Feed's take on their creation of plastic.com. It's a corporately supported weblog with editors and professional writers that takes input from users. Metafilter is the best participatory weblog in my mind - purely self-policing and a simple layout that I have found to be the easiest to read and navigate and participate in by far. Slashdot has a big following. To me, the design and readability of plastic can't hold a candle to Metafilter.

While I'm on the subject, raving about Metafilter, it is also, to my mind, the best online community. It's accessible. The barriers to join and the click-throughs don't seem prohibitive. Interesting that this kind of structure promotes or prohibits interaction.

Anyway, back to the thread:

'For millions of people worldwide, the Web has become their primary information conduit: not just a research tool or a source of cheap airline tickets, but something far more immersive and habitual.'

Yes, I resemble this comment. When expressing incredulity to my wife that more of my friends don't read this site regularly I asked 'Doesn't everyone have some websites they read everyday?'. I know the answer is no, but it's hard for me to believe, relative to the way I interact with the world now.

'Reader discussion forums clearly improve on a letters-to-the-editor page, but they are usually cordoned off in a special area...It's a perfectly good model, but it's not a radical break from print magazine publishing.'

But the structure of Metafilter allows for free discussion in a much less cordoned off area such that, to me, the results are revolutionary.

Wow, I guess I'm passionate about Metafilter.

The author of this Feed article is talking about what I call 'network dynamics'. Kevin Kelly called it something else originally, something like the rules of the new economy, but it's bigger than that, the power of networks. You get the issues of scale like Yahoo vs. Google. Open Source harnesses these powerful dynamics.

'Linus Torvald's development strategy -- "release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity".' Linus was the chief architect of Linux - an open source, Unix-based operating system that many of us hope will one day supplant Windows.

See, I'm never going to participate in an inelegant discussion interface. I won't take the time.

Here's a related Feed article on Open Source. The interviewee says open source is subversive - it subverts the conventional notions of quality control and management.

"At first blush, the Open Source movement looks libertarian, with its emphasis on personal involvement and its core faith in the idea of meritocracy," says Hunter College professor and technology activist Clay Shirky. "It also looks capitalist, since Open Source works for the same reason that transparent markets work." But as Shirky explains, that superficial behavior shouldn't distract us from the effects of OSS development, which "have all the hallmarks of the economic category called a 'Public Good.' Like lighthouses or national defense, a public good is something that is best built for everyone all at once. Likewise, Open Source has the quality of solving a problem once and for all and then putting it out in the public domain, and once you even admit the idea of a public domain into the argument, you're a few steps away from libertarianism."

Open Source is a public good. That sounds right to me. It's probably one of the reasons I'm so crazy about it.

And what if we could apply these dynamics to thorny problems like politics? Or how can we? Can a meritocracy be advantageous and produce public good without becoming thoroughly self-serving, leaving the techno-peasants and less meritorious as indentured servants?

One political result of Open Source may be more citizen actions, like the Seattle WTO demonstrations (some of the valuable parts anyway). One of the great things about network dynamics/Open Source is it provides a cheap, quality alternative to the reigning hegemony. That's critical, because you need a replacement, not just a critique of the status quo. You need something constructive.

Okay, I don't have time to go on and on about this. There's some good stuff, especially in this second article, even though it's old. Read it! And then interact.