Posted on 05/26/2009 5:01:43 AM PDT by Sinschild
Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. Ward Cunningham who invented the first collaborative Web page in 1994, tracks nearly 150 wiki engines today, each powering myriad sites. Wetpaint , launched just three years ago, hosts more than 1 million communal efforts. Widespread adoption of the share-friendly Creative Commons alternative copyright license and the rise of ubiquitous file-sharing are two more steps in this shift. Mushrooming collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, and Twine have added weight to this great upheaval. Nearly every day another startup proudly heralds a new way to harness community action. These developments suggest a steady move toward a sort of socialism uniquely tuned for a networked world.
(Excerpt) Read more at ecksrated.com ...
The “wisdom of crowds” and Adam Smith’s invisible hand are capitalist, not socialist, values. There is nothing anti-capitalist about large numbers of people volunteering to collaborate in a common enterprise for their own reasons. It only becomes socialism when they are compelled to do so and I don’t see that happening here.
When the largest portion of the folks participating are guiding the medium towards the collectivist/socialist slant, I disagree.
True, they are participating because of their own free will, but the voters in our last election also participated of their own free will.
When the atmosphere turns hostile to creativity and truth, what else would you call it?
I agree with you 100%. There are some “lefties” in the Open Source movement, but they are not the norm.
Software should sink or swim on it’s technical merit, not some marketing scheme promoting rubbish applications.
The real battle is between Freedom and Compulsion.
It has always been about that, even before the ‘isms.
Truth vs Lies (doublespeak)
Darkness vs Light
Freedom vs Slavery
Sorry folks, It don’t work. Collectivization, Socialism, Communism, may be good on paper but outside of a few egg heads everyone knows it just doesn’t work. People are too tribal, too selfish,to nationalistic to make it work. When tried men must be forced to make it work and even then it fails. Ask the Russians—they gave it a 75 year test and it failed. Forcing things only leads to lots of folks becoming dead. The first to go are always the ones who force it on others. The revolution eats its own children. In America we are (or were) too proud to take this up. At the first step to force things upon us will spark revolt and revolution that will make the Civil War look like a walk in the park. There are still too many Bible-believing Christians, too many independent thinkers and just plain crazies to accept this poison. Maybe its a good thing—in the end the Republic will purge away the corruption that has weakened our nation. Maybe something good will come of it as we return to our Christian values.
They are parasitic ideologies. They cannot stand freely on their own. Take away the host, (Capitalism) and they soon die.
This is a very thought provoking article, although is it socialism or is it really a system of natural liberty, a truly free market? Socialism is flawed because it is driven by envy, but there’s little envy driving this. A great thing is government hasn’t figured out a way to tax all that free labor. Our quality of life is getting richer and this trend isn’t going away.
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