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Despite WiFly’s ubiquity — with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population — just 40,000 of Taipei’s 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000.

That such a vast and reasonably priced wireless network has attracted so few users in an otherwise tech-hungry metropolis should give pause to civic leaders in Chicago, Philadelphia and dozens of other American cities that are building wireless networks of their own.

Like Taipei, these cities hope to use their new networks to help less affluent people get online and to make their cities more business-friendly. Yet as Taipei has found out, just building a citywide network does not guarantee that people will use it. Most people already have plenty of access to the Internet in their offices and at home, while wireless data services let them get online anywhere using phones, laptops and P.D.A.’s.

“There is a lot of hype about public access,” said Craig J. Settles, a technology consultant in Oakland, Calif., and author of “Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless.” “What’s missing from a lot of these discussions is what people are willing to pay for.”

電動遊戲文化（video game culture，另譯為電腦遊戲文化）的核心美德是完美地主宰（mastery）與自我駕馭（self-control）：前者在於掌控電動遊戲所需求的技術技能，後者著重於手動控制的敏捷性。長時間的重複操作與失敗，對於掌控遊戲來說是必要的磨練，而其同時也要求玩家懂得規訓（discipline）的重要性，以及練習達到與超越自我設定目標的能力。大部份當代的電動遊戲都是冷酷無情、與目標導向的遊戲。男孩子會常常玩這些遊戲，努力要掌控那具有挑戰性的一關又一關，直到體力與情緒耗盡為止。孩子們並不是那麼地對電動遊戲上癮，而是在達到設定目標之前他們不願意退出遊戲。遊戲總是有新的挑戰目標，邀請我們挑戰「另外一關」、期待表現的更好。當代電動遊戲的其中一種限制就是，它僅僅提供著「預先結構化的互動形式」（pre-structured forms of interactivity），而某種程度來說，就像是小孩子的遊戲場或都市中的公園一樣，並不像是真正的荒野野地。大部份時候，遊戲玩家只能夠利用內建環境的可用特性（affordances，另譯為「功能可見性」、「機緣」、「可用性」）與預先設計好的路徑。所謂的密技、復活節蛋之類的驚喜與「特異時空」（warp zones）在數位空間中的作用，就像實體空間中的神秘小徑一樣，讓想要去到特別的地方、看到一般人看不到的東西的熱切玩家們，迫不急待地找尋。

The central virtues of video game culture are mastery (over the technical skills required by the games) and self-control (manual dexterity). Putting in the long hours of repetition and failure necessary to master a game also requires discipline and the ability to meet and surpass self-imposed goals. Most contemporary video games are ruthlessly goal-driven. Boys will often play the games, struggling to master a challenging level, well past the point of physical and emotional exhaustion. Children are not so much “addicted” to video games as they are unwilling to quit before they have met their goals, and the games seem to always set new goalposts, inviting us to best “just one more level.” One of the limitations of the contemporary video game is that it provides only pre-structured forms of interactivity, and in that sense, video games are more like playgrounds and city parks rather than wild-spaces. For the most part, video game players can only exploit built-in affordances and pre-programed pathways. “Secret codes,” “Easter Eggs,” and “Warp zones” function in digital space like secret paths do in physical space and are eagerly sought by gamers who want to go places and see things others can’t find.

“Netizens, elancers, cognitarians, swarm-capitalists, hackers, produsumers, knowledge workers, pro-ams… these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to the new social class emerging from the networked workplace.

In this short book, Richard Barbrook presents a collection of quotations from authors who in different ways attempt to identify an innovative element within society ? the class of the new?. Announcing
a new economic and social paradigm, this class constitutes a social prophecy of the shape of work to come. From Adam Smith?s Philosophers of the late 18th century, down to the Creative Class
celebrated by sociologist Richard Florida today, the class of the new represents the future of production within and beyond capitalism.

A Creative Workers in a World City project. Published, POD (print on demand) design and production by Openmute. ISBN: 0-9550664-7-6

“With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment.

In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing-and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained-or lost- by the decisions we make today.”

Yochai Benkler - Yale Law School, Publisher: Yale University Press (May 16, 2006), Language: English, ISBN: 0300110561.
http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf