The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

WIRED MAGAZINE: 17.06

Culture  :  Culture Reviews  

 

Wikipedia, Flickr, and Twitter aren't just revolutions in online social media. They're the vanguard of a cultural movement.
Illustration: Christoph Niemann

Bill Gates once derided open source advocates with the worst epithet a capitalist can muster. These folks, he said, were a "new modern-day sort of communists," a malevolent force bent on destroying the monopolistic incentive that helps support the American dream. Gates was wrong: Open source zealots are more likely to be libertarians than commie pinkos. Yet there is some truth to his allegation. The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism.

Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. Ward Cunningham, who invented the first collaborative Web page in 1994, tracks nearly 150 wiki engines today, each powering myriad sites. Wetpaint, launched just three years ago, hosts more than 1 million communal efforts. Widespread adoption of the share-friendly Creative Commons ....

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KENNETH CAPPELLO

ACID DROP

Curated by Tim Barber

A Milk Gallery Project

Exhibition dates: June 2nd - 13th

450 WEST 15TH STREET

 

 

 

James Fuentes LLC is pleased to announce a solo presentation by ALEJANDRO CARDENAS

LISTE, The Young Art Fair Basel, Stand: 1/2/2
Burgweg 15, 4058 Basel, Switzerland

June 9 - 14, 2009
http://www.liste.ch

JAMES FUENTES LLC
35 ST. JAMES PLACE
NEW YORK, NY 10038
TEL 212.577.1201 
FAX 212.577.1202

HTTP://WWW.JAMESFUENTES.COM

Variables
New works by Jessica Eaton
Opening Reception Friday June 12th, 7 - 11pm
June 12 - July 12

LES Gallery
1879 Powell Street
Vancouver

www.lesgallery.ca

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Goldfrapp "Deer Stop"

 

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bajofondo - [listen] "borges y paraguay"

Underworld [A Hundred Days Off] "Trim"

 

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Remarks by Václav Havel and Two Members of China's Charter 08 at the Ceremony for the Homo Homini Award

By Václav Havel, Cui Weiping, Xu Youyu

This is an online-only supplement to the April 30 issue of the Review.

Opening of the One World
Human Rights Film Festival,
Prague, Czech Republic,
March 11, 2009

I offer my congratulations to the recipients of this year's Homo Homini Award and I am happy they came here from China. Allow me to make a few remarks. First, I think I will be speaking on behalf of most signatories of Charter 77 if I say that we are both pleased and honored to have inspired the Chinese Charter 08.

Secondly, I would like once more to point out our experience, one that our Chinese friends should adopt in one way or another, the experience that one may never reckon with success, one may never reckon with the situation changing tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or in ten years. Perhaps it will not. If that is what you are reckoning with, you will not get very far.

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daniel melingo - [maldito tango #08] "pequeño paria"

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daniel melingo - [maldito tango #08] "pequeño paria"

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Data-Entry Supervisor

 

It's time for an ambitious new literature of the office

By Alain de Botton

May 31, 2009

Without quite grasping the extent of our debt, we rely on writers to help explain the world to us. It's they who give us a feel for what it's like to fall in love, who give us words for describing the landscape around us, and who help us interpret the dynamics of our families. Such is their power that we can name whole slices of experience with adjectives built of their names. We speak of encountering, sometimes in the most unlikely settings, dynamics most succinctly described as "Proustian," "Austenesque," and "Kafkan." Writers are our map-makers.

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