The Gift Economy  - How the Web is making that possible in some areas.

Mary Parker, July 16, 2006

Chris once read us something about how good it would be to have a “gift economy” rather than an organization of society where “we all live to make money from one another.”

The Web is a communication medium which has made it more possible to have a gift economy of some things, in some sectors.   Because the marginal cost of distribution is very small, people who are interested in collecting and disseminating information can do it with little cost for the dissemination part. 

Obviously, what is available on the web is of varying quality.  But it is certainly not true that all the free stuff is of poor quality.  In fact, many people would argue that some of the best work available is free.  

Here are things I know about and use:

Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Google – the search engine that revolutionized searching.  Now has ads, but quite unintrusive.  http://www.google.com/

Peanut software.

Free software  for math students (graphing, statistics, geometry, etc.)  written and maintained by a high school math teacher.  http://math.exeter.edu/rparris/

Journal of Statistics Education   http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/

Refereed journal, online and free.

Open-source information/software: 

• Connexions project.  http://cnx.org/content/   See their description of open license on the next page. 

• Linux operating system.  UT math dept uses this on all their computers.  Lots of countries in Europe and elsewhere use this to avoid the costs of Windows.

• Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/   Open-source alternative to Microsoft Office.

• R statistical software package  http://www.r-project.org/

Other stuff:

I’m impressed by how so many people spend their time creating these really great resources for others.

• Project Gutenberg:  Makes the complete texts of books (out of copyright) available on the Internet  http://www.gutenberg.org
• Internet Browser and email program: Netscape and Mozilla http://www.mozilla.org
• The Unofficial British Royal Family pages.  http://www.etoile.co.uk/Rnews.html
• Judy’s Sunday School Site  http://www.sundayschoollessons.com/calendar.htm
• Lectionary Resources http://www.textweek.com/about.htm
• Information about TV Shows  http://www.epguides.com/ 
• Newspapers.  Lots of them have quite a bit of free information.  See Hunter’s list of what he reads at http://hunter.ellinger.org/HunterBookmarks.html

Everybody can be a "columnist": Learn about Blogs: http://www.blogspot.com/

Basically free

Virtual University.  Online courses that are almost free.  5-week courses about using computers and other stuff.  No book required.   Cost is $20 for one session, and can take up to 4 courses.  http://www.vu.org/

CNET.  Online courses that are free.  Ad-sponsored.  Very short courses about using computers. Not as good as VU (above) but has more courses.   http://www.cnet.com/

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From Connexions:  http://cnx.org/content/

Here’s what they give as their “copyright” page.

• You are free:

• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works
• to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
• Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code (the full license).