The New Media Economy

As Benkler is so quick to point out in his incredibly dense novel, everything’s changing you guys! This ain’t your daddy’s economy! Like the printing press, from hereon out, we shall view history as before internet and post internet. While this is true, that significant progress has been made towards a truly democratic media, I can’t help but reemphasize the fact the human nature does not change. No matter how many blogs and wikis pop up, the authority of and power of what is perhaps best referred to as “the man,” will never go away. And maybe that’s a good thing.

When we look at characteristics of the new economy, as described by Benkler, he brings up the concept of decentralization. I interpreted this as the idea that information is no longer distributed solely by media powerhouses and large companies. Blogs and social media have created a grassroots network of peer media which threatens the Big Brother-like control of the mass media. While we can go on and on about how groundbreaking this interpersonal network of regular schmoes is, I really don’t see this network toppling the totalitarian hold that mass media has upon our culture. In order to have the power and influence that mass media has, these by-the-people, for-the-people networks need not only management, organization and leadership, they need money. Money means either benefactors of advertisers. And soon enough, your anti-authoritarian blog is inherently spouting the American capitalist agenda. So sure, we can decentralize information, but I don’t think it will ever carry the same influence as the information machine that tells all of America what to think about.

Consider the motivations for producing information: benefit maximization and cost minimization. With the first, I can use my exclusive rights on certain information to make money, and my non-exclusive rights to get money and non-monetary benefits. With the second, I can save my own money by using public domain information or purchased or privately shared information. So in both regards, I’m either intending to get money back on my informational investment, or I’m trying to save money on the front-end. Although there might be nine different production strategies, they all boil down to the same strategy of leveraging the information you possess to gain wealth, in one form or another. Maybe its just me, but this concept seems at odds with the democratic themes of the new information economy. While Wikipedia, arguably the world’s greatest source of information, fulfills these ideals, it does offer a way for information producers to make a living.

And that’s really what it all comes down to. As long as people need to make a living, they’ll need money. Sometimes this is influenced by greed, but everyone needs to leverage their information production capabilities to their own advantage, especially the decentralized ones. That’s why huge corporations are here to stay, and so are intellectual property laws. As wonderful as a world with free information would be, I plan to utilize my iMedia degree to produce information and collect on the money that it sells for. It’s the way the world works, and no amount of blogs or social networks is really going to change that.