The crisis that requires this Myth to lead us out of the darkness, the crisis that requires these Values to be translated into values, is already upon us. The advocates open source ideals don't have the kind of time that Goldwater Republicans had, to refine those ideas, and to slowly build a political movement on their behalf.
Google is a good company but a very speculative stock. It may pay off, but there are real risks. Banking risks, for one thing. There are risks from government, not just the U.S. government either. There are growing legal risks doing business online. There is growing competition from Microsoft, and Yahoo, eBay and Amazon, too.
The Right Wing Noise Machine not only lacks answers, it doesn't even know the question, just as the Johnson's Great Society had no clue how to deal with the problems of the 1960s, even though it ruled all three branches of government.
The new Thesis lies within you. It’s in how you’re acting, in what you’re doing. The new Open Source Thesis is so internalized you can’t identify it. You know when it’s challenged, feel good when it’s validated, but you don’t quite know what to call it.
So what happens now? Hopefully municipal broadband happens now. Hopefully, if you have a cable connection, you’ll close your account with the phone company now. Hopefully, the idea that broadband is a public utility everyone needs will start to grow.
The Internet belongs to the edge, not the center.
Not only would it be the right thing to do, it would be great political jiu jitsu on the Bells, which have gamed the system during the Bush years to create the first subsidized, unregulated monopoly in the American economy in 100 years.
As a Senator Webb is likely to be moved from the left back to the right, becoming increasingly irrelevant as the new thesis takes hold. That's the pattern anyway.
Right now, the Bush Administration is doing what the Johnson people did in the mid-1960s, everything they can to institutionalize their advantage.
My word for all this is satiation. Many of our richest and most famous chafe at the limits of their own avarice. They wonder if there's something more. And they find it, in doing good work, in contributing to the world's forward progress.
