danah boyd responds to Mark and Clay

Clay said:

danah, as Yochai put it, "Loosely coupled systems need motivated
actors." This seems to me to be not just true, but a deep truth --
when discovery or creation of new opportunities is placed outside
managerial culture, it's the people who volunteer who end up making
the work.

I think that you're right that this is a deep truth, but one that is also worrisome because it fundamentally means that those with privilege stand the greatest opportunities to benefit from new opportunities that rely on cultural capital and time (regardless of whether or not economic capital is needed). I don't know that I have an answer for you as much as I feel the need to highlight that what we're creating may result in a new form of inequality that, as you've succinctly put it, has no good checks or balances.

Mark said:

And while we're on the subject of things-arising-out-of-4chan, ANONYMOUS.

I actually think that Mark's point is more significant than just being about listing examples.

Growing up, my cohort was obsessed with hacking by which they meant breaking into technical systems (usually those owned by governments or corporations) just to prove that they could. It was about breaking a particular kind of technical power. What fascinates me about 4chan and many other smaller groups of today's youth is that they're interested in social hacking - breaking down social infrastructures to prove that they can. In both cases, it's "for the lolz." Hacker and hax0r culture has long been about collective action to prove something can be done. Too bad we train people out of this mindset through formalized education before they can put it to other uses....