Sep 20 2010
Week 4 Framing Questions
1. In Chapter 2, Benkler discusses the trends and dynamics of economics of information production and innovation over the last century or so. With this said, he classifies the Internet as more of a “nonproprietary production” plan that can “play an important role in our information production system.” On Pg. 54, he states that the Internet, as a digitally networked environment, creates a capacity to “increase the efficacy, and therefore the importance, of many more, and more diverse, nonmarket producers.” Because of these nonmarket producers of information that is supplied on the Internet and its broad, non-profited funded supply of information, what confidence level and trust can people put into the Internet? Are we simply just getting quantity over quality, or are we receiving both? Does this wide array of choices of materials that are supplied by the World Wide Web, allow for a greater source of trusted information, and can we, as the consumers, trust ourselves to these outside sources that we are not familiar with as we are with some accredited institutions and profited producers?
2. In Chapter 10 of Wealth of Networks, Benkler talks about how asynchronous the Internet can be and how that can be quite beneficial for individual communication purposes. For example, many people chose telephone conversations as their primary means of communicating with their close relationships. However, the Internet “makes it easier and cheaper to communicate with family and friends, at close proximity or over great distances, through the barriers of busy schedules and differing time zones”. With the invention of the Internet and through this new means of asynchronous communication, despite its advantages, what are its disadvantages? What all is lost through this means of communicating? Do many people still prefer to use synchronous means, such as using the telephone, for communicating with people and if so, who and for what reasons? As a society, do we lose pieces of conversations, and what is sacrificed, when they are mediated through these virtual identities and messages?
3. In Chapter 10 of the Wealth of Networks, on Pg. 363, Benkler discusses how users increase their connections with preexisting relations through their use of the Internet. He describes a study done in a Toronto suburb where homes had access to high speed Internet before it had been widely adopted in America. In this study, they found that neighbors who did have the high speed Internet were able to “connect with three times as many of their neighbors by name and regularly talked with twice as many as those who were not wired. But then he combats this statement and states that stronger ties with these neighbors, however, may not have been affected by the Internet variable. Instead, a better indicator of a stronger tie, they found was how long someone had lived in the neighborhood. This being said, is it better as a whole to have weak connections to many, or have a deeper connection and stronger ties with a select few? On a broad scale, does technologically being connected with a lot of people be more or less beneficial than being very strongly connected to a select few? Can you there be both and still remain balanced? How might this affect other cultures,such as traditional cultures, whose dominant ideology centers around strong personalized connections with family and friends?