People are inventing new ways of working together on the internet. Decentralized
production thrives on weblogs, wikis and free software projects. In
"Cyberchiefs," 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