Yochai Benkler: Open-source economics

http://www.ted.com Law professor Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional economic production, copyright law and established competition, they're paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[etharooni]

Wow! Another great Ted presentation. Really interesting!

[kashphlinktu]

Yes but still in wikipedia the really good articles still came from a specific person who had deep knowledge of the subject. I think the real gains here come from the freedom that comes from the destruction of beaureaucracy. It's not magic and it's dangerous to make the assumption that consensus is truth since in certain cases (scientific) one piece of hard evidence is worth more than any number of uninformed opinions about a topic.

[thesaintofelsewhere]

Who is "solving the issues" politicians? "Intellectuals" deal with peer review at the very least. These are the people who change the world with new technology, medicine, and ideas-- all of which you feel the advantages of every day.

[JamesTheFox]

The final piece of the puzzle for Open Source productivity is crowdfunding platforms. Crowdfunded incentives for programmers helping in Open Source projects will be a revolution that will DWARF the others. If I were Adobe, I'd want to tap into this ASAP to stay on top of their markets.

Crowdfunding also happens to be the greatest disproof of copyright law out there: get incentives for your creativity as your creativity progresses, and you have a business model that can survive without copyright.

[Cameron Belt]

the problem with open source is that its voluntary, I can design a robot and either patent it or throw the plans and software out on the internet for all the world under a GNU license. Nothing socialist about it

[HowlingToFullmoon]

What exactly do you mean by open-source monetary policy and why do you think it's not a legible possibility?

[Syed Nayab]

Sadly with intellectuals, the whole discussion ultimately turns into some kind of Oratorical Tournament instead of Solving the Issues. and most of the Ideas as just mental master*****on.

[Trevor Hamilton]

You can tell he must be a linux user by his beard.

[Eric Fortune]

you might be interested in a "Dan Pink RSA" lecture on youtube. He gets into the science of motivation and why people do what they do

[Martin St John]

wow that one really got real at the end there!