essay by Pierre de Vries, a response to David Weinberger. Are forests governed tacitly or explicitly? In the woodland near my house, only the red alder knows how to make its leaves, and the red huckleberry and skunk cabbage pick their ideal spots without having to be told. The shrews and raccoons decide what to […]
essay by JP Rangaswami, a response to David Weinberger and David Johnson. Human beings are complex adaptive systems. We’re surrounded by such systems, in nature and in society: our immune systems, our bodies, the natural ecosystems around us, the very society we live in. The Net is no different, both in its complexity as well […]
essay by David Johnson, a response to David Weinberger. David Weinberger’s essay suggests that we are better off, at least in the realm of “governance” of online activities, when we don’t (or don’t have to) write things down. His point makes sense with regard to certain types of online groups, engaged primarily in discussion rather […]
essay by Kevin Werbach, a response to David Weinberger. David Weinberger’s essay demonstrates that what we do know, but don’t formalize, can actually help us. His analysis is characteristically deep and provocative. However, the parts he leaves out demand a closer look. The real action lies at the interface between tacit and explicit governance mechanisms […]
essay by Esther Dyson, a response to David Weinberger. The whole point of the net is that it is decentralized and heterogeneous: One size need not fit all. Thus there is no need to resolve the question of whether tacit or explicit rules are better for online communities. But you can ask when to use […]
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Since governance is, like speaking, co-extensive with the rise of civilization, it’s curious that it has such a bad name. Or perhaps it’s not so curious. Governance, as an explicit social structure, codified and implemented, arises when tacit governance fails. At its best, explicit governance is a response to a breakdown. It rarely restores a society to its prior, unbroken state…
We live in extraordinary times. For one billion of the six billion people on the planet, our lives are mediated by digital technologies. The way we use these technologies has a huge impact on many aspects of life in wired cultures around the world: how we do business, how we connect with one another, how […]
Michael Barrett Ken Banks Judith Donath Melanie Dulong de Rosnay Esther Dyson Jean-Claude Guédon Melissa Hagemann Lewis Hyde Reed Hundt David Johnson Daisy Pignetti JP Rangaswami Doc Searls Wendy Seltzer Clay Shirky Peter Suber Pierre de Vries David Weinberger Kevin Werbach Jonathan Zittrain John Willinksy Daithi Mac Sithigh Charlie Leadbeater
How are human rights such as freedom of expression, privacy, and association, newly understood, observed, advanced or endangered in this space? How has national sovereignty reasserted itself in recent years through government controls, such as Internet censorship and filtering? How do peer production and volunteer networks redefine the economic, social and political structures of modern […]
Since the early frontier days of the Internet, the question of how the medium should be controlled and by whom, has been hotly debated. Yet the governance questions that characterized the early 1990s—“How will baseline rules of conduct that facilitate reliable communications and trustworthy commerce be established? Who will define, punish and prevent wrongful actions […]
