Post-capitalism

I was talking with my friend and colleague Johnny at the reference desk this afternoon, showing him another neat online toy, del.icio.us, a social bookmarking tool which lets you save and tag your favorites in a web-based environment.

We were marveling over the rich and complex online resources like LibraryThing, Technorati, Blogger—plus all the open source stuff, from Linux on—all of it available for free.

It occurred to me that we are seeing a global social revolution, in which millions of people are disconnecting work from pay and intellectual/artistic creation from property.

I think of this even in terms of my own "work." I do a job for pay—thankfully, a satisfying job which I really enjoy— but what I "really" want to do is write and publiish.

For years I didn't try "what I really want," because I doubted I could make a living at it.

Now, however, thanks to this vast social cyberspace world, I've been sharing stories by email for over a decade and blogging for over two years. I get to write, I have a readership, I don't have to convince someone to publish me....

Money for my writing would be nice, yet the real satisfaction comes from the feedback I get from readers.

And there are millions of people around the world now doing this: writing, coding, designing, photographing, inventing...and sharing it online.

Working at what they want to because they want to.

Neat!