This book exists because Jennifer Pahlka wouldn’t take No for an answer, insisting on my giving a talk about something new, just as I had finished the book tour for Here Comes Everybody; the framing of Cognitive Surplus was the result, so thank you, Jennifer.
The community at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU has provided an incredible home, for me and for this work. Red Burns, the founder, to whom this book is dedicated; Dan O’Sullivan, the associate director; and my colleagues Tom Igoe, Nancy Hechinger, Nick Bilton, Kevin Slavin, and Kio Stark offered vital comments and support. I must also thank current and former students who have always asked sharp questions and pushed for clear answers, especially Cody Brown, Cheryl Furjanic, Jessica Hammer, John Geraci, Jorge Just, Liesje Hodgson, Steven Lehrburger, and Thomas Robertson. My research assistants at ITP, John Dimatos and Corey Menscher, have also been vital sources of observation about social media.
Chris Anderson, Lili Cheng, Tim O’Reilly, Andrew Stolli, and Kevin Werbach all provided their own observations, as well as offered public platforms for the development of this work. Long-running conversations with many colleagues have provided material and insights for this book, including Sunny Bates, Yochai Benkler, danah boyd, Caterina Fake, Scott Heiferman, Tom Hennes, Liz Lawley, Beth Noveck, Danny O’Brien, Paul Resnick, Linda Stone, Martin Wattenberg, David Weinberger, and Ethan Zuckerman.
My agent, John Brockman, helped me clarify what I wanted to say, and Eamon Dolan and Helen Conford of Penguin Press helped me say it. Mel Blake, Ana Dane, Chris Meyer, and Vanessa Mobley all provided useful feedback on earlier versions, and Amy Lang was an invaluable research assistant.
Finally, of course, is Almaz, my endlessly patient wife, and Leo and Marina, my periodically patient children, who have been a source of inspiration and support throughout. Thank you all.
5 TV quickly took up the largest chunk of our free time: There are many sources tracking the number of hours of television use; although the hours vary somewhat by country, in the developed world the numbers range from the high teens to the high twenties. One interesting source for hourly figures, along with analysis, is “The Effects of Television Consumption on Social Perceptions: The Use of Priming Procedures to Investigate Psychological Processes,” by L. J. Shrum, Robert S. Wyer, Jr., and Thomas C. O’Guinn, The Journal of Consumer Research 24.4 (1998): 447.
6 Someone born in 1960 has watched something like fifty thousand hours of TV already: This is simple extrapolation: at around twenty hours a week, someone who has grown up with television has seen about a thousand hours a year for every hour of their life. Another version of the same observation comes from Robert Kubey’s Television and the Quality of Life “… a typical American would spend more than 7 full years watching television out of the approximately 47 waking years each of us lives by age 70.”
6 not only do unhappy people watch considerably more TV: The full reference is Bruno Frey, Christine Benesch, and Alois Stutzer, “Does Watching TV Make Us Happy?” Journal of Economic Psychology 28.3 (2007): 283–313.
7 Television viewing has come to displace: Jib Fowles’s book is Why Viewers Watch: A Reappraisal of Television’s Effects (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 1992), 37.
7 people turn to favored programs when they are feeling lonely: The full reference to Jaye Derrick and Shira Gabriel’s study is “Social Surrogacy: How Favored Television Programs Provide the Experience of Belonging,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45.2 (2009): 352–62.
8 television viewing plays a key role in crowding-out: Luigino Bruni and Luca Stanca’s 2008 paper is “Watching Alone: Relational Goods, Television and Happiness,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 65.3-4 (2008): 506–28.
8 television can play a significant role in raising people’s materialism: In keeping with the expansion of economics to take on many other kinds of measurable social issues, much of the most interesting work on television consumption is now being done by economists, including Marco Gui and Luca Stanca. Their working paper, referenced here, is “Television Viewing, Satisfaction and Happiness: Facts and Fictions,” University of Milan–Biocca, Department of Economics Working Paper Series, 167 (2009), http://dipeco.economia.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper167.pdf (accessed January 6, 2010).
9 Back in 2006, Pluto was getting kicked out of the planet club: Pluto has an orbit so uncharacteristic of the sun’s other eight planets that after much discussion, the International Astronomical Union decided it was not to be labeled a planet anymore. There was much discussion of the decision, before and after; a good review of the decision itself is Mason Inman’s “Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule,” National Geographic, August 24, 2006, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060824-pluto-planet.html (accessed January 6, 2010).
