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Open-source, volunteer-created computer software like the Linux operating system and the Firefox Web browser have also established themselves as significant and lasting economic realities.

That's not true yet in the worlds of science, news and entertainment: we're still figuring out what the role of volunteers will be, but that it will be much bigger than in the past seems obvious.

It might seem very odd to look to a long-dead Russian anarchist for business advice. But Peter Kropotkin's big idea--that there are important human motivations beyond what he called "reckless individualism"--is very relevant these days. That's because one of the most interesting questions in business has become how much work people will do for free.

ut neither does Benkler dream of a world without capitalism. Instead, he has become an unlikely business guru, with a shop at the intersection of Commerce and Cooperation.

Take the case Benkler makes in his 2006 book, The Wealth of Networks (available, free, at www.benkler.org) for the economic benefits of "peer production" of software and other information products

Peer production by people who donate small or large quantities of their time and expertise isn't necessarily great at generating the original and the unique, but it's very good for improving existing products (like software) and bringing together dispersed information (Wikipedia). Often better, in Benkler's telling, than corporations armed with copyright and patent laws.

Clever entrepreneurs and even established companies can profit from this volunteerism--but only if they don't get too greedy. The key, Benkler says, is "managing the marriage of money and nonmoney without making nonmoney feel like a sucker."

In other fields, it's not so clear. In a critique of Benkler's work last summer, business writer Nicholas Carr speculated that Web 2.0 media sites like Digg, Flickr and YouTube are able to rely on volunteer contributions simply because a market has yet to emerge to price this "new kind of labor." He and Benkler then entered into what has come to be widely known in Web circles as the "Carr-Benkler wager": a bet on whether, by 2011, such sites will be driven primarily by volunteers or by professionals.

But the technologies, the methods and the results will be picked up by industry."

grid computing

seamless real-time

videoconferencing

collaborators and resources

science and research

over ten years of development and large-scale operation

standards-based collaboration

conference rooms

desktops or laptops

any of the major operating systems

standard videoconferencing equipment

auditoriums

minimum of human intervention

single or multiple screens

support for HD (1080i)

http://evo.caltech.edu