The University in the Networked Economy and Society: Challenges and Opportunities

This book chapter is from The Tower and the Cloud by Richard N. Katz. The chapter itself is by Yochai Benkler, the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Harvard Law School and is Faculty Co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society:

Throughout the period of the industrial information economy, the university maintained a stance apart from much of the rest of that economy. As we move to a networked information economy, the distinct values of the university—its relative freedom from the pressures of the market, polity, and popular fashion—are a major source of strength. Universities can become an even more significant force in the knowledge production system, one that distinctly pulls in the direction of professional values. Universities can provide an anchor “against” commercial incentives and build a strong complementary system with the amateur commons–based peer production system, as we have indeed seen in areas such as free and open source software.

University networks and technical platforms will have to focus on managing the increasingly permeable boundaries among universities, and between universities and the world outside them. University platform design should be focused on ensuring that faculty and students have the greatest degree possible of authority and capacity to act freely, innovate internally, and participate externally. And university systems should be attuned to the need to build platforms for cooperation, as the new practices of cooperation and sharing become more prevalent and more based in a broader shift from an image of hierarchical or market-oriented systems to systems based on individuals collaborating with each other in loose networks.