Say You Want A Revolution...Well Ya Know...

In reading Alexis de Tocqueville I'm finding many things relevant to our class discussions. The French Revolution that he longed for is not that different from the web revolution that we are experiencing now. What he says about censorship seems closely related to close source software. Freedom of the Press as representative of Democracy seems to me to be an old example of openness, open-source software, peer production, etc. What was good for the world then, seems equally beneficial now!

In his writings on Freedom of the Press in the United States he says "When one accords to each a right to govern society, one must surely recognize his capacity to choose among the different opinions that agitate his contemporaries and to appreciate different facts, the knowledge of which can guide him." This passage makes me think mostly of our discussions on Wikipedia and blogs. Many critics, myself included at one time, say that with so much information crowding the internet it is difficult to decipher the truth. I remember watching the comedic video of President Bush's press conference concerning ZOMBIES. Sure, we worry about children who may not know the truth when they see such videos, but even jokes carry a great deal of truth. Perhaps naively, I've come to believe that everything I consume on the internet says something about someone/thing. Even the satires we watch on YouTube create a very honest picture of Pop Culture's current disapproval of our president. Withough ratings charts or surveys, those videos say so much about America's current situation. Combine that general impression with what we see and hear on mainstream news, household discussions, etc., and you can create a well-rounded view of your own.

Another passage, more closely linked to Wikinomics, states that "the creation of a newspaper being an easy thing, everyone can take it on; on the other hand, competition makes a newspaper unable to hope for very great profits, which prevents those with great industrial capabilities from meddling in these sorts of undertakings."
In my reading I replace newspaper with wikis, blogs, social communities, etc. Tocqueville's conclusion of newspaper is my own conclusion of websites. We are not charged for using MySpace and Pandora's Box because we can just as easily make a similar site ourselves (Well, not me, but many IT buffs could, especially with the free tools given to us each day). I believe the same is true with free music downloads, e-books, etc. I don't believe that anyone with "hope for very great profit" should try to reign in the limits of the internet; they should not attempt to control the flow of information and entertainment. It is a losing battle.

***I've not forgotten our discussions on American capitalism and the exclusivity of a new philosophy of openness as seen in the example of GoldCorp, but Tocqueville says that he prefers freedom of the press (openness) not because of the good that it brings, but because of the evil that it prevents.