Even with some months left of 2006, the Undercurrent book of the year award can already be announced: Yochai Benkler is the winner with his exceptionally insightful “The Wealth of Networks”. Benkler uses a coherent framework to analyze the developments that have occupied many of us in theory and practice the past few years: the rise of peer production – user-generated publishing – blogging – open source software. In brief, Benkler’s book is the most forceful and comprehensive analysis so far of the impact on society of these connected phenomena.

Unsurprisingly the book is published under a Creative Commons licence, which makes it possible to download for free in the pdf format.

More about the book will be forthcoming here, but as a start, here’s an important quote from the concluding chapter:

The basic material capital requirements of information production are now in the hands of a billion people around the globe who are connected to each other more or less seamlessly. These material conditions have given individuals a new practical freedom of action. If a person or group wishes to start an information-production project for any reason, that group or person need not raise significant funds to acquire the necessary capital. In the past, the necessity to obtain funds constrained information producers to find a market-based model to sustain the investment, or to obtain government funding. The funding requirements, in turn, subordinated the producers either to the demands of markets, in particular to mass-market appeal, or to the agendas of state bureaucracies. The networked information environment has permitted the emergence to much greater significance of the nonmarket sector, the nonprofit sector, and, most radically, of individuals.