Futurismic’s regular columnist Jamais Cascio recently gave a talk at the International Association for Public Participation conference in Montreal, Canada, and has now made the transcript and slides available to the general public on his blog. In it he discusses the rise of a new participatory global culture which is “technology-enabled, not technology-focused”, covering topics such as open source, sousveillance and the advantages of networks over hierarchies. Go and read why he believes that these phenomena could empower real progress in our civilisation.