The idea of an economy posited on recognition is not new, but I found an interesting description of a precedent: scientific research. \u00a0In Chapter 8 of “The wisdom of crowds”<\/i>, James Surowiecki described the publication of the first issue of the Royal Society’s\u00a0Philosophical Transactions, <\/i>wherein the editor worked to persuade scientists to forgo sole ownership of ideas hatched in secret in exchange for recognition amongst one’s peers. \u00a0This was a radical change from the way discovery and invention had been carried out in the Middle Ages, where it was confined “to a secretive exclusive few”. \u00a0He makes the point that this was possible because of the near-zero-cost nature of replication of scientific knowledge. \u00a0Unlike physical things of the time, copies of knowledge were effectively cost-free.<\/p>\n
As many have noticed, lots of things are becoming cost-free to replicate. \u00a0So what has worked so well for science could well work for other fields, and that’s what we see in, for example, the open-source software world where people work for reputation. \u00a0The missing element which is just starting to happen is the institutional support that recognizes the ultimate commercial value in such work. \u00a0Large companies are seeing the value in reusing chunks of other people’s work, and in releasing chunks of their own employee’s labors to the public domain, often simply in exchange for attribution.<\/p>\n
As more and more human artifacts become amenable to zero-cost replication, the idea of the reputation economy becomes more relevant.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The idea of an economy posited on recognition is not new, but I found an interesting description of a precedent: scientific research. \u00a0In Chapter 8 of “The wisdom of crowds”, James Surowiecki described the publication of the first issue of the Royal Society’s\u00a0Philosophical Transactions, wherein the editor worked to persuade scientists to forgo sole ownership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}