10 Martin Wattenberg, an IBM researcher: Personal communication with author, April 2008.
11 some cohorts of young people are watching TV less than their elders: Paul Bond, “Study: Young People Watch Less TV,” Hollywood Reporter, December 17, 2008, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ic41d147829e712a6a6ecd990ea3a349c (accessed January 7, 2010).
11 Young populations with access to fast, interactive media: Marie-Louise Mares and Emory H. Woodard, “In Search of the Older Audience: Adult Age Differences in Television Viewing,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 50.4 (2006): 595–614.
11 As Dan Hill noted: Dan Hill’s terrific essay, “Why Lost Is Genuinely New Media,” was published on his blog, City of Sound, on March 27, 2006, http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2006/03/why_lost_is_gen.html (accessed January 6, 2010).
12 Charlie Leadbeater, the U.K. scholar of collaborative work: Private communication with author, December 2009.
12 But one of them, Gerald Berstell, chose to ignore the shakes: Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Gerald Berstell, and Denise Nitterhouse, “Finding the Right Job for Your Product,” MIT Sloan Management Review 48.3 (2007): 38–47.
15 In December 2007 a disputed election pitted supporters and opponents: The results of the 2007 Kenyan election were widely discussed. A good contemporaneous description is Jeffrey Gettleman’s “Disputed Vote Plunges Kenya into Bloodshed,” The New York Times, December 31, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/africa/31kenya.html (accessed January 6, 2010).
15 Ory Okolloh: Okollah’s role in founding Ushahidi is described by Dorcas Komo in “Kenyan Techie Honored for Role in Tracking Post-Election Violence,” Mshale: The African Community Newspaper, July 3, 2008, http://mshale.com/ article.cfm?articleID=18192 (accessed January 6, 2010).
16 Ushahidi had been better at reporting acts of violence: The Harvard study was written by Patrick Meier and Kate Brodock, “Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Election Violence: Comparing Mainstream News, Citizen Journalism, and Ushahidi,” Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, October 23, 2008, http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/mapping-kenyas-election-violence (accessed January 6, 2010).
21 an essay in 1997 called “Romancing the Looky-Loos”: Dave Hickey’s marvelous collection of essays, including “Romancing the Looky-Loos,” is Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (West Hollywood, CA: Foundation for Advanced Critical Studies, 1997): 146–54.
23 In 2010 the global internet-connected population will cross two billion people: There are many sources for predictions of growth of internet and mobile phone use. Two good ones are Dave Bailey’s “Global Internet Population to Hit 2.2. Billion by 2013,” Computing, July 21, 2009, http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2246433/analyst-online-user-increase and Kirstin Ridley’s “Global Mobile Phone Use to Pass 3 Billion,” Reuters, June 27, 2007, http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL2712199720070627 (both accessed January 7, 2010).
24 being part of a globally interconnected group: World population estimate from Population Reference Bureau, 2009 World Population Data Sheet (Washington, D.C.: PRB, 2009): 3, http://www.prb.org/pdf09/09wpds_eng.pdf, and age distribution estimate from the Central Intelligence Agency’s “The World Factbook,” https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html#People (both accessed January 7, 2010).
25 More is different: Anderson’s seminal essay, a touchstone for the ways in which aggregates of things exhibit new behaviors, is “More Is Different,” from Science 177 (1972): 393–96.
25 rose from a few million worldwide in 2000 to well over a billion today: The mobile phone growth estimate is from the MIT Media Lab, in “Camera Culture,” http://cameraculture.media.mit.edu (accessed January 7, 2010).
31 Korean citizens staged public protests: A good account of the Seoul protests as they were going on is Elise Yoon’s “More Anti-Lee Myung-Bak Protests Continue,” The Seoul Times, May 11, 2008, http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=6585 (accessed January 7, 2010).
33 I’m here because of Dong Bang Shin Ki: Mizuki (Mimi) Ito, “Media Literacy and Social Action in a Post-Pokemon World” (paper presented as keynote address for the fifty-first NFAIS (National Federation of Advanced Information Services) annual conference, Philadelphia, PA, February 22–24, 2009), http://www.itofisher.com/mito/publications/media_literacy.html (accessed January 7, 2010)
34 access to better, faster, and more widely available communications networks: For a review of the various capabilities offered to citizens in high-tech cities, see “Tech Capitals of the World,” The Age, June 18, 2007, http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/tech-capitals-of-theworld/2007/06/16/1181414598292.html (accessed January 7, 2010).
