Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
Profile
Rishab is founding international and managing editor of First Monday, a widely read peer-reviewed journal started with Esther Dyson and Edward Valauskas in 1995 that covers Internet economics, law and technology.Rishab is co-Programme Leader of the e-Basics Research Unit at the International Institute of Infonomics, a venture of Maastricht University supported by the European Commission. He has been programme leader at the Institute since its founding in January 2000, and moved from New Delhi, India to Maastricht, the Netherlands, in October 2000. At the Institute he coordinated and was lead author of the recently completed FLOSS study on free/libre/open source software, which includes work closely related to the Orbiten survey.
Gift Economy
It has long been assumed that there is something beyond economics involved in the proliferation of free goods and services on the Internet. Although Netscape's recent move to give away the source code for its browser shows that the corporate world now believes that it is possible to make money with free software - previously eyed with cautious pessimism - money is not the prime motivator of most producers of the Internet's free goods, and neither is altruism. Efforts and rewards may be valued in intangibles, but, as this paper argues, there is a very tangible market dynamics to the free economy of the Internet, and rational economic decisions are at work. This is the "cooking-pot" market: an implicit barter economy with asymmetric transactions. --Rishab Aiyer Ghosh in http://www.firstmonday.org, 1998Attention economy
Reasoning about an "attention economy" - I stick to Goldhaber's thesis here because reasoning about some of the vaguer alternatives proposed to classical economics or the industrial economy is quite a strain on the imagination - it is necessary to use tools of classical economics. Unless one accepts that it is impossible to compare the value to Oprah Winfrey of one viewer joining an audience of 50 million with the value to Goldhaber of an addition to his conference audience of (say) 500, one has to make use of the classical concept of marginal utility. Similarly, why is it that when Goldhaber speaks, his attention gain is "illusorily magnified" by an audience of 500 while Oprah's is magnified hundred- thousandfold more? Do we ignore such questions? If we do, then classical economists could answer them. The supply of Oprah-like shows may be more than the supply of attention-economy speakers; but the demand - and hence available attention "currency" - for disclosures on the President's underwear is far higher than the demand for speeches on the new economy.Reputation Economy
Why do hackers spend countless hours to break in to computer hosts and often leave fingerprints or signatures as their triumphant marks? Eric S. Raymond (1998), editor of The New Hacker's Dictionary, suggests that social status in hacker gift culture is determined by what one gives away. In this community, where there is no shortage of computer resources (such as disk space, bandwidth and computing power) there is lack in success measurement. This measurement can only be achieved by reputation among one's peers. Raymond parallels the culture of hackers and that of academics. In academia, new ideas and research are shared and added on through journals and other media. The success or failure of the academic is measured by contributions to these sources. In hacker society, new ideas and research are shared by code sharing. The success or failure of the hacker is measured by contributions to these sources. The reputation economy creates new academic theories or high-quality hacking codes, through peer evaluation.
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (1998), Managing Editor of First Monday, suggests that people produce ideas, the equivalent of goods and services in the Virtual Nation, to gain or improve reputation, the currency of the Virtual Nation. Numerous examples of code sharing for reputation exist. One example is Apache, a WWW server software used by more than 50% of websites (www.apache.org). Another example is Linux, an operating system that runs on low to high technology systems, and is increasingly embraced by commercial vendors (www.linux.org). Its creator, Linus Torvalds, made Linux source code freely available. Today, developers worldwide use Linux to develop applications. The attention and reputation that Torvalds received, earned him a prominent job. When asked about the job as a result of his reputation, he says "the good thing about reputations ... is that you still have them even though you traded them in. Have your cake and eat it too!" (Ghosh, 1998, p.12).--Rebecca Sukach
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