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Douglas Rushkoff - Open Source Democracy
An Excerpt from the book-
Chapter 1
From Moses to demystifying the storytelling and taking control
We are living in a world of stories. We can't help but use narratives
to understand the events that occur around us. The unpredictability of
nature, emotions, social interactions and power relationships led
human beings from prehistoric times to develop narratives that
described the patterns underlying the movements of these forces.
Although we like to believe that primitive people actually believed
the myths they created about everything, from the weather to the
afterlife, a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that
early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we
understand religion today. As Karen Armstrong explains in A History of
God1, and countless other religious historians and philosophers from
Maimonides to Freud have begged us to understand, the ancients didn't
believe that the wind or rain were gods. They invented characters
whose personalities reflected the properties of these elements. The
characters and their stories served more as ways of remembering that
it would be cold for four months before spring returns than as
genuinely accepted explanations for nature's changes. The people were
actively, and quite self-consciously, anthropomorphizing the forces of
nature.
Chapter 1
From Moses to demystifying the storytelling and taking control
We are living in a world of stories. We can't help but use narratives
to understand the events that occur around us. The unpredictability of
nature, emotions, social interactions and power relationships led
human beings from prehistoric times to develop narratives that
described the patterns underlying the movements of these forces.
Although we like to believe that primitive people actually believed
the myths they created about everything, from the weather to the
afterlife, a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that
early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we
understand religion today. As Karen Armstrong explains in A History of
God1, and countless other religious historians and philosophers from
Maimonides to Freud have begged us to understand, the ancients didn't
believe that the wind or rain were gods. They invented characters
whose personalities reflected the properties of these elements. The
characters and their stories served more as ways of remembering that
it would be cold for four months before spring returns than as
genuinely accepted explanations for nature's changes. The people were
actively, and quite self-consciously, anthropomorphizing the forces of
nature.
- GenresPolitics
64 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 6, 2003
3 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Douglas Rushkoff
107 books1,001 followersDouglas Rushkoff is a New York-based writer, columnist and lecturer on technology, media and popular culture.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 30, 2012
A very nice little book that takes you for a stroll through history leading to today's (or maybe tomorrow's) open source democracy. I advise it to all!
A note for mathematicians (and those that are bothered by approximative\inaccurate popular science):
As a mathematician, I was frustrated, as always, by the many wrong claims made when trying to use mathematical notions as a comparison\example. This always happens, but surely could be avoided if authors stuck to what they know, or if they found\had a friendly mathematician to talk to.
A note for mathematicians (and those that are bothered by approximative\inaccurate popular science):
As a mathematician, I was frustrated, as always, by the many wrong claims made when trying to use mathematical notions as a comparison\example. This always happens, but surely could be avoided if authors stuck to what they know, or if they found\had a friendly mathematician to talk to.
Read
July 30, 2020This book is more like a poem written in the early internet age, in which scientific analyses are loose with a lot of leftist reflections. Though, still an interesting read to compare with current digital governance movement, where state power has already started adopting technology and emerge with democratic need.
June 19, 2018
Available for free via Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10753
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10753
September 5, 2020
This book shows how new type of flat organisation can emerge by referring to how software developers created the open source movement
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews