In broadcasting, content is valued according to its ability to attract commercials and advertising. Therefore the saying that "content is king." On the other hand, according to Jaap van Till, conversations are king across the web because success in the Internet commons is driven by adding unique skills and perspectives to a group rather than adding advertisements.
According to van Till, open-source, Internet exchanges, and the flower auctions of Holland are a few examples of the strength of the commons in action while the best example of a commons success is the Internet. Google and Twitter are to some degree examples of how a commons culture among users can potentially be more important than the telecom company under girding it.
Van Till ends by holding up Iran as a recent example of a networked commons among people who used technology overlooked by their conservative government to channel their frustration with authoritarian policies. He makes the important point that in the past, hierarchy was the most effective way to spread information amongst groups. Now the most effective way to do that is probably networks.
Jaap Van Till was the Internet Infrastructure professor at the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem (NL). Before that he was professor for Corporate Networks at the Delft University (NL) and visiting prof at the University of Technology Kaunas (Lithuania). He frequently teaches at post-graduate courses and business schools, like the Institut Theseus in Nice (France) and at the Universities of Amsterdam (UvA) and Leuven. And he lectured at Master courses (MSTM) in Arnhem (NL), Bandung, Jakarta (Indonesia) and Kumasi (Ghana).
His work ranges from telecom legislation and government IT policy to Internet and intranet and extranet implementations. In 1988 he was part of the team that wrote the Telecommunication Law (Wet op de Telecommunicatievoorzieningen) that replaced the Telecom Law of 1904. He is chief scientist at Tildro Research B.V. in Rhenen, NL and writes columns and blogs in TelecomMagazine, Netkwesties.nl, and ScienceGuide.nl.
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Photo: Pvt pauline
