Great stuff

What I love about the internet generally is that so much great stuff is out there. Yeah, sure, there is the dark side too, but for those who wish to impose major restrictions on t'internet, I say one can't have one's cake and eat it, too.

You can make as much or as little as you like of the internet, but there is a burgeoning debate amongst the internet literati about its impact on society, for better or for worse.

See for yourself, I'm going to rip Paul Canning's handiwork here, but I'm sure he won't mind as in keeping with good academic practice, credit belongs to those who deserve it... Canning quotes the Technology Liberation Front as the original source, which appears to be accurate if you care to follow the link.

The typology below summarises the main advocates within the "optimist" and "pessimist" camps as regards the world wide web:

Adherents & Their Books / Writings

Internet Optimist	Internet Pessimists
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks	Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail and “Free!”	Lee Siegel, Against the Machine
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody	Nick Carr, The Big Switch
Cass Sunstein, Infotopia	Cass Sunstein, Republic.com
Don Tapscott, Wikinomics	Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited
Kevin Kelly & Wired mag in general	Alex Iskold, “The Danger of Free”
Mike Masnick & TechDirt blog	Mark Cuban

And here’s a rough sketch of the major beliefs or key themes that separate these two schools of thinking about the impact of the Internet on our culture and economy:

Beliefs / Themes

Internet Optimists	Internet Pessimists
Culture / Social
Net is Participatory	Net is Polarizing
Net yields Personalization	Net yields Fragmentation
a “Global village”	Balkanization
Heterogeneity / Diversity of Thought	Homogeneity / Close-mindedness
Net breeds pro-democratic tendencies	Net breeds anti-democratic tendencies
Tool of liberation & empowerment	Tool of frequent misuse & abuse
Economics / Business
Benefits of “free” (“Free” = future of media / business)	Costs of “free” (“Free” = end of media / business)
Increasing importance of “Gift economy”	Continuing importance of property rights, profits, firms
“Wiki” model = wisdom of crowds; power of collective intelligence	“Wiki” model = stupidity of crowds; errors of collective intelligence
Mass collaboration	Individual effort

You can make your own mind up about who you choose to believe. All I can say is that I never really believed in the polarisation of such debates, even though I love the above typology for it points out the fickleness of what is widely considered as "knowledge".

Remember, the pond you fish in determines the fish you catch.