The wealth of networks
by Yochai Benkler · first published 2006
44% recommend56% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues that networked information production, like open source and peer collaboration, is reshaping economics and culture. A thoughtful, deep treatment of the commons and network effects for readers of tech policy.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information e
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Yochai Benkler's book The Wealth of Networks talks about this at length. The whole text is available online but don't let that stop you from running out right now and buying a seminal work of our time. Here's a passage you may find interesting:…
on “Ask YC: Why do people share on social websites (like Youtube, Digg, Reddit, YC)?” ↗A nice deep dive into that thought is the book “The Wealth of Networks” by Yochai Benkler https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Networks It’s main focus is on what he calls Commons Based Peer-Production and how the default capitalistic model of private property…
on “Capitalism, Alone” ↗If you have the time and interest, check out The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler. It's a much better and thoughtful piece—and of course, much longer.
on “Machiavelli 2.0 — The Fundamentals of Network Society” ↗The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler and Information Rules by Hal Varian are good. Both are a bit dated though. If you know of any contemporary works to those, I'm all ears.
on “Ask HN: Good books on Information Economics?” ↗…https://pluspora.com, run by two people and hosting 10k+ users. Mind that additional admin and moderation services add to this. 3. Eben Moglen, a/k/a "Richard Stallman's lawyer", and Yochai Benkler (Th Wealth of Networks), whom I'm very late to the party in discovering just within the past week, among many others.
on “The FreedomBox enables you to control your view of the internet” ↗I highly recommend a commonly ignored part of economics and that is the economics of goods with zero marginal cost of production. The two key texts in this area are: Yochai Benkler's "The Wealth of Networks" -- This text is a bit dated (2005) and the first two chapters couldn't be more dry and boring, but after that the economic discussion in the book about how economics changes when the marginal cost of…
on “Ask HN: What is the best Economics read?” ↗…See Henry George and geo-libertarianism for more thinking in this direction. But I think there’s some need for innovation to address “commons based peer-production” as Yochai Benkler terms it in The Wealth of Networks).
on “The Pirate Party on Copyright Reform (2010)” ↗True, I forgot about that. I'm assuming you're familiar with Toffler and Drucker, but recently Yochai Benkler has added a lot to this theory. In the intro to The Wealth of Networks, he says that the declining cost of capital has three effects: 1) People can do more by themselves. 2) People can do more in loose association with others. 3) People can do more in informal organizations…
on “Paul Graham's Talk at Startup School 2007” ↗Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks as mentioned in the article. http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf
on “How Wesleyan’s Counter Culture Came To Rule New York’s Tech Scene” ↗…Manage. Sci. 45, 160 (1999). [CrossRef] * 11. A. Ely, Information Week, 20 December 2008; www.informationweek.com/news/infrastructure/ipv6/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212501014. * 12. Y. Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CT, 2006). * 13. J. Lerner, J. Tirole, J. Ind. Econ. 50, 197 (2002). [Web of Science] * 14. K. R. Lakhani, E. von…
on “Over-networking leads to groupthink - on digg, reddit, here?” ↗…A26 --- Pascal Garnier The Blithedale Romance --- Nathaniel Hawthorne The Weird --- Edited by Jeff VanderMeer & Ann VanderMeer (2) Front Seat Passenger --- Pascal Garnier Non-Fiction: The Wealth of Networks --- Yochai Benkler Field Notes from A Catastrophe --- Elizabeth Kolbert What Ever Happened to Modernism? --- Gabriel Josipovici Escape Velocity --- Mark Dery What We See When We Read ---…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