This was the very first academic conference exclusively devoted to peer production, and to my mind, it has therefore a ‘historic’ importance. We already know that it will be held again next year, though at a different place, so this will also be the start of a peer to peer research movement that will likely… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2007"
Video: Real News television – peer-funded, no advertising.
Going back to the edge
Danny O’Brien has started a nine-part investigation about how we can avoid the centralization of our sharing and return ‘the data back to the edge’ i.e. back to our personal (but shareable) servers … The dominance of players like Google is not a fact of nature, but a design decision, so this investigation into the… Continue reading
P2P Spirituality
In a series of blog posts I would like to research the meaning and relevance of a P2P (peer-to-peer) approach to religions and spirituality in our contemporary world. In a first post I would like to restate the P2P approach as I understand it, and give an overview of three attitudes towards religious pluralism, or… Continue reading
The produsage revolution: a stellar new book
Axel Bruns. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Axel Bruns has been so kind as to send me the manuscript of his new book on Produsage, and I must admit that while reading it I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. This is nothing less that the… Continue reading
Smart objects and the coming convergence of the digital and the physical as the Third Book of Nature
Our friend Kim Veltman has written a very interesting conference presentation on the new convergence between the digital and the physical world. I find such an approach interesting because it goes beyond the onesided attention to a independent “Internet of Thingsâ€, or the business-oriented approach of Bruce Sterling’s Spimes, which assumes an unchanged copyright regime… Continue reading
New introduction to peer to peer, for beginners
Mauro Bieg has just rejoined the ranks of our wiki-contributors. He wrote us that he wanted to tackle some of the complexity of our writings and presentations, which are certainly not accessible to everybody: “I feel like all the free culture, creative commons, free software, open source, open access, anti-DRM, etc. movements have a lot… Continue reading
An update on the thriving field of product hacking and open hardware
Canadian Stephen Vermeulen keeps a regularly updated list of open hardware initiatives, which he calls product hacking. This is a good occasion to refer readers to our own page, which contains a full listing with links, on the various projects we know of. Go to that page for the links and further exploration. We can… Continue reading
Participatory Spirituality, an update on John Heron’s book
One year ago, John Heron wrote an important, but self-published book, on Participatory Spirituality, which was subtitled, a Farewell to Authoritarian Religion. This important book is now also available through Amazon and I would therefore like to bring it once more under your attention. Below is the short review that I added to it. Review:… Continue reading
A handbook for the global cooperation of corporate teams: Global Project Management
Jean Binder is a former Brazilian student of mine, back in the days when I was teaching The Anthropology of Digital Society. He sent me the following news, which is appropriate for the subject matter of our blog. Jean Binder: “Let me take the opportunity as well to share with your peers my new website… Continue reading
How the Dutch are pioneering open payment and self-determined revenue sharing practices for creative services
I’m very, very excited about the following developments reported in the dutch media and blogosphere, and have asked our Dutch sympathizers to report on this in English. Because of time constraints, I can at present only provide the Dutch-language links. This is truly the peer to peer future in the making, so I’m hoping for… Continue reading
Dutch P2P Foundation offline dinner in Amsterdam
The P2P Foundation is growing. Not only do more people believe in the theory of Michel Bauwens, but more people involve actively in the foundation. Last Monday we had a dinner with a group of the Dutch believers. We had a great dinner in the old center of Amsterdam. It was the first time meeting… Continue reading
Current internet will reach capacity by 2010
Gorden Cook writes in the Arch-econ mailing list, a hang out for emancipatory telecom strategists, that the next The COOK Report will feature an intensive interview with John Curran predicting that the current IPv4 address blocks will run out, and that convergence to IPv6, however imperfect, is a necessity, yet no one is really preparing… Continue reading
A CAT-Scan of the Global Brain
When it first came into usage, “the global brain” seemed like only a metaphor. But the more we learn about how the human brain functions, the more convincing the parallels are in real life. In many ways each of us is participating in a brain without borders, one that encompasses humankind. I’d like to focus… Continue reading
How should the open community relate to business?
I’m reproducing as a piece in this debate, a contribution by Johannes Ernst. He writes that: “You and I and everybody depend on others to get technology into our hands, and those others are, for the most part, “enterprises”. I depend on Apple for the laptop I’m writing this on. A big CableCo for the… Continue reading
A New Social Contract?
Friday, November 2, at the University of Michigan, game-theorist Brian Skyrms gave the Tanner Lecture on Human Values, and his topic was “The Evolution of the Social Contract.” Saturday, November 3, there was a symposium to respond to and discuss his lecture. Invited speakers were Elinor Ostrom, Michael Smith, and Peyton Young. Elinor Ostrom discussed… Continue reading