely by the price system (Entman and Wildman 5-19). Producers flock to high prices, consumers to low prices. Inside the firm, however, production and consumption are organized by managerial fiat.

Workers have significantly less freedom within the firm to contract for their services than the firm has within the market to contract for its products or expertise (Fallery, Ologeanu-Taddei, and Gerbaix 37-53). Coase argues that firms exist because certain transactions are easier and cheaper to organize within a command hierarchy than within a market. A firm will grow so long as its management can rearrange "the factors of production under its control" to outweigh the benefit of trading those factors on the open market.

Benkler, in an argument developed in "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm," says that markets and firms are two different ways of solving the problem of information: how does one identify the best person for the job? Markets depend on price signals; firms depend on managerial discretion. Under a third option -- one he calls "commons-based peer production" -- the best individuals, working on a neutral network, self-identify and self-select for a given project.

This option works best for projects with high levels of "granularity;" that is, projects which can be broken down into many small component parts, such as classifying craters on Mars - NASA Clickworkers, writing encyclopedias -- Wikipedia - and even building online worlds - Second Life, a massive multi-player online game (Hetsroni 439-451).

Peer production has a big advantage over markets and firms: transaction costs are reduced essentially to zero (achieving ideal efficiency) so long as the group is large enough to aggregate resources and conduct peer review, and so long as each person has equal access to an informational network. McQuail believed in his theories that as the television industry increases, market controls replace political policies, along with this the new media affects the individual and the society directly (Webster 366-382).

Up until now, access to the informational network -- the internet -- has been near neutral with respect to both the person using it and the data that the person is passing back and forth (Hindman 327-348).

The internet operates much like a public highway, in that it is indifferent to the person and his or her destination, as well as the type of data he or she is transmitting, this is giving the individual direct control over his or her use of the new media, in contrast to older techniques where you cannot manipulate media as much (Hetsroni 439-451).

However, the concentration of business and media that has occurred within the industrial information economy is being echoed in the basic infrastructure of the NIE -- most people obtain high-speed internet access from either their cable or telephone provider. Moreover, new router technology allows internet providers to distinguish traffic between a subscriber and "undesirable" sites (e.g. A competitor's or non-rent-paying site) and traffic between a subscriber and "good" sites (e.g. those of advertising partners) and vary the speed of access accordingly. Government regulations support this discrimination.

Broadband internet access has been regarded in the United States since the Brand X case last year as an information "service" rather than a telecommunications infrastructure, relieving cable and telephone carriers from the regulatory requirement to permit competition from other broadband service providers (Hindman 327-348). Without significant pushback from citizens and businesses, the effect of these trends will be to needlessly destroy or, at least, inhibit the growth of a promising new arena for economic production.

This is where we see a needed paradigm shift in media policies, and in regards to McQuail's chapter which discusses how the new media calls for a new theory (van Cuilenburg and McQuail 181-207). Benkler's book provides a comprehensive, informative, and challenging meditation on the rise of the "networked information economy" as discussed above, along with this its implications for society, politics, and culture are covered which can be related to McQuail's views on the new media (Braman 153-182).

Benkler, argues that the digital revolution is more revolutionary than has been recognized, even by its most passionate defenders. The new information and communications technologies do not simply make the old ways of doing things more efficient, but also support fundamentally new ways of doing things.

In particular, the past few years have seen the rise of social production, a radically decentralized, distributed mode of interaction that Benkler calls "commons-based peer production." McQuail also believes that the new media gives individuals openings to be more creative and to utilize the new technologies more for personal and societal use. The Wealth of Networks is Yochai Benkler's book is regarded as a heavyweight analysis of the state of the internet in the early part of the 21st Century.

In the book, Benkler argues strongly in favour of what he calls "social production," which harnesses impulses, time and resources that, in the industrial information economy, would have been wasted or used purely for consumption. The immediate effect of this social production is therefore likely to increase overall productivity in the sectors where it is effective (McChesney). This is where McQuail believes that the distinction between mass communication and personal communication is blurred. However, this does not mean that its effect on market-based enterprises is neutral (Hindman 327-348).

