Book: The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age. Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui, Editors. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press and University of Michigan Library, 2008. Some weeks ago, I discovered this new book, which I did not read, but browsing through the chapters convinces me that it is a very high quality… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2008"
The Open Everything initiative
Mark Surman and David Eaves and a number of mostly Canadian friends started a great initiative to think through trends associated with openness and to map “all things open”, which is called Open Everything. They are organizing a three day retreat in September to continue mapping and exploring this. Heather Ford of iCommons has built… Continue reading
Innovation will flow more freely in a world where goods flow more slowly
Alex Steffen of WorldChanging asks an important question that we have discussed here as well (i.e. Could Globalization Be Reversed?), but his piece is important because it reviews all the other arguments that may point to a reversal scenario, and not just the current hike in transportation costs. I’d like to start with his very… Continue reading
What’s wrong with the Singularity as political strategy
Below are excerpts from Eric Hunting in a recent email discussion. I think this is a valuable insight that transcends any critique of transhumanism, but can be applied to similar cultural memes, like the expectation of a fundamental spiritual transformation of the world by 2012. Utopian or apocalyptic visions can actually demobilize because of their… Continue reading
Phone + Twitter = Phweet
A Phweet is a shortURL that makes conversations and conference calls possible between Twitter friends and across other social networks. Let your friends know you are talking. Invite them to join in. No numbers, no new profiles. I usually try to refrain to write on technical topics, because I do not feel I have enough… Continue reading
The role of contemporary spiritual communities in the Post-Industrial reinvention of the Pre-Industrial past
The following is from an interesting discussion by Eric Hunting on the role played by religious or spiritual communities in developing alternative forms of production. I just want to add that of course this does not imply support of a particular path, nor of of the presence of authoritarian elements within a particular community (for… Continue reading
Payment for peer production
In a recent discussion on Oekonux, I came up with the following gradation of payment vs. voluntary contributions in peer production, which echoes the distinction made by Oekonux between singly-free software (a commons as output, but input is wage labour); and doubly-free software (commons output and participatory input). Here is the model, which I think… Continue reading
Mushin on moving from a hierarchical to self-empowered spirituality
What I appreciate in Mushin is that he may be the very first spiritual master to have consciously abandoned this stance, and replaced by a horizontal ‘spiritual servant’ oriented approach. In an interesting blogpost, he compares his earlier personal experiences a a leader claiming spiritual authority, with the liberation of letting go of that stance…. Continue reading
From the nation-state, via the market state, to the rhizomatic state?
the Nation-State actors of globalization do not realize that rhizome terrorism is not fighting the policies of particular states, but that the source of conflict is the fundamental incompatibility of rhizome with the hierarchal nature of both globalization and the state. The above quote is from an essay by Jeff Vail, together with John Robb… Continue reading
Geoff Chesshire on regenerosity’s win-win accounting
A side effect of our recent conversations on Open Money with Michael Linton and Ernie Yacub (now available through blogtalkradio), we got some details on the Regenerosity project by Geoff Chesshire. The quote at the end is from Keith Hart’s latest Memory Bank essay. Geoff explains the motivation behind his project: “I have been working… Continue reading
Searches for the word P2P on Google Insights
Between before 2004-present, China has produced the most searches for word “P2P”. What does “P2P” mean to the Chinese? Anwser, I don’t really know, maybe the same as it does for me? Upon trying to narrow down the search requests via categories, Google Insights was not able to provide a break down. It was unavailable…. Continue reading
The status of 3D Printing
There’s a lot of movement on the ‘fabbing’ front, i.e. the ability to make 3D objects out of the comfort of your home (by either owning a 3D printer, or sending it by email to a company which sends you the object). This is important to the P2P Foundation, because it is one of the… Continue reading
The extraordinary shift to peer to peer trust forms
Although Bazaarvoice focuses on marketing aspects and opportunities, they have done an extraordinary job in summarizing recent surveys and polls showing the decline in trust in intermediary institutions, and the rise in trust in peers. What it shows it the very profound social transformation taking place. A selection of the key factoids: # Trust in… Continue reading
OpenStreetMap status report
Via Glyn Moody OpenStreetMap is clearly fast becoming one of the open world‘s signal achievements!. Here’s a recent summary of their progress: “Earlier this week the project surpassed 50,000 registered users with over 5,000 actively contributing data each month. Historically the contributor base has doubled every 5 months. That means there will be around 50,000… Continue reading
Difficulties in moving from free software to free production
I’m not going to talk here about the difficulties related to economics and ownership, but rather about technical issues, by referring to the work of Eric Hunting. First, I want to get one issue out of the way: that of the interaction between immaterial design and the physicalization of the product. There is a lot… Continue reading
The role of the market in a Peer to Peer Society
Following the relational typology of Alan Page Fiske http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Relational_Model_Typology_-_Fiske, there are four intersubjective modes which have existed cross-culturally and historically: equality matching (gift economy), authority ranking (feudal-type structures), market pricing, and communal shareholding (according to us: P2P). Societies have always been a mix, but it can be argued that historically we have seen a succession… Continue reading