We needed someone to chronicle the creative ferment and astonishing changes whipping around us in the Web 2.0-enabled commons.
And now David Bollier has done so in his meticulous and very readable new book, Viral Spiral (New Press, $27 hardcover), whose publication date is either tomorrow or next week. (Disclosure: I’ve known the author since we were 17 and recruited him for the Advisory Board of Ourmedia.org.)
For newcomers to the world of Web 2.0, the Long Tail and crowdsourcing — the social Web would have been a more apt term for the phenomenon Bollier describes — Viral Spiral serves as an indispensable primer, laying out in rich detail the birth of Creative Commons, the role played by such seminal figures as Lawrence Lessig, Jimmy Wales, Hal Abelson, Tim O’Reilly and others, and the underlying dynamics of law and culture that are powering the rise of user-created media.
But even those of us deeply familiar with these subjects will come away with a deeper understanding of the social Web and the critical role that the commons — the notion that we all benefit when we’re free to build upon others’ works — plays in the massive upheaval now taking place in media, business and politics.
Bollier is perfectly suited to assay this landscape as the editor of OntheCommons.org and co-founder of Public Knowledge. He writes early in the book:
Individuals working with one another via social networks are a growing force in our economy and society. The phenomenon has many manifestations, and goes by many names—"peer production," "social production," "smart mobs," the "wisdom of crowds," "crowdsourcing," and "the commons." The basic point is that socially created value is increasingly competing with conventional markets, as GNU/Linux has famously shown. Through an open, accessible commons, one can efficiently tap into the "wisdom of the crowd," nurture experimentation, accelerate innovation, and foster new forms of democratic practice.
This is why so many ordinary people—without necessarily having degrees, institutional affiliations or wealth—are embarking upon projects that, in big and small ways, are building a new order of culture and commerce.
Bollier provides a broad lens to the commons, taking it out of its legalistic straitjacket and showing how it’s relevant to our daily lives. And he brings us up to date, outlining the important new initiatives that Science Commons is bringing to the scientific community and that Open Education is bringing to the cloistered, often stultifying world of academia.
Bollier’s previous books, Brand Name Bullies and Silent Theft, were important contributions to the ongoing policy debates over intellectual property and creative freedom. Viral Spiral provides the overarching framework that helps us appreciate how and why the forces of disruption are changing our lives — mostly for the better.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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