I love it. Lucas Gonze, whose blog posts are recently regularly epic, has posted a wonderful meme on Lightnet. He contrasts Darknet- which I'll define as an internet-based interface for browsing and consuming traditional mass produced media- with Lightnet- illustrated with examples like ccMixter, CreativeCommons, WebJay, and MeFeedia.

What's so beautiful about Lucas' idea is that Lightnet is sustainable media technology. Lightnet feeds itself through nurturing and enabling the expression of the creative impulses we experience during content consumption. Darknet restrains and/or swallows up these impulses for personal gain. With Lightnet, our aggregate participatory media experiences are like earth worms toiling the soil we live in- the attention we spend consuming media fuels the creation of new more relavant media, entertainment, and information. With Darknet, the ripple effect of our lives comes across as fashion and trend.

Lightnet is participatory media while Darknet is traditional linear media (no matter how personalized). In Darknet, identity is equal to our content collections and the content collections of those we associate ourselves with. In Lightnet, our individual playlists, our music and video libraries, and the videobloggers we subscribe to take on completely new meaning and value in the context of our social networks, relationships, and the shareable transparancy of our decisions and impulses.

In Lightnet, our identities can shine and become prolific - eventually becoming a new creative class of worker. Lucas has made it clear. Supporting Darknet is futile. Lightnet and sustainable media technologies will fuel the creation of an entirely new way to live, earn money, and communicate. So let's get busy!