From the Introduction to “The Wealth of Networks“:
We are in the midst of a technological, economic, and organizational transformation that allows us to renegotiate the terms of freedom, justice, and productivity in the information society. How we shall live in this new environment will in some significant measure depend on policy choices that we make over the next decade or so. To be able to understand these choices, to be able to make them well, we must recognize that they are part of what is fundamentally a social and political choice–a choice about how to be free, equal, productive human beings under a new set of technological and economic conditions. As economic policy, allowing yesterday’s winners to dictate the terms of tomorrow’s economic competition would be disastrous. As social policy, missing an opportunity to enrich democracy, freedom and justice in our society while maintaining or even enhancing our productivity would be unforgivable.
I am loving this book.
By the way, David Weinberger blogged the book release event in NYC.
By the way #2, there is a wiki to go along with the book.
By the way #3, so far I’ve been reading with a mind to how to bring these ideas more fully into an educational context. Anyone up for a book club wiki? (I may not have the time, but I’d love to facilitate…)
I read the intro to this last week when Lessig first blogged it. Very interesting stuff–it seems like education is an ideal site for the development of non-proprietary knowledge. I’d be interested in discussing, but probably not for a couple of weeks, until after the end of my semester.