Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Reading Media Virus brought me to the WELL, for which I would like to
thank you personally, Mr. Rushkoff.  I came seeking a new kind of
collective organised around information.  What I found was somewhat
different than I expected, though not altogether disappointing.

I like the idea of forming ad hoc alliances for real world projects,
and always felt that the WELL has had real potential to incubate and
proliferate such entities.

Would you agree?

Do you feel that the WELL has lived up to its potential in this
regard?
  

    
I wouldn't try to build a 747 with local currency. Only the makers of
centralized currency have insisted on the use of a single tool for
every job. We can use local currency for local transactions, locally
sourced goods, and locally created value. We can use long distance
currency for long-distance goods, products manufactured in multiple
locations, or long-distance import and export. That's the way it worked
in Renaissance Florence, for example, or all the Ottoman regions under
the Millet system. 

The Millet system didn't require colonial expansion for economic
sustainability, though, so unlike the Europeans, they didn't need to go
on giant conquests. (Sure, they had violence of their own, but it was
not an economic requirement.)

Centralized currency works GREAT for some things. But we need to
distinguish between the stuff it does, and the reasons and ways it was
implemented. The reason Kings developed it was not to promote long
distance transactions (the Floren already worked for that, as did the
Gold Dinar). It was developed to prevent local transactions and
monopolize commerce.

This does not mean it has to go away. More than one currency can work.
Just like many people have more than one bank account. 

But don't confuse local currency with barter. They're really
different. 

As for the WELL, well, I was around about a year after it started.
Straight dial-in and all that. And it was a much kinder community - at
least kinder than it was by 1996 or so, when I just couldn't take it
anymore. 

I'm not sure whether the Internet became a nastier place, or whether
the world became a nastier place and the Internet came along with it. 

I think spaces like this are great for modeling new mechanisms. I
don't know if they're great for actually carrying them out. But
incubating, sure. I don't know if it's lived up to its full potential,
though. There was a moment when it looked like some of the "original"
folks were going to fight for the original Well ethos, but then they
just split off and went about their own projects. 

And it felt like the first instance of "white flight" - like what's
happening as richer, more educated Myspace people migrate to Facebook. 
  

    
I apologize for coming to this conversation late. Thanks to the
vagaries of the military postal system, I only just received the book,
and I am burning through it. I will certainly have to go back and read
it more thoughtfully in the future, but both the subject matter and the
approaching end of this conversation are driving my reading right now.

One thing I haven't seen raised here is your discussion of the
corporatism of the military in the chapter "No Returns." I spent a
third of a my life as a soldier, and I was astounded at how much
corporations become an essential part of a military at war. Even before
9/11, however, I saw the effects of corporatism on military systems.
One thing that struck me as a young NCO was watching some powerful
Unix-based computer systems switched out for much more expensive and
much less reliable Windows systems. 

If we begin with the premise that some form of standing military is
needed to provide for national defense, do you see a way to seperate
corporatism from the military? Or do you believe that the modern
standing military is inseperable from corporatism?
  

    
Well, there's two main effects at work.

First, is the very simple marriage of real corporations and the
military. That's as old as colonialism, where the government works with
and through corporations to fight wars. In those days, it was British
East India both having its own army and being supported by the British
Army. The company could carry out the more dastardly military
maneuvers, just as Blackwater was hired by the CIA to do assassinations
and such in Iraq and Afghanistan (yesterday's NYTimes, I think). 

Then there's the corporaticization of the military, which is really
just an organizational principle that has replaced more traditional
values and logic with that of the corporation. They look for
efficiencies, etc. that may or may not be the best way to run an army.

And finally, I suppose there's simple corruption and contractors
bidding for stuff and bribing generals and senators to pick certain
contractors for tech or planes or whatever. Everything is "bid",
corporations seek to create needs for the things they fulfill, and most
of them last much longer and become more entrenched than the people
doing the deciding of whose products to use. 
  

    
As well as "economies of scale", we probably have "corruptions of
scale", "hubris of scale", "stupidities of scale", etc..  

