Archive

The Misfit Economy

I’ve spent about four years explor­ing the dark side of inno­va­tion, try­ing to con­vince peo­ple that there’s actu­al­ly a lot that we can learn from those who work in the unseen cor­ners of the world. You know, so-called mis­fits. Pirates, hack­ers, gang­sters, con artists, pranksters, ex-prisoners. 

Pirate in the Empire

I think in order to under­stand why the Pirate Party came about as a polit­i­cal par­ty, you have to look at the way that these file sharers—often minors—were being addressed by the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment and by the cul­tur­al lob­by­ists in par­tic­u­lar. And what kinds of mea­sures were being lob­bied for by the cul­tur­al indus­tries, espe­cial­ly the sur­veil­lance of peo­ple’s online behav­ior, which we’ve only learned prob­a­bly years lat­er was going to become a much broad­er prob­lem for a fun­da­men­tal rights.

The Conversation #38 — Alexa Clay

I think at a fun­da­men­tal lev­el I just believe in human agency. And I think that every­one should feel like they can par­tic­i­pate and shape the econ­o­my, rather than feel like they’re expe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms of the econ­o­my. When the reces­sion hap­pened, there was all this chat­ter around well, the Fed is going to do this. Or the banks are going to do this. And gov­ern­ment is going to do this. And there was no nar­ra­tive around what peo­ple are going to do.