Week 9 Reflections

(I accidentally read this stuff weeks ago and am reposting my old post with some new links)

My initial reaction to Ghosh's article was "wow, the Internet has changed so little in 16 years."We continue to see the sharing of free, intrinsic assets between citizens of different digital communities. Ghosh makes a case that people can develop social capital and reputation through online engagement however that doesn't translate to real money.

I argue however there is evidence that money can be made in the knowledge economy. Within digital communities is a wealth of free knowledge about peoples' purchases, questions about products, consumption patterns, etc. Within the last 10 years the cost of producing hardware as a result of cheaper microchips, the adoption of rapid, small scale fabrication using laser cutters and 3-D printers has greatly reduced the cost of bringing a product to market.

Within the online film communities I frequent, people not only are presenting knowledge or tutorials, but they've begun developing their own products/solutions which lead to companies. Some examples include, Jag35, HondoGarage, or VideoCopilot (software example). These small entities can fabricate new ideas quickly and also bring the ideas of their clients to fruition. A lot of these companies aren't large scale manufacturers and in many cases already the necessary equipment to produce. This allows them to be more agile as they don't have to mass produce to recoup costs.

Additionally, companies like Google and Amazon offer affiliate programs that allow opinion leaders or people with digital reputations, the ability to make a small fee from their blog postings.

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While reading Gladwell, Ghosh, and Anderson, I couldn't help but think about the environmental effects of our transition to a digital media model. What is the environmental cost of having on-demand access to produce and consume media/content? We've replaced printing presses with data centers that require a lot of energy. People are also upgrading their televisions, tablets, and phones at a pretty rabid rate that creates a huge amount of waste, much of which gets shipped to the developing world. There isn't a lot of academic literature I could find about this, though I think it could be an interesting space for inquiry.