Yochai Benkler has been called “the leading intellectual of the information age.” He proposes that volunteer-based projects such as Wikipedia and Linux are the next stage of human organization and economic production.
It is hard to deny the disruption and fundamental shifts being caused by open source ideology and social web values.
A historical analogy to wikenomics is weaponry. There have been long periods of history when weaponry was more or less equal , followed by times of great weapon disparity. Think of the transitions between prehistoric society and the Bronze Age, or the development of Greco-Roman culture. Think of the difference between the Medieval times and the Renaissance. The Bronze Age saw the growth of powerful central governments over tribes. The Renaissance saw a flowering, vibrant, changing culture overturn a static system that had been in place for hundreds of years. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have seen the growth of mega-corporations and mega-governments. The change in technology of the collaborative internet threatens more than Microsoft! It has the power to transform ALL social, economic, and political relationships in the not too distant future. While it’s not possible to predict all changes, with enough thought one can make some scenarios and predictions. Want to try?..
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