Futurist Mark Pesce gave a fascinating speech at the Personal Democracy Forum last month. He explained how two different kinds of power structures (autopoietic, or self-generating, and hierarchical) will increasingly come into conflict because of their radically contrasting operating procedures. Using the recent battle between the church of Scientology and Wikipedia as an example, Pesce describes how hyperconnected, power-sharing, hyperintelligent (where shared knowledge increases the intelligence of all participants) groups chip away at the classic, top-down hierarchies of the state and other such power structures.
He explains:
In order to avoid catastrophe, the state – and any institution which attempts to [...]

Two recent cover-stories in the weekly news magazines have counter arguments about innovation in the US. Business Week suggests that innovation is declining while Time says it’s booming…

Rob Matthews has created a hefty physical version of Wikipedia’s featured articles. The 2,559 digital articles have been transformed into a massive, 5,000 page hardbound book that looks to be around 2 feet tall. Though thoroughly impractical, the project beautifully illustrates the usefulness of digital information.
[via Spreading Jam]

Whether or not you fully agree with the chosen terminology and accompanying ideology, we felt Kevin Kelly’s recent piece in Wired that examines the history and growth of what he calls online “socialism” takes an insightful look at the ways people are interacting in the digital realm. Kelly tracks the movement as it shifts from passive sharing information towards more active collaboration, a trend that is enabling greater innovation through decentralized forms of production. Examples of this include opensource efforts like Wikipedia and Boxee. He views this as a hybrid system that lands somewhere between a non-market and free market economy, [...]

The internet is awash with images.  Many professional photographers see this explosion of access as a devaluation of the art form, but most revel in the leveling of the playing field.  Images from the dozens of popular photo sharing sites are tagged, ranked and categorized in a mostly democratic system.  For Wikipedia and other educationally centered sites, the encyclopedic value of these photos has improved dramatically with time.
The legal status of images has stifled their appearance online, but as national archives from around the world recognize the cultural significance of their holdings, they are more prone to release them.  A [...]