Networked information economies and political morality

In Yochai Benkler’s Toward a Political Economy of Information, he examines the prospective impact of a shift from what he calls an “industrial information economy” to a “networked information economy.” In this networked economy, the centralized production and distribution of information is challenged as networked individuals connect as engage users that actively participate in, create and judge information based on their own access to the new ecosystem of knowledge. Benkler does not suppose that this networked economy will supplant the industrial information economy, but it will, he asserts, have the potential for profound effects on the contours of liberal democracies. He defines these effects as applying to the wider political morality, the intent and actions of nations and their governments.

Within the sphere of political morality Benkler cites three core values of liberal democracies that stand to gain from this transition in particular: autonomy, democracy and social justice. While these three pillars may be expressed with varying degrees of emphasis in different nations, he says, all stand to be significantly impacted. “If the networked information economy is permitted to emerge from the institutional battle,” Benkler says, “it will enable an outward shift of the limits that productivity places on the political imagination… A society committed to any positive combination of the three values needs to adopt robust policies to facilitate these modes of production, because facilitating these modes of [networked] production does not represent a choice between productivity and liberal values, but rather an opportunity actually to relax the efficient limit on the plausible set of political arrangements available given the constraints of productivity.”[1]

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