Yochai Benkler has given us a comprehensive, complex, and persuasive work in The Wealth of Networks. There is no better place to turn for an account of the processes of creativity and commerce relating to digital networks and the work that people do with them.
Benkler is the most original thinker on matters digital writing today. If there are observations in this book that seem familiar, it is only because others (including most clumsily, myself) have poached Benkler’s shorter works and enthusiastically rephrased his ideas for common consumption. But this book is certain to last and displace all pretenders (including, sadly, my own work). It should be the first place scholars and students turn to understand the radical changes we have encountered in the culture and economics of information in recent years.