Comments on: Why Amazon’s civil rights desertion has ominous implications for democracy https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/why-amazons-civil-rights-desertion-has-ominous-implications-for-democracy/2010/12/16 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:30:09 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Tom Crowl https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/why-amazons-civil-rights-desertion-has-ominous-implications-for-democracy/2010/12/16/comment-page-1#comment-455235 Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:30:09 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=12370#comment-455235 The first ICT was perhaps a bird call constructed out of a leaf made by a hunter to notify his mates of where the prey was…

And the first journalism was Ooga running into camp and announcing she’d just seen the first spring sprout on a favorite berry bush.

And if the message was false, misleading or dangerous… the onus certainly didn’t fall upon the air through which the information was transmitted!

There was no gatekeeper, no intermediary… ICT AND JOURNALISM were BOTH strictly peer-to-peer.

The same could be said for politics and charity within the hunter-gatherer world… peer-to-peer.

The commercial transaction (and the creation of money, trade tokens, etc) only arose with the need for interaction within or between larger or multiple ‘social organisms’… an important and needed development.

I’m not going to write some long essay here but the bottom line is that transactions involving “Commons-oriented” functions… politics, charity, speech/journalism… dovetail in ways that suggest that solutions geared to those specific “Commons-oriented” functions will benefit by dedicated mechanisms designed for that purpose.

Further a simple, secure and ECONOMICALLY VIABLE microtransaction must be enabled in this area through a Commons-owned entity or entities to address issues arising with scale.

HOW the Web evolves… how WE determine its evolution is critical for the future of civilization.

There are NO issues more important than those revolving around the development… the evolution of this new LANDSCAPE.

And that’s vital to remember. We are constructing a landscape which then shapes everything that comes after it… and is built upon it.

Its more akin to the air, water and sunshine than it is to the invention of the printing press.

And it may well be the first human created artifact to assume that level of evolutionary importance.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEB IS THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN PEER-TO-PEER RELATIONSHIP SINCE THE MOVE TO SETTLED EXISTENCE!

The Commons-dedicated Account Network:
A self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution… which for fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons).

(I note that journalism is often a for-profit enterprise and that this presents a complicating factor. I believe this is an addressable issue.)

I believe the development of such peer-to-peer structure(s) is inevitable. And I believe it will naturally concentrate. Hence I’d suggest that both its Terms of Service and the design for its governance under a commons-ownership are vitally important. There are both pitfalls and opportunities in such a structure that bear attention.

Re-Igniting the Enlightenment: On Building Landscapes for Decision
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/12/re-igniting-enlightenment-on-building.html

Why Politics MUST be Localized
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-politics-must-be-localized.html

On Social Energy, Enterprise and Expanding the Technology of Money
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-social-energy-enterprise-expanding.html

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/culturalengineer

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