Culture 2.0: The Collapse of Everything

First published May, 2007

 
Lots of people think they will never see major societal changes that drastically alter their sense of reality in the course of their lifetime. They plan on just happily going along, thinking the nation-state will last forever, their currency will not crash, their government will not collapse, everything will be okay, la la la.....  
 
There is only one thing that can be said to such naivete: 
 
Lol. 
 
Sorry folks, but 2.0, the open source world of the attention economy, is a beautiful universe that will give each and every one of us an unprecedent ed opportunity to make our dreams real. But the dream world is not going to come about without some big, big changes. 
 
This mini-series is a look at culture 2.0: the cultural revolution that goes hand in hand with the economic and technological revolution of the open source, peer-produced economy. It will proceed as follows: 
 
1. The collapse of law. The nation-state is going to collapse, and I'll venture to say it will happen much sooner than most people think it will. This has some rather enormous consequences.  
 
2. The collapse of stock markets. Some say this collapse will happen in the US in 2007 -- I'm not sure, although I wouldn't rule it out. When this collapse does happen, though, it's going to force companies (both in the US and outside) to change the way they finance their growth, which in turn will have enormous consequences for business culture and collaboration.  
 
3. The collapse of conformity. David Icke is a man who claims George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, the Queen of England, and other members of the "global elite" are part of a conspiracy for reptiles to rule the world. Is he a total kook? Maybe (you can decide for yourself by checking out videos of his presentations on YouTube). Of course, the real question is how valuable conformity is in 2.0. Hint: it's worth nothing (and I'm actually being generous with that valuation, it'll probably end up costing you). We'll explore why in this third post.  
 
The heroic journey is never an easy one. This mini-series will help prepare us for some of the more serious dangers that us web 2.0 heroes are destined to face.