Slashdot Mirror
The Next Social Revolution?
Cryofan writes "In a recent interview, Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs) discussed the possibility of a 'new economic system' born of 'unconscious cooperation' embodied by such technologies as Google links and Amazon lists, Wikipedia, wireless devices using unlicensed spectrum, Web logs, and open-source software. Rheingold speculates that 'the technology of the Internet, reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices...may make some new economic system possible....We had markets, then we had capitalism, and socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism. There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production.' However, Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies could 'quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'"
People do work together for the common good. But only in certain fields. Some people feel the call to advance human knowledge, and do it because it's what they want, not because they're in it for the money. The same is true for Open Source. The problem is, it's nobody's dream to clean toilets, and there are plenty of such jobs that need to be done in order for society to function.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I can't think of a single other instance in U.S. history where a conglomeration of companies have had the power to stall technological advancement and changing economic structures, but this is precisely what they have done.
This really isn't that unprecedented. There was a big effort by the riverboat lobby to stop the development of railroads back in the 1800s.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.