Benkler and Lessig

Reading in more details the wealth of networks.  It’s indeed a very good book which empassess all the key economic and cultural issues when it comes to current internet-driven information and cultural production.  As Benkler coins it, Commons-based Peer Production (CBPP).
Basically it’s more likely for CBPP to emerge when (1) there are excess capacities of computer storage that widely distributed among different households (2) communicative technologies, i.e. the Internet that link these capacity together; (3) compounded by the vast amount of exccess human capitals.

Using this framework to condense to cultural-virtual-social environment of how Wikipedia emerges  remains my FIRST choice.  But having read Benkler’s work (2002, 2004, 2006) I came to see that it’s quite hard to condense his arguments.  As much as I love to do, right now my work is really granular and modular (the way he describes how projects can be broken down to tiny bits) and I am still trying to figure how to tightly knit everything together.  Contrasting his work, and presentations with Lessig (which is not exactly fair but I am hungry and bored right now…) Lessig has a faster momentum to his writing and definitely speeches, which keep people like me (ADD) in tract.

Well I was reading the economics of social production – why am I blogging?
Let me know if you want to read the chaotic, mushy, first draft of my thesis.  Man, as I said, I really REALLY want to put it on Wikipedia *NOW*

PS:  there is something I don’t understand about men/women…  having dinner with a girlfriend tonight made me realize something – remember the father-test?  So we have the waitress test (to see how a guy treats the waitress, that’s his real self), mother test (how he treats his mom forecasts how he treats you when the novelty periods wear off) and finally the FATHER TEST.  Well. This is the reverse of mother test for guys – but never as direct.  A girl’s sense of self-worth and identity stem from a collective perception of how the parent treated her.  So if the mother provides a strong emotional ground but the father doesn’t do so, it may cost the girl to over compensate that in a relationship.  A few possibilities can emerge.  (yes it sounds even more complicated than CBPP).  If she lacks the affection, she may become more aloof or dependent on the relationship.  NOTE:  it’s the relationship, not the boyfriend.  Once the relationship becomes the comfort zone, it doesn’t matter who is in.  Sad, huh?  It’s nothing empirical, but years of observation and being bought up in a girls’ school….

Benkler, Y. (2002). Coase’s penguin, or, linux and the nature of the firm. Yale Law Journal, 112(3), 369-+.
Benkler, Y. (2004). Sharing nicely. The Yale Law Journal, 114(273), 273-385.
Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks:  How social productino transforms markets and freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.