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.'"
Are you saying the giant corporations might do something that's not in the interest of the public good?
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
Oh my, a 'new economy' based on 'unconscious cooperation'. My, that sounds like Capitalism.
I think the same can be said of a lot of Democracies these days.
"Unconscious cooperation?" Why, it's almost as if it's being guided by...an "invisible hand!"
But then I looked around and all I saw was people clawing their way to the top, stepping on each other in a futile grab for something they couldn't reach: "enough." Nobody ever has enough in this society. Nobody has enough money, enough respect or enough love. We are a society of maximizers, always worried about what we're giving up for having something else. "I could take a sick day now, but I have to make my car payment." "I don't like my job, but I'll stay there and be miserable because other jobs don't pay enough."
It won't work on a global scale. All it would take is one person taking advantage of another for the whole thing to collapse.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
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.'
The easy solution? Make the rest of the world quash innovations such as file-sharing too.
(Sadly, this seems to be too common the attitude, and seems to work somewhat...)
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.
What are you, a retard?
Yes.
Can you build your own computer?
Yes
And I'm not talking some 8-bit micro controller thing you cobbled together from parts you picked up at RadioShack.
Well, yes, I've built on of those... but I didn't get the parts at Radio Shack.
I'm asking, can you build, in your back yard from raw materials, a general purpose computer?
No I can not turn rocks, dirt, and dog feces from my yard into a computer.
I'm betting that, perhaps, one one-thousandth of the slashdot readership has even the beginnings of the capability to do that.
Everyone has the "beginnings of the capability" to do whatever the hell they want.
The rest of us are consumers however much we'd like to think of ourselves as somehow above the comman man.
Eh? Everyone consumes. No shame in that.
But the fact is we buy our equipment from big corporations.
You can buy all kinds of stuff from small corporations. Often better stuff than the big corps sell.
Those big corporations will take whatever steps are necessary to stay in business and prosper.
Good for them, but faced with a big enough threat, they won't.
If that means that the common computer goes the way of the dodo bird and more stringently controlled systems replace them, then that's what will happen.
Why does that have to happen?
Stop acting like you're some kind of god and that the rules of economics don't apply to you.
If I write you a check for a trillion dollars will you shut up? Or do I have to send a plague on you and your family?
Fucking moron.
Indeed. Sorry I piped up.
The rest of us are consumers however much we'd like to think of ourselves as somehow above the comman man. But the fact is we buy our equipment from big corporations. Those big corporations will take whatever steps are necessary to stay in business and prosper.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls and you're going to get rightly modded down to oblivion after I'm done writing this, but...
Big companies of today will try to keep the way they do business unchanged, until such time as the consumer will grow tired enough of their attitude that they'll vote with their wallets. When that happens, those companies one of two things:
- They will evolve and adopt the way consumers want them to do business, simply because it's in their best interest, if nothing else to survive.
- If they can't evolve, they will go the way of the dodo.
You can see the latter happening to media companies. They had their hayday, and they used to have a purpose, which is distributing intellectual material (music, movies...) by distributing the media they're stored on. Now that technology allows people to share the intellectual material without exchanging the physical media, media companies find themselves with no business case. They're superfluous and struggling to stay alive, but they won't be able to adapt, simply because they aren't needed anymore.
Now, in your example, nobody will need to build computers from scratch, because computer-making companies will adapt to whatever new way of distributing goods emerges. That's because, as you point out, people have a need for someone to manufacture computers for them.
I don't know what the new way of distributing/selling computers will be, and how it will happen, but rest assured that it will happen. The RIAAs and MPAAs of the world however will not be part of the new world, that's for sure. The only question is, how many victims will they make in their downfalls...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This interview is especially interesting because it outlines some specifics about HOW this can proceed, using technology as a tool to force social progress. Hopefully governments won't start fucking with things to protect their client corporations and realise that everyone needs to adapt. Otherwise they might as well be full-blown communists.
Slashdot in 5 Paragraphs
We don't even have a FAIR capitalistic society yet.
I'll bet you're thinking of something like "The American Dream", which is the dream of a "fair" capitalistic society. Or Utopia, which is in theory where the socialism/communism/capitalism models are supposed to evolve to.
Capitalism by definition isn't necessarily supposed to be fair - it's an economic model that states that anyone is allowed to make money. It means that evil corporations are still allowed the make the same money in the same market that good ol' Joe is (substitute whatever David vs. Goliath story you wish - NewPunkBand vs RIAA, Consumers vs. BigCorporations, Linux vs. Microsoft, etc..etc.etc). It just so happens that currently (and many,many,many times in the past) politics are helping the bigger evil corporations make money easier than good ol' Joe, because they are big enough to get some law on their side.
