Douglas Rushkoff initiates new radio show
an application of the hacker ethic and net collectivism to everything
Important announcement:
“This participatory radio show looks at both sides of Life Incorporated: how life has been literally “incorporated” by business and economics, and how can we incorporate LIFE back into our world: local commerce, community, social currency, and other emerging forms of participatory culture. This is freeform, bottom-up, open source radio looking towards similarly open source, bottom-up solutions to some of the problems engendered by our relentlessly top-down society.
According to Rushkoff, “media can not only expose the artificial nature of the entities currently in control of the social and economic landscape – they can restore human agency, create the right conversations, connect people, and fight fear with fun. So, I want to make a show that initiates the conversations and behaviors that engage people in these processes.”
Each show will initiate a series of discussions, which will themselves comprise part of an expanding wiki of resources, support material, and community-generated content. A piece on “local currency” will branch out to embrace the local currency efforts, discussions, and tools out there. How does a person create a currency for his or her town? And where are the other people interested in doing this? Who has the best solar solutions, the most interesting way of organizing labor, the best free local Wi-Max network? Let’s talk to the CEO’s of GE and BP about their green efforts, and whether they believe their own hype. How about urban planning? Bike lanes? Ads on school buses and Coke machines in the cafeteria? What’s in those textbooks, anyway?
This isn’t pure 60’s or Whole Earth radicalism and self-sufficiency (though it’s certainly related) but a 21st Century, cyberpunk reclamation of all technologies and social contracts as essentially open source, up for discussion, and open to modification. It’s an application of the hacker ethic and net collectivism to everything, done in the spirit of fun and adventure. ”
Listen to it here.