michael_nielsen

2) This is true largely because of the billions and billions of dollars worth of labor that has been poured into open source. When you want to write software today, the vast majority of what you need can be taken free from the commons. Languages, libraries, tooling

3) Commons based peer production -- is really only possible when you're dealing with goods that have basically no marginal cost. 1st one extremely expensive 2nd one nearly free He calls them non-rival goods. Only other person I've heard use that term is @jgreenhall re #gameb

There are all sorts of things which could be made non-rival and added to the commons which are currently locked into artificial scarcity because we haven't figured out how to reliably produce them otherwise Formulas for prescription drugs for one

I've been pretty shocked over the past 12 years how few other tech entrepreneurs I've met who've heard of Benkler or where motivated by his frameworks. Assume it's because either A) A lot of his work focuses on law and copyright, spectrum governance etc B) he isn't as wide eyed

But the core ideas are highly motivating, and provide a different orientation to how to think about social change and building the future How do we create a context where more is being added to the commons? How do we convert rival to non-rival goods?

The first question deals with changing institutions and context of economic production, and can lead one in revolutionary directions Second, to me, is just about "Software Eating the World" and progress in hard tech You figure out 3D printing and nanotech and everything = info

Benkler talks about Wikipedia, Linux, and Apache Web Server as modern wonders of the world. Places where loosely coordinated hobbyists outcompeted firms and nation states. My question has been, what Wikipedias have we not built yet, for want of the right wiki?