danah boyd responds to Douglas Rushkoff

I'd actually like to address the first half of your opening question - "What are the values implicit in both collaborative open source activities and "crowd-sourced" activities" - before addressing the second half. The full question naturally leads us to think about contemporary capitalism and free labor, but the first half is also critical to analyze on its own. Why? Because we must take into account privilege at both the individual and collective levels.

"We" assume that people have time, yet we know that some people have more flexibility in their time than others. This is true at different axes. For example, those without dependents (like many teenagers) have more time than those with dependents (like working parents). Those who work 40 hours a week have more time than those working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Etc.

"We" assume people feel confident in their voice, feel as though what they have to contribute will matter and be valued. We may talk about how we value everyone, but even if that were true (which I don't believe it is), there's huge variation in people's sense of their value.

"We" assume that the collective voice will be populist and, more importantly, that it will reflect the diversity of the populous. Yet, as we've seen time and time again, certain values and attitudes and voices are over-represented in crowd-sourced activities. Who is looking out for those who aren't represented? In what ways are we reinforcing structural inequalities? What are the implications of this?

[In using the Royal "We", I'm reflecting a cultural ethos where these practices are valued... a cultural ethos that I'm a part of, that many of you are a part of. And a collective ethos that primarily reflects a libertarian value of meritocracy and a sense that it's only laziness that's limiting certain individuals from participating. While I know not all of you share the beliefs echoed in this ethos, I think that we need to call them out explicitly.]