Re: <nettime> Zittrain's Foundational Myth of the Open Internet

[Michael H Goldhaber <mgoldh@well.com>]

A few quick points within the quasi-open, quasi-anarchic space of  
nettime itself (ourselves?):

1. As I  argued at the 2006 FirstMonday openness conference 
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_6/goldhaber/index.html , open 
 projects are star-fan systems as a rule, usually, I suspect,  with one key 
leader who makes crucial decisions, and then maybe some  sub-stars. They are 
then open in the sense that fanship is open, as  well as in some other 
aspects.

2. As for democracy, since steam-engine governors were mentioned, I  
have thought the real value of democracy is to let off steam before  
clashes can boil over into civil war, although robust protection of  
minority rights and the like, is also of value when it exists.

3. But can we do better? For instance, instead of open communities  
that in some sense are closed, can there be fully "public" ones that  
could still attract? Likewise, any coherent thoughts on politico- 
social  systems preferable to the best of western democracies?

Best,
Michael

On Oct 16, 2008, at 3:11 AM, Florian Cramer wrote:

>On Wednesday, October 15 2008, 18:39 (+0200), Felix Stalder wrote:
>>
>>Thus, I don't think a fitting critique to see these "open media" as
>>continuation of the liberal projects because they aren't (I kinda
>>would prefer if they were). Rather, they seem to exemplify a new
>>corporatism where the group (be it a community or a corporation) is
>>always right and very steep hierarchies are masked behind a shallow
>>egalitarianism.
>
>But the same critique could be (and has been) made of Western
>democracies that fulfill Popper's open society criteria.
 <...>


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