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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
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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