Counter Culture 2.0

The counter-culture of the Sixties was an amazingly vibrant and exciting time. I was a small child when it reached it's peak, and it still forged a tremendous imprint on my psyche. I grew up in places like Laguna Beach and Los Altos, California. I have vivid memories of hanging out at the beach in the late 60's watching naked guys (probably on acid) riding their bikes straight off the pier. My parents tried to shield me from them, but it didn't work. Once I had a taste of the "energy" these people exuded, it never wore off. As a child of 4 or 5 it was pretty obvious these guys were having lots of fun and I wanted to be a part of it. For at least the first 10 years of my life I had lots of exposure to hippies of every variety in my home neighborhood, including this incredibly gifted artist who made the most intense, colorful, beautiful psychedelic drawings I have ever seen, which right then and there turned me on to art forever.

Like I said in my political optimism piece we are witnessing the collision between the old culture and the new heating up at a furious pace.

I believe we are on the verge of another Counter Culture, this time brought on by THE MAN of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). David Weinberger has an excellent transcript of his talk on NPR. I urge you to read it, or listen to it - Real Audio, or Windows Media. Some would say that the internet itself is a counter-culture, and I think this is true to some extent. But I think it's more accurate to say that the Internet is an extension of our culture, rather than counter to it. This is a great thing, but I fear such an extension is about to be nipped off at the bud by DRM. That leaves only one alternative... a counter culture.

Counter-culture will happen, because it will be just that - counter to so-called "culture" that is propagated in a highly controlled, locked-down way by the media oligarchs. Since they are denying their memes... the same freedoms that other memes enjoy, they won't spread as fast, far, or wide as counter-cultural memes without such restrictions. Additionally, their memes can't mutate, since DRM prohibits fair use and deriviative work. Counter-cultural creations will have no such restrictions.

In the marketplace that is as much a part of the natural world as plants and animals, Darwinian counter-cultural meme propagation will out-compete expensive, crippled memes, leaving corporate-controlled media eating the dust of an out-of-control Cambrian meme explosion. As this meme propagation accelerates towards the singularity, corporate dinosaurs will die off, wasting away in the pollution of their own making. The irony of it is, in the age of infinite duplication, there is no scarcity, so their desperate gasping is their own refusal to breath readily available air of a new culture.

Some say that open-source creative work won't be that high of quality, since there is less financial incentive, but I disagree. The counter culture was not driven by money either, but by a strong desire to communicate a new awareness, a new consciousness being opened up by psychedelics. This new counter-cultural will be as popular if not more popular than anything we have ever seen. Except this time the counter cultural will be global and instantenous. It will give birth to a new renaissance... I'm guessing THE Renaissance of our age. Empowed by cheap tools of creativity, music & video production, blogging, smart mobs, and even more empowering and creative tools on their way, the sky is the limit for anyone with the desire to participate. Bye Bye Hollywood!

Meanwhile the government is losing what currency it had of trust. It's exhausting it's remaining credibility with its stupid and dishonest war against some drugs, especially regarding MDMA. Its continuing dishonesty with both the drug and Iraq war is only making maters worse. I think this is really sad, because trust in governance is what makes for a healthy democracy. So instead people are looking within themselves and each other for a more honest and genuine "reality". So while the media monopolies continue to lockdown and fence off their cultural creations, increasing numbers of people will seek out freer (as in expression and cost) alternatives.

And lets not forget the emergence of smart mobs... decentralized social networking on a scale like we have never seen. Imagine if the counter culture of the sixties had access to these 21st century tools.

Meanwhile media monopolies are showing their true colors with online distribution of works, with their recent decision to eliminate the 99 cent download cost. Now they want to bring the cost back up, so it doesn't cut into their CD sales. So obviously they still don't get it. They are not interested in seeing a digital distribution. They are trying to fight against the future itself. And they WILL LOOSE. In the meantime, The FCC is adding things like the broadcast flag; HP, Intel, Microsoft and other companies are adding increasingly strict digital restrictions, making it almost impossible to use the digital media the way you want. So it is inevitable that alternatives will spring up, people will create more and more work that is in the public open-source domain without any restrictions. These are the works that people will download. These are the works that people at school will be sharing, watching and listening too, and influencing their outlook on life. This will be the real cultural driving force. Meanwhile the media monopolies will have locked themselves out of future cultural evolution, a cultural primarily driven forward by young people who've grown up with computer consciousness from the time they were born. They won't accept anything less than total information liberty.

Posted by paul at April 13, 2004 10:44 AM | TrackBack