35 during the month of May, that figure plummeted to less than 20 percent: “No Bottom to Lee Myung-bak’s Approval Ratings,” Anti2mb, June 3, 2008, http://anti2mb.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/no-bottom-to-lee-myung-baks-approval-ratings (accessed January 7, 2010).
35 websites were filled with images of policemen with water cannons: You can find many of these videos on YouTube, such as “Seoul Protest Against Mad-Cow Beef,” uploaded by a user going by dawitjaidii, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf-nutNE_iQ# (accessed January 7, 2010), or a trio of videos on the situation uploaded by a user going by digitallatlive at http://www.youtube.com/user/digitallatlive (accessed January 7, 2010). Interestingly, many of the videos are from users who created their YouTube accounts in early June 2008 and uploaded only one or a few protest videos, suggesting that the protests didn’t just rely on social media, but further drove its use.
36 The People Formerly Known as the Audience: Jay Rosen has been using that phrase for much of this decade, but the most coherent statement of purpose is his blog post of that title, at http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html (accessed January 8, 2010).
37 trying to require citizens to use their real names online: Michael Fitzpatrick, “South Korea Wants to Gag the Noisy Internet Rabble,” The Guardian, October 8, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/09/news.inter net (accessed January 8, 2010).
38 As Ito describes the protesters: Ito made these observations in a keynote speech, “Media Literacy and Social Action in a Post-Pokemon World,” delivered to the fifty-first NFAIS annual conference. A rough transcript of the address is at http://www.itofisher.com/mito/publications/media_literacy.html (accessed January 8, 2010).
40 hired a private detective to use PickupPal: The detective’s affidavit is at http://www.pickuppal.com/save/blog/res/PrivateInvestigationAffidavit.pdf.
40 Trentway-Wagar invoked Section 11 of the Ontario Public Vehicles Act: Daniel Goldbloom has a nice discussion of the legal situation of PickupPal in Ontario in “National Post Editorial Board on PickupPal: Carpooling Is Green and Cheap. So Why Is It Illegal in Ontario?” National Post, August 21, 2008, http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/08/21/national-post-editorial-board-on-pickuppal-carpooling-is-green-and-cheap-sowhy-is-it-illegal-in-ontario.aspx (accessed January 8, 2010).
41 the Ontario legislature amended the Public Vehicles Act: The website for the Save PickupPal movement put up a post after the legislative change: “Bill 118 Receives Royal Assent (We Won!),” Save PickupPal in Ontario, April 24, 2008, http://save.pickuppal.com/?p=16 (accessed January 8, 2010).
43 a scribe could produce a single copy of a five-hundred-page book: Paul Oskar Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome, Italy: Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 1993): 141.
43 four ways a person could make books: David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, An Introduction to Book History (London: Routledge, 2005): 68.
46 All I had to do was type, then click a button marked “Publish”: Motoko Rich, a book reviewer for The New York Times, discusses the National Book Awards and Kingston’s remarks in her blog post at the Times: “National Book Awards: Maxine Hong Kingston 2.0,” The New York Times, November 20, 2008, http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/national-book-awards-maxine-hong-kingston-20 (accessed January 8, 2010).
47 The multitude of books is a great evil: William Hazlitt, ed. and trans., The Table Talk of Martin Luther (London: George Bell and Sons, 1902): 369.
47 multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils: Chester Noyes Greenough, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Volumes VII and VIII (New York: Hearst’s International Library Co., 1914): 164.
48 The essay, titled “The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck”: Melissa McEwan’s, “The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck,” Shakesville from August 14, 2009 is at http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/08/terrible-bargain-we-have-regretfully.html. The comment thread is also extraordinary (accessed January 8, 2010).
50 Whether this revolution in the reading habits of the American public: Quoted in Kenneth Davis and Joann Giusto-Davis, Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America (New York and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984): 68.
57 The writer Nicholas Carr has dubbed this pattern digital sharecropping: Nicholas Carr writes at his blog, Rough Type. “Sharecropping the Long Tail” is from December 19, 2006, http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/sharecropping_t.php (accessed January 8, 2010).
59 sued AOL on behalf of the ten thousand or so other volunteers: Lisa Napoli covered the AOL lawsuit for The New York Times: “Former Volunteers Sue AOL, Seeking Back Pay for Work,” The New York Times, March 26, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/26/nyregion/former-volunteers-sue-aol-seeking-back-pay-for-work.html? (accessed January 8, 2010).
