(2007-11-14) Turnipseed Interviews Benkler

Joel Turnipseed (in Jason Kottke's space) interviews Yochai Benkler of The Wealth Of Networks.

• In terms of the economics of academic publication, I think the press found that they did much better than usual with this book, partly, at least, because many more people got partial exposure to it online, and then bought it. But I don't think that this is the long-term strategy for academic presses (Book Publishing). Because ultimately the (EBook) display technology will catch up. What is the right path for academic presses is to use this transition period to learn how to make online books and book sites into powerful learning platforms, and to use those capabilities to reorient the universities from the trend to treating the presses as self-sustained centers, back to a time when the presses were part of what universities needed to subsidize from their main teaching role - as part of their effort to disseminate the knowledge they produce.

• I think there are certain well-defined threats to this model. If we end up with a proprietary communications platform, such as the one that the FCC's spectrum and Broad Band policies are aiming to achieve; and on that platform we will have proprietary, closed platforms like the IPhone, then much of the promise of the networked environment will be lost.