Open Online Knowledge Sharing

This chapter addresses open online knowledge sharing, which some label as the “memory component” in CI. Several different examples will be presented to illustrate how this new culture of sharing is emerging. Before the time of the Internet, only a very small part of the population made their opinions and knowledge publicly available to others. The communication model was built around enabling experts to disseminate their knowledge to the rest of the population. Today, the situation has changed entirely, with a majority of the population publishing and sharing all kinds of information with each other through social media. The costs of producing and publishing both unimodal and multimodal content have almost disappeared, permitting anyone to publish almost anything. Individuals do not need to be passive recipients of the “wisdom” of certified experts, but they can now publish their own opinion, information or product. Consequently, there has been an enormous increase in people participating in the cultural production and public conversation through the online setting. A decade ago, this development was regarded as an amazing new step towards a better society through a democratization of knowledge production processes (O’Reilly, ). Benkler () claimed these new online networks strengthened individual autonomy and human freedom and represented a fundamental improvement in human life. Everyone with Internet access can now take a more active role than what was previously possible in the industrial information economy. In the online setting, individuals can produce their own cultural environment. They can do more by themselves and create their own expressions. If a person wants to publish something, one does not need help from others or a permit from a licensing body. Individuals are also free to continue to develop and build upon much of others’ creative work. The invention of new license systems such as Creative Commons has also made it much easier for anyone to