Economic change and our participatory culture
November 8th, 2007Contributor: Caricia Catalani
Just to begin writing in this blog, I feel like a lot of introductions are necessary. Not just people, but also ideas. Idea 1, meet idea 2. This kind of meet and greet is happening in my head all of the time.
So, here is a new idea to participatory research and a well known idea to participatory media. I have a bit of a crush on this idea and feel pretty proud to introduce it around.
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Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor and the author of the already well revered book “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom,” (available in full) has some incredible observations of interest to anyone wondering about participatory media or participatory research. Or… participatory anything.
Benkler describes a major global shift in the production and exchange of information, knowledge, and culture. Like the critical theorists, Benkler agrees that the market through which these intangibles emerge has profound influence on human freedom and development.
Through his observations on the trend of economic change enabled by the affordability and rise of a networked, computer-mediated communications environment, Benkler develops the concept of a networked information economy. The network information economy, as he observes, is a
“system of production, distribution, and consumption of information goods characterized by decentralized individual action carried out through wildly distributed, nonmarket means that do not depend on market strategies.” (Benkler 2006, p. 3)
By decentralization, Benkler is referring to the disappearance of economic middlemen, those traditional economic brokers that control the valve at the end of market bottlenecks because of their unique ownership of the means of production. For example, if you wanted to be a singer twenty years ago, you would need to have your music embraced by a major record company. They alone had the power to distribute your songs through contract deals with music broadcasters and retailers. Today, the barrier to entering cultural economies like music is substantially lower and although not everyone can afford access to a computer with Internet connection, this is all it takes to share your song with hundreds of thousands of people.
One of the “market strategies” that Benkler refers to is propriety, or ownership of an informational good. Sole ownership does not fit into the networked information economy, when goods are commonly produced by hundreds of thousands of volunteers brought together from all corners of the globe through network technology. For example, Wikipedia is now the most serious competitor to encyclopedia makers. Forty years ago, you had to buy a set of encyclopedias for your home or hope that you had access to a subsidized public library to access this wealth of information. Today, Wikipedia gives hundreds of thousands of people from around the world free access to information production and consumption. More than 75,000 active writers, working on nearly 9 million articles in more than 250 languages, produce Wikipedia (statistics). This is, in effect, the world’s largest participatory research project.
Benkler’s theories on the networked information economy reveal an entirely new vision of an economy in which participatory production of information, knowledge, and culture are not only possible but also given wings. Whether we know it or not, our work in participatory media and community-based participatory research will be profoundly impacted by the networked information economy.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Thanks for that thought. I’m gonna be chewing on it for a while. And I’m looking forward to reading The Wealth of Networks as soon as I get a chance.
Looking forward to more posts.
November 8th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Apa kabar contributors. Muchismas gracias Caricia - anak aku, for getting us into roll.
Professor Benkler of course does a Harvard-size job of tidying up a wobbly world. Lots of change. Some good, some not — but a lot not really new. Maybe renewed, maybe even recycled in times when memories are short. Attention deficited.
Here’s what I mean: 25 years ago, America’s west coast was struggling with what was then a “wave,” a veritable “invasion” of Southeast Asians. Mainstream institutions were stressed. You’ve got to watch besieged folks, like startled dogs, they bite. Bite bad. An erosion, I imagine Prof. Benkler saying, of centralized authority’s, uh, well: authority.
These times are much the same. Mother Mexico’s energetic children are overwhelming us. The Battle for The Border. The War for Immigration Reform. Those needing a better sense of control are anxious about their ability to regulate the rub.
But here’s another thing that happened back then in our ethnic enclaves — the same thing’s true in our new immigrant barrios: families WILL take care of business, with or without mainstream institutional management.
Of course there’s a brawl between ethnic minorities and our dominent culture-carriers, that’s what’s reported in morning news. But there’s much-much more business-as-usual happening “inside” local or indigenous systems. Folks come here, after all, with a thousand-thousand years of social and spiritual capital. Even if financial and political capital accounts are a bit low when families are new.
And so we take care of community business, as Prof. Benkler says, without those pesky middlemen: cops monopolizing the power to police neighborhoods, courts deciding what’s just, big employers determining who to hire, banks evaluating who’s a good risk, and so on and on.
We talk to each other. Directly. A lot of that talk, and the consequent trade in ideas and products and services — goes to affirming and reaffirming community. We talk to ourselves rather than to monolithic Hollywood or Madison Ave or Washington DC monopoly on legitimacy, because as a practical matter it takes a lot less time, effort, love.
It seems what IS new in this “decentralization,” is the emerging (and un-cozy) concept of “community,” indeed: what’s becoming of individual and collective identity when community is digitally (fleetingly) bonded rather than through the older kitchen table conversation. With all those smells. In all that complexity. Uncertainty. Joy.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Re: Ronault LS Catalani’s comment:
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment! Profound observation. Maybe the only thing new about Prof Benkler’s networks is that they are visible to the outside. Networks, the kind that have bonded people for centuries over kitchen tables, were so much harder to see. A blip of energy across a broadband connection is sort of countable, quantifiable, categorizeable. Lots of 1s and 0s. So, digital social theorists have an easier task ahead of them. Nothing as messy as what really happens between people, face-to-face people, in countless and tangled and contradictory relationships.
But, I think that there is something different about these networks. And, I agree, it is not the decentralization. I think what is really different is the geographic spread of networks. How does an ethnic enclave change when everyone can still talk to home, everyday, in their language? How will diasporas change when you can share your music, your ideas, or your images with enclaves across the globe? Maybe places like the Midwest will become less lonely to our brothers and sisters who are satellited there, sending money home.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Overarching all our diversity is the loud voice of our all-pervasive media,
“mainstream” and parochial, offering a confusing, yet diffusing mixture that spreads across all those communities’ breakfast and dinner tables, clubs, and restuarants.
Those middlemen can’t be discounted yet.
Are they uniting or dividing us? Possibly both.
November 12th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
The networked information economy changes the whole notion of community, thus community -based participatory research and the implementation of that reseach. Data collection instruments will expand such as research participant use of cell phones and centralized data analysis and interpretation. These processes may be outsourced impacting funding and publication.
We must look carefully at the opportunities and challenges of the networked information economy and the impact of globalization on research, specifically community-based participatory research.
What are the issues facing us?