I think this one is kind of interesting, considering that it would actually create room for discussion from last week’s assignment on copyrighting and conflict but, how about Limewire. This here is a gift economy, there is an established network between users and there is a lot of information or file sharing that takes place. Or what Kollack would consider generalized exchange. Now, only for the purpose of this assignment, I’m going to disregard the fact that Limewire itself promotes copyright infringement because that’s not the topic for discussion here.
Now, I have viewed the site before (Limewire) and have seen how it works and you have to admit it’s quite impressive. It’s impressive when you think about it the way Kollack states, “Yet the wonder of the Internet is not that there is so much noise, but that there is any significant cooperation at all. Given that online interaction is relatively anonymous, that there is no central authority, and that it is difficult or impossible to impose monetary or physical sanctions on someone, it is striking that the Internet is not literally a war of all against all. For a student of social order, what needs to be explained is not the amount of conflict but the great amount of sharing and cooperation that does occur in online communities”.
When using Limewire its always for personal/individual gain or growth. You never see who you are sharing a file with or obtaining it from, and you don’t feel an obligation to reciprocate the transaction to the immediate individual that you receive the file from however, you know that someone else will be interested in what you have and that other users can gain from you now also.
When you think about what Limewire provides, it be viewed as what Kollack considers, “Public goods”. And to be honest I couldn’t explain this any better than Kollack does, so Kollack says, “In particular, many of the benefits provided in cyberspace have the quality that they are public goods, which are goods that anyone might benefit from, regardless of whether they have helped contribute to their production. A public good is defined by two characteristics. First, it is to some degree indivisible in that one person's consumption of the good does not reduce the amount available to another. One person's viewing of a fireworks display, for example, does not reduce what can be seen by another person. Second, a public good is to some degree non-excludable in that it is difficult or impossible to exclude individuals from benefiting from the good – one receives the benefits of a national defense system regardless of whether one pays taxes. In most cases a public good will exhibit these two qualities to some degree only; pure public goods are the exception”. And to just kind of tie all of this together Kollack also states, “Everyone in a group may be made better off by the provision of a public good, but that in no way guarantees that it will be produced”.
Lewis Hyde expresses the spirit of a gift economy (and its contrast to a market economy) as follows: The opposite of "Indian giver" would be something like "white man keeper"… Whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away not kept. Or, if it is kept, something of similar value should move in its stead… The gift may be given back to its original donor, but this is not essential… The only essential is this: the gift must always move.[19]
To provide another example of this, according to Gifford Pinchot, who also refers to Lewis Hyde, he states, “In a commodity (or exchange) economy, status is accorded to those who have the most. In a gift economy, status is accorded to those who give the most to others. Lest we think that the principles of a gift economy will only work for simple, primitive or small enterprises, Hyde points out that the community of scientists follows the rules of a gift economy. The scientists with highest status are not those who possesses the most knowledge; they are the ones who have contributed the most to their fields. A scientist of great knowledge, but only minor contributions is almost pitied - his or her career is seen as a waste of talent”.
Kollack offers great insight to this topic providing vivid analogies to explain the material. So I want to end this with what I think really puts it all into perspective by Kollack, “This is not to say that online cooperation is inevitable or expanding. Nor is it to say that online cooperation and collective action is always a benefit to the larger society. However, the changing economies of online interaction have shifted the costs of providing public goods – sometimes radically – and thus changed the kinds of groups, communities, and institutions that are viable in this new social landscape”.
Works cited
Gift Economy. (n.d.) In WIKIPEDIA The Free Encyclopedia online. Retrieved September 19, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
Pinchot, G. (1995). The Gift Economy. Business on a Small Planet (Summer 1995 page 49). Retrieved September 19, 2008, from http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/PinchotG.htm
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