The Wealth of Networks2

I wish I could say that I have some comments on the points that Benkler is making.  However, I don't understand this book, it is a real thinker, like the Stitch Bitch article we had to read in Motley's class.  I wish i could keep up with what he was trying to say and I think that discussing it in class will help a lot.

One of the main things that I got from the reading is economics.  Benkler seems to assume that we are all economists or at least have a good grasp on the idea.  I however do not fall in to this assumption.  Economics and I do not get along, you could say we have a mutual dislike for each other.  This I think is where my main problem of not understanding lies.  I think it would have been best for Benkler to include an example  of what he is talking about by putting it in terms other than economics.  I can appreciate that he understands economics and wrote a scholarly book but I like the idea of designing for the lowest common denominator like what we learned in the other theory class--just because you don't use big words doesn't mean you are not smart.

Anyway, stepping down from my preaching stand, I did find the part about Wikipedia kind of interesting.  Wikipedia gets a bad rap for being inaccurate because it is and editable encyclopedia.  And sure it is not always good information but it is a good starting point for research.  I like the idea of Wikipedia because it is editable by anyone and in the sense of creative commons, this way we can get an idea of how society collectively pieces together information rather than having someone tell us what it is (even though there is merit to that too); there is value to collectively defining life.