I’ve long held that I believe in the markets of ideas and the power of people to make decisions given the right access to information and tools. It’s what motivates my work at PlaceMatters. My reading list includes books like Wikinomics
Kelly says that this redefined socialism is decentralized to the extreme:
Instead of gathering on collective farms we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs [i.e. Programmable Web]. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods.
In other words, we are entering into a digital socialist movement that is leaderless and stateless, bound up in innovative technology and global networks that have enabled collaboration and sharing on a vast scale. The barriers to innovation are coming down and mobilizing a project doesn’t necessarily require large reserves of cash. Before you write your congress person to report me as a pinko-commie bent on the destruction of the state, let me be clear that this is a movement without a leader. It is born from a confluence of historical circumstances and practicality that are anything but anti-American or un-patriotic. And this ground shift will never replace government. Instead, this cultural and economic shift will influence and change the way in which we think about the production and consumption of goods and services. It will augment and evolve our current system so that both individual freedom and collective responsibility are reconciled and honored.
Take the open source movement, for instance. As Kelly mentions in his article, a recent survey indicates that most people contribute as a means to learning and building experience. Others enjoy the accolades and relative fame afforded to those at the fore of a big project. Individuals are still rewarded and honored in this system. In return, they give the fruits of their labor back to the community to co-create something greater than they could have alone. Additionally, individuals and companies have monetized open source software through innovative and legal business models. I’m not saying all work will be done at this level and scale, but I believe it will happen where it is most appropriate, born out of an intrinsic desire to share and collaborate.
Ironically, the capitalist-driven dotcom boom of the 90′s helped hasten the new global digital socialist movement by leaving us with a wealth of network infrastructure. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this last boom-bust cycle push the movement along further. Instead of populist outrage and taking to the streets, people are mobilizing for greater transparency and accountability, building better ways for people to collaborate and share, or just trying to build the next Twitter. Tim O’Reilly wrote about DIY on a civic scale recently in response to a story on CNN about Kauai residents successfully taking on a road repair job in a state park for which the state had no money. O’Reilly points out that:
The internet provides new vehicles for collective action. A lot of people pay attention when social media is used to organize a protest (as with the recent twitter-fueled protests in Moldova.) But we need to remember that we can organize to do work, as well as to protest!
The movement isn’t a revolution, but rather an innovation in culture and economics. We live in a world defined less by walls and more by bridges. Not to belabor the point, but don’t read this as a call for a new world order or a global government. It is instead, an acknowledgement that there are forces at work rewiring our culture to solve the problems of the next century and this time it isn’t coming from a single individual or group of politically powerful people.
For those of you still afraid of the word socialism, I understand it leaves a bad aftertaste. But, remember that the United States is built on foundations of innovation in our economy and institutions. Our government was an original mashup, borrowing from the best minds on governance and political economy of the time. Within this framework, we have seen our country invent and reinvent solutions to new problems both from the ground up and the top down. So long as the tenents of democracy are preserved, this digital socialist society could help us take on even greater challenges. No revolution required.
Tags: collaboration, crowds, culture, networks, socialism