Ben Buckman.net

This segment from Douglas Rushkoff's Nov '08 talk on Open Source Democracy just blew my mind. I transcribe it here, italics mine:

Now the problem is, money just got too expensive. And there's nothing we can make anymore. There's nothing we can do anymore because big companies that know how to use centralized currency and do things from a distance pretty much outsourced anything anyway, to do business by balance sheet. I get called in by companies all the time to consult on their communications strategies. And almost none of them have anything to communicate. None of them actually do anything. It's really true. The last one I always like to talk about was this company that said they were an American television manufacturer. And I know there aren't any American television manufacturers, so I said, "oh, so you must design the televisions," and he said, "well no, actually we don't, we outsource that to a company in San Francisco." "So you do the marketing?" "Well yeah, but we actually give that to another company." So I was like, "what do you do? What does this company do?" Nothing. They can't take advantage of new comunication strategies, they can't have a social network about their company, they can't be transparent because then we see in that there's nothing. So they're depending on what - on marking, on opacity. Basically billboards around their company to hide the fact that there is no there there. And when you have an entire nation of industries with no there there, that's when you get intro trouble.

The full video follows (this segment begins around 32:20, but you should watch the whole thing):

(Thanks to @eethann for bringing this to my attention.)