Micropayments cover microbills and micromeals and microcars. And all those lovely payments add up to the oh so lovely standard of living in rural India or, perhaps, a phonebased sweatshop in Shanghai. It's all the more intriguing when places like the Berkman Center hesitate to put such talks on the net because of copywrite issues which those micropayments might actually address, if, that is, people would be willing to make them.... Ah, there may be the rub!
Joe Beckmann -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Deborah Elizabeth Finn Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 7:31 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: [DDN] I am not an economist (This item is also available with live links through my blog at <http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2005/6/27/974051.html >.) Dear Colleagues, Attending the Berkman Center's internet law program on a press scholarship has given me ample opportunity to protest (with sweeping arm gestures) that I am not a lawyer and not a journalist.(1) Now it's incumbent upon me to point out that I'm not an economist.(2) I was tremendously impressed with Yochai Benkler's presentation on "The Rise of the Networked Economy," but I can't help wondering how we are all going to make a living in the future that he is envisioning, and what the implications are going to be for the philanthropic and nonprofit sector. In the networked economy, we'll be users rather than consumers - and peers rather than employees. We'll all have more autonomy, and engage in more collaboration, as the economy goes online and becomes decentralized. How is the money going to flow in the networked economy, where we all collaborate online in producing knowledge? I asked my friend John McNutt, who knows more about social policy and economics than I do. His answer was "micropayments." For the nonprofit sector, I wonder if this would translate to "microdonations" from philanthropic individuals and institutions, since many of us serve individuals and groups who are not in a position to pay us. Or are we all going to have to get day jobs in the conventional economy (as telemarketers, or baristas, or law school professors) to support ourselves until the networked economy comes into its own and we can live on micropayments that flow from the internet? I'd like to live in the society and economy that Yochai describes. For me it would combine fun and work - after all, I'm the kind of person who has spent hours bookmarking and tagging web sites for the del.icio.us nptech project, simply because I enjoy taxonomizing in the same way that other folks enjoy knitting or sailing. So I'm ready, willing and able to become a member of new networked economy, but I just don't see how we're going to get from here to there, and that's discouraging.(3) What are YOUR thoughts? Best regards from Deborah (1) However, I did have the pleasure of sitting next to Jon Healey of the Los Angeles Times during part of the conference. Now, there's a real journalist. (2) So what am I? I'm a cyber-yenta operating in the nonprofit/philanthropic sector. (3) On bright side, I have to say that Yochai's lecture persuaded me that I didn't entirely waste my youth. All of those hours of studying the social theories of Max Weber, Emile Durkhein, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Georg Simmel finally paid off, in that I had some inkling of the context of Yochai's argument, even if I failed to comprehend it fully. Deborah Elizabeth Finn Boston, Massachusetts, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog http://public.xdi.org/=deborah.elizabeth.finn _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
