Here is another major essay by Mark Pesce, on hyper-empowered politics. He introduces his inquiry in the following manner: “I have focused my research toward an understanding of how technologies change the people who use them, and how people change the technologies they use. This emergent, or “autopoeic,†relationship between technology and society is now… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2008"
Wikipedia Governance: the power of admins
Continuing our inquiry into the dysfunctionalities of “peer governance”, we ask the question: Where is the power in Wikipedia? A large part is distibuted in the editor class of ‘admins’, and according to many, the process is not going well. The first item is from a discussion forum in the Wikipedia Review, post 18: “Cory… Continue reading
On the trustworthiness of Amazon book reviews
We continue our lookout for critiques of the dark side of “peer governance” and user-generated content”. After Digg and Wikipedia, here is Amazon. The excerpt is from an interesting article in Slate, where author Garth Risk Hallberg discovers that the glowing review he got was actually commissioned by his publishing agent. See here for the… Continue reading
Announcement: The Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference
First International Conference, July 15-17, 2008, Barcelona, Spain, http://fkft.eu The Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference (FKFT) is the first international event which will centre on the production and sharing of educational and training materials in the field of Free Software and Open Standards. The FKFT 2008 Conference will bring together around 500 people from different… Continue reading
Mark Pesce on the death of mass media
I can’t possibly summarize this more than excellent essay (keynote speech) by Mark Pesce, but it is a must read. What is describes is how the new hyber-distribution models for music and film, have created a new psychology, which make mass media a secondary reality, and friend-forwarding the primary reality. Mark uses the hypothetical example… Continue reading
Eben Moglen on business and the commons
Interesting article in LinuxWorld about the future of free software by Eben Moglen. I’m excerpting a passage which clearly explains the reciprocal relationship between an open commons and the businesses that profit/benefit from it. Eben Moglen: “One of the things that everybody now understands is that you can treat software as a renewable natural resource… Continue reading
Kevin Kelly on business models in a world of free copy-ability
Openness creates wealth, enclosure captures it. That enclosure can be willfull, i.e. using proprietary licenses to protect part of the value you want to bring to the market (think of the dual licensing schemes in open source software), or, more fundamentally, you can create added value that is by nature difficult to copy, even in… Continue reading
Henrik Ingo on good and evil in the Web 2.0
Another contribution to Re-public that engages with the theses in our article, Some notes on social antagonism in netarchical capitalism. Henrik Ingo: “The great achievement of the Web 2.0 phenomenon lies in that it has significantly grown the mass of users who are at least instinctively coming to appreciate the joys of sharing (Youtube), communication… Continue reading
Christian Siefkes on Distributing Effort Through Weighting Labor
A continuation of the post on the material peer economy by Christian Siefkes, which yesterday described hint-based stigmergic systems. The full original contribution appeared in keimform.de. That full article also contains references. Christian Siefkes: “There are several ways of tying the contributions people are expected to make to the benefits they want from a project…. Continue reading
Axel Bruns: Going beyond’s Facebook’s Anti-social Web
A very interesting and important contribution by Axel Bruns in Re-public, that excellent Greek-based political journal that really engages in co-creating a understanding of the political and policy implications of commons-oriented policies. What Axel Bruns does in this piece is directly engaging with the issue of the “ownership of the means of peer production”, which… Continue reading
Christian Siefkes on hint-based stigmergic systems
Christian Siefkes continues his exposition of the ‘material’ peer economy, which we started discussing here. Here in the Keimform.de blog he discusses Hint-based stigmergic systems: “The first characteristic of peer production is that the effort required to reach the goals of a project is shared among those who care enough to contribute. How this sharing… Continue reading
A New Framework for Co-creating Business and Social Value
Darren Sharp informs us that his latest report on user-led innovation is finally live on the Web. Here is the announcement: User-led Innovation: A New Framework for Co-creating Business and Social Value,’ co-authored by Darren Sharp and Mandy Salomon. The sources of innovation are shifting rapidly from the traditional 20th century model of commercial R&D… Continue reading
From open organizations to open enterprises
For those who are not so familiar with our wiki, the main bulk of the material is organized in a three-column directory on the main page. 1) Introductory material in the left column (who we are, what we want, best essays on p2p topics, etc…) 2) The right hand column is a directory by format,… Continue reading