5 comments

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  Greg Lastowka

  2 years ago

  Fwiw, there's a discussion of Yochai's book going on over at Crooked Timber, including a review by Dan Hunter.
  
  link
  
  I agree with you (of course) that the Wikipedia model provides economic value, perhaps even more than Britannica provides. It strikes me, though, that the peer production & sharing model might have a disadvantage in producing campaign contributions. One thing about these particular broken windows is that the glaziers know how to lobby effectively, while the shopkeepers face some significant collective action problems.
  
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  Greg Lastowka

  2 years ago

  Whoops, bungled the HTML for the link.
  
  Here's the plain text:
  http://crookedtimber.org/2006/05/30/a-general-t...
• 

  eee_eff

  2 years ago

  "How do we know that Wikipedia and SETI@Home don't contribute in any meaningful way to the U.S. economy?"
  

  
  Obviously, they are of value to the economy. Just because they are not overtly monetized certainly does not mean they are not of value.
  

  
  "By the same logic, the sun and the air don't contribute in any meaningful way to the U.S. economy."
  

  
  Strongly recommend the book "The Future of Life" by Edward Wilson, The Future of Life, in which he does take a stab at valuing the biosphere.
  

  
  But, let's get back to the reason these phenomena are so revolutionary--not because they have built an Encyclopedia (which is in fact very good, but I digress) or a super computer but because they have done so outside of the control infrastructure of the traditional hierarchies.
  

  
  That is why wikipedia, open source software, have been so vilified by those agents of the powerful traditional hierarchies.
  

  
  Examples of this vilification: Microsoft calling FOSS "cancerous", Brittanica response to the Nature study, SCO suit against linux, and you can look at those apologists of the corporate power infrastructure attacking open source and Free Culture at such propaganda sites as IP Central every day...
• 

  Anton Sherwood

  2 years ago

  If the absence of payment does not make Wikipedia valueless, neither does it make Wikipedia costless.
• 

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