QotW4:Missing out!!!!

I believe that the ideology of Marxism has not been utilized to its full potential by people like me. “Survival of the Fittest” can apply to any aspect of life. Technology has advanced to such a level that it brings many goods and services to us. If we move with the pace of the development of technology and hence be “fit” enough to be able to take advantage of the gifts that it brings to us, we would greatly benefit from it. Unfortunately, unlike most of my friends who use this to their advantage, I have been ignorant of this great innovation and am pretty much missing out.

A gift economy is an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange is for goods and services to be given without explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo (the Latin term for the concept of "a favor for a favor"). Typically, this occurs in a cultural context where there is an expectation either of reciprocation—in the form of goods or services of comparable value, or of political support, general loyalty, honor to the giver, etc.—or of the gift being passed on in some other manner. The concept of a gift economy stands in contrast to a planned economy or a commodity-based economy. In a planned economy, goods and services are distributed by explicit command and control rather than informal custom; in commodity-based economies, an explicit quid pro quo is established before the transaction takes place. In practice, most human societies blend elements of all of these, in varying degrees (Gift Economy, 2007).

Some believe the Gift Economy to be a replacement for the Market Economy. Where the Market Economy tends to concentrate wealth, rewards distortion and abuse by the rich and powerful, is predicated on self-interest and scarcity, and is amoral, the Gift Economy distributes wealth, provides no significant incentive for abuse, is predicated on collective interest and abundance, and is profoundly moral (Pollard, 2005).

Gift economy is when help and information is offered without the expectation of any direct, immediate quid-pro-quo. Even in more anonymous settings, such as Usenet discussion groups, there is a surprising amount of free help and information given out, often to complete strangers whom one may never meet again (Kollack, 1999).

Be it fashion, Free and open software, gaming forums or even cooking communities, the Internet opens the doors for people to share their views and help each other in their respective fields. As mentioned above since I have not yet ventured into this wide horizon of information I can only relate to Gift Economies through the experiences of my friends.

The passion of a gamer can only be described by a gamer. The tension levels and euphoria experienced whilst playing dismisses all humanely urges and keeps gamers at their game for hours and even days at an end. The “World of Warcraft” or “WoW” is a massive multiplayer online game that enables thousands of players to come together online and battle against the world and each other. This is one of the hundreds of online games that have behind it a huge and passionate community. They have their own forums which enable each of them to communicate with other players and help each other out in their quests to kill and destroy. Such exchanging of information (I was told by my gamer friends) are vital to succeed in this field. They are secure that if they ever encounter a problem, their “gamer buddies” would help them out. In turn they did disclose to me that they would most certainly give out information on that particular game to another gamer if the need arises. One of my friends even proudly brands himself as a “known and popular” gamer in the forum.

Gift Economy is primarily due to a combination of human creativity and innovation, applied to create enabling and sharing technologies (Pollard, 2005). Online gaming and the forums which they bring about, as one of the gift economies many examples does just this.

There are many of those who are so ideologically obsessed with privatizing everything, making everything property, and undermining public belief in public institutions, government and self-regulation. There are also those who are trying to destroy and undermine Open Source, the Creative Commons, the Internet and the electronic freedoms, 'price-less' sharing of assets and information, self-sufficient individuals and communities, collective effort and collaborative innovation. If Gift Economy is going to make a stand it would have to fight against doctrinaire corporatism, against lawyers who are trying to patent and copyright everything forever, and against ignorance that there are workable alternatives to an untrammeled Market Economy (Pollard, 2005).

By doing a lot more discussion, research and education about what the Gift Economy is, and what it could be, I believe that this could indeed give new heights to the concept of sharing and exchanging information. I, for starters am going to finally venture into this sea of information sharing and use it to its full potential and contribute to others in the process.

References:

Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Retrieved February 10, 2007, from
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/eco

Pollard, D. (2005) How to save the world: How can we make the gift economy work? Retrieved February 10, 2007, from
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/07/31.html

Gift Economy, (2007) Wikipedia: The Free Enclycopedia.
Retrieved on February 10, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

Steinkuehler, C. (2005). Cognition and Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Critical Approach. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to my friends who helped me understand the vast amount of information buried within.

Alex Liu (Gamer)
Ruchit Kalra (Gamer)
Yang Landen Woo (Gamer)
Arvind Mohan (Gamer)