Now see here…I have worked with Windows for most of my life. I have learned the ins and outs of a lot of the software. In fact, so much time has been spent learning about their stupid software that I could have probably read thousands of more books by now.  I have two computers right now with windows, a netbook I just bought with XP and a desktop I built with Vista. I even tried the beta for Windows 7 for a while.  And I just bought an Xbox 360.  My product selection says Microsoft.

I even used to defend Microsoft and Vista, although that was mainly because I wanted them to actually move forward from a decrepit and visually boring XP.  I couldn’t understand how they could still be trying to sell an operating system they created nearly a decade ago. Thats like centuries in the computer world.

But now they’ve done it…completely alienated a pretty hard-core Microsoft consumer.  In my attempts to get myself reorganized I have wasted probably a good 10 hours (at least!) trying to get Microsofts junk to work.  The more I try the more I realize that Vista is the absolute worst operating system ever to be created and ought to be rounded up, sent off into the furthest most reaches of space, and violently blown up with several nuclear missiles.

So get this. Apparently with your new 360 they advertise how you can connect it with your PC and watch movies, listen to music, and access online stuff using Windows Media Center (why did they even make this product??? Why do they need a Center and a player??). Cool, I thought. Until I tried to do it. Several, several, several hours later, still trying to connect my Vista Desktop to the 360, I try an XP laptop. No problem. Connects right up.

Then I’m playing Halo 3 online and this little random thing pops up for all of 3 seconds, just long enough for me to catch that it said something about “NAT not enabled, go to…to enable”  So I look up NAT and realize that, like the geniuses they are, you actually have to open up ports for everything on the network.   Finally, I got it through. Excited, I open WMC only to realize that all of the Internet streaming on there is crap.  Why haven’t they gotten hulu on WMC? You’d think Microsoft would be jumping all over that. But no….just a few lame news channels. But at least I can stream videos and music to the TV now…but with all the time I wasted setting it up, I could’ve just used a flash drive.

And then there’s the netbook I got today, the Asus Eee PC. I boot it up and get through everything. Then I see that there is a cool little app to sync your two computers together. Awesome. So I throw the software on the flash drive like it instructs and take it over to the Vista desktop. 4 hours later, here I am with no stupid software installed because it requires “administrator” access. Wtf, I AM the administrator.  I follow some steps I found online–apparently Microsoft thought it’d be a cool idea to hide the administrator account so that you have to jump through hoops to get to it–your main account is not technically administrator.  So I open up computer management and enable the admin account and log onto it. Still not working. Ok. So he says that you have to disable all the other accounts with any admin status in order for it to work. Do that, restart again. Nope. Safe Mode? Nope, can’t run installers there.  ALL I WANT TO DO IS INSTALL A LITTLE PROGRAM!! WHY CAN’T I INSTALL THE PROGRAM?!?! ITS MY COMPUTER!!! I AM THE ADMIN..

I am glad that all my guns are virtual (and also created by Microsoft) otherwise I might not have a computer now.

And the worst thing is…I know I’ll get Windows 7 just because Vista sucks so bad. Only Microsoft could make money that way….

But when Google releases its new Chrome OS next year, I’ll be all over it!

Once again, the guys at wired got a hold of some really cool ideas this month. I particularly like this article on “Waste is Good” article that is written by Chris Anderson (i don’t think its up on Wired.com yet). It is based off of his book The Long Tail, which looks like an incredibly great read. I’d like to get a hold of a copy myself when i get a bit of money.  It is about how abundance creates a different world, particularly in economics.  When you have a lot of room to spare, whether in space, resources, or time, you can have a much more interesting dynamic.

Lets see…to make this clearer I think its best to just describe the same thing he does: sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow’s idea of “thinking like a dandilion.”  A dandilion “wastes” an enormous amount of resources sending its seeds all over the place instead of carefully investing in more strategic ways of duplicating itself. With this formula a great percentage of the seeds come to nothing. But without this strategy it would not be able to find all those nooks and crannies in all the sidewalks and patches of grass.  Now apply this thinking to economics. Carefully planned projects and business plans may ensure that the business continues. But the businesses that will thrive in this world are the ones who use their abundant resources to really push their limits. But of course what is really important is the internet abundance. Cheap computing power means that we have an abundance of harddrive space, memory capacity, and processor power. Most of the Web 2.0 stuff works like this, “seeding” lots of ideas, videos, pics, advice, etc. Yeah there is a lot of crap, but that just sinks through the bottom real quick while the good stuff catches on.

There is a powerpoint he put together on Scribd. Not sure how long it will stay up.

Its a good idea that further explains the confusing logic of the Internet, which I am incredibly interested in.

I recently spent several hours exploring various Web 2.0 features for my Guide to Social Bookmarking (if you don’t know how to use them, check out the guide).  I was astonished at the rate at which somethings cruise around on the Internet. It is astonishing.  It seems that one could get into one or two communities and then spend your time all day long doing nothing but participating. And there are thousands of large communities out there.

In just the past week I have participated in quite a few.  I’ve commented quite a bit on the new Wired articles from which I created my three posts on Socialism (here, here, and here). I’ve been quite active over at Facebook and Twitter.  I’ve also had a brief stint over at a cool website called Song Meanings, where people comment on the meanings of their favorite songs (excellent site, btw).  Along the way I also joined StumbleUpon and Digg and toyed around with them quite a bit. Digg is particularly overwhelming since if you install the firefox plugin it hits you with rising posts every two minutes. You keep finding yourself saying “Huh, that’s cool” and you click on the link, scan through it, digg it, maybe toss up some comments–and by the time you’re done with that another one pops up. You could literally keep doing this non-stop, 24 hours a day. (continue reading…)

I want to write one more post to finish off the current discussion about Kelly’s Wired article on the New Socialism.  The whole concept has been bothering me for over a week now and I’ve been trying to make sense of all of the fuss around this. The other day while I was finishing the second post I wrote on it (Socialism 2.0), I realized that there may be something to all of the debate surrounding whether we should call it socialism or not. For those who haven’t kept up with the discussion, the question is this: Does the creation of wiki-style projects, where many collaborate for free to create genuine products or otherwise share information, resources, and time, represent a new form of socialism in which people can work for the whole without being forced by some higher authority?

In this last post I want to go out on a limb and make some general suppositions. They may be wrong because, while I consider my feel for history above average for my age, I know there are a lot of things I have yet to learn about the origins of political ideas. Nonetheless, I will propose some ideas and hopefully I’ll get some comments one way or the other.

My thinking is this: what Kelly has stirred up is bigger than even he imagined. If we take a look at the whole litany of political ideas, we’ll see that each of them is born of good intentions, many of which are responses to particular ideas, principles, or events.  In my first post I spent some time exploring what the basis for fascism and socialism was, but here I want to extend this further. It seems to me that what may be occurring now is something strange: it is a conglomerated mass of unexplainable self-organization across large populations that simultaneously fits and doesn’t fit every political and economic theory out there.

To put this clearly, it may be that what the Internet and new forms of connections (cell phones, increased travel, globalization) are doing is providing us with means to finally achieve all the goals of every positive political project simultaneously. Might it be like this unity chain above, a conglomerate form of interaction and living together that provides the unity of all our political experiments?  Granted, this is an extreme view but I want to see how it plays out. Lets take a look at some of the various political ideaologies and how they play into this (all of these are fed by various comments at the original article at Wired where the phenomenon Kelly was talked about what declared to be a “new form” of every single one). Each of these are rough sketches, by no means completely accurate to all cases.

Democracy

A picture of the US Founding fathers

Founding Principles: Democracy was born out of ideas that opposed oppression and tyranny. It was an attempt to invite people into politics in a real way so they could have a direct influence in the direction of their lives and the country. This was a radical belief at the time, that people would be smart and wise enough to direct their country in ways that were positive and beneficial to all.

Problems: The problem with democracy is that it doesn’t always work for the good of the whole but rather often works very inefficiently and can be distracted by sensationalism and the whims of the majority.  It doesn’t necessarily promote freedom even if it is based on freedom.  It often takes too long to function, thereby not working very well in time-sensitive situations. Also, it has been very easy throughout history for the people in power to give an appearance of democracy while actually keeping a tight control (an idea first hinted at by Machiavelli). This is why virtually every country in the world considers itself a democratic-something.  Even China calls itself a democratic dictatorship.

How collective Internet based projects redefine it: The Internet allows the voices of individuals to come through quite clearly. Everyone has a vote and has a say. Even if there are millions of others online one can still hope to influence things you believe most important.  And more than anything, it dramatically increases people’s ability to communicate, gather, and take action to change their government. As my professor and advisor always says “Democracy is the ability of a population to insert themselves into the government.” In this case, the Internet and the increased connectivity it provides offers an enormous leap forward in this ability for concerned populations to exert influence over their local and national governments.

Socialism / Communitarian

Marx and Engels in legos.

Founding Principles: As I said in my first article, socialism was in no small part a response to the shortcomings of democracy and capitalism, which continued to perpetuate inequality and exploitation. The idea was to make something more democratic in a way, for the people to have a complete and direct say into the way that the country is run, to provide an equality for the sake of equality so that no one would have to suffer more than others. While there were many derivatives of this and explorations on how it could be done, the fundamental idea was that people are all valuable and no one necessarily deserves to be better off than others. In many forms there is also the concern about efficiency, the thought being that an economy could be managed better directly rather than trusting markets, but the concern about greed and exploitation is by far more fundamental.

Problems: How does one direct a society that is supposed to be completely equal?  The only way you can do it is with a very strong hand, drastically limiting the freedoms of individuals in the name of equality.  This gets harder the larger through group. Furthermore, to make an economy function in such a society you have to force people to work, which no one likes, and attempt to manage them in some way. And don’t forget, we’re dealing with people. They will be lazy extortionists who will not do their best for the whole no matter how many slogans you throw at them. These are the valid points in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. But Rand wouldn’t admit that the same problems that riddle socialistic ideas are the same that make capitalism equally horrible in its own ways (people will take advantage of each other)

How it is redefined: As I said in the Socialism 2.0 article, Internet and Wiki-based projects allow for organically organized socialistic projects. People can produce high quality products through what is largely a gift economy. There, they earn whatever satisfaction they want in contributing but it isn’t for money. This is the closest we’ve ever come to the abolition of money that was heralded by Marx and once again quite well by Marcuse (in One-Dimensional Man) as one of the most important progressions towards an equal society. But even more importantly, this puts in place a system that lets all this happen without an overlord restricting the freedoms of individuals. Rather, it promotes both freedom and equality, allowing people to contribute to society as they will.  For the first time we’re realizing that that motivation may just be enough (I think this has a lot to do with the fact that it takes much less labor force to support the whole of society than it ever has, but that is a post for another time).

Capitalism
Founding Principles:  As far as I understand, capitalism developed naturally more than intentionally. However, there is no doubt that it is as much philosophy as economic system.  Most recently, the works of Ayn Rand (of which I am quite familiar with, having read all her novels, the Fountainhead twice) have clarified it’s philosophical principles and elevated it far beyond a natural status. The basic principles inherent in Capitalism is the idea that people are entitled to the rewards of their efforts and that no one has the right to simply take those things away for the sake of society.  It is also underpinned by a fundamental faith in humankind who, while doing what he/she loves will be able to built things that are beautiful and worthwhile.  Capitalism seeks to promote that kind of self-motivated (Ayn Rand would say selfish) behavior.

Problems: As I suggested under the Socialism section, capitalism suffers the similar curse of a humanity that doesn’t function that ideally. People, believe it or not, do not always act in truly self-interested ways–at least not in the sense that Ayn Rand and others like her hoped. That is, they become obsessed with money and do not actually do the things they like. Also, it is much much easier to cheat the rules, exploit, and cut corners than to do things right. Ayn Rand’s philosophy relies on the idea that capitalism will promote people doing things because it is what they want to do and she says money is the means of exchange for these pure endeavors. But this is not how it works. Capitalism becomes about money rather than money becoming about people’s efforts so that some of the worst people will flourish and those who flourish will have increased ability to repress the rest and continue to flourish. In the end you get rampant inequality, violently and brutally enforced. In the end, money is too much of a distraction for capitalism to work in the ideal way.

How it is redefined: In the comments for the Wired article a user said

It is the new capitalism, which is beyond money. Everybody is getting paid. Some with prestige, some with entertainment, some with attention, some to learn. *leespatch

The implication is clear: this is still a form of capitalism. People are still trading, they are still seeking after their own best interests. But now they are doing it with other currencies, the currencies that really matter.  With these collaborative projects people are doing exactly what Ayn Rand wanted them to do: they are seeking after things that they love and they are doing it for selfish, internally-motivated reasons. And the things they are building are beautiful (like Microsoft’s Photosynth).  I could see this stuff in the future bringing together people with like-minded interests and equally internal yet variable motivations to build buildings as beautiful as Roark’s (From the Fountainhead) or complex systems as brilliant as Dagny Taggart’s railroads (from Atlas Shrugged).  It creates a whole new form of fair exchange and personal rewards that moves beyond the current systems into one that is much closer to the capitalistic ideal.

Fascism / Village  Mentality/ Hunter-Gatherer Societies
Founding Principles: The fundamental principle (I also talked about this in my first article) of fascism is the idea that the nation comes first.  I put this in the same group as the Village mentality and hunter-gatherer societies because in many ways fascism is the modern-day attempt to recreate these small-group mentalities. In these older forms as well as fascism, the idea was that every individual lives for the whole and through such mentality we can all survive. It proposes that society works much like the body does, with every individual having a specific purpose but in themselves they are nothing. Part of this is necessarily that there be a head that leads the society, often with absolute control.  The survival and continuation of your group is the most important and often this means sacrificing some individuals for the sake of the whole. Keep in mind that you cannot fight a war without a semblance of this mentality, otherwise you would not be willing to sacrifice individuals for the sake of society. Nationalism, patriotism, and isolationism are the most popular renditions of this idea.

Problems (and advantages):  All of the groupthink mentalities are important because they do help the whole of society work together and keep it together as a unified body. Also, the concept of a figurehead to lead has always been central to this and is important for time-sensitive decisions and an efficiency of political work in general. Democracy just takes too long sometimes. That being said, it’s disadvantages are obvious: it neglects the individual, sacrificing some (whether willing or not) for the whole, and often restricts their freedom.  With this group mentality comes a separatist world-view; your group is the best and you shun or look down on other groups (or in some cases look up to them, which can be equally harmful).  We don’t need to look far to see what this brings, just ask any of your Jewish friends.

How it is redefined: These Internet communities actually resemble, to a large extent, old villages or a hunter-gatherer societies, as several of the posters on the article pointed out.  They consist of people who have a reason to be together and who look out for the whole of the group.  Often times comraderie develops between users in astounding ways, with an enormous amount of trust being shared. It is hard to describe services like 23 and Me, where you share your genetic information, and PatientsLikeMe, where you share personal health information, in any other terms.   The difference here is that these are entities borne out of a commonality–a shared experience or interest–that forms a trusting community, even if it is behind a veil of anonymity in many cases.

But we can go further than that, of course. The Internet as a whole is making the world seem much more like a Global Village than ever. People across the world can look out for each other in the same way a neighbor once did. There is really no other comparison for services like Kiva, which lets people provide small loans to needy organizations any where in the world. Beyond this, craigslist and eBay bring garage sales to the world, providing the same friendly sort of exchanges that prompt old couples to drive around town on saturday mornings (at least they do that in South Carolina, looking for garage sales).  In addition to this, cultures flow freely between countries and places. For example, Japanese culture has become somewhat of a world-wide phenomenon due to the increased popularity of Japanese animation over the past decade. Sure a lot of people don’t understand the culture all that well but it is still incredible that it gets that kind of exposure. Dattebayo, the fansub site that dubs the popular anime Bleach (and used to do Naruto) picks up several hundred thousand downloads every week when it releases its fansubs.  This kind of exposure is something only the Internet could provide and is slowly remaking our world to feel much more like a coherent unit. What is created then is a sense of not nationalism but globalism: we are a human on the planet earth and should do what is best for all people here. That is remarkable.

Anarchism / Libertarianism
Founding Principles: Anarchism and Libertarianism are relatively new ideas in terms of coined and talked about political ideals but their core principles are still quite important. Anarchism focuses in on survival without the state, believing that people can do things on their own without the need for an overlord. Libertarianism is closely related to this because it focuses in on maximizing the rights and freedoms of individuals.  Both ideas have similar goals so I’ve put them together here despite their differences.  Both concepts emphasize the power of individuals to direct their own lives without the need to be overlooked and enforced. Often times, the proponents of these emphasize the ability of natural organically developed systems (such as capitalism) to regulate people rather than a governmental system.

Problems: No system has been able to allow people to live together without the threatening hand of a centralized governmental organization. People just aren’t that good hearteded to live that way in a complex world like this.

How it’s redefined:  The Internet empowers individuals even in the midst of their restrictions. As of yet the Internet is a no-mans land, a Wild West of sorts, where the government has very little hold.  All of its projects are formulated organically and very much chaotically.  People come together, contribute as much as they want, and a product comes out that everyone loves.  And people self-regulate beautifully, in a way that anarchists have been insisting people could. If we could translate that self-regulation more and more into the real world then less and less government would be needed. That being said, even Wikipedia has to put its foot down–there will always be a need for some defining authority. But if this is also provided organically then what you have is a practical version of anarchism.

The Result: A Democratically libertarian anarcho-socialist, capitalist village.
All of that seems to contradict, I know. But as I’ve demonstrated, the main goals of each idea is in no small way fulfilled by the new systems that are coming out of the Internet, globalization, and communication tools.  The systems all collide there and their mutual intentions all become clear. Perhaps with time, as this trend progresses, we’ll find ourselves with a new system that extends far beyond any of these ideal versions that have failed on us time and time again. This may be proof that if we keep moving forward, trying our best to improve society, new and wonderful and brilliant new things will come together, reshaping our society into something more brilliant than we’ve known before. Perhaps this is enough reason to hope that we actually can do this as a world-wide society. If these trends continue we just might (just a small chance) find everyone at least somewhat satisfied with the conglomerate political and economic systems we are forging.

Picture credits: Unity chain by Olivander;  Founding Fathers by INeedCoffee; Marx and Engels by Dunechaser; Ayn Rand by ElvertBarnes