[rohrpost] Open Source Novel by Douglas Rushkoff

[Reinhold Grether]

["Douglas Rushkoff is writing an open source novel that
readers are encouraged to leave footnotes on. These
footnotes can contain comments, suggestions or discussion
about other footnotes."
MetaFilter <http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/8880>]

Exit Strategy
by Douglas Rushkoff
<http://www.yil.com/exitstrategy/>

"Exit Strategy is an open source novel. The story I wrote
is merely the starting place for what I hope will be a
lively interaction between all of us. The premise is that
the central manuscript was written in the very near
future, then hidden online and discovered 200 years
later. Because society has changed so much, an
anthropologist has annotated the text for his
23rd-century contemporaries. They are no longer familiar
with notions such as venture capital or advertising, much
less Microsoft or Nasdaq. The 23rd-century reader even
needs a footnote explaining what condoms were used
for.

These footnotes are a way for us to conceptualize a
future that has moved beyond our current obsessions.
Instead of describing that future explicitly, though, we
will suggest what it will be like by showing what facts
and ideas future readers won't understand. I've written a
hundred-odd footnotes to get us started re-imagining the
present from the perspective of the future. It's up to you
to fill in the rest. 

Remember, these footnotes don't have to be accurate.
They only have to show what anthropologists and other
experts from the future think are accurate explanations
of our society. And these experts needn't necessarily
agree with one another."

You are free to create a footnote for any concept in the
book, including the footnotes themselves (and the
footnotes to the footnotes and so on). For each chapter
there will also be a discussion board, where we can
review just what sort of world we are creating together.
A new chapter will be posted here each week, and in
September you'll be able download the full e-book or
order a printed edition through iPublish. Early next year,
I'll be releasing an Open Source version of the book,
which will include 100 reader-written footnotes=97the ones
that have created the most conversation, or become
regarded as classics by the community. The authors of
those footnotes will receive free signed copies of the
book, and be invited to a book party in New York. 

So, with this, I open the continuing authorship of our
collective Exit Strategy to you."

Exit Strategy
by Douglas Rushkoff
<http://www.yil.com/exitstrategy/>