James Burke: I took part in a broadbased survey on political engagement in the UK last year organized by PowerTruth commission. After numerous public consultations and much deliberation and refinement of results, the final report is available. We’re hosting the pdf from our server as their’s is pretty slow right now. Some excerpts from report… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2006"
Larry Penslinger on P2P and quantum physics
Larry Penslinger is an American author, of the legendary novel “The Moon at Hoa Binh“, and an expert on quantum physics and m-valued currencies, who lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand. His thought is complex, sometimes difficult to understand without philosophical and scientific grounding, and many people of my circle here in Chiang Mai, including myself,… Continue reading
Dialogue with Patrick Godeau (1): free software and equity
I recently discovered an interesting text by Patrick Godeau, on Software Freedoms and Parecon Values, which examines the free software freedoms from the point of view of the values of equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management. Patrick is also the conceptor of a very important proposed reform of the GPL license, which he calls the IANG… Continue reading
Are P2P relations personal, or impersonal?
Quote from StpehanMz, Oekonux: the difference between personal or abstract types of domination – and the free society without domination including a type of societal organisation, is that the latter is based on personal relationships. This does not necessarily mean, that “you know each other” (which is impossible), but the cooperation is driven by humans… Continue reading
Four levels of P2P
A reprint of the editorial in P2P News issue 95: A typical reaction to the manuscript and the ideas around P2P is to stress how it can be recuperated , not only by the current economic system, but even by darker social forces such as Al Qaeda. If such is the case, how can I… Continue reading
The “Great Cosmic Mash-up” as an answer to postmodernist fragmentation
Michel Bauwens: I discovered an interesting website yesterday, The Age of Embodiment, a forum for commentary on what Karl Shroeder, a science fiction author must praised by Cory Doctorow, but which I haven’t read yet, sees “as a massive cultural change that’s sweeping towards us: the end of the Modern/Postmodern age, and the beginning of… Continue reading
Web 2.0 and the new minipreneurial culture
Darren Sharp reports: Two great articles from today’s New York Times which look at how Web 2.0 is transforming business processes and entrepreneurial culture. The first “Web Services Upend Ideas About the Little Guy’s Role” explores what might be called the “Long Tail” of the small-business market through the democratisation of information technology. According to… Continue reading
John Heron on the spiritual in the Global Integral-Spiritual Commons
John Heron: Thanks for the opportunity to clarify and enlarge on my very brief statement about the global integral-spiritual commons in Issue 89.I take a fundamentally relational view of spirituality. I don’t believe that spirituality is about individualistic states of consciousness, however subtle, refined and elevated. See my piece “Integralism 2” at the end of… Continue reading
P2P and the Cooperative movement: critical comments from Marcus Moltz
Michel Bauwens: Both theory and practice are important, even though they do not always coincide. Any theoretical scheme, such as the one I’m trying to develop on P2P, has to constantly check itself to the reality of transformative practice. Theory is subject to hubris, to ‘conceptual imperialism’ and to various forms of arrogance. It is… Continue reading
Dialogue with Wim Nusselder on Quarternary Economics and P2P
Reprinted from P2P News 91, this refers to our previous entry on Quarternary Economics. Two comments on the relationship between P2P theory and the quarternary economics of Wim Nusselder, which we featured before. My comments are in between the comments of Wim. Comment 1: Wim: “I have the impression that there are essential differences between… Continue reading
Remi Sussan on transhumanism, chaos culture and P2P
Remi Sussan, who maintains our French-language pages, has written a marvelous book about the emergence of the transhuman countercultures, Utopies Posthumaines. This book has been very well reviewed, and generated a number of interviews, the latest one being here. I have no hesitation to say that if this book were written in English, it would… Continue reading
Cooperative capitalism as an intermediary between the market and peer production?
On Chris Cook and the Open Capital Movement. Last week I got an interesting email from Chris Cook, one of the former Directors of the International Petroleum Exchange, who is working on the development of a framework for cooperative capitalism on his site Open Capital where he develops alternatives to the existing financial structures based… Continue reading
The new gatekeepers, equipotentiality vs. the Power Law
There is a recurrent debate on the internet, summarized here, about re-intermediation through the new gatekeepers. Observers note that a new elite of A-list bloggers is able to set the terms of the debate, and that many of the existing search engines based on popularity, then re-inforce that dominance. There is therefore a tension in… Continue reading
Peer production, the market, and the state
Christophe Lestavel has sent us a number of questions and challenges, about how peer production will affect both the private sector and the state. His questions are in French, but I’ve summarized them in English. Comment l’open source (ou P2P), en faisant baisser le cout general de l’infrastructure (au sens le plus large, on pourrait… Continue reading
Peer Governance and the State
The following is a reprint from P2P News 91, with preliminary thoughts on peer governance. “In 3.4.A, we have used the typology of intersubjective relations by Alan Page Fiske. Two points are important here: First, no society or civilization can survive through reliance on any one mode, they have always co-existed. But we can also… Continue reading
Announcing the first ever thai bloggers meeting
If you’d like to participate, go here at http://www.sf-day.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bloggers_Meeting_Bangkok