“The Young Foundation have released an interesting report today on British political party funding and the role of political parties. Some of the key proposals include a cap on spending nationally, not just in elections, and a greater focus on political parties becoming development and leadership organisations, somewhat akin to charities, rather than just bodies… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2006"
Catherine Burton’s essay on planetary governance
Societies which were low in aggression occurred when “the individual by the same act and at the same time serves his own advantage and that of the group… Non-aggression occurs not because people are unselfish and put social obligations above personal desires, but when social arrangements make these two identical” This essay by Catherine Burton,… Continue reading
Lala update: the p2p music exchange service goes ‘radio’
We continue to report on interesting P2P Exchanges: LaLa is a really neat idea: “it works like an online music co-op where members trade-in CDs they have for CDs they want from other members. CDs are sent through the mail in pre-paid envelopes provided by ‘la la’. “Trading CDs is an affordable way to experiment… Continue reading
The shift towards postmaterial value systems
This is not new research, but the described shift to postmaterial value systems is part of the cultural explanation towards the emergence of peer to peer systems, so we’re reproducing this note from the Smart Economy blog: “The Values Map above ( Inglehart and Baker (2000), visually illustrates the strong correlation of values in different… Continue reading
Blog and wiki up-time issues
First of all apologies for the crashes on our site. Some of you may have noticed that we have been down at various times over the last months(year?). We are still investigating why this happens having reinstalled and updated all the latest versions of drivers and software for both blog and Wiki. The sites are… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Participatory Spirituality, part 2
We continue, and conclude, our introduction to John Heron’s new book, Participatory Spirituality, A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion, which is available through Lulu Press. For context, see our Wiki entry on Relational Spirituality. Here is the programmatic Prologue: 1 Prologue: a participatory spiritual culture  “An increasing number of spiritually-minded people are currently busy with… Continue reading
Dave Pollard on P2P healthcare systems
Dave Pollard has a long post about the necessary reform of health care, which is worth reading in full, here we only repost two explicit paragraphs on the emerging P2P alternative: “The significant new ‘ingredient’ in the bottom chart, the Health Info ClearingHouse, is an example of what I have called a peer-to-peer information exchange…. Continue reading
Blue Dot – social bookmarking revisited
“While with traditional social bookmarking services like del.icio.us the emphasis is satisfying a personal need while allowing the whole world to benefit from it, the relationships that ensue are often very impersonal and limited to extending one’s own ability to find interesting content without ever socializing with those serving it you. Blue Dot moves you… Continue reading
Paul B. Hartzog on expanding the commons through technology
Technology can play a role in expanding our conception of what is a commons, writes Paul B. Hartzog in the On the Commons blog. Legal technologies such as intellectual proprety, or technological features such as DRM, of course also can have an oppostive effect. Here we are reproducing his examples about the expansion of the… Continue reading
Is the future of banking in doubt?
VNU Net reports on a recent Gartner report, which has some quite radical conclusions: “Ten or 15 years ago, people trusted banks. Nowadays banks in the UK realise that most of their customers don’t actually trust them. They don’t even like them. They only use them because they know there isn’t really an alternative,” he… Continue reading
Peer production from the point of view of corporations: a hierarchy of engagement
In this post, I’d like to do a thought experiment, in which, on the basis of being inspired by the Direct Economy concept of Xavier Comtesse, extend the model to pure peer production. For background see also the recent discussion on engagement that has been doing the rounds of the Blogosphere. • Consumers: you make,… Continue reading
New book of the week: John Heron’s Farewell to Authoritarian Religion
We have admired John Heron’s work for many years now. What can be more important to life than the construction of meaning, i.e. the spiritual search for our relation with the totality of existence? In this context, John’s pioneering work on Cooperative Inquiry, a method to undertake the spiritual search collectively without any recourse to… Continue reading
Charles Leadbetter on the We-Think Economy
Charles Leadbetter is writing what should be an interesting book on the We Think economy. An excerpt from his column in The Times of London: “From YouTube to Wikipedia, collective creativity and collaboration are replacing top-down management as a business model. Our correspondent believes the We-Think phenomenon will affect every area of our lives.[…] Traditionally,… Continue reading
What neoliberal globalization has wrought
Comments on this analysis by Financial Times editor Richard Tomkins, partially excerpted here from Google, would be welcome. One of the trends the article does not focus about: is who is losing out in the developing world. For every worker gaining an increase in their very low wages, many farmers are loosing their land and… Continue reading
The Ethical Economy recap page
This is a one-page entry to the introductory chapter of the book in progress by Adam Arvidsson, and the related reactions. Please make sure to read the comments as well. The Ethical Economy Book The full text of the first chapter is located here at http://www.p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Ethical_Economy_Book_Project It is republished in five parts, for easier discussion,… Continue reading
Update on Robert Anton Wilson’s condition, according Douglas Rushkoff
From Douglas Rushkoff’s blog: Â “Thanks to your spontaneous generosity, we raised over $80.000 on behalf of Robert Anton Wilson in less than a week. This means he can be taken care of by family at home or, if need be, in a managed care facility for over six months. If at the end of… Continue reading