Open Source Democracy | Page 7

information, or content,
unlike real human interaction, could be bought and sold. It was a
commodity. People would pay, it was thought, for horoscopes, stock
prices and magazine articles. When selling information online didn't
work, businesspeople instead turned to selling real products online.
Horoscope.com and online literary journals gave way to Pets.com and
online bookstores. The e-commerce boom was ignited. Soon the
internet became the World Wide Web. Its opaque and image-heavy
interfaces made it increasingly one-way and read-only, more conducive
to commerce than communication. The internet was reduced to a direct
marketing platform.
The burst of the bubble and the re-emergence of community
Few e-commerce companies made any money selling goods, but the
idea that they could was all that mattered. When actual e-commerce
didn't work, the internet was rebranded yet again as an investment
platform. The Web was to be the new portal through which the middle
class could invest in the stock market. And which stocks were they to
invest in? Internet stocks, of course! Like any good pyramid scheme,
everyone was in on it. Or at least they thought they were.
News stories about online communities such as The Well, or even
discussion groups for breast cancer survivors were soon overshadowed
by those about daring young entrepreneurs launching
multi-million-dollar IPOs (Initial Price Offerings of formerly private
stock on public exchanges such as the NYSE or NASDAQ.) Internet
journalism, written by option-holding employees of media
conglomerates, moved from the culture section to the business pages

and the dot.com pyramid scheme became the dominant new media
story.
A medium born out of the ability to break through packaged stories was
now being used to promote a new, equally dangerous one: the great
pyramid. A smart kid writes a business plan. He finds a few 'angel'
investors to back him up long enough to land some first-level investors.
Below them on the pyramid are several more rounds of investors, until
the investment bank gets involved. Another few levels of investors buy
in until the decision is made to go public. Of course, by this point, the
angels and other early investors are executing their exit strategy. It used
be known as a carpet bag. In any case they're gone and the investing
public is left holding the soon-to-be-worthless shares.
Tragically, but perhaps luckily, the dot.com bubble burst along with the
story being used to keep it inflated. The entire cycle, 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 stories to the
technologies through which they are disseminated. And the whole
ordeal may have given us an opportunity for renaissance.
Back here in the real world, the internet is doing just fine. Better than
ever. The World Wide Web, whose rather opaque platform ascended
primarily for its ability to serve as an online catalogue, has been
adapted to serve many of the internet's original, more technologically
primitive functions. USENET discussions have been reborn as
web-based bulletin boards such as Slashdot, and Metafilter. Personal
daily diaries known as weblogs have multiplied by the thousands.
Blogger.com provides a set of publishing tools that allows even a
novice to create a weblog, automatically add content to a Web site or
organise links, commentary and open discussions. In the short time
Blogger has been available, it has fostered an interconnected
community of tens of thousands of users. These people don't simply
surf the Web. They are now empowered to create it.
Rising from the graveyard of failed business plans, these collaborative
communities of authors and creators are the true harbingers of cultural
and perhaps political renaissance.

Chapter 3
The opportunity for renaissance
The birth of the internet was interpreted by many as a revolution. Those
of us in the counterculture saw in the internet an opportunity to topple
the storytellers who had dominated our politics, economics, society and
religion - in short our very reality - and to replace their stories with
those of our own. It was a beautiful and exciting sentiment, but one as
based in a particular narrative as any other. Revolutions simply replace
one story with another. The capitalist narrative is replaced by that of the
communist; the religious fundamentalist's replaced by the gnostic's.
The means may be different, but the rewards are the same. So is the
exclusivity of their distribution. That's why they're called revolutions -
we're just going in a circle.
This is why it might be more useful to understand the proliferation of
interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we
have the ability to step out of the story altogether. Renaissances are
historical instances of widespread recontextualisation. People in a
variety of different arts, philosophies and sciences have the ability to
reframe their reality. Renaissance