A newly effective form of social behavior, coupled with a cultural shift in tastes as well as the development of new technological and social solutions spaces to problems that were once solved through market-based firms, exercises a significant force on the shape and conditions of market action. This cultural shift is because of the new media as well as the new policies required to govern it (van Cuilenburg and McQuail 181-207).

The new media, as stated above, with its dynamics and crossing of cultural and networking bounds observes a paradigm shift. The Wealth of Nations is an in-depth examination of the forces that are bringing about this change, and the efforts of existing industrial media providers, particularly in the United States, to restrict this change by lobbying for stricter laws in relation to copyright and patents, also mentioned in McQuail's media theory.

Benkler cites many examples of social production that have come about through the web, such as Wikipedia, Linux and Folding@Home; this utilizes un-used computing cycles to carry out protein research. Peer production involves the creation and dissemination of "user-generated content," including the online Wikipedia encyclopedia and open-source software, such as Linux, that allow users to generate their own entries and modify those created by others (McChesney).

Commons-based peer production is characterized by weak property rights, an emphasis on intrinsic rather than extrinsic (monetary) rewards, and the exploitation of dispersed, tacit knowledge. He views the new collaborative models as something to be encouraged and assisted, on the basis that the pursuit of knowledge, unfettered by excessive restrictions of intellectual property, benefits individual freedom and the common good.

The book shows how the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people create and express themselves, as McQuail discussed how the new media opens up new ways for people to use technology for their personal use. In truth, it is quite difficult to summarize Benkler's book.

It is pages on end with incredibly in-depth research and analysis on the development of social production and the challenges which it faces from the "industrial media" sector, looking at the media and technology as an economy (McChesney). This is not to criticize the book or writer; Benkler has contributed greatly to our understanding of the battle between those who would enable the spread of new ideas and those who would restrict them out of self-interest.

In 1776, Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, which is viewed by some as the blueprint for the capitalist system. The Wealth of Networks, in its title, implies that it contains a blueprint for a new economic system, in regards to the new media. This is not strictly correct -- the networked economy which Benkler sees emerging generates wealth largely in a social sense rather than in a monetary sense.

But it is inaccurate to label the book as anti-capitalist -- to put it simply, Benkler argues for a reasoned and balanced approach between the commercial and the social aspects of the internet. This is a problem which McQuail faced, where there is no clear line between the personal use of the world wide web, and public use. This comes as problematic and is what calls for new policies in governing the internet and virtual environments.

Surprisingly, The Wealth of Networks focuses almost entirely on social production of digital products -- software, media and scientific data. It does not refer to how social production might impact manufacturing or durable goods. You can, however, take the arguments put forward and envision how they might apply to the developing field of digital manufacturing.

This would lead you to ask yourself: could present day extensions to copyright laws inhibit the future development of a digital manufacturing economy? The bottom line of this book, is that democracy and prosperity are both enhanced by shared rather than restricted information (Baker). The open commons model is the only one that allows us to harness the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth, where each individual can made incremental improvements that cascade without restraint to the benefit of all others.

As it is discussed above, the new media sets up a different and more developed framework for media users because of the accessibility the internet gives. The author has written the authoritative analytic account of the new social and political and financial realities of a networked world with information embedded goods. It is said that this book suggest that the era of sharing and voluntary work has come of age.

On that note, I wish to observe that those who label the volunteers who craft Wikis including the Wikipedia as "suckers" are completely off-base. The volunteers are the smartest of the smart, the vanguard for a new economy in which bartering and sharing displace centralized financial and industrial control. Indeed, with the localization of energy, water, and agriculture, this book by this author could not be more important or timelier. The Wealth of Networks is divided into three main parts, as discussed above.