59 trying to make a dollar off the back of free slave labor: Brian McWilliams, “AOL Volunteers Sue for Back Wages,” Internet News, May 26, 1999, http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/8_127431. The site for the class action itself is at http://www.aolclassaction.com, and as of March 4, 2010, official notification of the class action had been mailed to all AOL community leaders.
61 William Safire, an opinion columnist for The New York Times: William Safire made these remarks in “What Else Are We Missing?” The New York Times, June 6, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/opinion/06SAFI.html? (accessed January 8, 2010).
62 “Skyful of Lies” and Black Swans: Nik Gowing, “Skyful of Lies” and Black Swans: The New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crisis (Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2009): 45–46, available as a PDF via http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/publications/skyful-of-lies-black-swans.html (accessed January 15, 2010).
66 worked to make charitable giving part of life in Grobania: “Grobanites for Charity: About Us,” http://www.grobanitesforcharity.org/about (accessed January 8, 2010).
70 a remarkably simple experiment that ignited a controversy: Edward L. Deci, “Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Reinforcement, and Inequity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 22.1 (1972): 113–20.
73 asked whether they would approve a hypothetical government proposal: Bruno S. Frey, Inspiring Economics: Human Motivations in Political Economy (Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2001): 77–81.
73 where money was offered as a reward for volunteering: Bruno S. Frey and Lorenz Goette, “Does Pay Motivate Volunteers?” (Zuerichbergstrasse, Zurich: Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, 1999), http://ideas.repec.org/s/zur/iewwpx.html.
73 this sort of crowding out can appear in children as young as fourteen months: Tomasello’s research on children and their view of how things should be, by some ethical compass (a trait called “normativity,” or the understanding and abiding by norms), was published as “The Sources of Normativity: Young Children’s Awareness of the Normative Structure of Games,” with his coauthors, H. Rakoczy and F. Wameken, in Developmental Psychology 44.3 (2008): 875–81.
74 dozens of studies that had paid experimental subjects: Judy Cameron and David Pierce, “Reinforcement, Reward, and Intrinsic Motivation: A Meta-Analysis,” Review of Educational Research 64.3 (1994): 363–423.
74 people were more motivated to do uninteresting tasks if you paid them: Edward L., Deci, Richard Koestner, and Richard Ryan, “A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 125.6 (1999): 627–68.
74 crowding out of free choice can occur with the introduction of extrinsic motivations: J. Cameron, K. M. Banko, and W. D. Pierce, “Pervasive Negative Effects of Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation: The Myth Continues,” Behavior Analyst 24 (2001): 1–44.
75 philanthropies that use 40 percent of donated money for expenses: The American Institute of Philanthropy, “How American Institute of Philanthropy Rates Charities,” http://www.charitywatch.org/criteria.html (accessed January 9, 2010).
76 not graphics and gore but the feelings of control and competence: Laura Sanders, “Gamers Crave Control and Competence, Not Carnage,” Science News 175.4 (2009): 14.
78 Commons-Based Peer Production and Virtue: Benklar and Nissenbaum’s paper, “Commons-Based Peer Production and Virtue,” appeared in The Journal of Political Philosophy 14.4 (2006): 394–419.
79 growth in postpartum support groups organizing via the internet: Katherine Stone noted the prevalence of postpartum groups in “Postpartum Among Top 10 Fastest Growing Topics at Meetup.com,” Postpartum Progress, October 8, 2009, http://postpartumprogress.typepad.com/weblog/2009/10/postpartumamong-top-10-fastest-growing-topics-at-meetupcom.html (accessed January 9, 2010).
80 And then there’s the section called Thank You: The full name of the Thank You page is “Grobanites for Charity—A Special Thank You!” is at http://www.grobanitesforcharity.org/ty (accessed January 9, 2010).
84 When Linus Torvalds first asked for help: Torvald’s original public announcement of what became Linux appeared as a question about a related operating system, Minix, on August 26, 1991, on the global discussion board usenet under the heading “What Would You Like to See Most in Minix?” Six other usenet users replied over the following two days. (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/msg/b813d52cbc5a044b)
85 Japanese anime (animated cartoons) are often subtitled in English: Sean Leonard, “Celebrating Two Decades of Unlawful Progress: Fan Distribution, Proselytization Commons, and the Explosive Growth of Japanese Animation,” UCLA Entertainment Law Review (Spring 2005): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=696402 (accessed January 9, 2010).
