Cory Doctorow excellent Locus column ‘Cory Doctorow: The Jubilee: Fill Your Boots‘ raises interesting questions about the ultimate evolution of society in the Collaborative Age – what I would call the Abundance utopia.
The point Cory Doctorow makes is that it should be possible to live in a world of abundance leveraging on the rhythms of nature to minimize our environmental impact. The point is then to accept that things don’t necessarily work all the time. This drawback can be compensated by technology coordination.
“Technology hints at another model, one that hybridizes the pre-industrial rhythms of work and play and the super-modern ability to use computers to solve otherwise transcendentally hard logistics and coordination problems.”
“Using bright green, high tech coordination tools, we can restore the pastoral green, artisanal autonomy that privileges mindful play over mindless work. The motto of Magpie Killjoy’s Steampunk zine was ‘‘love the machine, hate the factory.’’ Love the dividends of coordinated labor, hate the loss of freedom we suffer when we have to coordinate with others.”
I strongly encourage the read and the thought that freed from the needs to coordinating large organizations, we could live a life far closer to the rhythms of nature while enjoying abundance.