Howard Rheingold is making the point that these big evil corporations are depending on what he believes is an outdated "version" of the capitalistic economic model, which is that since they need to control the distribution of their particular product/service in order to make money, the only way they can make that happen when technology gets in the way is to get laws passed against it. That can't "bail them out" forever, especially when other countries that aren't necessarily interested in following that economic model get involved.
If greed motivates the average human (which it does), then the way for this type of "social revolution" to work is for everyone involved have something to gain by the collective participation of everyone. The "greed factor" could be that people start to learn in an very Pavlov-like-way that the more they contribute to making the collective model work, the better it works for them. It might take some time, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.
But then again I've had a few beers, so maybe I'm just dreaming...:)
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
Please repeat after me: capitalism with a hundred thousand government rules and regulations functions the same way as communism. a + 100000*b = c.
Is that a statement I somehow missed while reading Marxist literature?
A capitalist system, even a protective one such as the one found in the U.S., encourages corporations to maximize their profits, and even to be exploitive. In a communist economy, state owned monopolies protect the proletariat at the expense of profits and efficiency.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
Haha. Ice vendors who have the financial and political muscle to outlaw fridges, send secret police around confiscating them, and poison your childrens' minds with "artificial refrigeration is an evil abomination" propaganda coming from "unconnected" think tanks.
Yes, don't worry at all.
Industrial capitalism: Presence of corporations, legal "people" with unlimited liability protected by the State. Phony "free trade agreements" and "free trade organizations" which are nothing more than protection of businesses. Strict intellectual property laws. This is what we have in America.
Free-market capitalism: What this guy is describing. No corporations, true free trade (meaning the absence of subsidies, tariffs, embargoes, outsourcing bans, and other restrictions, NOT by agreements or organizations, but by lack of laws.) Whether there is intellectual property or not is debatable. I don't think that this has ever been fully put into practice.
All that needs to be done is to abolish property and the state
Ok. We'll get right on that. Is next Friday soon enough, or do you need it earlier?
FWIW, I think that's because only in the US is ice so widely used by the general public. A friend visited from Germany recently, and everywhere he went, he had to make a point of asking them not to put ice in his drink ...
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
This is sounding like a new way to pass the buck. At the same time, there are far more social implications to these technologies.
What geeks saw in the 80's. College students saw in the early 90s, and what the entire world is waking up to now is that by changing the extent of a single persons ability to communicate, we have a much larger base population for any one society.
It is interesting to note that while large corperations are throwing money at ways to resist economic change, governments and traditional cultures are also trying to resist a "global" society by protecting viewpoints,certain sentimentalities,and cultural identification. Are we seeing a unilateral changes in social-political power structures as well as economic systems?
My $.02, but I think I have change coming.
Kei
Congratulations, Howard, you're discovered free markets. Self-organizing, self-optimizing.
Best of all, gussy it up with some techie-speak and no one will ever notice you're repeating one of the best sellers of '76.
1776.
'unconscious cooperation'
Wouldn't it still be conscience since it's trying to, uhh, earn the most amount of money possible?
There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant
China isn't doing so badly. It seems most capitalistic societies are taking a more socialist turn - providing healhcare, welfare, education, etc. Seems capitalism sort of fused with the ideas of communism.
Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies
Open source is superior to brand name any day. Linux > windows. Firefox > IE. However, the latter both dominate the market, but Linux and Mozilla still have their fair share. Open source is the only example of REAL capitalism - since it's based on rugged individualism and can compete with huge corperations. That being said, it also forces big companies to innovate their software. You can bet that IE 7 will closely resemble FireFox.
quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'"
That is a fairly valid assumption, however, file sharing seems to be as rampant as ever. Kazaa, Ares, Gnucleus, eMule... if you want it, it's out there.
Case in point, desire for profit still does give companies incentive to improve upon existing models. The best thing that has ever happened to big corperations was open source - free, creative innovations which they can utilize in their up and coming products. Most of it was way too technologically advanced for the average user (try and explain to your parents how and why you need a 3 partition drive to have Linux and Windows).
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
And Ghengis Khan:
No I can not turn rocks, dirt, and dog feces from my yard into a computer.
Amateur...
Free Image Hosting
AT&T's monopoly was dismembered.
Standard Oil's monopoly was dismembered.
The horrific child labor conditions of the Industrial Age were checked by laws.
Labor unions were established.
The weekend was created.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but the point is that business in the United States is not immune to pressure from the population at large. It just takes a lot of hard work and political activism to force change of any kind, and most Americans are for a variety of reasons singularly uninterested in exercising their political power.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Right! You are! No one else would talk about the current election with two parties, leaving out the name of the country and other details, and assume to be understood- but an American. (Ok, I'll cut you some slack: this *is* slashdot, which is located in the US
Now, you know, a lot of the "rest of the world" isn't quite as paranoid about other people wanting to steal their stuff. A lot of us actually believe that the vast majority of the time, most people like to cooperate. And there are enough people that like to act ethically that things like wikipedia and open-source can actually work. Heck, not just work, they can work better than your cut-throat capitalism.
