quote:

"The column revolves mostly around the work of Yale Law School's Yochai Benkler, a modern-day, more-or-less capitalist Kropotkin."

Excuse me while I throw up.

It's good that people in the mainstream are starting to publish pieces like this. A deeper awareness is necessary.

Fact of the matter is, these tools (which Philly Future is a similar one) can do much to help bring people together - but they can be machines for exploitation.

I'm starting to get the feeling I'm being excluded from a certain clique because I've asked the *wrong* questions and am not part of the elite you spoke of in your earlier pieces.

I don't know if there is any meat to those bones - but I'm starting to really, really feel that way.

That realization - along with my aching back - is well - rather depressing to tell you the truth.

There is a great sig on floating around on Slashdot - don't know the source:
"In the 80's capitalism triumphed over communism, in the 90's it triumphed over democracy"

I do my share of digital sharecropping at Slashdot.
I do my share of testing Firefox.
I also help out at some other places when I can.

Last week I got invited to participate in a forum because the admin liked my style of comments at a place I hang out. So my writing has value to someone.

What is in it for me?

A great time waster for when I am busy waiting.
I can ask a few (even very) technical questions and get them answered.
I also get a few good laughs from the mozillazine forums.
But I see no cash or beer tap coming out of my computer.

At Technocrat you can get paid for any accepted article submitted.
I don't bother and have submitted (and had accepted - not hard) stuff anyway.

This comment:
"meritocritous to be sure"
This is not always the case - someone may have a great idea and plan, but doesn't mean they shouldn't move on and let others manage it. You won't a list of failed or forked projects? Evolution at work.

From http://www.calacanis.com/2006/07/18/everyones-gotta-eat-or-1-000-a-month-for-doing-what-youre/
"Before launching the new Netscape I realized that Reddit, NewsVine, Delicious, and DIGG were all driven by a small number of highly-active users"
At what point does some enterprising programmer write a bot that can get a $1,000 month at least for a while? Maybe setup the id to start with and let the bot do the work? The bot doesn't need to pass a Turing test, all it needs to do Eliza like is regurgitate on the userid's fave themes with the latest links.

Kropotkin's writing are a good read even if you disagree completely with his conclusions - his work on co-operation vs competition (from studying nature in Siberia) is welll written and interesting.

The question:
as I am likely to have a lot of free time soon, is the cash for comment offer invitation only?

Karl: My sympathies. This is what exponential distribution *means*.

tqft: When I get bought-out or go IPO, I will issue you stock-options at the appropriate valuation :-).