KCB201: I've got that funny feeling ...

Does anyone else get that childish feeling when they read a book that's just been published? Anyone?

No?

Ok it's just me then.

Last night I downloaded Yochai Benkler's new book, The Wealth of Networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom.

You know the one, John gave us the link in week 8? Benkler has made his whole tome available under the Creative Commons License.

And a hefty tome it is. I got Dad to print it out on his work printer: it takes up about 2 inches thick of A4 paper with double-sided printing.

The thing I like about it is, when you're reseaching stuff about Virtual Cultures, any resource older than about 2 years seems outdated and redundant.

[Of course there are the classics - people who were theorising about VCs before the internet became popular - but most other books just seem 'old'. I hired out a book from the library the other day called Blogs. That's it - Blogs - and it was like `whoah man, you can publish your own words on the internet!! Yeah!! This phenomenon is called weblogging, a term which can be shortened to 'blogging.` And I'm like `that was sooo 2001. Contemporise, man!`]

Benkler's book was published earlier this month, and I'd love to say that means the ink is still drying, but I got it off the net so I guess that cliche is meaningless.

Anyway, I'm beginning to like this creative commons stuff.

I'll let you know how the book is when I start reading it.