People are inventing new ways of working together on the internet. Decentralized production thrives on weblogs, wikis and free software projects. InCyberchiefs, Mathieu O'Neil focuses on the regulation of these working relationships. He examines the transformation of leadership and expertise in online networks, and the emergence of innovative forms of participatory politics. What are the costs and benefits of alternatives to hierarchical organization? Using case studies of online projects or "tribes" such as the radical Primitivism archive, the Daily Kos political blog, the Debian free software project and Wikipedia, O’Neil shows that leaders must support maximum autonomy for participants and analyses the tensions generated by this distribution of authority.
Mathieu O'Neil is Adjunct Research Fellow at the Australian National University in the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, and Principal Researcher at Australia's Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. He has contributed articles to Le Monde diplomatique, Maniere de voir and Factsheet 5. He has also worked as a magazine editor and designer, as an editor on the collective New Media Art weblog Under the Sun, and has curated international digital art exhibitions.