85 Yahoo.com hosts a mailing list for sufferers from Crohn’s disease: Yahoo! Health Groups, “Crohns: Living with Crohn’s Disease, Yahoo! Groups, http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Crohns (accessed January 9, 2010).
85 “EVERYTHING you need to know about the CPSIA”: Steve Spangler, “CPSIA Could Wage Severe Effects on Consumers, Retailers and the Economy,” Steve Spangler Blog, January 3, 2009, http://www.stevespangler.com/in-the-news/cpsia-could-wage-severe-effects-on-consumers-retailers-and-the-economy (accessed January 9, 2010).
87 postwar America saw a general decline in social connections: Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
88 the full crazy range of what people are actually interested in: Nicholas Mirzoeff, personal communication with author, March 12, 2009.
88 opinion pieces by a nerdy know-it-all named Larry Groznic: Larry Groznic’s columns can be found at The Onion, http://www.theonion.com/content/columnists/view/groznic (accessed January 9, 2010).
90 a fanfic author with the pen name of Cassandra Claire: Robert Covile covered the Cassandra Claire story as it was unfolding in “Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before,” Telegraph, January 27, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3350729/Boldly-go-where-no-one-has-gone-before.html (accessed January 9, 2010).
90 Some fan fiction writers even use a “legal” disclaimer: Disclaimers are discussed in Rebecca Tushnet’s “Copyright Law, Fan Practices, and the Rights of the Author,” Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (New York: New York University Press, 2009): 66. A search for the word “Disclaimer” in http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Harry_Potter will bring up many examples of the form.
91 the other charge leveled at Cassandra Claire: The Fan History Wiki has a discussion of this issue called “Cassandra Claire: Profiteering” at http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Cassandra_Claire#Profiteering (accessed January 9, 2010).
93 twenty-four hours of video were being uploaded every minute onto YouTube: M. G. Siegler, “Every Minute, Just About a Day’s Worth of Video Is Now Uploaded to YouTube,” Tech Crunch, May 20, 2009, http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/20/every-minute-just-about-a-days-worth-of-video-is-uploaded-to-youtube (accessed January 9, 2010).
93 Twitter receives close to three hundred million words a day: “In-depth Study of Twitter: How Much We Tweet, and When,” Royal Pingdom, November 13, 2009, Pingdom AB, http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/11/13/in-depth-study-of-twitter-how-much-we-tweet-and-when (accessed January 9, 2010).
93 asked its readers to rank a list of the 50 Most Beautiful People: “Can You Trust Web 2.0?” .net magazine, April 4, 2008, Future Publishing, http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/discover-culture/can-you-trust-web-2-0 (accessed January 9, 2010).
94 The write-in campaign for Hank was started by Kevin Renzulli: Joab Jackson covered the KOAM-inspired write-in at “Hanky-Panky,” Baltimore City Paper, May 6, 1998, http://www.citypaper.com/columns/story.asp?id=5594 (accessed January 9, 2010).
98 stories with titles like “Old People Like the Internet”: Andy McCue, “Old People Like the Internet,” Silicon, November 14, 2003, CBS Interactive Limited, http://www.silicon.com/technology/networks/2003/11/14/old-people-like-the-internet-39116903 (accessed January 9, 2010). Michael Agger, “Geezers Need Excitement: What Happens When Old People Go Online,” Slate, September 11, 2008, http://www.slate.com/id/2199920/ (accessed January 9, 2010). Anne D’Innocenzio, “More Older People Turning to the Internet to Find Love,” red Orbit, September 29, 2004, Associated Press, http://master.redorbit.com/news/technology/89595/more_older_people_turning_to_the_internet_to_find_love/index.html (accessed January 9, 2010).
99 theory-induced blindness: Personal communication with author, May 2009.
100 energetic techies built a phone booth: Brad Templeton, “The Phone Number Is Dead,” Brad Ideas, October 1, 2005, http://ideas.4brad.com/node/269 (accessed January 9, 2010).
102 the self-styled Z-Boys, began riding on skateboards inside the empty pools: Regina Hackett, “Seattle Artists Roll Out Dynamic Skateboard Art Celebrating the Legendary Z Boys,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 3, 2008, http://www.seattlepi.com/visualart/107733_skateboard08.shtml (accessed January 9, 2010).
