TEDxShanghai: New Online Commons

The New Online Commons

The Internet’s New Public Spaces

Andrew LihThe Wikipedia Revolution

15 June 2009

One Many

One

Many

Old Media

In personPhone call

PublishingBroadcasting

Letter to editor

Call-in show

One Many

One

Many

Web 1.0 Media

Email, SMSInstant

message

Email blastWeb site, CMS

Feedback form

Comments

Chat roomMailing list

One Many

One

Many

Web 2.0 Media

FacebookLinkedIn

(Discovery)

Blogging

Blogcomments Wikipedia

One Many

One

Many

Twitter

Directmessage

µ blogging

@username #hashtag

One Many

One

Many

Commons

Wikipedia(Knowledge commons)

Twitter(Information commons)

Metaphors: WikipediaCommunity names: village pump, forum,

esplanade

Commons properties

Open and accessibleNavigable

Human-orientedSafe

Adaptable

Wikipedia and Twitter

Community driven norms

Situated (custom) software

Fast adaptationLow participation

barrierPublic spaces/zeitgeist

Distinction

“Free culture” and Creative Commons

vs.Communications

commons creating public spaces

Lessig

“weirdly totalitarian” communications of the 20th century

yields to “read/write”

M2M Information Pyramid

Information / messaging

data / transmission

knowledge / collaboration

wisdom

Wikipedia

Twitter

P2P, BitTorrent

?

News industry

Journalism not doomed

Guiding the public to wisdom

Fortune at the top of the pyramid?

A new digital commons has

emerged as a global public space for discourse and

deliberation, fulfilling a journalistic need

The old monolithic media giants will go away for

good

A modern and diverse news landscape will be re-

constituted in these public spaces

Approach

Democracy x

Socialism x

Deliberative adhocracy √

For China,a technology first

adopted for entertainment, can

be a deliberative space designed for

social justice