Transcript Commons in the Info Economy

The Network Economy
New role of Culture in Economics
Implications for the nature of
Markets, Property & Ownership
Creativity & Work
Commons & Ecology
Benkler: “...battle over the institutional ecology of the
digital environment”
Redefining Wealth
Quantitative:
Money & Material
Accumulation
Qualitative:
Well-being
Regeneration
McLuhan on Technology
• Extension of human senses
& functions
• Civilization: extending
muscles & bodily functions
like heating
• Electronic technology:
extending the human mind &
nervous system
Questions
• Is capitalism an intrinsically
material-based and scarcity-based
system?
• How does information redefine
property?
• How do we support or remunerate
culture-based production?
• What is the appropriate balance of
commercial & non-market
production in the economy?
• Does ‘globalization’ of information
require economic globalization?
Related Questions
• Who are corporate allies in the
quest to free up culture flows?
• What business models can tolerate
non-proprietary information?
• What are possible negative impacts
of mass collaboration?
• What are the implications for
university research & education?
Knowledge-based Development
• Dematerialization: intrinsic:
substituting information for
resources
• Detoxification: ...great potential
to tune into benign process &
substances.
• Decentralization: intrinsic part of
the network economy
Hardware & Sustainability
• Electronics: design for
obsolescence. The Waste Economy.
• Design for monopoly: incompatibility
• E-waste & toxicity
• Electronics & global labour
exploitation.
• Crucial role of Extended Producer
Responsibility (EPR) in reducing &
reusing.
• New possibilities for efficiency in the
“World Wide Computer”
Work (Creativity) in the Info Economy
• a growing proportion of work is involved in the
production of “meaning & value”
• a break from the historic role of worker as cog in
the Megamachine
• the decline of bureaucracy
• people as means & ends of ‘development’;
inversion of ‘investment-consumption’
relationship
• all-round human development: underlying basis
for “creative class” economy: freedom &
individuation.
N.B.: The overwhelming portion of ecological development—green
building, permaculture, renewable energy, eco-industrial networks,
reuse-based waste management etc.--all require greater knowledge
Commons in the Info Economy
• Sharing & conservation: key role of
design.
• Sharing: flip side of the new
importance of creativity.
• Green goods and info goods as
“public goods”, not easily served
by market exchange.
• Key struggles today: over control of
the Commons—the “2nd Enclosure”
Democracy & the New Commons
• the Digital Divide
• Net Neutrality & the
Information Highway
• Struggle over Bandwidth