Talk:Moving from free software to free life
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We want to articulate this to make it clear to people like Larry Lessig (Creative Commons), Eben Moglen (FSF lawyer, dotCommunist Manifesto), Yochai Benkler (Wealth of Networks), Howard Rheingold (smart mobs). Joe and GuakaTalkCS 18:55, 2 December 2006 (EST)
I removed some text to here:
Our sense has always been that we can have a society without money. Now what do we mean by without money? Economists have several senses in which they use the term money: "the money of account", money as a "store of value", "the medium of exchange", etc. We don't think it makes sense to get rid of accounting, or of "the money of account", but I think we can most past having a "medium of exchange" towards a society based, not on bi-directional exchange, but unidirectional, nothing-asked-in-exchange gifts.
"Wrap the Internet around every person on the planet and spin the planet, software flows in the network." [1] Connected human minds create for one another's pleasure. To conquer their sense of being alone, they start using their creations to make other creations, they write encyclopedias, dictionaries, share their diaries, share physical books with each other, meet each other, or even share their private space with each other.
It is an exhilarating feeling to write software or to make a website that is used around the world. It is an exhilarating feeling to host and to be connected with travelers the world around. People who give once tend to give more, because when you give a little and see the effect of your gift, it makes you want to give more. Also, when people give to you without receiving any compensation, for a whole raft of human reasons, it makes you want to give to others. So the more we give, the more we tend to give, and the more we receive from someone who was not compensated, the more we want to give.
This is good news.
