Speaker Details

I am a scholar, technologist and activist. In all three roles, I am passionate about understanding why, and when peer production succeeds. As a social scientist, my research aims to explain why some attempts to create free culture and free software result in large volunteer communities like Wikipedia and Linux — while the vast majority never attract even a second contributor. For most of my life, I have also participated in a number of these communities. I spend most of my time consuming, and increasingly often producing, academic articles, software, blog posts, essays, books and talks.

You can follow my latest musings and projects on my weblog Copyrighteous. I microblog infrequently as @makoshark on Twitter.