Oh, I should mention this while I'm ranting: the US economy's fortunes have very little to do with your brand of aggressive capitalism. If anything, you're doing well despite it. In the first part of the last century, you folks had a lot of oil, which is essential for fuelling an industrial economy and war machine. That's all. Just like England became wealthy with coal, you became wealthy because of oil- just an accident of history, really.
I believe St. Francis explained that having wealth made you fearful, and wanting to protect it. It was easier for him just to renounce material wealth, so he wouldn't have to worry.
Now, this is a crucial point: the US has been in decline now for some 30 years as an economic power. Your GDP goes up, but you people aren't any happier. This wealth that you accumulated is causing you some nasty "cognitive dissonnance", and you're choosing to resolve it by believing odd notions- like you're somehow superior, and the rest of the world is after you. Not so.
There is no problem with these other economic systems so long as they do not require coercion. People obviously ARE willing to contribute to things like wikipedia, distributed proofreaders, open source projects, peace brigades international, etc, etc... These things WORK. Who are you to say that human nature is evil, in the face of such feats? Humans sure are capable of incredible, unspeakable barbarity. But that's only human realization, quite distinct from human nature, which includes the possibility of either realization. And some systems invite certain types of realization: authoritarian systems invite barbary, systems that give status in exchange for contribution reward giving.
It's not selfless in the dualistic way that is present in judeo-christian (well, mostly christian) morality. The gift economy can't be seen as either selfless or selfish- more like enlightened self-interest. Contribute to a good OSS project, see your ability to charge high consulting fees go up. Neither selfless, nor selfish (or maybe both?)
Ah, there you have it: as far as IP goes, we do have nearly unlimited production capacity. Economists had to come up with the idea of augmenting returns; it's so damned cheap to copy bits that marginal costs keep decreasing. You can't deprive the other guy by making a copy (well, unless you're counting on licensing...).
There's no need. We only need a system that invites better realizations, and that's something that's become possible with a new mode of production. It's a rare thing in human history to be witnesses to such a massive change. That said, I'm afraid a lot of Americans are going to be too afraid to partake in this movement because your accidental wealth has warped your vision, making you see human nature as dark as your leaders manifest it.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
A few years ago Stephen King was doing an experiment of an end-run around the publishing industry, and doing it wrong (possibly with the intention of poisoning that well for unknown authors, as a bone thrown to his publishing buddies). What he did wrong was to insist that a minimum percentage of downloaders should contribute. What he should have done was release each chapter in response to a total contribution for the previous one, regardless of the percentage. He required an honesty level that wasn't necessary for his business model, and which caused his experiment to "fail".
Most writers obviously don't have the creds of Stephen King. So suppose it's a few years ago and you're Cory Doctorow - you're a very good writer but you're not widely known (now watch as I get told that I was the only person on Earth not following his work for the last 20 years). You have a great idea for a wonderful book about immortality and Disneyland. I forget how many chapters it is, let's say twenty. You put the first four in the public domain and post them on your website. You announce you will post the next chapter when you've gotten contributions totalling some amount of money. If you're good, the contributions will roll in pretty quickly. Maybe you put a thermometer picture on your website to let readers know how close they are to seeing the next chapter.
If this works, the creator gets his money even though the entire work ends up in the public domain. It would be really interesting to see somebody try this.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Except that these companies now have the cash and the clout to buy enough congressman to pass laws outlawing innovation that might do away with their business model. As technology advances the laws must become more draconian in order to try to force a stable state on unstable conditions, but so far they seem to have the means required to keep passing those laws.
Free market economics only works in a free market. The United States isn't anywhere close to a free market, and hasn't been anywhere close since the early days of the Republic. The less free the market, the easier it is for vested interests to use the government to maintain their positions of power and status. They're so good at it, in fact, that they managed to take a commodity which is now anything but scarce and make it artificially scarce in the face of a technological tidal wave moving in the opposite direction.
The RIAA, MPAA, Disney, and others like them have proven that they can stand against both the market and technological advancement and at the very least win a reprieve. 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.
I'd put my faith in the free market if we actually had one. But we don't.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That's not the only reason socialism fails. People are more productive with incentives to encourage them, and capitalism results in many more incentives for the average person to be productive. (note that incentives are not necessarily rewards; negative consequences are incentives too...) Since incentives and equality are mutually exclusive, a socialist society dedicated to equality won't be as productive as a capitalist society, and it will fall behind.
Idealistic yes. Communism can have the same things, rewards for qoutas met ect.. like a unionized job. There is nothing inherintly better about capitalism. It has as much to do with circumstances, leaders, population behavioral patterns as it does the system.
