Gift Economy assign #4

When considering gift economies there are many different examples that can be looked at. Gift economies exist not only in cyber space, but also in the physical world. According to wikipedia a gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future repayment. In the physical realm one gift economy that I participate in is religious tithing. Religious tithing can be considered a gift economy because you are in a sense giving money with no immediate expectation of a return. With this example you are hoping for a long term return of not going to hell, but it is not guaranteed. This concept of giving without expectation for return is why many places on the internet can be considered gift economies.

There are many gift economies on the net that could be discussed in this situation. One gift economy that I am familiar with is DC++. For anyone who does not know what this is it is a file sharing system where you can get music, movies, software and other downloads from other peoples computers. I consider DC++ an example of a gift economy because you do not have to repay anyone for the free downloads that are available to you. What you do have to do is make a certain amount of downloads available from your computer to other users on DC++. The way that this system is set up you receive the gifts of free downloads from people you probably do not know and will never know, but at the same time you are giving the “gifts” to other people that you do not know just by being on this file sharing network. In this example the motivator for giving the gift, or letting others download your files, is that you are then capable of downloading files from a large base of users.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s nineteenth-century essay ‘Gifts’, outlines as follows "The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him." DC++ abides by this definition as a gift economy because it is a big network of gift givers and receivers. Although the gift giving and receiving is indirect because we aren’t necessarily giving downloads back to the same person we downloaded something from, there is a constant flow of giving happening. There are many other examples of gift economies that can be found on the web.

Another type of gift economy that I am thankful for are websites like wikipedia or Google. They are a type of gift economy because they are giving free information. If you are interested in learning about something you can go to one of these sites and acquire the information that you need. I consider these gift economies because without them I would have to buy encyclopedias, or seek out experts in whatever it is that I am trying to learn. Instead I can access the information free and easy by simply going online. There are a few different types of gifts when it comes to a gift economy. These forms of giving are considered content gifts, which are gifts that have the capacity to satisfy more than one person and in many cases, information gains rather than loses value through sharing. How does information gain value you might be asking, it can simply be more valuable to one person than to another at any given time. According to “The Economics of Online Cooperation” there are many different types of motivators for givers. In the case of the websites mentioned above I think the motivator might be loyalty. These websites give information that people request with the expectation that the next time they are looking for something on the web they will return to their site. I consider online gift economies to be very helpful in times when information is needed, regardless of the topic.

References

- Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. London: Routledge
- Retrieved September 21, 2007, from Wikipedia: Gift Economy.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/Gift_economy
- Retrieved September 21, 2007, from FirstMonday.org
Website: www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/veale/