🠗 🧙🏽‍♂️ randomized 🧙🏽‍♂️ 🠗

• Douglas Rushkoff
  

  Open Source Democracy
  

  Social Philosophy Lecture [2008]

  Computers & Society, NYU. Following is the foreword, by Douglas Alexander, to Rushkoff’s paper on the same topic:

  “The internet has become an integral part of our lives because it is interactive. That means people are senders of information, rather than simply passive receivers of ‘old’ media. Most importantly of all, we can talk to each other without gatekeepers or editors. This offers exciting possibilities for new social networks, which are enabled – but not determined – by digital technology.

  In the software industry, the open source movement emphasises collective cooperation over private ownership. This radical idea may provide the biggest challenge to the dominance of Microsoft. Open source enthusiasts have found a more efficient way of working by pooling their knowledge to encourage innovation.

  All this is happening at a time when participation in mainstream electoral politics is declining in many Western countries, including the US and Britain. Our democracies are increasingly resembling old media, with fewer real opportunities for interaction.

  What, asks Douglas Rushkoff in this original essay for Demos, would happen if the ‘source code’ of our democratic systems was opened up to the people they are meant to serve? ‘An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to confront the issues of our time,’ he answers.

  That’s a profound thought at a time when governments are recognising the limits of centralised political institutions. The open source community recognises that solutions to problems emerge from the interaction and participation of lots of people, not by central planning.

  Rushkoff challenges us all to participate in the redesign of political institutions in a way which enables new solutions to social problems to emerge as the result of millions interactions. In this way, online communication may indeed be able to change offline politics.”

  Categories: Essays, Lectures, Literature, Symposia

  Tags: Civilization, Computers & Society, Culture, Democracy, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Futurism, Humanity, NYU, Open Source, Technology

• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
  

  The Communist Manifesto
  

  Political Philosophy Pamphlet [1848]

  View Fullscreen

  ×

  This has got to be the most misunderstood document in the world. People talk so much shit without having any idea what they’re talking about. This isn’t even a book; it’s less than 50 pages long. Do yourself a favor & print it out & pin it up in your bathroom so you don’t forget. Be a part of history fam. Don’t sleep on this.

  “The Communist Manifesto was conceived as an outline of the basic beliefs of the Communist movement. The authors believed that the European Powers were universally afraid of the nascent movement, and were condemning as “communist,” people or activities that did not actually conform to what the Communists believed. This Manifesto, then, became a manual for their beliefs. In it we find Marx and Engel’s rehearsal of the idea that Capital has stolen away the work of the artisan and peasant by building up factories to produce goods cheaply. The efficiency of Capital depends, then, on the wage laborers who staff the factories and how little they will accept in order to have work. This concentrates power and money in a Bourgeois class that profits from the disunity of workers (Proletarians), who only receive a subsistence wage. If workers unite in a class struggle against the bourgeois, using riot and strikes as weapons, they will eventually overthrow the bourgeois and replace them as a ruling class. Communists further believe in and lay out a system of reforms to transform into a classless, stateless society, thus distinguishing themselves from various flavors of Socialism, which would be content to have workers remain the ruling class after the revolution. The Manifesto caused a huge amount of discussion for its support for a forcible overthrow of the existing politics and society. (Summary by Mark F. Smith)”

  Categories: Audio-Only, Audiobooks, Essays, Literature, Pamphlets

  Tags: 1800s, Anti-Capitalism, Capitalism, Communism, Copyleft, Economics, Friedrich Engels, History, Karl Marx, Marxism, marxists.org, Philosophy, Political Economy, Politics, Socialism, The Profit Motive