Burning Man, the Internet and late stage capitalism

[hugi]

You might not be aware, but these days, Edgeryders has grown to host more communities than this forum. On Edgeryders Communities, there are conversations going on about everything from biohacking, to running Blivande in Stockholm to the governance of Burning Man and other participatory events.

I just posted a long-ish piece on the Burning Stories forum.

https://forum.burning-stories.org/t/burning-man-the-internet-and-late-stage-capitalism/137

I would love your perspectives on it, as I think it might resonate.

Today, many of us who championed the internet in the early 2000s have had to see it fall into the hands of large corporations. That freedom we fought to have as citizens has been misused and appropriated, with the dawn of “surveillance capitalism” as a direct result. In response to this, many of the radicals have abandoned hope for the World Wide Web and are moving towards technologies of decentralization and many internets that cannot be fully owned or controlled. Our fight was lost, and we are moving on. Our mistake, in my opinion, was to underestimate what capitalism would do with the freedom we fought for. I can’t help but ponder how to keep the burner culture from falling in the same trap.

Your Edgeryders login works on the Burning Stories forum too, so feel free to pop over there and comment.

[nadia]

@jean_russell it took a while but there you have it

[hugi]

@guff

Capitalism eats newness. It feeds on innovation. As opposed to what became before it, capitalism has hit genius ability to improve itself, to constantly adopt and grow. It does that by using an experimental evolutionary process, which identifies meaningful difference and exploit it by scaling. Be it Elvis, a Che Guevara T-shirt, a Brooklyn condo or Paris Hilton at Burning Man. It can be described by the innovation diffusion curve, through the theory of cultural appropriation, or by Sander van der Leeuw’s Archeology of Innovation (cities as systems addicted to innovation).

Some interesting discussion happening over in that thread, and @sander being referred to by @guff. I can recommend the discussion on the mechanisms of social capital.