Speaking about digital public goods, we think of goods to be provided to all. We do not want to close out anybody from the consumption of information or knowledge products. Recently, when information becomes a more and more important resource the significance of knowledge capital can be compared to of material capital. The article seeks what are the social and legal conditions, in addition to the "unlimited access", that create digital public goods.
Category Archives: Former issues
Information society development in Hungary regarding social capital
The Hungarian information society – regardless to its modest development – is increasingly divided. In addition to the known reasons, it should be considered that the majority of the outcasts have neither direct contact with PCs and internet (the feature devices of information society), nor with persons using these devices on a daily basis. In order to break the cultural and knowledge barriers, that mostly responsible for the digital division, we have to launch such IT programs that regenerate incomplete social contacts in order to speed up the spread of innovation, new values and attitudes.
Open source software and the potential for democratisation
The article uses practical approach with everyday examples of the application of IT and communication devices and software showing that the use of simple looking technology how deeply affects everyday life and also democracy.
The structural crisis in politics
In recent times, not only the US but also other western democracies can be described as "two-rightwing-party-systems" or in practice as one-party-systems – monopolising political decision making by an institutional structure based on self-legitimising consensus. What are the social grounds and structural reasons that develop the negative tendencies in politics and justice – putting away political liberties, because they cause only trouble? The spoor leads to the structural crisis of the capitalist way of social reproduction.
A capitalism pure and simple
An answer is sought to the question, why there is so little resistance to capitalism in contemporary Eastern Europe – which leads to the more general question, what are the specific features of capitalism in the former Soviet bloc. Since the tasks (according to the traditional theory) incumbent upon bourgeois revolutions have been fulfilled here by the Bolshevik revolution, the demiurge of East European modernity, secularization etc, both the remnants of the aristocratic-chivalric-ecclesiastic past and the elements of a proletarian socialism were annihilated. Result: East European capitalism is the purest version anywhere.