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:Torrents

[Broken scope]

Why would the dea confiscate your corn?

Re:Nothing new, but encouraging

[Andr T.]

I don't really mean any offense to you personally, but you just stated, in a long winded example, two things that everyone here already knows.

No offense at all.

Someone trying to sell something beefed up the drama to make it more exciting and interesting and sell more products. We know that happens.

Yes, but the question here is the 'hero' thing. You can sell the same stuff by exagerating in many other ways - here in Brazil, for example, ppl would say that 'despite the corrupt police, this policeman did his job'.

People are too self involved and egotistical to think they are incorrect in their assumptions and therefore everyone else must be wrong. They can't see how others can see it any other way.

You are right again, but you can think they are 'wrong' and do nothing about it, or you can think they are 'wrong' and sell them democracy and other western values. I think Graham Greene thought that Americans were not bad, they were only ingenuous.