Capatalism won, because computers happened along the scene and gave the capatalists a huge production increase, while the communists didn't anticipate this and didn't gear their production in a similiar fashion. They aimed for gaols that become superflous. They aimed to outprodous the US in steel. Which in the early and mid industrial era, meant they'd have more tanks, more guns, more eveything. The communists centralized planning methods failed to properly incorporate electronics and they become fell behind. The US had a decentralized system, so when they came along, they switched productions.
But the soviets accomplished a lot. So did the Americans. In no way did communism fail. No more then Democracy can fail. They are just idealogical systems. They are never implemented ideally and thus never behave ideally. The russians stopped supporting that system, and it is no longe rin use. But the achievements of the soviets is just as stagering as the achivements of the Americans, who both stole much of the base of these achivements formt he germans.
Capatalism is just an idea. There is no pure capatalist system because people will not stand for a purely greed driven society. Even the most capatalistic societies have some provisions for the poor and ample regulations. Marx was a interesting but idealistic hippie, and Smith was a idealistic moron. If you want a true economic system that works, try Keynes. As Nixon put it "We're all keynsians now".
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Sounds great. Tell ya what - you go first. I'll hold onto your property while you're busy on that abolish-the-state thing.
> And once the majority of the people are not coerced to wage slavery or unemployment (as under capitalism) and have most of their time off to do what they want to do in addition to what little is needed to produce the basic essentials of life, everyone will be much better off.
Yes, we went over this. Neither of us are wage slaves, and during my free time, I hold onto your property. And you go and abolish the state.
> And to make people work, no oppression machinery like the state is needed, just social pressure.
So what are you waiting for? Gimme your stuff! What are you, some kinda chicken? :)
Who want's half of their drink as ice? You go to the movies and those bastards fill half the cup with it! Seems to me like a classic case of water down the product and rip off the consumer.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
it's because only Americans are stupid enough to pay money for frozen water?
(yes I'm joking, and American.)
Small companies who are successful selling computers, become big companies or go out of business.
Why does it have to be like this though? Why is it that the stock market must go up, corporate profits must increase, and small companies must become large ones to survive?
Central Banks, that's why. They are so entrenched that just getting rid of them (Federal Reserve buy back) would cause much suffering for most of us.
I haven't heard anyone "pipe up" with a sensible plan to get ourselves out of this hole we've (our grandfathers) dug, but maybe this is it.
An alternative system evolves slowly and quietly alongside the old one, eventually replacing it. The final step would maybe not be a revolution but a collective decision to ignore the old system.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Some real trends worth following:
This isn't a new phenomenon. There are many tangible products where the manufacturing cost is a tiny fraction of the retail price. Soft drinks, for example. Bottled water. Jeans. Batteries. Printer ink. There are successful business strategies for pushing the price up, ranging from heavy brand promotion to lock-in. Just because it could be cheap doesn't mean it will be.
We're starting to see these strategies applied to the Internet. "SBC Yahoo DSL", and "AOL for Broadband" are examples.
Electric power is a striking example of an unstable market. There's no inventory. Demand is relatively inelastic. Producers have high fixed costs. The result is prices that change by three orders of magnitude within a single day. This huge volatility can be exploited by traders, which makes things worse.
There's much economic theology around this issue, and not enough theory with predictive power. This area needs more simulation and less pontification.
Now these are the real issues in postmodern capitalism. Not peer to peer networking.
I think the idea is that with the lowered cost of technology independent movies will be able to gain a greater foothold. This will continue to be true.
The nature of free markets (truly free markets) is that people will do what is possible. Once indy movies are possible at a reasonable quality (something that is subjective) they will find ways to be distribued. As technology for distribution increases (high speed web access, for instance) you will see interesting ways to distribute them.
In a truly free market the profit margin is always very thin -- which is why many don't like the idea of a truly free market...
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
by it's very definition Science Fiction is....well, Fiction. Ofcourse this logically entails that all of the things described do not exist and never will. I mean, take this Jules Verne character, I mean, airplanes? submarines? pah, such nonsense, no way. or this whole psychohistory babble this Asimov person brought up...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
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.
Knowing the classic American love of conspicious consumption, I think it had to do with the fact that, before refrigeration, the wealthy elites of American society could afford an icehouse or deliveries of ice. They put ice in their drinks; this was emulated by whomever in the middle class could afford it. Once refridgeration spread, everyone could 'look rich' for a penny's worth of water. Ice used to be valuable, and so it remains as a cultural preference to this day.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The concept that the runaway consumption of natural resources and the paving over of fertile land
either in the name of western Capitalism, or in the name of nature-unfriendly Communism (China and the former USSR has/had a HORRIBLE environmental record)
can go on forever
is science fiction.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!