Coase's Penguin is learning to fly: Building the Wikipedia of the future

Andrew Lin, in his phenomenal book “The Wikipedia Revolution,” called that moment “Wikipedia’s magic,” the rare time when “the “socio-psychological” reward of interacting with others, and the “hedonic” personal gratification of the task” come together. And that, in essence, is why peer production can be so much more efficient at allocating creative... See more

When we hear “lowering the cost of ownership of knowledge” most people immediately assume we’re talking about copyright. But as Stratechery writer Ben Thompson and ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin have both rightly pointed out, the scarce resource online isn’t copyrightable content itself - it’s people and their ability to bestow legitimacy on the ... See more

hether the knowledge is basic science in an academic article, investment research in a Reddit thread, or investigative journalism via a new Substack — we’ll explore how to get more of it and more impact out of it.

This has been the status quo for a while — either you have entirely open, non-commercial projects like Wikipedia or you have unilaterally owned projects like Eureka. But now, thanks to lower costs of building products and lower costs of implementing community ownership, we are starting to see a new mode: community owned peer production.

Benkler’s key addition in “Coase’s Penguin” was a framework for understanding why and when groups of individuals motivated primarily by the cultural significance of their work can be more efficient than markets or firms in the allocation of creative effort. In other words, how the web creates an environment where massively valuable projects like Li... See more

When you think about it on a people level, this danger becomes clear. If those who have been willing to participate in peer production purely for the societal benefit are no longer interested given its financial nature, then we lose the people who are most likely to pursue impact over hype. But if we can do it in a way that allows more of those peo... See more

No doubt, monetary reward could actually decrease the perception of cultural benefit — not everything should be commoditized. But one key benefit to such a model would be that it allows its members to actually build sustainable lives based on their contribution, rather than simply volunteering out of the drive to produce something valuable.

So while it seems obvious, one of Benkler’s most important contributions is that he provided a neat framework and even some equations for thinking about why and when people contribute to the building of open knowledge. We enjoy creating and curating impactful knowledge. Anyone who has worked with scientists, but also with most writers or other know... See more

One of the reasons I’m particularly excited that experiments in digital ownership are tending towards communities and peer production is because knowledge creation is a team sport. That’s something I know from working in some amazing neuroscience labs, my career in product development, and the past few years of writing online in various places. Sin... See more