Surviving the Culture Wars

As to the title: some say that sew money in the United States is created out of debt. I don't pretend to understand this, but the 'Zeitgeist' movie series claims that money equals debt. Thinking about this differently, money is society's I.O.U. When you work, you do something for someone, and they pay you as if to say, "I owe you." I owe you food or clothing or shelter or service, but I trust you to know what it is you need most. So, in many ways, we can think of capitalism as sharing, a great series of officially printed IOU's floating around on pieces of paper.

So, for you, a new video: GreenXchange is an initiative to give corporations access to one anther's ideas. If Tom Friedman is correct in the assertion he makes in his talk (below) that "everything that can be done, will be done," then all of these ideas that currently sit unused by corporations could potentially be used by start-ups, or other corporations. Especially in the face of sustainability, which is a problem and a trend which we all currently face, GreenXchange could not be more valuable.


Now, for me: I grew up, as many do, learning that sharing is good. My parents said, "Share your toys," your knowledge, etc. In 8th grade, however, my private school started a laptop program. At the same time, Kazaa was blowing up, along with all peer to peer file sharing. Jonathan Zittran mentions Kazaa in his talk (below). During gym class, I'd walk around the track explaining to my classmates how file sharing on Kazaa was related to free speech. I told them, "Just imagine that I'm telling you the whole plot of a movie, or that I'm singing a song I like." I explained, "That's the same as a bunch of ones and zeroes being transferred across a computer network." Lawrence Lessig points out this similarity in his talk (also below), when he mentions John Phillips Sousa's objection to the "infernal machines." Those infernal machines have now been linked to the Internet, which increasingly dominates our lives, and the Internet has made the "people on the front porch singing the songs of the day" so much more powerful. There are roughly a billion and a half people on the Internet, and they have begun singing together, through Creative Commons.

If you liked the video, check out the rest at ThruYOU.