103 lead user innovation: Eric von Hippel, “Lead Users:A Source of Novel Product Concepts,” Management Science 32.7 (1986): 791–805.
103 their first formal skateboarding competition: “The Z-BOY Story,” Z-Boy, http://z-boy.com (accessed January 9, 2010).
104 improve the ideas of a group and spread them: Michael Farrell, Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work (New York: New York University Press, 2001).
105 the Ultimatum Game: Werner Güth, Rolf Schmittberger, and Bernd Schwarze, “An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining,” Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization 3.4 (1982): 367–88.
107 Versions were run with hundreds of dollars at stake: Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Herbert Gintis, Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
111 In his book Public Associations in Civil Life: Alexis de Tocqueville, “Chapter XXVII: Public Associations,” Democracy in America, Vol. 2 (New York: George Adlard, 1838): 593–607.
112 we design systems that reward selfish people: Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Common Action (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
113 office workers will take fewer if there are paper cutouts of eyes: Lee Bowman, “Office Workers Add to Coffee Kitty if Watched,” Scripps Howard News Service, June 28, 2006, http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2006/jun/28/office-workers-add-to-coffee-kitty-if-watched (accessed January 7, 2010)
114 Conscience is the little voice that tells you someone might be looking: H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writings (New York: Vintage, 1982): 617.
114 Behlendorf was the primary programmer for Apache: “Brian Behlendorf, Founding Member of the Apache Software Foundation Speaks on How Open Source Developers Can Save the World,” Bitsource, October 6, 2009, The Bitsource, http://www.thebitsource.com/2009/10/06/brian-behlendorf-apachecon-keynote (accessed January 9, 2010).
116 People do get paid to work on it: John Naughten, “The High Tech Gift Culture,” A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet (New York: The Overlook Press, 2000); also at http://www.briefhistory.com/pages/extract4.htm (accessed January 9, 2010).
119 upended the idea that humans always determine value rationally: Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper, 2008).
119 commons-based peer production: Yochai Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm,” Yale Law Journal 112 (2002): 371–99.
120 Napster users could share a list of the songs: Spencer E. Ante, “Napster’s Shawn Fanning: The Teen Who Woke Up Web Music,” BusinessWeek, April 12, 2000, Bloomberg, http://www.businessweek.com/ebiz/0004/em0412.htm (accessed January 9, 2010).
120 Napster acquired tens of millions of users in less than two years : Benny Evangelista, “News Analysis: Internet Music Will Still Play on Despite Napster’s Uncertain Future,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 18, 2001, Hearst Communications, http://www.sfgate.com/c/a/2001/02/18/BU39387.DTL (accessed January 9, 2010).
124 “He who receives ideas from me”: Quoted in John Pitman, “Open Access to Professional Information,” IMS Bulletin 36.8 (2007): 13.
125 “Triumph of the Default”: Kevin Kelly, “Triumph of the Default,” The Technium, June 22, 2009, Creative Commons, http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/06/triumph_of_the.php (accessed January 9, 2010).
126 tired of their country’s divisive politics: Sabrina Tavernise, “Young Pakistanis Take One Problem into Their Own Hands,” The New York Times, May 18, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/world/asia/19trash.html (accessed January 9, 2010). The Responsible Citizens site is at http://www.zimmedarshehri.com (accessed January 7, 2010).
128 The Strength of Weak Ties: Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78.6 (1973): 1360.
128 social networks spread all kinds of behaviors: Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler discuss “Social Networks and Happiness” in Edge (2008), http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/christakis_fowler08/christakis_fowler08_index.html (accessed January 9, 2010). Their book is Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (New York: Little, Brown, 2009).
131 “A Fine Is a Price”: Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, “A Fine Is a Price,” Journal of Legal Studies 29.1 (2000): 1–17.
137 our Invisible College: Richard Weld, A History of the Royal Society (London: John W. Parker, West Strand, 1848): 39.
138 Hermetic Books have such involved Obscuritys: Quoted by Lawrence Principe in “Boyle’s Alchemical Pursuits,” Robert Boyle Reconsidered, M. Hunter (ed.) (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,1994), 9.
140 In his book The Economics of Knowledge: Dominique Foray’s book, The Economics of Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004).
142 a kite-sailing community called Zero Prestige: Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005): 103–25.