Larger systems of any kind have basic benefits and problems.  Small
systems of any kind probably have basic benefits and problems.  

It is notable that those that would "fix" things seem to have many of
the same problems once they are in charge.  Could they be up against
something fundamental about human systems similar to the essential
complexity problems in software?

BTW, I'm all in favor of checks and balances as well as
trust-busting,limitations of power and other tools to keep
accumulations of power restrained wherever and  whenever they are
found.
  

    
You're absolutely right that a lot of the corporate interest in
"efficiency" tends to run counter to the right way to run an army.
Redundancies are considered inefficient in a corporation--but in an
army, they might be what saves your ass when you start taking combat
losses. We used to joke in Iraq that if they kept telling us to do more
with less, pretty soon we'd be able to do everything with nothing at
all. 

What really concerns me with regards to military corruption are
indications that many former senior officers were hired as military
experts for news outlets, while simultaneously (and in a non-disclosed
manner) working for various arms and military logistics corporations.
Hard to understand why there's no conflict of interest there. 
  

    
Just wanted to thank everybody who posted in this conversation, and to
note that the two weeks visit is over, by the calendar, but that
everybody is certainly welcome to keep discussing the book and the
issues while some attention shifts to the next conversation.   Life,
Inc. certainly raises some interesting questions!  Thanks for a great
discussion.
  

    
Thanks, Gail. Sorry I dropped off at the end, I was traveling.

Doug, I want to thank you for joining us here, and also for the
evident grind you went through to create this book, which has set in
motion a few wheels I didn't even know I had. I'd be happy to continue
the conversation, if you can make time for it.
  

    
Hey, it was a pleasure. I had to run off to see the Blizzcon
convention for the Frontline documentary I am working on. Insane but
wonderful to see a virtual community gather in realspace like that.
Inspiring even. 

Thanks to everyone for showing up and caring enough about these issues
to bring your own experience and perspective. I learned a lot. 

I really am convinced that the problem we are running into as a
society is that we base so much on scarcity - and we just don't know
how to deal with abundance. If we could easily feed everyone, house
everyone, and provide energy to everyone, how would we get anyone to
*pay* for anything? It gets to that reverse efficiency problem. 

I'll be interested to see whether we devise a new model, or surrender
to the old one as default and only. Time will tell. 
  

    
Congratulations all for such a scintillating discussion.  Having
lurked thruout, I wanted to nudge just one micron or two along:

<24> Am not expert, Brian, but have heard an expert on international 
complementary currencies cite Bali's economy as an example: in so
doing, he pointed out how inextricable the currency was from the 
culture, in which it is said a newborn child's feet don't touch the
ground until it is two, because from birth it is always passed around
from villager to villager, who hold it close to them, in love. 

I'd also cite Arayatne's community-based movement in Sri Lanka,
Sarvodaya, eventually seeing more of their own complementary currency
in circulation than the gov't's. -/ sarvodaya.org
  

    
I realize this discussion is no longer current, but based on Mr.
Rushkoff's remarks about the importance of local currencies, I thought
people would find this interesting:

The Economic Revolution Is Already Happening -- It's Just Not on Wall
St.

By Maria Armoudian, AlterNet. Posted October 7, 2009.

Thousands of alternatives to the punishing corporate model have
sprouted up across the US, building up an alternative economy as Wall
St. crumbles. 

"Over the past few decades, thousands of alternatives to the standard,
top-down corporate model have sprouted up -- worker-owned companies
and co-operatives, neighborhood corporations and trusts,
community-owned technology centers and municipally owned enterprises.

In fact, today, involvement in these alternative models of business
outnumber union membership as the means by which private-sector workers
and community members are taking their economics into their own hands.
The story is revealed in the 4-year-old book, America Beyond
Capitalism, written by University of Maryland political science
professor Gar Alperovitz."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/143102/the_economic_revolution_is_already_happe
ning_--_it%27s_just_not_on_wall_st._
  

    
Thanks for posting that. I think many of us are aware of innovative
approaches emerging below radar, facilitated in part by the Internetl
and new media. Coworking is another example.