How about this for a video game? Free Speech TV has put out a short video about the current and threatened enclosure of the Internet:
Disclosure: The video is produced by Steve Anderson, whose COA News is a client of Agaric Design Collective.
Some surprising background on the current extent of concentration and tracking supplements the video.
Ironically, it comes off a little like an ad for the FreeSpeech.org community, but I strongly agree with the premise of online spaces under the control of regular folks, meaning notably open source free software and not legally owned by corporate stockholders.
I would go farther and say that anything with network effects - the more people who use it, the more valuable it is (see Microsoft Office, MySpace) - must be open in key ways and ideally under some sort of (genuine not government) democratic control. And we who care about this have a responsibility and an opportunity to help make an awesome aggregator under these auspices.
That's not in the FreeSpeechTV project, as far as I know, but I'm glad to see them step up to help people claim our web.
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2 comments so far, Add Yours
Benjamin Melançon said:
December 7, 2007 4:45 AM
Related Content:
On the subject of controlling our own social networks and online communities...
(Hat tip Adam Kenner on Action Coalition for Media Education's discussion list.)
Paul Lamb said:
December 8, 2007 11:52 AM
Benjamin: Good spot, and thanks for sharing. You are probably also familiar with http://www.freepress.org/, which does some good work in this space as well.
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