The first deals with the economics of the networked information economy. Benkler's treatment is nevertheless insightful, intelligent, and engaging. The characteristics of information as an economic good -- high fixed costs and low marginal costs; the ability to be consumed without exhaustion; the difficulty of excluding "free-riders" -- support the widespread use of commons-based peer production. Benkler proposes social production as an alternative to the traditional organizational modes of "market and hierarchy." Indeed, open-source production differs in important ways from spot-market interaction and production within the private firm.

But here, as elsewhere, Benkler tends to overstate the novelty of social production. Firms, for example, have long employed internal markets; delegated decision rights throughout the organization; formed themselves into networks, clusters, and alliances; and otherwise taken advantage of openness and collaboration, as also discussed in Coase's publication in regards to the freedoms and policies of firms. Many different organizational forms proliferate within the matrix of private-property rights. Peer production is not new; rather, the relevant question concerns the magnitude of the changes.

This calls for a new reform in terms of the policies governing the internet, as McQuail had mentioned. Here, the book suffers from a problem common to others in this genre. Benkler provides a wealth of anecdotes to illustrate the new economy's revolutionary nature, but little information on magnitudes. How new? How large? How much? Cooperative, social production itself is hardly novel, as any reader of "I, Pencil" can attest.

Before the Web page, there was the pamphlet; before the Internet, the telegraph; before the Yahoo directory, the phone book; before the personal computer, electric service, the refrigerator, the washing machine, the telephone, and the VCR. In short, such breathlessly touted phenomena as network effects, the rapid diffusion of technological innovation, and highly valued intangible assets are not novel. McQuail discusses that there are certain consequences the new media will provoke upon the traditional ways of communications and media.

Part two, "The Political Economy of Property and Commons," is the book's most original, provocative, and is a confusing section. Benkler sees social production as a powerful force for individual liberty. People used to be passive recipients of news, information, norms, and culture; now they are active creators.

Each participant in an open-source project, each creator of user-generated content on Wikipedia or YouTube, "has decided to take advantage of some combination of technical, organizational, and social conditions within which we have come to live, and to become an active creator in his or her world, rather than merely to accept what was already there. The belief that it is possible to make something valuable happen in the world, and the practice of actually acting on that belief, represent a qualitative improvement in the condition of individual freedom" (p. 137).

Which is the problem McQuail addresses in regards to the need for new policies in governing the internet where the bounds of individual privacy and public views come as an issue. It is due to the open accessibility of the internet that calls for a new reform in the internet's environment (Horwitz). What Benkler means by "freedom" and "liberty," however, is not the classical-liberal notion of the absence of state coercion, but the modern liberal view of "autonomy," individuals' ability to achieve their goals without restraints, voluntary or otherwise.

This understanding of liberty, which originates with Kant and Rousseau, is central to Benkler's political economy. Autonomy means that "individuals are less susceptible to manipulation by a legally defined class of others -- the owners of communications infrastructure and media" (p. 9) -- hence Benkler's sympathy for the commons, an institutional framework in which individuals, not a collective, hold property rights.

It does not matter for Benkler whether the collective is a private club, such as the participants of an open-source project or the subscribers to a particular information service or the state. What matters is how the commons facilitates "freedom of action" in comparison to how a system of private-property rights affords freedom. The governance of the media according to McQauil's new media theory calls for new policy changes because of the increasing availability of access. Benkler strongly opposes privatizing the information commons by allowing owners to exercise property rights.

He chides Cisco Systems, for example, for designing and deploying "smart routers" that allow broadband service providers to control the flows of packets through their systems. This action is akin to erecting toll gates on the Information Superhighway (Horwitz). To ensure open access to the networked economy, Benkler favors a public-ownership network infrastructure, loose enforcement of intellectual property rights, subsidized R&D, and "strategic regulatory interventions to negate monopoly control over essential resources in the digital environment" (p. 21). This approach has some problems.

First, although information itself cannot be "owned," the tangible.