I asked Kevin Carson, a mutualist who values “free markets” for his vision on Reciprocity. See also here for an extensive discussion of reciprocity in the context of peer to peer dynamics. This is the first of two parts, with part one focusing more on ‘free markets’ and part two on ‘unfree markets’. This is… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2008"
How’s FON doing? A status report.
Update on the project for a global peer to peer wireless infrastructure in the New York Times: Excerpt from the 3-page recommended reportage: “At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON… Continue reading
Buying Out at the Bottom through an Unplugged Lifestyle?
Concept developed by Vinay Gupta and expressed in fictional format here. Excerpts from a TV documentary in 2030: “Well, first we’ve got to cover briefly how Unplugging works. The core of the theory is that we can all live off the interest generated by our savings, or the profits from our investments, if we possess… Continue reading
How Open is VIA’s OpenBook Design?
A buzz-creating article appeared in Wired which announced that VIA, one of Taiwan’s leading chip and computer makers, is posting the computer-aided design (CAD) files for its OpenBook PC under a Creative Commons license. Wired writes that: “For industrial designer Scott Summit, VIA’s move is part of a gradual shift toward more highly-customized manufacturing, in… Continue reading
Valentin Spirik: online theme park theatres as the future of film
A contribution from Valentin Spirik, the author of our guide to making your own videos: – The future of film? “Just like YouTube seemed like a far out vision only ten to fifteen years ago (remember the time when there was no internet and when no one had a mobile phone?) the cinema of the… Continue reading
The turn to the cities and P2P heterogenesis
I have noticed in circles of political thinkers, such as Toni Negri for instance, a turn towards the cities, which is part of a much larger trend that drives attention towards strategies of localization. From a totally different perspective, military analyst John Robb in his blog on Global Guerilla warfare, has been analysing cities both… Continue reading
Future Melbourne: The Dawning of the Age of P2PGovernance
This is my first post to the p2p blog (though I’ve wanted to for some time). Michel has asked me to discuss my experiences with the Future Melbourne project – the transformation of a traditional city planning exercise governed by a few, to a global, wiki-based collaboration on the future of Melbourne, Australia. First, here’s… Continue reading
Margaret Archer on the morphogenetic society and the implications for peer to peer socialisation
I received a fascinating text by sociologist Margaret Archer, on the history of reflexivity, which has a very interesting thesis of why peer to peer socialisation is by necessity becoming dominant in the new generation. To understand the chosen excerpt which will illustrate her thesis, two prior elements are necessary. First of all, Margaret Archer… Continue reading
The emergence of free software/open source cooperatives: India’s WikiOcean collaborative
I was already aware of the existence of the OS Alliance in Austria, a successfull free software cooperative. I’m also aware of Kunlabori Collabortive in Sweden but have no updated information on their status. Now comes news of a very ambitious initiative in Pune (and Mumbai), India, which uses a peer-to-peer based decision-making and revenue… Continue reading
Is peer production capitalist exploitation? A reply to Jasper Bernes and David Bollier.
David Bollier has a presentation of the debate on the relation between the commons and the market, which has a great citation of a fairly traditional left critique (see just below), then counterposes the positive interpretation of the commons, using Adam Arvidsson’s (I co-authored later versions with Adam) Crisis of Value essay as a guide… Continue reading
What are the specific challenges for open hardware?
Free Software Magazine has an interesting conversation/interview with members of the Open Graphics Project , an open hardware initiative, in which they talk about what difficulties make open hardware more challenging than free software. FSM introduces the topic: “The tools and techniques for creating hardware designs are very different from those used for software; and… Continue reading
Dave Pollard on Peer Production and the Myth of Economies of Scale
Via Dave Pollard, whose How To Save the World blog, would probably get my vote as the best in the world. Here’s an extensive excerpt because he touches on one of the great myths of the industrial age that is being dismantled ever more as our means of production get more distributed: the myth of… Continue reading
What should we think of free trade?
“The closer the economy approaches the scale of the whole Earth the more it will have to conform to the physical behavior mode of the Earth. That behavior mode is a steady state—a system that permits qualitative development but not aggregate quantitative growth. Growth is more of the same stuff; development is the same amount… Continue reading
There is always already coercion
One of the commentators I regularly follow, is Dale Carrico, who is of the opinion that no realistic political theory can be held, which ignores the role of violence and coercion as inherent in the human condition. I agree, and this is how P2P Theory differs from the libertarian tradition. The following excerpt is from… Continue reading
Sustainability and development require participation
Achieving sustainability without participation is an impossibility!! One of my key arguments regarding an eventual transition to a new form of society that is based on peer to peer as its core logic, which I consider a ‘conditional inevitability’, is a hypothetical but hopefully likely attempt, to a new global reform towards a green/natural capitalism…. Continue reading
The Tilaphos project – Interview
In a previous post I said a word about the Tilaphos project , a reforestation project that takes place in Greece. The new issue of the well-known journal Republic includes an interview with Dimitrios Zachariadis, the driving force behind this project, who explains that Tilaphos aims at dispersing, through the Greek web, “reliable public information… Continue reading