the network economy new role of culture in economics implications for the nature of markets,...
TRANSCRIPT
The Network EconomyNew 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