"In this book, Benkler establishes himself as the leading intellectual of the information age. Profoundly rich in its insight and truth, this work will be the central text for understanding how networks have changed how we understand the world. No work to date has more carefully or convincingly made the case for a fundamental change in how we understand the economy of society."-Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
I happened upon his blog via a link on smartmobs.com about ten minutes after reading a logical commentary in Wired (which I can't find on their website) by Lessig about the stifling of competition by the admistration's policies and actions which favor established big business, not free markets.
Benkler's book is out
Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks, is out. This is by far the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this. The book has a wiki; it can be downloaded as a pdf for free under a Creative Commons license; or it can be bought at places like Amazon.
Read it. Understand it. You are not serious about these issues on either side of these debates unless you have read this book.OR
Check out this explanation of the basic idea for the wiki for The Wealth of Networks quoted in a post with commentary at futureofthebook.org.
At this point, don't take any of this as an endorsement as I haven't read the book or the wiki and have not spent any time at futureofthebook.org. The collective potential of the book wiki sure sounds interesting, though, and it does seem like a book I might find interesting.
Also, if you didn't click on Lessig's link Creative Commons license, check it out here:
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