Amazon Was Right Again (aka Why I Need a Kindle)

First of all, I agree with several who have already posted:  I am concerned about Benkler's seeming uncritical disregard for issues of access in relationship to hardware (e.g. those who can't afford a computer), software (e.g. those who can't learn to fully participate in the internet), and information (e.g. those in countries that monitor and restrict free expression).  Because this discussion is going on elsewhere, I will try to focus my comments on other aspects of Benkler's book.

Several of you have also commented on this reading being a pdf.  I spent some time before I began reading investigating the various formats available through the wiki.  Most interesting to me is the "Bulleted" option, in which someone has gone through the entire book making decisions about subordination:  One sentence or part of a sentence is presented, with successive sentences bulleted underneath.  Basically, it makes explicit the implicit processes we all do as we read.  I couldn't stand to read much in this format, however, so I stuck with the pdf.

Then I spent awhile downloading Acrobat because Preview wouldn't allow me to highlight on-screen.  But -- surprise! surprise! -- neither would Acrobat because I didn't have "document rights" to the document.  So much for Benkler's grand open-source concept.  I don't know who exactly "owns" this document (and I don't know how he is making any real-market money off these free downloads of his massive book through the nonmarket economy), but I apparently do not have the (copy)right (or left) to participate in it or modify it in any way.

Once I settled on my only means of interactivity back in Preview -- drawing red ovals, creating clunky marginal comments, and bookmarking -- I sat down to read.  Within the first few pages, I found that I had to fight a tendency to skim:  Because of the glut of information I encounter on the web, I think I've become accustomed to skimming when reading large amounts of online or digital text (but I read your blogs closely, honest!).  I was also tempted to skim because I was behind:  Even though I took my laptop with me to the dentist and read while waiting for my appointment, I wasn't able to read on the bus or in all the other in-between times during which I can usually snatch a few pages.  Hmmm...maybe I really do need the Kindle -- "Amazon's Revolutionary Wireless Reading Device"! -- that Amazon keeps trying to sell me.

Why bother blogging about all this?  Because material conditions matter.  They are an inescapable part of the economy of digitality.  And as much as Benkler talks about nonmarket, non-proprietary developments, there are still plenty of market-driven technological advances (like the Kindle) that make all this possible.  Of course, it goes the other way, too, and perhaps that's his point:  As more people make their books available for free download, for example, demand -- the driving force of capitalism -- for hardware like the Kindle goes up.

Now, a few other brief observations about "The Wealth of Networks"...

Like Weinberger, Benkler talks at length about Wikipedia (esp. pages 70 and following), and once again, I was left with a question that neither author seems to address.  Even though both discuss the relationship of Wikipedia and Britannica, and even though both tell stories of rapid changes being made when errors are revealed, neither discuss where contributors are getting their information in the first place.  Ideally, entries about new and current events/people/things can and should be written by people who have direct personal experience with them; and ideally, information not obtained through direct experience must be cited; but who's to say that an entry on Alexander Hamilton wasn't written and edited by people using Britannica as their primary source?  Eventually, I suppose, subsequent editors will add additional sources and perspectives -- working toward the "neutrality" that Weinberger and Wikipedia tout -- but it strikes me as odd that neither author (to my recollection) addresses even in passing the question of where contributors get their information.

Sara wrote about the Mars Clickworkers seeming like (or leading to) "outsourcing."  The Mars Clickworkers project both excited and frightened me:  The name itself calls up images of long assembly lines or children in China sewing button-eyes on teddy bears.  There are, of course, significant differences:  At this time, at least, participation in this project and others like it is completely voluntary, and some projects -- such as SETI@home -- don't actually require any participation by the human, just the machine.  Not only does the mass participation have tremendous potential in terms of work being done, but it allows millions more people to gain agency and engagement with something they would normally never experience (without training for half their lives to be a NASA scientist).  In our world of ever-increasing specialization, I don't think the "experts" will ever lose their jobs.  But perhaps the grad students of the world, or even the underpaid -- but still paid -- factory workers of the information industry, will someday see their jobs vanish into the global void of open-outsourcing.

And yet, I would like to believe with Benkler that the networked information economy "will likely result in significant redistribution of wealth, and no less importantly, power" (468).

This is WAY too long, but one more quick comment:  At the very end, Benkler writes, "As we observe these battles; as we participate in them as individuals choosing how to behave and what to believe, as citizens, lobbyists, lawyers, or activists; as we act out these legal battles as legislators, judges, or treaty negotiators, it is important that we understand the normative stakes of what we are doing" (472-73).  I wrote in an earlier post that perhaps we should be more self-reflexive about the choices we make online and the consequences of those choices.  I think Benkler helps us think through these choices and consequences, showing us how such small, individual decisions as whether or not to download a free song or contribute to Wikipedia or use Linux can have tremendous repercussions (when multiplied by millions) in the marketplace.