One of the highlights of my last lecture tour in Europe, was meeting Franz Nahrada, the pioneer, amongst other things, of the concept of Global Villages, which proposes the “combining the immaterial wealth of global connectedness and peer design with the material wealth of local natural resource cycles and human community.” In other words, it… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2007"
Finally: a P2P Theory of Power?
We have mentioned Jeff Vail’s Theory of Power book before, and featured large extracts on how he sees the relationship between hierarchies and rhizomes, which you can find here. I have yet to read the book however, and Dave Pollard’s summary made me realize what a significant contribution it is for a P2P theory of… Continue reading
A critique of connectivist education theory
I recently found an excellent an in-depth review of George Siemens’ book on connectivism, written by Mark Landy, and which was first published May 2007 in The Knowledge Tree An e-Journal of Learning Innovation, Edition 13, by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework In the review, Landy wonders whether the book is correct in assuming that… Continue reading
The Coming Dark Age
I often say during my presentations that the peer to peer logic of distributed networks, is a way out of the present crisis, a re-integration to a higher level of complexity. The alternative, since infinite material growth systems are untenable, would be a regress to a lower form of complexity, i.e. a dis-organisation of society… Continue reading
The impact and challenge of networked politics
I recently discovered a website on Networked Politics, and found this useful summary of the political effects and potential of the internet, by “Hilary’. Excerpt: “The leap in the technological possibilities of such communication on a multi-media basis have had several (obvious, I guess) consequences for the potential of the movements, networks and conflicts that… Continue reading
Mark Pesce, Mark Deuze and Trebor Scholz on sharing vs. profits
As a companion to the excerpt below, I recommended reading the conversation/interview between Trebor Scholz of the Institute of Distributed Creativity, with Mark Deuze, a keen observer of participatory developments. Against the positioning of Trebor who insists of the exploitation of the sharers by capital, Deuze gives a nuanced and complex picture of the mutual… Continue reading
Video: Following on from Googlezon, Prometeus
“Here’s another take on ‘the media revolution’. Prometeus reminds me of a more uptopian view of the fantastical EPIC2014’s Googlezon dystopia of a few years ago. In Prometeus, Google buys Microsoft instead of Amazon while Amazon buys Yahoo. Possibly even more interesting than the future thinking ideas contained in these viral narrowcasts is their increasing… Continue reading
Defining the technical characteristics of human emancipation
One of the key ways to promote peer to peer social dynamics is simply the ‘distribution of everything’, i.e. slicing up the resources needed for human life and production so that they are under the control of the individual, who can then freely act and engage with others. Today, despite the emergence and spreading of… Continue reading
Distributed Power Generation making headway
I have asked our sustainability expert Franz Nahrada for more comprehensive reporting on this, but I would like to point our readers to a site I have just discovered, New Rules, which reports on advances and obstacles to electricity users and local communities generating their own power (and hence also sharing or selling it). I… Continue reading
From the North South lens to the commonalities lens
I’m a big fan of Drumbeat, an important communication initiative for worldchanging organizations. In the latest issue, Jon Tinker, founder of Earthscan (now the Panos network), and current Executive Director of Panos Canada, puts a spotlight on the “North-South” paradigm for viewing development. He considers its origins and explores some ways it may no longer… Continue reading
GPL Version 3 is out
We are forwarding this announcement by Hempal Shrestha of Asia Commons, announcing the launch of GNU GPL Version 3: “Great news, after Creative Commons 3.0, now we have GNU GPL Version 3 and GNU LGPL Version 3. As Richard Stallman, founder and president of the FSF said “GNU GPL is to guarantee every user the… Continue reading
On the Contradiction between Openness and Profits
The following quote helps in understanding one of the contradictions of proprietary Web 2.0 platforms, and why they all use a mixture of open and closed elements. The citation is from an article by Joel West in First Monday, “Seeking Open Infrastructures” “Simcoe (2006) observes that in standardization, firms face an inherent conflict between value… Continue reading
Can Open Science licenses work in the hierarchical scientific culture?
Excellent essay in First Monday, by Dan Burke, who investigates whether an open licence regime can work in the scientific world, where such usage might not only be hampered because science relies more on patents than copyright, but also because of the hierarchical structuring of much of the scientific institutions. Read the full essay here,… Continue reading