Open Source Democracy

Open Source Democracy - How
online communication is
changing offline politics

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Rushkoff
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Copyright (C) 2003 by Douglas Rushkoff.

Title: Open Source Democracy
Author: Douglas Rushkoff
Release Date: January 20, 2004 [eBook #10753]
Language: English
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Title page:
Open Source Democracy How online communication is changing
offline politics
by Douglas Rushkoff

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Tom Bentley and everyone at Demos for the opportunity to
extend this inquiry to a new community of thinkers. Thanks also to my
editorial assistant, Brooke Belisle, and to colleagues including Andrew
Shapiro, Steven Johnson, Ted Byfield, Richard Barbrook, David
Bennahum, Red Burns, Eugenie Furniss and Lance Strate.
Introduction
The emergence of the interactive mediaspace may offer a new model
for cooperation. Although it may have disappointed many in the
technology industry, the rise of interactive media, the birth of a new
medium, the battle to control it and the downfall of the first victorious
camp, taught us a lot about the relationship of ideas to the media
through which they are disseminated. Those who witnessed, or better,
have participated in the development of the interactive mediaspace
have a very new understanding of the way that cultural narratives are
developed, monopolised and challenged. And this knowledge extends,
by allegory and experience, to areas far beyond digital culture, to the
broader challenges of our time.
As the world confronts the impact of globalism, newly revitalised
threats of fundamentalism, and the emergence of seemingly
irreconcilable value systems, it is incumbent upon us to generate a new
reason to believe that living interdependently is not only possible, but
preferable to the competitive individualism, ethnocentrism, nationalism
and particularism that have characterised so much of late 20th century
thinking and culture.
The values engendered by our fledgling networked culture may, in fact,
help a world struggling with the impact of globalism, the lure of
fundamentalism and the clash of conflicting value systems. Thanks to
the actual and allegorical role of interactive technologies in our work
and lives, we may now have the ability to understand many social and
political constructs in very new contexts. We may now be able to

launch the kinds of conversations that change the relationship of
individuals, parties, creeds and nations to one another and to the world
at large. These interactive communication technologies could even help
us to understand autonomy as a collective phenomenon, a shared state
that emerges spontaneously and quite naturally when people are
allowed to participate actively in their mutual self-interest.
The emergence of the internet as a self-organising community, its
subsequent co-option by business interests, the resulting collapse of the
dot.com pyramid and the more recent self-conscious revival of
interactive media's most participatory forums, serve as a case study in
the politics of renaissance. The battle for control over new and little
understood communication technologies has rendered transparent many
of the agendas implicit in our political and cultural narratives.
Meanwhile, the technologies themselves empower individuals to take
part in the creation of new narratives. Thus, in an era when crass
perversions of populism, and exaggerated calls for national security,
threaten the very premises of representational democracy and free
discourse, interactive technologies offer us a ray of hope for a renewed
spirit of genuine civic engagement.
The very survival of democracy as a functional reality may be
dependent upon our acceptance, as individuals, of adult roles in
conceiving and stewarding the shape and direction of society. And we
may get our best rehearsal for these roles online.
In short, the interactive mediaspace offers a new way of understanding
civilisation itself, and a new set of good reasons for engaging with civic
reality more fully in the face of what are often perceived (or taught) to
be the many risks and compromises associated with cooperative
behaviour. Sadly, thanks to the proliferation of traditional top-down
media and propaganda, both marketers and politicians have succeeded
in their efforts to turn neighbour against neighbour, city against city,
and nation against nation. While such strategies sell more products,
earn more votes and inspire a sense of exclusive salvation (we can't
share, participate, or heaven