Life in General

Blessed are the Open-Source, for they shall inherit the earth.

It has been said time and time again; there have been books written, academic works published, and thousands of blog posts proclaiming the revolution that user-generated content has brought to the internet. In the form of open-source software and sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and Flickr; people are no longer accepting the media or the internet that is provided to them, instead they are creating it for themselves in the largest push of human cooperation in history. Everyone has seen how these sites have changed the world we live in, and it has challenged us to rethink “the free market”, and has the potential to radicaly alter theories in all subjects ranging from economics to human resources.

Yet there are still those people who believe that the power of information should be isolated in the hands of a few, and that the public should be told what is art and what the world around them is like. I stumbled across the clip below from the Colbert Report, which I realize is not exactly an un-biased, ivory tower of journalistic integrity, but the guest, Andrew Keen has this outlandish idea that user-generated media is akin to communism and is destroying our culture.

It truly is one of the more close-minded defenses of mainstream media dominance I’ve ever seen. Even those who have resisted the “Web 2.0″ movement are slowly being sucked into the mix, and it is only a matter of time before we discover parts of the world around us that can be shifted to open-source that no one has even considered to be capable of collaborative efforts. But anyway, check out this video, and then, in fairness, read a few of the posts at Mr. Keen’s blog.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

a Wordpress powered Site | Site info| contact cafourek [at] gmail.com