The change from a model of the Internet based strictly on downloading to a downloading and uploading model has been gradual, but it is irreversible.

Beyond the hype, there are a few principles that teachers of writing should observe from this latest shift.

The first principle is that students need the support of teachers to learn from networked writing environments. Wikis have a played large role in “flipping the switch” in moving the Internet from strictly a download model to a bi-directional experience. Soliciting content from almost everyone has, almost paradoxically, yielded a genuine resource. We can learn a lot from the way a Wikipedia creates knowledge, but to learn from it, we need to support our students as they explore it.

The firm model of economic production reveals the fallacy of attempting to play the role of the audience for our student writers. Teachers now have the option of allowing a large and diversified audience to respond to student writing, and there can be little doubt that as more CBPP models are developed, the number of ways to allow that audience into our classes will also increase.

Therefore, part of the mission of this book has been to illuminate the underlying concepts of CBPP as a writing experience so that we can see them when the next Wikipedia is developed.

A second principle is that what happens inside college writing classes need not be disconnected from CBPP: all of the laudable goals of a liberal arts education can be strengthened by conducting them in a CBPP environment.

Our students will live in a world with CBPP, or more simply put, a world of networked writing.

This book has attempted to look at Wikipedia as but one important instance of CBPP. Whether or not we find CBPP to be palatable as a reliable source of knowledge, and whether or not Benkler is correct in positioning it as a third economic phenomenon, there is little doubt that our students come to our writing classes familiar with networked writing, if by no other means than Facebook and MySpace.

It is also true that that they will leave our classes and write in a networked world. We already have a strong knowledge base for this environment. Works such as Bruffee’s Collaborative Learning have clearly documented the mental framework—foundationalism and antifoundationalism— we need for understanding the kinds of epistemological changes that CBPP portends.

A third principle is that there will be more collaboration to develop a theoretical understanding of how CBPP affects writing and epistemology, and rhetoric and composition theory are well-positioned to lead our understanding.

It is my hope that this book will help further that process. As we continue the transformation into an information economy, rhetoric takes on an increasingly important role. Just as economics developed and adapted to explain the rules of material production in an industrial age, so too does electronic rhetoric develop to explain the rules of production in the information age.

Epistemic rhetoric predicts the rules and foundation for collaboration in information networks, such as wikis, just as managerial economics predicts and explains motivations, behaviors, and rules for producing, predicting, and tracking material production.