And now they have Arrested me again in an Action of £4. trespas for digging upon the Comons, which I did, & own the work to be righteous & no trespas to any....
-- Gerrard Winstanley, 1650.
The World We Want? Perhaps it is an Augmented Social Network, a civil society supported among other things by an internet commons that enables us to find and coordinate with fellow spirits whether in our own propria persona or behind masks of various degrees of opacity. Masks, or "persistent pseuds," are like the "safe places" in which the rich hide out to talk among themselves about The World We Want. The difference is that an online persona is mobile, as if the King in a fairy tale were to go among the Peasants, dressed as a Pauper, his own whipping boy, to find out who we are - the King included.
In any case, I discussed Peter's work with Jan Hauser, and sent Peter a copy of the AUM essay written by Jan with Ken Jordan and Steven Foster.
Yes, bridging silos is hard - the techies, the inheritors, the dumpster dwellers, the zealots of Christ and/or the Market, corporate and governmental factotums: there are many worldviews, each so protective of its own zone of autonomy, each barricaded inside its own vocabulary, common sense and soundbites, but a project like the World We Want, or for that matter The Augmented Social Network, in becoming inclusive might create what clearly does not yet exist, a world, or free speech zone, in which we talk with one another across our many divides, in safe and congenial places, inside or outside the barbed wire.
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