inkbluesky

slightly surreal blue dock 1024×768

I found this surfing the other day. There is a little noise, almost a blur effect, but its still a very effective scenic mood piece.

People Power

Previous industrial ages were built on the backs of individuals, too, but in those days labor was just that: labor. Workers were paid for their time, whether on a factory floor or in a cubicle. Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy. The currency is reputation, expression, karma, “wuffie,” or simply whim.

This can all sound a little like, well, ’60s-style utopianism. After all, Marx himself believed that the industrial proletariat would revolt against the bourgeoisie, creating a state where the workers own the means of industrial production. It’s easy to see an echo of that in blogosphere triumphalism.

But it’s a mistake to equate peer production with anticapitalism. This isn’t amateurs versus professionals; it’s each benefiting the other. Companies aren’t just exploiting free labor; they’re also creating the tools that give voice to millions. And that rowdy rabble isn’t replacing the firm; it’s providing the energy that drives a new sort of company, one that understands that talent exists outside Hollywood, that credentials matter less than passion, and that each of us has knowledge that’s valuable to someone, somewhere.

I don’t think of this people powered content as revolutionary as much as evolutionary and while there will be new business models, the changes in content origination will mostly change the old brick amd mortar businesses. In the end business is a product or service; what could and should be different is how the business is run. The flatter in terms of business hierarchy the better. I am constantly amazed how many people that perceive of themselves as edgey nonconformists are so quick to appeal to authority and hierarchical structure when they don’t get their way or there is a problem to work out. The net can’t solve some deeply ingrained tendencies for some people to want to be princes or kings.
I’m a little saddened by the reference to Marx. It is a little archaic. If you go far enough to the left you have people giving up their identities for the sake of the state, a problem that has never occurred in the U.S. unless you count the original settlers who were communalists. The American left and many programmers simply has a tendency to be more egalitarian. Then you have the far right in which the individual gives up their identity to corporations and to some extent organized religion. Maybe this will be a chance for people to be a owned a little less by “the man”. I am still withholding judgement on that score since many of the independent successes we see on the net are bought out by the traditionalists( Murdock and MySpace, flickr and Yahoo as for instances). Still, to have the kind of world wide access that the net provides is unprecedented and the potential for individual empowerment is incredible.

Embrio One-Wheel Concept

This hydrogen fuel cell powered, gyroscopically balanced, one-wheeled recreational and commuting vehicle provides an extraordinary vision of the kind of personal transport we could be using 20 years from now.

Photo at the link. This is a wild little concept vehicle. I could see it as viable transportation for those they only live a few miles from school or work.