Douglas Rushkoff – Open Source Democracy
PUNKCAST1467 – Nov 5 2008. In the fifth lecture in Evan Korth’s NYU Computers and Society course featured author, thinker and professor Douglas Rushkoff. His topic:”Open Source Democracy.” Following is the foreword, by Douglas Alexander, to Rushkoff’s paper on the same topic: “The internet has become an integral part of our lives because it is interactive. That means people are senders of information, rather than simply passive receivers of ‘old’ media. Most importantly of all, we can talk to each other without gatekeepers or editors. This offers exciting possibilities for new social networks, which are enabled – but not determined – by digital technology. In the software industry, the open source movement emphasises collective cooperation over private ownership. This radical idea may provide the biggest challenge to the dominance of Microsoft. Open source enthusiasts have found a more efficient way of working by pooling their knowledge to encourage innovation. All this is happening at a time when participation in mainstream electoral politics is declining in many Western countries, including the US and Britain. Our democracies are increasingly resembling old media, with fewer real opportunities for interaction. What, asks Douglas Rushkoff in this original essay for Demos, would happen if the ’source code’ of our democratic systems was opened up to the people they are meant to serve? ‘An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to …
Mail this postPopularity: 2% [?]
21 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
The government doesn’t control the industry, the industry controls the government. How about shrinking government via removing the parts of it that give big business loopholes since they have the money to buy all the branches of government which was intended as a system of justice. The only regulations corporations want gone are the ones that say they can’t poison their customers, not the ones that say no one can compete with them in any actually free way.
you’re an idiot.
You can’t do any of those things until you change monetary policy.
Hey why ad hominem attack? Monetary policy of gov and the fed favors indebtedness. The change that we need to eliminate the federal reserve and return to some semblance of a gold or metal money standard. This way the gov will not be able to print money out of thin air and give this new money to its friends at goldman sachs. Inflation is the main problem and its at the root of the current financial crises. Business is not the problem, business gives us production and wealth.
I think you are mistaken. Business , spec. capitalism is resp 4 the greatest rise in living standards in the history of humanity over the last 200 years. Labor itself does not by itself produce weath. Its the efficient and profitable use of land, capital (aka savings), and labor that give us wealth. The most skilled among us at generating wealth this way are called entrepreneurs. Wages the price of labor. Inflation is real and caused by governmt, we need gold standard to stop it.
No. Business creates nothing.
Labor creates wealth, which is extracted and sold by business.
Your employer buys the wealth you create with your paycheck.
The reason a man with a bulldozer (BD)can earn more and get more work done than a man with a shovel is b/c someone gave him the BD. That BD is CAPITAL and the system that enabled the bulldozer to come into existence is CAPITALISM. If the man didnt have the knowledge or ingenuity or wealth to invent, build or afford a BD then he is benefitting from the business people that created the bulldozer. The creation of the BD is the capitalist’s LABOR just the same as the man who runs the BD is labor.
rushkoff is the hottest economic trend analyst. EVER.
abso dreamy!
What he is talking about when he says “Bottom up” and “an economy of abundance” really means a resource based economy… and goddamn if we had that the whole world would change… Guess what, It is real time in front of our eyes ;-D… We’re on the next step ladies and gentleman – go watch Zeitgiest 2…
I love the way these people put so much effort into appearing slack.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think Rushkoff’s books are worth reading, but so too are many other authors from other genres…even Trump.
we’ve had a problem with peripheral value creation for a much longer time than 400 years… hierarchy itself is based on centralized values creation and hegemony. and hierarchy is as old as civilization itself. I like Rushkoff (and I love the possibilities for Open Source philosophy) but I don’t care for the oversimplifications in this lecture…
Actually the rise in living standards in any society is directly attributable to increasing access to information. Knowledge. Literacy.
and if you read Life Inc he explains that the merchant class and local currency threatened that hierarchy.
My point is that hierarchy is older than 400 yrs… that’s what we’re talking about… and there has always been something (that smells like independence) which threatens any hierarchy (religious, socio-political, what have-you: monarchy, bureaucracy, oligarchy, whatever.) …. right now, the biggest threat to hierarchy is the internet and the proliferation of information. And there isn’t anything that can be done about it. They are now utterly dependent on what we, the collective have created.
That maybe true to an extent but the ability of a certain society to exploit another has been much more successful.
I would say the exploitation of others and your ability to do this with no morale responsibility is what separates the rich from the poor.
the poor/exploited are mostly uneducated… It’s much more difficult to exploit educated people.
… and it’s quite a broad generalization to say ‘rich’ people have a lack of morality, or get their money by exploiting – if i’m reading your comment right.
@immayhem
I should have said very rich then.
The door is opening will we walk through?
It will close quickly.
@CosmosPrivateer
I don’t see doors, windows or anything like that. Maybe because i’m already outside, walking away from the house …
What is the name of the largest non profit ISP, at 53:14? I can’t make out what she said.
@zelikris that would be riseup technologies – the speaker there is Gabriella Coleman
“no, he cannot govern . . . in a decentralized fashion “. . . I didn’t know that this was an unknown . . .