Last week I updated my computer to Windows 7. It was easier than any major update I have ever done. At about the same time, of course, Apple began running the latest iteration of its commercial, apparently trying to tamp down some of the enthusiasm that has surrounded the newest version of Microsoft’s operating system. It’s always been a loosing battle, of course. Apple has never achieved more than 10% of the overall market share.

The whole Apple/Microsoft dynamic is full of irony and contradiction. Apple has long pedaled the notion that it was the ‘alternative’ to big brother, yet it’s hardware and software is almost obsessively proprietary. Bill Gates has long been portrayed as the ultimate corporate…

Playing For Change | Song Around The World “One Love” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Arguably, we are witnessing the end of one era of academic cultural capital– I’d call it the proprietary era– and the beginning of another, which I think should be called the open era. In the proprietary era status was dependent, in part, on the possession of more or less rare forms of knowledge. The value of knowledge was dependent on keeping it secret until it was made public in a way which ensured that you would receive proper credit.

That’s one of the reasons that academic journals were so important: they were the gateway that allowed proprietary knowledge to become public without any loss of capital. The channels themselves, in fact, conveyed their own institutional cultural capital. It didn’t just…