Monday, July 07, 2008

Doug Rushkoff on the New Renaissance

A cool talk by Doug Rushkoff on participatory, open source Democracy. He argues against the notion of personal democracy. Interestingly enough, he gave this speech at the Personal Democracy Forum.

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of ten books on media, values, and society, including Cyberia, Media Virus, Get Back in the Box, and Open Source Democracy [available free here]. He also made the Frontline documentaries Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders.

In this keynote “invocation,” which opened the second day of Personal Democracy Forum on June 24, 2008, he argues that there is no such thing as “personal democracy” and genuine democratic discourse can only be participatory and collective. The power to write and publish, he notes, may finally be in the hands of everyone (after centuries of domination by religious and political elites), but real democracy isn't just blogging and commenting, it's treating the entire world as “open source” and remakable by direct participation.






1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"personal" i and "democracy" we seems not to be mutually exclusive, but both part of the dynamaic inter - active play...
not a problem

of course these aspects of looking to a higher purpose and or ideal is always the case as in adopting a view in this case a direction/desire
- looking up to obama is the same as looking up to open sourcing - not as content per say, but as a gesture - this activity of looking up... perhaps useful... nontheless, not a problem...

the topic of open sourcing as a consideration - very interesting !
what more can be said for open sourcing as a dynamic and in actuality?
?!