Long ago when Condi was younger than I am now, than I was several years ago, I wrote an honors thesis while a student of international relations at Stanford arguing that trust in the international system could be accrued, in theory, as well through a regime of information transparency and communication. It was a critique… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2006"
How We got To “Hyperlogic”: Lessons From Hacking the Human Mind Via Social BookMarking
[originally posted at Social Synergy weblog] [bliki|what is a bliki?] In a recent previous post, I gave a critique of Marc Fawzi’s “The Unwisdom of Crowds” post to his Evolving Trends blog.  Lots of discussion and healthy debate ensued with Marc both here and via email. I still stand by my criticisms, but I… Continue reading
Christopher Spehr on out-cooperating Empire
There’s a lengthy and stimulating interview of Christopher Spehr, a German cooperation theorist, by Geert Loving. See also a kind of summary on the economics of networking here.
Gold farming and exploitation in online games
 The wikipedia has an interesting article about Gold farming, which it defines as follows: “A farmer is a general term for a person who acquires in-game currency in a MMORPG through collecting items and money that can be obtained by continually defeating enemies within the game. Farming is a popular method in which to… Continue reading
Rosa Zubaretta on “lay peer-to-peer networks” vs. “conventional group facilitation.”
In my own vision of peer to peer, this new relational dynamic is not a panacea for all human problems, and the last thing we want is a kind of totalitarian Commons-type of society. P2P is appropriate in some circumstances, will influence other modes, and will often exist in hybrid combinations. In our new topical… Continue reading
Open Business Guide Launched
[bliki|what is a bliki?] If you are not already familiar with Open Business.cc, it’s an open knowledge commons worth looking at and participating in. The basic core concepts of Open Business can be found under the idea section: “Open business is designed to help the little guy along on his journey to spread his idea… Continue reading
Book and contest on telecenters
Posted by request: ” TELECENTRE.ORG LAUNCHES AN E-BOOK AND AN ONLINE CONTEST Toronto, On, 10 July 2006Â – telecentre.org is launching the electronic version of the book From the Ground Up, a piece collecting images, stories and experiences from users and members of the telecentre movement around the world. To celebrate the launch and in… Continue reading
Dale Carrico on the emerging technoprogressive ‘mainstream’
I’m not going to excerpt this one, but I wholeheartedly agree with the analysis of Dale Carrico in Amor Mundi. It’s about technology and democracy and how they both need each other; and what kind of transition we are experiencing, now that the abject failure of the American neoconservative project is unfolding. Read it here…. Continue reading
More on Spiritual Authoritarianism and Andrew Cohen
My friend Alan Kazlev has a really excellent four-part critique of Ken Wilber. One part specifically deals with Wilber’s inability to deal with spiritual abuse, and focuses on Andrew Cohen: “But the most common – indeed, the standard, excuse abusive gurus use to justify their behaviour is that it is necessary that the disciple be… Continue reading
A preliminary conclusion on the debate on democracy and peer governance
After the various discussions with Marc and Sam, I have shifted my opinion and am more critical of the original text by Marc Fawzi. To summarize: I agree that in some cases, crowd-only systems may lead to average or lowest-common-denominator judgments, and that in these cases, they might be usefully augmented by a mixed crowd-hierarchy… Continue reading
Steve Harnad on the difference between open access to code, to text, and to data
Steven Harnad, an open access publishing expert, gets worked up about the conflation of the meaning of open and free, as used in software, with open and free as used in text, and then again, in data. These distinctions are valid, and no doubt important in certain applications of his field. But I would still… Continue reading
Richard Poynder continues his excellent open access interviews
Richard Poynder has patiently been working on conducting a series a lengthy and highly qualitative online interviews: the Basement Interviews. The last series of 3 are essentially concerned with the founders of open access publishing initiatives, and I have indexed them here. They concern Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate and co-founder of the Public Library of… Continue reading
Why Digg Is A Poor Example Of “The Wisdom of Crowds”
[originally posted at Social Synergy Weblog] In this post, I want to address Marc Fawzi’s “Unwisdom of Crowds” post, as part of an analysis/debate that was initiated by Michel Bauwens of the P2P blog. First, Marc lays out his case to compare certain behaviors online to human “tribal” behavior (as in hunter/gatherer societies). The following… Continue reading
A conversation with Michael Goldhaber on Attention
I recently had an email conversation with Michael Goldhaber on the topic of attention. His take is original in that he does not equate the scarcity of attention simply with the application of a money or market economy, but he explains how an attention economy could Entirely through forces within Western European culture (including areas… Continue reading
Web 2.0. and the increase in software productivity
Michael Schrage has an interesting article claiming that recent productivity gains might make outsourcing obsolete. Of particular interest is this quote showing the productivity gain in producing software after the open source revolution: “So when Brondmo told me his software, called Plum, was the first time he’d done serious coding in over a decade, I… Continue reading
What drives online cooperation: agonistic giving
Trebor Scholz has a great post investigating the motivations behind social networking and other forms of social collaboration. It’s a contribution related to both Jaron Lanier’s rant against digital maoism, and our own dialogue with Marc Fawzi on the unwisdom of crowds. It basically asks: is the motivation selfish, or altruistic. Note that this very… Continue reading