We're protesting one master while we give away our future to another. Free Software is Software For The People, By The People. We say that we want Democracy but we're using closed tools to say it.
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| Wall Street, stop controlling my future! It's Apple's turn! |
But people, realize that we put ourselves here. As a people, we've given up our purchasing power by trading away our personal information in exchange for some 'socializing' on Farcebook. Free Software is where innovation is happening and Free Software has the users in mind, not a corporate bottom line, yet the protestors use Apple OSX and Microsoft Windows, Twitter and Farcebook. 'Social Networks' are seen as the enablers of this movement, but they're just the newest masters and we happily give up our data to them so that we can play Farmville.
Creating a new financial system and new economic structure requires that we learn new ways to do what we do now. We need to support small businesses, not Big Box. We need to change the way our banks run. The long-term success of this movement requires that we build our society with tools that aren't designed to lock out members of this society.
We can choose to structure our society around openness and mutual contribution by everyone involved, or we can choose to use tools that are closed in their workings, tools which lock us into their use, tools made by companies that take our code and ideas and sell them back to us without any community-focused contributions.
2 comments:
Well said. Many of us also contribute to 401k plans that fuel Wall Street. I don't know that I agree with "The long-term success of this movement requires that we build our society with tools that aren't designed to lock out members of this society." Part of the appeal of this movement is its resistance to prescriptions like these. I just don't think we really know how pure we have to be in order to see the changes we want. At the Occupy rally in my city there was a big sign that said "Capitalism cannot be reformed." I would have preferred a sign that said "Capitalism probably cannot be reformed." The point is we don't know. I think we need to stay open to radical possibilities rather than define what will or will not be needed for a successful movement.
@3peace
> I don't know that I agree with "The long-term success of this
> movement requires that we build our society with tools that
> aren't designed to lock out members of this society."
Isn't that what the 99% means, that 99% of us aren't able to fully participate in this economy due to the way the current rules are set, the way the deck is stacked against us? That 99% of Americans have little control over the way the game is run?
Isn't it important to get everyone involved in this democracy? If so, why should it require a $200+ piece of software to do so, when the rules and the game and methods to partake could be built with Free Software that we can all use and all benefit from?
You are correct in that we don't know what exactly is the remedy, but as the republican party has shown us time and again (yet we as a country refuse to learn), putting the fox in charge of the henhouse does not work. Election after Election, we hear promises from both parties about reform and it never works in our favour; the Democrats try but never hard enough and the Republicans' idea of reform is more corporate power.
We cannot build the better economy using the same thinking as the past, and locking out a part of our populace by setting these artificial limitations in place is doing us no favors.
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