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Modeling an Open Economy

Please join us to create shared resources that examine the effects of openness on the economy.

For example: For some time now, Internet Telephony? has been replacing long-distance phone calls. On the one hand, this is a financial threat to the incumbent phone companies, who watch once monopolistic per-minute revenues get replaced with commodity broadband connections that are often competitive. On the other hand, the availability of inexpensive global communications enables an explosion of service opportunities. Want to learn Mandarin from someone in China? Now it's not difficult to do.

What will open courseware do to our educational system, and to publishers, media companies and others that supply it? Might it be more cost-effective?

The details

Here's what we mean by Openness.

Of course, openness isn't the only lens through which to examine the changes the economy is going through, but it is a good starting point and lets us include forces as different as open source software and alternative currencies.

The structure we're using has three elements:

• Nuggets are the smallest elements. They offer capsule explanations of key forces, features, ideas and facts, such as The Long Tail, Smart Mobs, Tagging and Peer Production. Nuggets are written to be useful in many contexts and are generally anonymous, like Wikipedia articles. In fact, they may make good Wikipedia contributions later.

• Narratives offer such context, but in relatively factual terms. Narratives weave nuggets together to tell stories that further illustrate trends and forces. Retrospective narratives are case studies, such as Regional Advantage; prospective narratives are scenarios. Narratives are anonymous, too.

• Points of View express opinions. They assemble narratives and nuggets to prove an argument, to make a statement about where we are going. Points of View are personal, not anonymous. Please sign those you create or improve.

Here's how you can participate.

• Add or edit nuggets. You'll run across them all the time in books and discussions.
• Flesh out new narratives that capture forces at play.
• Check the Open Questions below for analyses that could use your energy and insight.
• Take a point of view, or help someone strengthen theirs. Get in touch with them personally; see how you can help.
• Help us Improve Our Approach.
• Riff on any of these materials in other media, such as Screencasts, Podcasts or Machinima stories. All elaboration is useful.

Please note that the best nuggets, narratives and points of view are carefully named, so their titles carry much of their meaning.

Open Questions

• How Much Has VoIP Affected Long-Distance Revenues

Can anyone find time series showing the growth of VoIP usage? Instant messaging?
Can we find correlated drops in the use of traditional long-distance telephony?
What effect have cellphones had?

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