A Virtuous Web

What does it mean in ethical terms that many individuals can find themselves cooperating productively with strangers and acquaintances on a scope never before seen?

Commons based peer production is leading to a more ethical society. At least, this is what the authors seem to think. I believe that those that contribute to many group based information efforts are very self selective. Those that contribute were already people that would like to contribute in a positive way to society and are less focused on being competitive. Commons based peer production is good because it gives these do gooders a place to contribute. Outlets like Wikipedia as a model are indeed more ethical hangouts than most of the rest of the world. They help society in general because people can see that there are virtuous people out there and might possibly be pushed in the direction of committing virtuous acts themselves.

A site like digg.com allows people to easily look at the most interesting information on the internet. Dig contributors do not get any benefit from recommending sites. Because sites like dig are so easy to contribute to, they attract contributors that might never had helped out with making the internet a more virtuous place. Making the internet a virtuous place depends on the ability for commons based peer production sites to attract new people.

A thought I just had was that contributors are not actually necessarily virtuous people, but instead they recognize the fact that their contributions add to the popularity of information mediums. This in tern spurns the creation of more available materials from other people that can benefit the virtuous person.