Rob sez, “Elephants Dream, the original open movie directed by Bassam Kurdali, proved that it is possible to make high quality 3D animated films using free tools in a studio setting. The Tube Open Movie is a new experiment in distributed collaboration using cutting-edge tools for independent film-making. The Tube Open Movie is inspired by the ancient Gilgamesh poem, which comes down to us as an incomplete, conflicting set of fragments and variations, the clay tablet remnants of more than a few ruined libraries. The epic centers on the Sumerian king who ruled Uruk, in ancient Iraq, who for his tyranny the gods teach friendship and loss, and through them, the fear of his own death. In the end, the immortality he achieves is different to the one he first seeks. Nearly five thousand years later, Gilgamesh, a woman and a soldier, rushes into a station in pursuit of a fragment of paper blown about by the passing of trains. In an ever-accelerating vortex, her hero’s journey becomes the animation’s own frames.”
Tube is the experimental production of a 3D animated short about the dream and failure and achievement… Continue reading »
Well-done and easy to understand: Bre Pettis, co-founder of MakerBot Industries, explains the basic principles behind open source hardware in simple terms.
The Learner Blog writes that this is “one of the best presentations on media, entertainment and technology I have ever watched”.
Here are some details:
“Barcelona Media, an interdisciplinary center of research and innovation, hosted Lear Center director Marty Kaplan to speak at its 10th anniversary celebration on March 6, 2012. His talk is titled “From Attention to Engagement: The Transformation of the Content Industry.”
Digital technology has increased competition for audience attention, increased audience control of media, and fragmented the mass audience. But the same technology that threatens traditional business models is also providing new data streams and new ways to define, measure, and monetize audience attention. The media/entertainment sector, which traditionally has derived value from distribution, is finding new currencies to price advertising and discovering data mining as a profit center. Kaplan, founding director of the Norman Lear Center for research on entertainment, media and society, will explore the impact on the attention economy of new metrics for the audience.”
This documentary looks at how DIY hack-tech is changing the discourse of modern day protests:
“Our story follows the trials of a pair of college dropouts who head up the Free Network Foundation, a peer-to-peer communications initiative seeking to liberate the global Internet from corporate clutches by building their own decentralized, cooperatively owned, free network, one wifi hotspot at a time.”
“97% Owned investigates behind the scenes of the ever changing financial system, to uncover how the monetary system provides the foundations for international dominance and national control. Fresh thinking, new ideas and answers to simple questions are squeezed into this 2hr 10minute expose.”
Here’s the trailer of what looks to be a very good documentary:
“The theme of the lecture addresses a question: how can we design spaces in the city which encourage strangers to cooperate? To explore this question, I’ll draw on research in the social sciences about cooperation, based on my book, and relate this research to current issues in urban design.”
“The government of Iceland has forgiven the mortgage debt for much of its population. This nation chose a very different way of stopping the crisis from the rest of European countries. It decided to hear the requests of the population and to put politicians and bankers on the bench of the accused three years after their financial excesses would sank one of the most prosperous economies in 2008.”
“The government and the newly constructed Icelandic banks developed a template to be used in case by case restructuring discussions between borrowers and lenders. The templates facilitated substantial debt write-downs designed to align secured debt with the supporting collateral (i.e bring the loan into line with the value of the house) and align debt service with the ability to repay.
The IMF found that such case by case negotiations safeguard property rights and reduce moral hazard, but they take time. As of January of this year, only 35% of the case by case restructuring applications had been processed. To speed things up, Iceland has introduced a debt forgiveness plan which writes down deeply underwater mortgages to 110% of the households’ pledgeable assets.
David Pinto and friends, with my support, are launching a new funding mechanism to support commons-based value creation. He asked a few people for their opinion on this intriguing project:
