Ever tried to explain to a six year old why boys like girls? Giving is like that. Some people have lived it and understand without explanation. Others create theories to explain the mystery. Web denizens seem to understand more often than most. Maybe giving is built into the ethos of the hyperlink itself, giving and receiving attention, flow, reputation. Maybe the web is a training ground for civil society, and a harbinger of a more giving society.
See Gifting and Technology by McGee and Skageby for a thoughtful discussion of the culture of file-giving, and sharing, on the web.
Under what circumstances, of markets, copyrights, and other social arrangements does the vitue of giving become a vice or crime? And is the good garnered by those arrangements off set by the loss of a vital gift culture? Can the two be balanced, by accountants and/or by the holy spirit?
Forgive the following if it's overfamiliar terrain:
I'd be interested in this site's regulars views of Marjorie Kelly's work on corporate power structures, e.g., the Divine Right of Capital - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1576752372/
- One point Kelly makes is that corporate fixation on shareholder value tends to destroy that value by plundering and pillaging the other values which were the reason customers and employees were attracted to the company to begin with.
- E.g. (my example not Kelly's), if you look at what is happening at this moment with Kmart and Sears, you will see a man (Lambert) gutting two Wal-Mart victims, raising share price, and, more than likely, destroying tens of thousands of retail jobs over the next few years.
- Thus, the interrelativity of corporate "giving" and taking.
Posted by: tom matrullo | November 18, 2004 at 12:11 PM
corporate fixation on shareholder value tends to destroy that value by plundering and pillaging the other values which were the reason customers and employees were attracted to the company to begin with.
Yes .. .and over time, new "values" are created (forced on us, actually). I would argue we have been witnessing this process unfold, in an accelerated fashion, over the past 15 years or so ... actually, there's probaly quite a long arc to it, punctuated by wars to give the roulette wheel some new momentum.
Posted by: Jon Husband | November 18, 2004 at 02:12 PM
Prudhomme, the theorist of anarchy wrote, "Property is theft." Today giving, as in file sharing, is theft. GNP and profit margins, or ROI, are ways to measure a succesful set of social arrangments. More subjective, but as important is social capital, the density of gift and service networks. To redress the imbalance, those who understand and love gift culture may have to focus their gifts more strategically on matters of law and public policy. "We are being stolen blind." On that point at least music companies and anarchists can agree.
Posted by: Phil | November 18, 2004 at 06:21 PM