I caught a great Podcast today at IT Conversations with Doug Rushkoff. You can hear it yourself at IT Conversations: Doug Rushkoff - Renaissance Prospects . I wrote about Rushkoff's book, Playing the Future, a couple of weeks ago. This talk, as with the book, raised a lot of interesting, thought provoking points. I do think that Rushkoff sometimes takes his points to an illogical extreme, but the ideas themselves ring very true.
This graphic is a must view as you listen to the talk.
The talk is far ranging, starting with a comparison of the parallels between the Renaissance and the current information renaissance. He goes on to discuss the growing control we have over our information environment through hypertext (relate anything to anything else) and ability to truly work with others, share information, and shape our view of the world. We are no longer "passive recipients of stories" but "active participants" in making these stories. His point reminded me of Tim Berners Lee's original vision of the world wide web from the early 90's:
The web was to be “ a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. A Hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished.” And “ second, a realistic mirror of the ways in which we work, play, and socialize…We could then use computers to help us…make sense of what we are doing… and how we can better work together.”
Maybe Tim really did know what he was doing -- its just taking a while for the rest of us to catch up. Rushkoff goes on in his talk to question the whole concept of a market driven economy -- and you know, he makes a pretty persuasive argument.
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