Dot-Communism Is Already Here

thanosk sends in a story at Wired Magazine about how online culture is, in many ways, trending toward communal behavior. Sharing and collaboration have become staples of active participation on the Internet, while not necessarily incorporating a particular ideology or involving a government. "Most people in the West, including myself, were indoctrinated with the notion that extending the power of individuals necessarily diminishes the power of the state, and vice versa. In practice, though, most polities socialize some resources and individualize others. Most free-market economies have socialized education, and even extremely socialized societies allow some private property. Rather than viewing technological socialism as one side of a zero-sum trade-off between free-market individualism and centralized authority, it can be seen as a cultural OS that elevates both the individual and the group at once. The largely unarticulated but intuitively understood goal of communitarian technology is this: to maximize both individual autonomy and the power of people working together. Thus, digital socialism can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates."

Comments

Re:Communal != Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarilly. Bullshitism would certainly make a nice name for the topic the article could be filed under.

Re:Nothing new, but encouraging

[MyLongNickName]

Ummm....how did the Hulk service others, exactly?

By defeating the Iron Sheik.

Re:Nothing new, but encouraging

[AKAImBatman]

I thought that the majority of Americans have come to terms that absolute Communism and absolute Capitalism are both bad systems?

Who said anything about Capitalism? I was referring to the general culture of the US. The culture of individual empowerment that makes the empowerment of the greater whole possible. Of which "Capitalism" as it has been named is merely a side effect of how such a culture operates economically, not a system in of itself.

I'm sorry you have wasted your time on such a long and pointless rant.