143 coined the term ”communities of practice: Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
145 Andrew McWilliams, his professor: Andrew McWilliams’s actions are reported in “Student Faces Facebook Consequences,” Toronto Star, March 6, 2008, http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/309855 (accessed January 9, 2010).
146 if work is to be done individually and students collaborate, that’s cheating: James Norrie is quoted in “Facebook User Can Stay at Ryerson,” Toronto Star, March 19, 2008, http://www.thestar.com/article/347688 (accessed January 9, 2010).
146 If this is cheating, then so is tutoring: Avenir is quoted in “Student ‘Plagiarised’ Via Facebook,” Times Higher Education, March 20, 2008, TSL Education LTD., http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=401139§ioncode=26 (accessed January 9, 2010).
151 an essay called “The Zagat Effect”: Steven Shaw’s “The Zagat Effect” appeared in Commentary Magazine (November 2000): 47–50.
154 Chris Anderson, author of Free: Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (New York: Hyperion, 2009): 194–95.
156 The largest studies on PLS or PMA: “Charting the Course of PLS and PMA,” The PatientsLikeMe Blog, August 11, 2009, http://blog.patientslikeme.com/2009/08/11/charting-the-course-of-pls-and-pma (accessed January 9, 2010).
157 he got his neurologist to alter his 10mg dose of baclofen: Thomas Goetz tells the baclofen story in “Practicing Patients,” about the rising involvement of patients in all aspects of their diagnosis and care. The New York Times Magazine, March 23, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/magazine/23patients-t.html (accessed January 9, 2010).
158 it also has an “openness philosophy”: “The Value of Openness,” The Patients-LikeMe Blog, December 13, 2007, http://blog.patientslikeme.com/2007/12/13/the-value-of-openness (accessed January 9, 2010).
161 Steve Ballmer of Microsoft denounced the shared production of software: Lea Graham, “MS Ballmer: Linux Is Communism,” The Register, July 31, 2000, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/31/ms_ballmer_linux_is_communism/ (accessed January 10, 2010).
162 Robert McHenry, “The Faith-Based Encyclopedia,” Technology Commerce Society Daily, November 15, 2004, http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111504A (accessed January 10, 2010).
162 compared bloggors to monkeys: Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amatuer: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today’s User-Generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values (New York: Broadway Business, 2007): 2.
163 a slim volume called Experiences in Groups: W. R. Bion, Experience in Groups and Other Papers (New York: Routlege, 1991).
165 The video starts simply enough: “Couch Surfing,” Current TV, July 21, 2007, http://current.com/items/76406002_couch-surfing.htm (accessed January 10, 2010).
167 Hitchhiking is choosing to have faith in other human beings: Pippa Bacca and Siliva Moro, “Progretto,” Brides on Tour, http://bridesontour.fotoup.net/progetto.html (accessed January 10, 2010).
167 Shortly after leaving Istanbul, Pippa Bacca was abducted: Laura Kind, “A Plea for Peace in White Goes Dark,” Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/31/world/fg-pippa31?pg=5 (accessed January 10, 2010).
169 religious fundamentalists named Sri Ram Sene attacked women drinking: “Young India Vents Anger Over Mangalore Incident on Internet,” Thaindian News, January 27, 2009, http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/young-india-vens-anger-over-mangalore-incident-on-internet_100147756.html (accessed January 10, 2010).
169 The founder of Sri Ram Sene, Pramod Muthali: “Girls Assaulted at Mangalore Pub,” The Times of India, January 26, 2009, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Girls_assaulted_at_Mangalore_pub/articleshow/4029791.cms (accessed January 10, 2010).
169 the Association of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women: Philip Reeves, “‘Moral Police’ in India to Get Valentine’s Underwear,” National Public Radio, February 13, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100624625 (accessed January 10, 2010).
170 Susan’s campaign flooded Muthali’s office with chaddis: Robert Mackey, “Indian Women Fight Violence with Facebook and Underwear,” New York Times Lede Blog, February 13, 2009, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/indian-women-use-facebook-for-valentines-protest (accessed January 10, 2010).
171 the state of Mangalore arrested Muthali: “Muthali Arrested to Save V-Day in Karnataka,” Indian Express, February 13, 2009, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/muthalik-arrested-to-save-vday-in-karnataka/423184 (accessed January 9, 2010).
175 You can always get what you want …: From Gary Kamiya’s “The Death of the News,” Salon, February 17, 2009, http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/02/17/newspapers/index.html (accessed January 10, 2010).
