The Gift Economy

Here's a rambling essay from wired.com about the impact of the internet on content production and consumption. It's a little nerd oriented but it does manage to summarize and highlight the rise of the internet and how it's enabled the dissemination of vast amounts of information to countless people. Part of this information is conveyed via blogs and you know how those are near and dear to our hearts.

The Web extends my passion to a far wider group for no extra cost or effort. In this way, my site is part of a vast and growing gift economy, a visible underground of valuable creations - text, music, film, software, tools, and services - all given away for free. This gift economy fuels an abundance of choices. It spurs the grateful to reciprocate. It permits easy modification and reuse, and thus promotes consumers into producers.
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The electricity of participation nudges ordinary folks to invest huge hunks of energy and time into making free encyclopedias, creating public tutorials for changing a flat tire, or cataloging the votes in the Senate. More and more of the Web runs in this mode. One study found that only 40 percent of the Web is commercial. The rest runs on duty or passion.