I have been doing a lot of reading lately about the potential of networked information technology to empower ordinary people, partly inspired by Guy Aitchison and Aaron John Peters' essay in the Fight Back! reader on the student protests.
There is a wealth of good writing on the subject, much of which is rooted in the open source movement, and is accordingly freely available online. I have compiled a list of relevant ebooks and articles partly for my own reference, and partly for those like me who are just getting into this area. I would particularly recommend Benkler' s Wealth of Networks as a starting point. I would welcome suggestions in the comments.
Graham Seaman, The two economies, or why the washing machine question is the wrong question, 2002.
McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto, 2004
Lawrence Lessig, Code: Version 2.0, 2005
Michel Bauwens, The Political Economy of Peer Production, 2005.
Michel Bauwens, P2P and Human Evolution: Peer to Peer as the Premise of a new mode of civilisation, 2005
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks, 2006.
Lawrence Lessig, Remix, Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, 2008.
Kevin A. Carson, The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, A Low Overhead Manifesto, 2010.
Kevin A. Carson, Open Source Government, 2011.
Guy Aitchison and Aaron John Peters, The Open-Sourcing of Political Activism: How the internet and Networks help build resistance, 2011.
