www [dot] socialism

A few months back, I somehow ended up with one of those “pick a magazine to have a free subscription for a year” deals, and the only one that peaked my interest was WIRED. It’s a techy magazine. I’ve enjoyed some of the stuff, and for the most part have just been completely blow away by the technology that is out there right now… my mind just doesn’t possess the ability to wrap around that kind of stuff. 

The other night, I was up late because I just didn’t feel like falling to sleep yet, and I managed to get into this long article about a “new socialism”.

I was really fascinated by the whole concept.

Basically, the author outlined all these reason why the internet and the networking that we are increasingly becoming involved in is a form of Socialism. 

It has varying degrees.

For instance… Facebook and YouTube and Delicious and things like that fall under “Sharing“… which he dubs the mildest form of Socialism. We are simply sharing things (personal info, bookmarks, videos, ect.) for free with other people. 

However, there are different levels to this. The next level would be “Cooperation“. This is where sites like Flickr come into play. Not only are you sharing things, but you can now (via the Creative Commons Licensing) use an extremely vast network of amazing photos at your will… without paying one cent! A few years ago, you would be forced to use stock photography sites and pay major $$ for images.

The next level is “Collaboration“. This is basically where random people that know a thing or two about technology (web usually) just spend their own time designing things because they like doing it and want the experience, and then they contribute little gadgets to networks and never get paid for their efforts (i.e. Google gadgets, those stupid Facebook apps, ect.).

The apex of this Socialist society we have created is “Collectivism“. This is basically where it’s all a little more organized and there is actually accountability for people contributing to things. Products like OpenOffice, Linux, and even Wikipedia are fairly sophisticated networks of people contributing to a collective effort without being paid. 

The end result… we are getting a LOT of free stuff… we are producing an incredible amount of “product” without paying anything for the labor behind it… and as a society, we are making a shift to where the expectation is that we don’t really have to pay for things!

The thought that I should have to pay for software for my computer is really beginning to just get annoying to me… why should I have to give any money for something that really isn’t that tangible. It’s getting to the point that I really don’t have to.

I’m able to enjoy so many things on the internet (all my Google gadget stuff, a TON of photos from Flickr to get inspiration as a photographer, and my newfound favorite… Delicious… it definitely lives up to it’s name). 

One conclusion that he made that I found really interesting though, was that he thinks because we as a society are becoming more comfortable (whether we know it or not) with this Socialistic concept, this could have contributed to the fact that we were able to elect a president that is far more Socialist leaning that any president before. 

The idea that as a society we can become really comfortable and even dependent on a communal internet and expect to get things for free, yet would still not be comfortable or recognize the benefits of having, say a socialized health system for people is really interesting to me. 

It’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out in our society… will the internet force us to become more and more reliant on things that are communal? Will this in turn change how we interact with others aside from our internet lives?