1. THE WEALTH OF
NETWORKS:
HOW SOCIAL
PRODUCTION
TRANSFORMS
MARKETS AND
FREEDOM
Lindsay Keith & Cecilia Ting

2. INTRODUCTION
• Traditional Models of
Production
• Markets
• Firms
• Commons
• Access
• Regulation
• Peer Production
• Commons-based
peer production

3. FREE/OPEN • History
•Richard Stallman
SOURCE •GNU General Public
License (GPL)
SOFTWARE • Development process

4. DISCUSSION:
WHAT FREE SOFTWARE HAVE YOU USED?
PROS/CONS?

5. BUT IT’S NOT Discuss:
JUST Do you think
SOFTWARE peer/shared
production is
Information production:
more effective
1) Humanly meaningful statement than governed
2) Relevance & credibility production?
3) Distribution
Examples of peer production: Why or why
Wikipedia, Second Life, NASA not?
Clickworkers

6. CLASS
ACTIVITY

7. RELEVANCE/
ACCREDITATION
• Amazon Discuss:
• Google In what instances
• Slashdot would your peers
seem more reliable?
• Things to consider: When would you
• Save time/effort? prefer to have an
• Fragmentation? “authority” provide
• Funny vs. relevant
credibility?

8. SHARING OF
PROCESSING,
STORAGE, AND
COMMUNICATIONS
PLATFORMS
• Storage: Peer-to-peer file sharing
– Ethics?
– Efficiency?
• Processing
– Supercomputers (ex:
Folding@home)
• Communications
– Skype

9. CONCLUSION
What motives do you have/have you
observed that lead to nonmarket,
peer cooperation?
Why might we see more of this
phenomenon online vs offline?
Additional Resources:
• Richard Stallman on free software
• Clay Shirky on shared cognitive surplus