Message 03366 [Homepage] [Navigation]
Thread: oxenT03315 Message: 13/45 L6 [In index]
[First in Thread] [Last in Thread] [Date Next] [Date Prev]
[Next in Thread] [Prev in Thread] [Next Thread] [Prev Thread]

[ox-en] Can communities profit from businesses?



Michael Bouwens wrote:

 In any case, I decided at one point that no progress could be expected 
from any corporate machines, and not from the political machines that 
they now almost completely control. On the other hand, civil society  was
thriving through internet experimentation, the social had taken  over the
dotcom era, and new participatory technologies were being  developed at
breakneck speed, creating all kinds of sharing practices  and communities
of exchange. Seeing this is what decided me to break  with the corporate
world, and to eventually create p2pfoundation.net
 
 However, it seems that we are seeing a revival of corporate change 
thinking recently: the social capital movement, bottom of the pyramid 
movements, social entrepreneurship, purpose driven entreprise, the 
for-benefit sector, the business ethics movement.
 My question is, given that my personal experience has driven me to 
scepticism, how real is all that? what do you think are the prospects  of
such efforts?

First I would say that all that we experience today is paradoxically
possible because of the speed infrastructures were buit up with commerical
goals in mind. 

Commercialisation thus has brought more people into the web than any other
way and have us talk daily and constantly to each other; now the exciting
possibility is that the corporate machines see that they are much better
off of in further supporting these peoples endavours than selling content
to them. I dont even say that this development is likely to happen: BUT
Communities and all those who want the web as a germ form of a cooperative
economy at large - modeled creatively in relation to the two paradigms
that we have allready, Wikipedia and FLOSS, better watch out and observe
the concrete nature of the support companies give to community building
instead of praising or denouncing businesses right away.

My approach was is communities - if self-conscient communities do exist
and if they even are able to ask such a question - might ask themselves
what they would like to "outsource" to businesses and be clear at what
cost. Of course we would like to do everything, but maybe we should focus
on important things?

One example: I would like that some business comes up with a hardware that
enables people to share sight and sound of one location with another over
broadband conncection. It is what we call "Video Bridge". Kind of mixer
and scaler for everything that plugs in to a digital stream. If such
hardware would exist at reasonable prices, it would cause an avalanche of
educational places networking with each other and sharing their best
offerings. This would create lots of needs for hardware and bandwidth,
much beyond the dull and expensive Videoconferencing technology of today.

This would, on the other hand, promote completely new networks of "fair
use shared educational content". So the community is also the result of
the process.

Franz Nahrada

------------------------
PS some recent links from a debate in the distributedcreativity list

http://www.whak.com/off/?202  A podcast interview with David Weinberger on
social interaction on the web and web 2.0 . "Marketers seem to have picked
up on the Cluetrain Manifesto in this years more than in the six previous
years".

http://www.pixelache.ac/2005/helsinki  The Dot Org Boom

http://www.sevensixfive.net/myspace/myspacetwopointoh.html   A closer look
at the new "social software" sites allowing people to share their contents.

quote "Just as online social networking sites have found ways to turn the
users into the distributers for the advertising medium, these sites have
also created their venues in such a way that the users themselves provide
all of the content that draws the traffic to the site. ~The set of content
that is monetized on Myspace includes the users identities in the form of
the profile pages that they fill out, it includes the users interactions
in the form of the online conversations they have with their friends and
the bulletins that they send out to keep in touch, and Myspace also claims
ownership of any original work that is uploaded to the site by the users."


_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



Thread: oxenT03315 Message: 13/45 L6 [In index]
Message 03366 [Homepage] [Navigation]