hydrarchist writes:
"Economic Orthodoxy and the Information Commons:
An
Interview With Michael Perelman"
Frederick Emrich, www.info-commons.org
Economics is a social science concerned with the production,
distribution, and consumption of resources to the fulfillment of human
desires. In some estimations, economics is the most "scientific"
of the social sciences because it has constructed powerful analytical
models and tools for developing our understanding of these processes.
Economics -- or at least the appeal to the idea of economics -- plays
an important role in policymaking. This is true not only of policymaking
with respect to physical goods, but also with respect to information.
Developing a full understanding of the information commons
means understanding: how information can be seen as a distinctive resource
(or set of resources); how informational resources are produced, consumed,
and distributed; how the accessibility of information is an essential
factor in its utility; and how policymaking can help to build or to
destroy a vibrant information economy. In short, understanding the information
commons requires that we understand the information economy, in the
broadest sense of that term.
Michael Perelman is Professor of Economics at California
State University at Chico. He has spent a significant amount of energy
addressing economic issues related to information. Although he is a
professor of economics, although he teaches courses in a university
economics department, and although he holds a doctorate in economics
from a major U.S. university, Perelman has called himself a "lapsed
economist" because he questions the validity of much of what passes
for "economic orthodoxy." His most recent book, Steal This
Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of
Creativity (Palgrave 2002), focuses on the destructive influence
of strong intellectual property rights in the areas of science and technology.
As part of a continuing project to build an understanding
of the information economy, info-commons.org editor Frederick Emrich
recently conducted this interview with Perelman.