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The internet is a great medium of exchange. There is a constant flow of information from person to person. This makes the internet a great learning tool. Online, people are willing to share valuable information which each other without asking for anything in return. An example of this would be www.pocketfives.com. Pocketfives is an online poker community. It has forums and articles where people who are members are in constant communication with other members, discussing strategy and winning moves. This is very strange considering the fact that in poker, the lesser your opponent knows the better. Most of the members are pocketfives are experienced and very successful players who plat with each other a lot online, but still help each other out in relation to the game of the table.

Thus the word, gift economy. A gift can be defined as an obligatory transfer of inalienable objects or services between related and obligatory transactors. Therefore, once someone is gifted something they cannot demand something back in return, but this would eventually kill the relationship and the medium of exchange. Information sharing online is known as a gift economy because even though nothing is asked for in return, the receiver of this bit of information is now obligated to reciprocate.

These sites which share information with each other are available for members of such sites. This is a very important concept because someone who is actively involved in such online forums makes an effort and this effort is made by a lot of the other members as well. This community shares a common love for the topic be it poker, sports cars or it knowledge. This similarity brings them together and they are motivated to share their views and opinions with each other and in turn get useful information which is beneficial to them as well.

The concept of reciprocity is fundamental in communication. Sharing information online has a number of reasons which would stimulate reciprocity. Firstly, if someone has benefited drastically from the help they got online, they would feel as if they owe that community something for helping them out. This would keep bringing people back. Some people are very good at games likes poker, and so an article or a comment left by them on a forum would receive a huge number of hits. For example, “Green Plastic” , is a prominent online player who over the past five years has made millions playing poker online. He has years of experience and his expertise at online poker has not gone unnoticed. Last month, he posted a comment on pocketfives saying that he was going to choose one person from the pocketfives community and make him his protégé’. His post got seventy five thousand hits. This respect drives people to contribute more because of all the admiration such people get for sharing important pieces of information.

Even though the internet is not governed by one central authority, it has created places where people can go and learn valuable things at no cost to them. In the real world, there are no such breaks. Free schooling is ineffective in relation to the extent that online forums can help people in a particular field. An information channel that can operate like this does not seem to crush the human aspect of things as most people believe that the internet does, instead I feel it drives a certain human instinct of working together in a community for little or no monetary gain.


References:

Gift Economy (2007). In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retreived on February 7, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gift_economy&oldid=105681971

Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Retreived on February 6, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm

Veale K.J (2003). Internet Gift Economies: Voluntary Payment Schemes as Tangible Reciprocity. Retrived on February 7, 2007 from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/veale/index.html