Benkler vs. Goldsmith & Wu

The selection from Yochai Benkler’s book The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom seemed to be essentially the counterargument to Goldsmith and Wu’s Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World. Goldsmith and Wu claimed the internet to be necessarily bordered with required national governance to protect honest citizens from those that want to copy and defraud others. Meanwhile, Benkler assumed the “goodness” of all people and took pride in what he considered the greater autonomy, democracy, self-reflection and human connections offered by the networked information economy.

Where Goldsmith and Wu stressed the influence of territory and government interference, Benkler argued that the internet is a source “of information and communication facilities that no one owns or exclusively controls” (465). Benkler also stated that the internet offers “a genuine reorganization of the public sphere” (465) where Goldsmith and Wu emphasized the commonalities between the territorial space and the establishment of the internet. In a similar sub-argument Benkler claimed that the internet is less hierarchically organized and controlled than mass media. This idea was also addressed in Goldsmith and Wu’s work as they discussed the influence of the government hierarchy on the internet.

Finally, Benkler claimed that the internet would most likely bring about a redistribution of wealth and power from the dominant businesses to social groups and individuals. This somewhat utopian ideal was stressed by Goldsmith and Wu as antithetical to the real desires of internet users looking for a safe and secure network. The only statement all of these authors might agree on was that the internet is providing an “opportunity” for change. Benkler advocated taking hold of the opportunity in his work, and Goldsmith and Wu saw change as possible but only through certain restrictions. Overall, Benkler, Goldsmith and Wu all offered interesting perspectives on the future of the internet, but as they almost completely opposed each other; the end results will most likely be a combination of theories.