Date archives "May 2007"

Top 5 P2P Books of the Week

Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology, by J.M. Balkin (From the Cultural Software website) Cultural Software offers a new theory about how ideologies and beliefs grow, spread, and develop– a theory of cultural evolution, which explains both shared understandings and disagreement and diversity within cultures.   Cultural evolution occurs through transmission and spread of cultural information… Continue reading

Advances in Desktop Manufacturing

How realistic is it to foresee substantial advances in the distribution of the means of production, in particular as a result of advances in desktop manufacturing? According to Lawrence J. Rhoades at the National Academy of Engineering (U.S.), this is in fact the very “The Transformation of Manufacturing in the 21st Century” that is in… Continue reading

Multi agents systems, articificial societies, and p2p

Remi Sussan, the editor of our French blog, has guest edited the last issue of our P2P Newsletter, the archive of which is available here. Issue 160 is dedicated to the topic of multi-agent systems in their relationship to P2P. Remi introduces the topic as follows: Why are multi-agent systems important to understand P2P ?… Continue reading

Dialstation: low cost radical business model and self-bank for the poor?

Dmytri Kleiner, with whom we had a lively discussion some time back, has launched an initiative which marries business and radical ideas, in the form of a very low-cost platform for international mobile phones. Here’s the info as summarized for IDC. You can find more information at their website as well. Dmytri writes that: “mobile… Continue reading

P2P projects: “A very small percentage of your members are highly relevant”

The blog of Cambrian House, a crowdsourcing / crowdfunding project, has a very interesting tidbit that I can’t refrain from reproducing. The figures come from Bill Tancer of Hitwise, who “shared some hard numbers on how much participation is actually occurring at some of the most popular web 2.0 sites.” * YouTube – 0.16% (visits… Continue reading

Censorship backfires: thanks to MPAA takedown notice “illegal number” becomes popular on digg.com

The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) recently sent takedown notices to sites mentioning a key that can be used to circumvent the copy protection of the new HD-DVD format. Digg.com frontpage stories featuring the key disappeared and accounts were suspended. The result was a user revolt and around May 1st, 2007 almost every story… Continue reading