The Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and free and open source and software are brilliant, wonderful things. They’re examples of forms of collaboration never before possible, and are just a glimmer of what’s to come. But they’re not guaranteed.
Yochai Benkler says it far better than I could:
Social production is a real fact, not a fad. It is the critical long term shift caused by the Internet. Social relations and exchange become significantly more important than they ever were as an economic phenemon.
So, next time you open the paper, and you see an intellectual property decision, a telecoms decision – it’s not about something small and technical. It is about the future of the freedom to be as social beings with each other and the way information, knoweldge and culture will be produced.
If you haven’t read Benkler’s book, The Wealth of Networks, I highly recommend you do so. It’s amazing, and freely available online under a creative commons license. (It’s also in print, for paper lovers like me.)
Found on DigiDave.
UPDATE: Swapped image in for nasty flash embedding.
hacker journalist 
When I worked at Wired and Wired News, I covered the convergence of entertainment, society and technology.
Much of what I covered was intellectual property and copyright. I was always upset when I’d write about the issues of IP and copyright, privacy and information control — and there would be little readership.
But I agree, it’s the most important piece of information that you can have — how this all works — in a digital age.
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