Via Mediacology: I was at this Paul Hawken talk and it remains one of the most inspiring I’ve seen. Given these troubled days, I thought it would be nice to take a breather and to remember we are the ones we have been waiting for. Recommended Video by Paul Hawken:
Date archives "September 2008"
Biobazaar (2): open biology and appropriate technology
Book of the Week: Biobazaar. The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology. By Janet Hope. Harvard University Press, 2008. We continue our presentation of Janet Hope’s new book on open source biology. Janet Hope: “Another broad social movement with potentially very strong connections to open source biotechnology is the appropriate technology (AT) movement. Adherents believe that… Continue reading
A warning from Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein in her editorial on the financial crisis: “It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right’s ability to use this crisis — created by deregulation and privatization — to demand more of the same. Don’t forget that Newt Gingrich’s 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is still riding the wave… Continue reading
Special issue on using Open Source methods for social innovation
You’ll find the free online magazine mentioned below here. From the editor’s intro: “Social Innovation is the theme of the September issue of the Open Source Business Resource. This issue captures important aspects of how open source assets, processes, and values may be used to create social and environmental value. Some of these aspects are… Continue reading
Does genetic food become palatable when it is a public good
Seed Magazine reports on efforts to make genetic engineering research a public good and says that it is vital for the next green revolution. Excerpt: “Free distribution and local ownership of bioproperty will be one crucial aspect of the new Green Revolution. Another will be the cultivation of locally adapted varieties. “The second Green Revolution… Continue reading
The other singularity: from the Great Meltdown to the Great Escape
A brilliant excerpt from the fifteenth chapter of Kevin Carson’s draft on Organisational Theory, which I will discuss in detail in daily submissions from October 2 to 5. If you can’t wait, go read it now, it’s has all the makings of a masterpiece. In this excerpt, Kevin Carson discusses a possible counter-strategy to the… Continue reading
Thoughts on P2P production and deployment of physical objects
Our Italian friend Marco Fioretti, of the social-catholic free software advocacy group Eleutheros, a man with a longstanding experience in the manufacturing of integrated circuits, has summarized a discussion we have on the specific difficulties of using peer to peer methods in the sphere of real physical production. Marco summarizes the other contributions, and strongly… Continue reading
Christian Siefkes on the difference between capitalism and the peer economy
This is a response to some of the challenges expressed by Stefan Merten, who believes Siefkes book re-introduces capitalist concepts in another form. Christian Siefkes: “In so far as current peer production tends to go, my solution is the same as of current peer production processes: you can take anything, without having to give anything… Continue reading
How do corporations and communities relate?
Earlier this month, we started processing/summarizing a number of research papers that relate findings about the concrete governance of free software production. As a reminder, we covered: – The governance of sponsored open source projects and their communities – Decision Rights in Open Source – Modularity in Open Source – Protective mechanisms in the peer… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Biobazaar, by Janet Hope
“the tinkering networks we see in the software industry will be mirrored in synbio. Further, the skill sets associated with synthetic biology will be as widely dispersed as software programming is today and the tools will be just as inexpensive/ubiquitous.” – John Robb How realistically can we expect open source biology? Consider the following recent… Continue reading
True and not so true Open Educational Resources
Via Leigh Blackall: “MIT have published a text called Opening Up Education, but under a copyright license that is one step short of All Rights Reserved. On the other hand, Utah State University in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning and individual designers have published the OER Handbook. Available under a free and practically nonrestrictive… Continue reading
What exactly is Open Video?
An announcement and appeal by the crew of Miro TV: “For many, it’s not clear what Open Video actually is — here’s what it means to us: openness is a state where video has more potential for innovation and competition. It’s a place with fewer restrictions and digital locks, fewer hurdles to block viewers who… Continue reading
A sensible alternative plan to the bail-out
Via Ian Welsch: “I have received multiple e-mails today suggesting that instead of the bailing out banks at the expense of taxpayers, the government should give mortgage holders money to pay off their mortgages. Both ideas are bad. But there is a better solution. The government is talking about setting up a Trust to buy… Continue reading
From the World Wide Web to the Web Wide World
If you read only one article about the future of the web, what exactly Web 3.0 might become, go no further than this brilliant overview by Nova Spivack here, entitled: The Future of the Desktop. In his own blog, he gives a brilliant summarizing of what it is all about. Nova Spivack: “Things are not… Continue reading
The revolution in accounting and the emergence of ethical markets
You may want to read Hazel Henderson’s reaction to the financial meltdown. Her stress on ethical markets is in tune with our own analysis of capitalist formats being subsumed through peer to peer-based ‘partner’ logics. Of interest is the paragraph in which she refers to deep changes that have taken place in statistical and accounting… Continue reading
The market, democracy, and peer to peer consent
Brilliant political intervention from our friend Dale Carrico at Amor Mundi. The original title was: Democracy, Consent, and Enterprise (and Their Contraries, Aristocracy, Duress, and Exploitation) Republished in full as a guest editorial, for saying all the right things. Faced with abject market failure, it’s important to break free of the ideological tyranny of the… Continue reading