Republished Via the Negations blog: The first issue of Resistance Studies has just been made available online. You can find it in PDF format here and read a press release about the project here. The following is a summary of its content (provided by the publishers): “The article by Karl PalmÃ¥s discusses the possible rupture… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2008"
Steve Bosserman on Common vs. Differentiated Value
A follow-up to yesterday’s contribution and in particular to the graphic presented in that article. Steve Bosserman: “There are two planes, common value and differentiated value, that establish an operating space in which a person divides efforts between giving some or all of what is done to the commonweal versus presenting it for sale in… Continue reading
A P2P critique of Transhumanism
Dale Carrico, a very astute political thinker with whom I feel a certain kinship, has been developping over the last 18 months, a critique of transhumanism as an ideology. In this entry, he kind of summarizes the main points. Dale: The Superlative Imagination is, in my view, premised on ignorance of or even active hostility… Continue reading
Steve Bosserman on Economic Sustainability in a world of Open Design
This article by Steve Bosserman is about the best that I have read about the issue of sustainability in a world of open design. It’s an article which should be read slowly, it is a slow buildup of simple but intricate arguments, and has the illustrative graphics to match. I want to retrace my own… Continue reading
From free software to the free drugs movement
I recently stumbled on an extensive essay by Tony Prug, which examines different aspects of the impact and extension of the free software principles in other domains of social life. Amongst other things, it has a examination on the relationship between the hacker ethic and the Protestant ethic, a dialogue with the hypothesis of Pekka… Continue reading
Rethinking music
Magnus Eriksson and Rasmus Fleischer, founders of the Piratbyran in Sweden, have published an interesting mini-essay on music, technology and participation, which attempts to recast the stale debate about copyright. I belatedly discovered it through a interesting commentary on the Swarming Media blog. Here’s an interesting excerpt from a text which is worth reading in… Continue reading
Franz Nahrada: A Vision for Global Villages
Some countries have national treasures, great living artists or craftspeople that are protected through national grants (Japan and Thailand come to mind). I believe that some people are living international treasures, and I consider Franz, whom I met in Vienna, to be one such person, and he has consistently helped people and projects to advance… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation launches its first ever social network
As I make a living through lecture tours, which brings me away from home a large part of the time, I particularly enjoy it when I’m home, both for being with my family and second batch of small children, and because it allows me to focus again on research, creating content for the blog and… Continue reading
Jason “jz†Liszkiewicz on community-interest-driven technologies
Somewhat similar in nature to the Japanese project we mentioned earlier, it would seem that the p2p theme is now also resonating with urban developments. JZ has written an essay with the intriguing alternative title, “Transformation through Transportation: The Convergence of the Transportation Industry, Information Technology, and the Knowledge Economy“, which will appear in an… Continue reading
Bottom-up vs. top down: modalities of peer governance
Two items to help you think through the ‘hybridity’ of peer governance. The journal Science Studies has an interesting case study, which examines the interlocking of three levels of control in a open source project, nl. self-control (individual autonomy), more central control by a group of core developers, and the distributed control by peers. Read:… Continue reading
Social advertising won’t work because it has no salience
Steve Gillmor makes an interesting case in a rather dense blog entry: “Social advertising doesn’t work because users are there for friends, not buying stuff.” As Sam Rose summarizes the argument: “I think the basic insight stems from the fact that the average person sees well over a thousand advertising messages a day So, people… Continue reading
Open Source in Asia faces special hurdles
Food for thought, via IP Watch: “Gen Kenai, business developer for the open-source company Mozilla, spoke about the difficulty of expanding the open source movement into Asia. Technology news service CNet asked in January 2008 “where is Asia’s contribution to open source?†said Kenai, and added that when Linus Torvald, who started the open source… Continue reading
Overview of peer-based business models
I have published an article in the January 2008 Canadian “Open Source Business Resource”, a site which promotes open source based business models. It has an excellent archive of articles mediating the understanding of open communities with the needs of OS-based companies. For those familiar with my modelling work, this is a good summary of… Continue reading
Participatory Design in India: Urban Typhoon workshop
Announcement: The Urban Typhoon workshop is a multicultural, multidisciplinary and multimedia experiment in participatory design. It is organized by the residents of Koliwada and a global collective of researchers and activists. Architects, urban designers, planners, artists, anthropologists sociologists, photographers, media artists, activists and other creative people from India and abroad are invited to Koliwada for… Continue reading
Christian Siefkes on possession (not property) as the basis of the commons
Only one more to go in Christian Siefkes summary presentation of his research on the material peer economy. Here, he focuses on replacing the notion of property by possession. Christian Siefkes: “Peer production is based on _commons_ and _possession,_ not on _property._ As long as you _use_ something (by yourself), there is no obvious difference… Continue reading
Companionism: introducing democracy in the corporation
On the book by Madoc Batcup. Companionism: why companies need democracy as much as countries. Exposure Publishing, 2007 Interesting proposal to introduce democratic governance in the corporate world, featured in Open Democracy. Madoc Batcup: “Democracy is a form of political governance. But it is also a principle, an idea about the best way for a… Continue reading