Howard Rheingold on software and action APR 23 2003
Some key points from Howard Rheingold's keynote on Technology Innovation and Collective Action:
- Developers: create tools that amplify collective action
- Are we going to be consumers (passive) or users (active)?
- We need to fight to remain users.
- Reputation systems are crucial.
- In building software, learn from the past and buildin room for future innovators
- The design of defaults is important. (The idea that simple is very usable, but make it hackable for power users and developers.)
Steven Garrity21 23 2003 3:21PM
I've been thinking a lot lately about how we are all consumers, and how some of us are consumers and producers. Some seemingly subtle developments (like the upload/download speed disparity on cable internet connections pointed out by Laurence Lessig) seem to be creeping towards the assumption that we are all only consumers.
There is some good news though - weblogs are a great tool for turning consumers in to producers. Even those who don't have weblogs of their own are free to contribute.
I'm not anti-consumer (my Adbusters subscription expired last year…). However, we can't all only be consumers. We have to produce. It is good to produce.
Ralph Nader, in a speech at the University of Washington (1:24 - windows media - worth watching), quotes Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power". If we only consume, we are not participating and have no freedom (freedom to chose what we consume just doesn't cut it).