(2008-07-15) Rushkoff Personal Democracy Next Renaissance

The transcript of Douglas Rushkoff's "Next Renaissance" talk from Personal Democracy Forum is available online.

Ironically, with each leap towards individuality there was a corresponding increase in the power of central authorities. Remember, the Renaissance also brought us centralized currencies, chartered corporations, and nation states. As individuals become concerned with their personal plights, their former power as a collective moves to central authorities.

Movement-s, like myths and brands, depend on this quality of top-down, Renaissance-style media. They are not genuinely collective at all, in that there's no promotion of interaction between the people in them. Instead, all the individuals relate to the hero, ideal, or mythology at the top. Movements are abstract - they have to be. They hover above the group, directing all attention towards themselves. As I listen to people talk here - well-meaning progressives, no doubt - I can't help but hear the romantic, almost desperate desire to become part of a movement.

The next renaissance (if there is one) - the phenomenon we're talking about or at least around here is not about the individual at all, but about the networked group. The possibility for Collective Action. The technologies we're using - the biases of these media - cede central authority to decentralized groups. Instead of moving power to the center, they tend to move power to the edges. Instead of creating value from the center - like a centrally issued currency - the network creates value from the periphery. This means the way to participate is not simply to subscribe to an abstract, already-written myth, but to do real things (Real World).

Computers and networks finally offer us the ability to write. And we do write with them. Everyone is a blogger, now... But writing is not the capability being offered us by these tools at all. The capability is Computer Programming - which almost none of us really know how to do. We simply use the programs that have been made for us, and enter our blog text in the appropriate box on the screen.... At the very least on a metaphorical level, the opportunity here is not to write about politics or - more likely - comment on what someone else has said about politics. The opportunity, however, is to rewrite the very rules by which democracy is implemented. The opportunity of a renaissance in programming is to reconfigure the process through which democracy occurs.

If Barack Obama is indeed elected - the first truly Internet-enabled candidate - we should take him at his word. He does not offer himself as the agent of change, but as an advocate of the change that could be enacted by people. It is not for government to create Solar Power, for example, but to get out of the way of all those people who are ready to implement solar power, themselves. Responding to the willingness of people to act, he can remove regulations developed on behalf of the Oil Industry to restrict its proliferation. In an era when people have the ability to reprogram their reality, the job of leaders is to help facilitate this activity by tweaking legislation, or by supporting their efforts through better incentives or access to the necessary tools and capital.