In his book ‘The Wealth of Network’, Yochai Benkler proposes that WWW has brought new economic models and social models to the world. The subtitle says ‘How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom’, and the book mostly deals with how web, which is the prima facie social production of the 21st century, can change the way people construct a society as a whole. Based on open sources and sharing models, the economics of a society is now going through a drastic change, based on the unprecedented participation of the people in constructing new worlds online. Even though he professed to be liberal from the beginning of the book, his arguments can be read as too much utopian although he pinpoints several critical social transformation brought with the web cultures.
Contents are as follow:
Chapter 1.The Networked Information Economy Chapter 2.Some Basic Economics of Information Production and Innovation Chapter 3. Peer Production and Sharing 59 Chapter 4. The Economics of Social Production 91 The Political Economy of Property and Commons Chapter 5. Individual Freedom: Autonomy, Information, and Law 133 Chapter 6. Political Freedom Part 1: The Trouble with Mass Media 176 Chapter 7. Political Freedom Part 2: Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere Chapter 8. Cultural Freedom: A Culture Both Plastic and Critical 273 Chapter 9. Justice and Development Chapter 10. Social Ties: Networking Together Chapter 11.