I attended this lecture today by Michael J. Madison. These are some of my notes from the lecture.
There are informal groups that we can see through social software. Thus, these groups have some sort of salience. salience of group as group -- community? alliance?
Groups depend on "place," "things," and a "stories."
Examples of these groups:
Online example: Social software --
Offline example: Casual carpooling -- many people do this (for more than 20 years), many customs but no laws;
Creative Commons -- how groups become salient? There's a "place" connection with "commons". There is a "thing" sense of CC -- explain. There is a compelling narrative "story" for creative commons. It's also a governance regime for things that are available downstream.
The law doesn't know what to do with these sorts of informal groups. The law can handle formal groups -- corporations, families, etc.
Informal groups include book clubs, neighborhoods, alumni glee club, college football clubs. Law can attack the material conditions part (place, thing and story).
These informal groups are not full of unmitigated good things. Casual carpool -- the maniac driver. Social software -- moderation problems, trolls, CC -- has an "affinity" with click wrap/shrinkwrap licenses.
Strain of research in cog sci, re: loosely bounded informal groups. Research suggests that disciplines/informal groups are likely to produce (emergent quality to them) creative behaviors.
Group orientation can be applied in a couple areas:
Edmund Hutchins (antro prof at UCSD) -- he studies how the ship gets steered. THe ship does not get steered through the mechanisitic routines/algorityhms. But rather there is a dynamic constitantly renegotiated system of behaviours of the individuals that makes sure the ship gets to where it gets to go. This is a non-law conceptual example.
Law-based doctrinal example: Sony/Betamax case. VCR is a thing. An object around which patterns of behavior emerged. Timeshifting, swapping tapes, sharing tapes. Called the VCR a staple item of commerce, was to recognize implicitly there was this group-oriented activity going on.
Last formal point: (Point 1 = informal groups can be good.) They can exercise legitimate authoritiy alongside formal enacted law (see lessig/lemley re: social norms
Hasn't come up with a grand unifying theory of information governance -- doesn't feel he's come up with something that could replace formal modeling, economics, etc.
Lemly: economics plays a role (theory of the firm) -- software and the internet change the economics of the theory of the firm by reducing xn costs; The theory Mad. envisions fits nicely w/i the theory of the firm.
Response: (1) Ed Rubin has interesting paper about theories of the firm, and claims that whatever you think on the theory of the firm, depends in part on the story of the firm? Mad's claim is understanding the things, places and stories is prior to understanding the theory of the firm.
(2) If you assume that the firm is a way of enhancing the agency of the individual (reducing xn costs you accumulate higher level conduct by individuals)
Lemly: This is like a theory of the firm for informal groups: "Theory of the informal groups."
Lessig: these groups are things we cannot see -- an advantage of this approach is to train people to look for the groups in places where they have been and where they will be. Helpful to create categories of groups; Doyou need to give up methodological individualism?
Response: No. Benkler is very consistent with Madison's approach. Is there some benefit to look at the work through the "material culture" frame?
Granick: you need to better identify the benefits of the informal groups, because they often have some bad detriments to the formal groups (cafeteria example; carpool example).
Response: there's a static cost/benefi that's easier to determine (downsides of carpool is fewer to support the pub transit system); there's also a dynamic cost/benefit that is very difficult to assess. Can't say that all informal groups are a net benefit. He thinks there's a tendancy towards benefits.
THOUGHT: it seems difficult to draw a line between informal and formal groups.