Douglas Rushkoff: "The next renaissance (if there is one) – the phenomenon we’re talking about or at least around here is not about the individual at all, but about the networked group. The possibility for collective action. The technologies we’re using – the biases of these media – cede central authority to decentralized groups... the invention of the printing press did not lead to a civilization of writers – it developed a culture of readers. Gentlemen sat reading books, while the printing presses were accessed by those with the money or power to use them. The people remained one step behind the technology. Broadcast radio and television are really just an extension of the printing press: expensive, one-to-many media... Computers and networks finally offer us the ability to write. And we do write with them. Everyone is a blogger, now. Citizen bloggers and YouTubers who believe we have now embraced a new 'personal' democracy. Personal, because we can sit safely at home with our laptops and type our way to freedom. But writing is not the capability being offered us by these tools at all.... Nothing against the strides made by citizen bloggers and journalists, but big deal. Let them eat blog... the opportunity here is not to write about politics or – more likely – comment on what someone else has said about politics. The opportunity, however, is to rewrite the very rules by which democracy is implemented... If Obama is indeed elected – the first truly Internet-enabled candidate - we should take him at his word. He does not offer himself as the agent of change, but as an advocate of the change that could be enacted by people. It is not for government to create solar power, for example, but to get out of the way of all those people who are ready to implement solar power, themselves. ... Change does not come from the top – but from the periphery. Not from a leader or a myth inspiring individuals to consent to it, but from people working to manifest it together... not simply a way to get candidates elected to office.... a disengagement from the myths through which we abdicate responsibility, and a reclamation of our role as citizens who participate in the creation of the society in which we want to live. This is not personal democracy at all, but a collective and participatory democracy where we finally accept our roles as the fully literate and engaged adults who can make this happen."
(at the PDF Conference)