176 In a free culture, you get what you celebrate: Dean Kamen describes this idea in “You Get What You Celebrate,” Xconomy Boston, January 2, 2008, http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/01/02/you-get-what-you-celebrate (accessed January 10, 2010).
177 the assumption that ”people are basically good”: “Pierre Omidyar on ‘Connecting People,’” BusinessWeek, June 20, 2005, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938900.htm (accessed January 10, 2010).
177 This idea, as noble as it is, didn’t quite pan out for eBay: Tobias J. Klein, Christian Lambertz, Giancarlo Spagnolo, and Konrad O. Stahl, “The Actual Structure of eBay’s Feedback Mechanism and Early Evidence on the Effects of Recent Changes,” International Journal of Electronic Business 7.3 (2009): 301–20.
177 an 8 percent premium on price: Paul Resnick published these findings with his coauthors Richard Zeckhauser, John Swanson, and Kate Lockwood, in “The Value of Reputation on eBay:A Controlled Experiment,” Experimental Economics 9.2 (2006): 79–101.
179 added a fake quote to composer Maurice Jarre’s Wikipedia page: Shawn Pogatchnik discussed Fitzgerald’s actions in “Student Hoaxes World’s Media on Wikipedia,” MSNBC, May 12, 2009, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30699302 (accessed January 10, 2010).
185 notes in his book The Success of Open Source: Steven Weber, The Success of Open Source (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005): 272.
188 He got a loan to enter the indulgence-printing business: The British Library discusses Gutenberg’s printing of indulgences in its documentation of Gutenberg’s Bible: http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/indulgences.html (accessed January 9, 2010).
188 John Tetzel, the head pardoner for German territories: Tetzel’s place in history was largely secured by Martin Luther’s objections to indulgences in 1517, but his name recently reappeared when the Catholic Church brought back indulgences in 2008; in discussing this change, John Allen references Tetzel’s phrase in the Room for Debate blog, http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/sin-and-its-indulgences (accessed January 7, 2010).
190 As Elizabeth Eisenstein notes in The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
192 a computer system called PLATO: Elisabeth Van Meer discusses this history in “PLATO: From Computer-Based Education to Corporate Social Responsibility,” Iterations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Software History (2003): 6–22.
196 “The behavior you’re seeing is the behavior you’ve designed for”: Joshua Porter, “The Behavior You’re Seeing Is the Behavior You’ve Designed For,” Bokardo, July 28, 2009, http://bokardo.com/archives/the-behavior-youve-designed-for (accessed January 10, 2010).
203 One of the most parsimonious examples of this pattern on the web is from JavaRanch: “Be Nice,” JavaRanch, http://faq.javaranch.com/java/BeNice (accessed January 10, 2010).
203 it sometimes upgraded its software every half hour: Nisan Gabbay, “Flickr Case Study: Still About Tech for Exit?” Startup Review, August 27, 2006, http://www.startup-review.com/blog/flickr-case-study-still-about-tech-for-exit.php (accessed January 10, 2010).
203 has its users watch people trying to use their service every day: Meetup’s user-testing setup observed by the author and discussed at “Meetup’s Dead Simple User Testing,” http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/13/meetups-dead-simple.html (accessed January 9, 2010).
205 ”If you want to solve hard problems, have hard problems”: Brewster Kahle advised on the Libarary of Congress’s digital preservation efforts starting in 2003 (a project I also worked on); he made this remark at a meeting in Berkeley, California, in April 2003.
206 clarity is violence: David Weinberger made this observation in a talk called “What Groups Will Be,” presented at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Santa Clara, CA, April 26, 2003.
207 The Elements of Style (popularly known as Strunk and White): William Strunk’s book The Elements of Style (Geneva, NY: Press of W. P. Humphrey, 1918) was later updated and expanded by E. B. White, hence the popular name.
208 some feared it would lead to less formality between the sexes: Claude S. Fisher, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994): 356.
abundance versus scarcity, 49–50, 60–61, 189
advertising, 48–49, 59
age. See generational difference; senior
citizens; young people
aggregation
of cognitive surplus, 23–24, 27–28, 161–62
collaborative participation and, 117
coordination and, 40, 41–42
creation and sharing and, 25
of free time, 27–28
value and, 161
alchemy, 138–40
ALS, 155–56, 157, 159
altruistic punishment, 109
amateurs
connectedness and, 89–90, 95
coordination and, 83–85, 95, 110–11
motivation and, 82–83