something happened on the way to the bank

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Id: 374 posted in: SOFTWARE
2010·02·27 12:33:27

Rushes Sequences - Doug Rushkoff interview - USA (Video)

bbc

Doug Rushkoff
is an author, teacher, columnist and media theorist. He met with the programme three ream to discuss the realities of free content and services on the web.

Doug Free is absolutely a myth.
The only thing that-, the only thing thats changed is that there are new ways to extract value from people who are working.
Nothing is-, nothing is free, nothing is free. You know, you are paying for your free Guardian, youre just paying for it by buying the computer and buying the online time, and upgrading your system, and getting the new computer and then buying the computer for your kid, you know, and then paying for the power.
You are still paying, youre just paying different companies. Sometimes youre paying the same company. Sony owns music and computers, so theyre selling you one thing to rob from the other side of their company, you know, but youre still paying.
The only thing thats different, is things-, the only thing thats changed is that which was in scarcity, and that which was in abundance.
So, the technology through which to watch the news was in such abundance by the 1980s that there were no American television manufacturers left by the late 80s, because everybody had a TV, they all lasted a long time, it didnt matter.
Now, everybodys getting a new computer every year or two, or a new device, and a new iPhone and a new this, theres a tremendous market for that stuff, but the content is basically free because theres so many people in companies out there trying to make content, trying to write their articles.

Doug
theres a real danger among er technology and media theorists today, in that they accept the sort of libertarian understanding of the market as a given, in reality, that they just assume that thats the way things work.
They havent looked at the history of money.
They dont understand that making markets for scarce things is the result of having a kind of money that is released in a scarce way.
This is a better way of saying it; for all these peoples understanding of open source and programmes, they refuse to acknowledge that the money we use is also a programme, that it is a closed source programme.
Its as if you woke up one day and all the computers had Microsoft Windows on it, you wouldnt know that theres any other operating system.
Well the money we use is also an operating system that was invented during the Renaissance, and it was invented for a top down scarcity model of media and culture and technology and everything.
Now weve got a decentralised technological system with computers all over the place and people creating value all over the place, but were still using a 13th century money system.
So you end up with these contradictions that guys like Chris Anderson call free, that means all the stuff is free! No, it doesnt mean its free, it means we need to now develop an economic platform capable of dealing with the distributed decentralised value-creation economy.
And thats not that-, I dont think thats too complex for a documentary.
I mean I think thats an im-, you know what I mean? I think thats-

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