Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically, and Voluntarily-Produced Thoughts

Yochai Benkler is an exceedingly smart, widely-read and thoughtful person, so it is no surprise that his new book is very interesting and well worth reading. In many respects I ought to end my review right here, or maybe after a sentence (such as this one!) in which I explicitly recommend that you obtain and read it. Benkler offers a lot of fascinating observations and predictions that are very useful to consider, even if you are not necessarily in agreement with his world view. In an exercise of either hubris or idiocy, or possibly both, I am going to continue this review beyond that initial introductory paragraph with some observations, and even a few criticisms, of the tome. I’m not really sure who the target audience for a book review such as this is: people who are considering reading the book, people who have already read it and are interested in the reactions of others, or people who have no intention of reading the book but want to know enough about its slant and content so that they can pretend that they did. For the purpose of this review, I’m going to assume that anyone who has read this far has at least some familiarity with Benkler’s academic scholarship. Even if you