"When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism."The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online, a provocative article in the new Wired magazine, examines the effects of the growing influence of online collectivism. I thought this might make for an interesting read and discussion by members of an online community.
posted by Benny Andajetz
on May 27, 2009 -
63 comments
It's a year since the untimely
death of
Chris Lightfoot. He had a remarkable
combination of political commitment and technical expertise that led him to develop sites
such as
WriteToThem and
Pledgebank for the splendid political and social
software group,
MySociety.
His political writing brings a sharp and sarcastic wit to bear on such subjects as the
Iraq war, and
ID cards.
There are also some good
rants.
A sad loss to British society.
posted by crocomancer
on Feb 11, 2008 -
6 comments
Is the web fuelling a crisis in politics? Matthew Taylor, Blair's chief strategy advisor has commented "as a citizen" that the "net-head" culture of political criticism is fuelling a crisis in politics where the populace is "increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet capable of self-government." One of his chief targets is the blogosphere, because he says bloggers are like teenagers - demanding, but "conflicted" about what they actually want.
posted by talitha
on Nov 17, 2006 -
37 comments
Webcameron. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party in the UK, reaches out to the Youtube generation.
posted by greycap
on Sep 30, 2006 -
53 comments
A Message from Iran was distributed on August 6 by the editors of MAHA, the clandestine gay ‘zine in Iran. MAHA means “we” or “us” in Persian. Originally begun in 2004 as a newspaper after a crackdown on Iranian gay Web sites by the Tehran regime, MAHA is now distributed in PDF format to its subscribers.
Iran has been censoring the Internet in earnest since
2003, and homosexuals are only a small part of that story. Likewise, Internet censorship is merely an element of the systematic persecution of gay
men and
boys in Iran. [more inside]
posted by owhydididoit
on Aug 19, 2006 -
17 comments
truthdig --drilling beneath the headlines. A new webmagazine, offering
expert in-depth coverage of current affairs as well as a variety of thoughtful, provocative content assembled from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major “digs,” led by authorities in their fields, who will drill down into contemporary topics and assemble packages of content... Robert Scheer is editor in chief (you may know him from the
SF Chronicle). The current featured "dig" is on
religion and homosexuality.
posted by amberglow
on Dec 2, 2005 -
12 comments
Internets: Serious Business! These last few months have seen an increase in the attacks on the participatory culture of the web. The mainstream establishments, both political and corporate, have been looking with a cautious eye towards this new developing place.
So far we've established that
blogs can get you fired,
keep you from getting a job, give
pedophiles a place to ruminate on snatching your children, threaten journalistic integrity *snicker*,
endanger the marketing ,
product planning, and
product life cycles for automobile manufacturers, can
infect your computer with virii, and have
all sorts of negative consequences. The internets (both of them) can cause
your children to be charmed, seduced, and addicted by readily available porn, and can also provide access to extremist radical and fundamentalist groups, prompting
Congress to discuss more restrictive legislation (
NSFW), but only for the porn. It has even been claimed that the web has given
"Al Qaeda wings". P2P is blamed as causing record loses by the music industry, despite their investments in
local station marketing payola. The FEC has held
public hearings attended by both hemispheres of the blogosphere (amazingly in near-agreement)
discussing the regulation of political speech online. The figureheads of
a certain political party fear that their affiliated slice of the blogosphere may be too far-left. Newspapers and TV are leading the charge, with the internet standing in for pharmaceutical scares, yo-yo diets, and missing white women.
The question is, how will the libertarian-minded digerati respond to this very real attack on the essence of web culture?
posted by rzklkng
on Jul 29, 2005 -
34 comments
Carbon Planet - aims to reduce Climate Change by empowering individuals to erase their CO2 footprint by purchasing carbon credits. The site enables users to subscribe based on the greenhouse gas usage in their country, with the subscription buying carbon credits in a forestry scheme in Australia. Would you consider subscribing?
posted by gusset
on Jul 3, 2005 -
26 comments
S2K: So the election is over and you're sad. Right? Right? Er, well, anyway, check out this hilarious (and as-yet-unfinished) online comic featuring the guy we all secretly wanted to vote for. If we didn't already. (Features naughty words at times.)
posted by Skot
on Dec 14, 2000 -
4 comments
