23 Nov 2009, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in New Work Ways,Thought & Theory, 0 Comments
Ramifications of the Internet Economy
Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist. Specifically, his recent work has been taking a long, hard look at the ramifications of a digital world on the institutions of the past. His most recent talk at Web 2.0, embedded below, argues that our current economic models are poorly equipped to handle scaling with abundance – a problem with information distributed via the Internet.
The money quote:
“So we end up in this early Internet stage which is where we’re at now with a lot of smart, smart people writing new laws of the new economy and new ideas on how business is going to happen and these are always positioned as revolutionary new ideas for how to do business in a networked age when what they actually are is extremely reactionary stances on how can traditional companies and traditional corporations maintain stranglehold over the economy even though there’s this vastly liberative technology out there.”
So how to we get there from here? Rushkoff proposes two points:
- The development of an Internet culture that actually respects the labor of individuals. My writing is my writing. It is not a medium for Google ads.
- The creation of new modes of currency based on abundance rather than scarcity.
I actually take some issue with the first point. Placed in context with the rest of the talk he seems to rallying against the ‘remix culture’ of Lawrence Lessig and, more recently, Chris Anderson’s book Free. Obviously the sharing and spreading of ideas, as I’m doing in this post, becomes much less potent without being able to embed the original source and enrich it with my own ideas, debate the merits with your comments, and allow it to become something else.
However, endlessly giving away creative works in order to leverage something else, taken to its logical conclusion, is a dead end: talks are done for free to better leverages sales of a book, which will eventually be given away to leverage consulting engagements, whose consultations will eventually be done pro bono to leverage … what exactly? So we can scape together Adsense nickles and dimes on the attention all the leverage is able to get us?
If this kind of stuff is interesting to you, make sure to check out his Colbert Report appearance.