Very insightful commentary by Eric Hunting. The context is the following: following our presentation of the work of John Robb on Resilient Communities, Vinay Gupta commented that he sees only potential amongst the poor people in the South. This view is challenged by Eric who things that open production will be developed concurrently but separately,… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2008"
Open Source Manufacturing Tools Directory and Bibliography
After a long debate across various open design/open manufacturing networks, that a sourceforge type of directory is needed that keeps track of design and development documentation to create an open source distributed manufacturing infrastructure, Eric Hunting has started with a already extraordinary outline of such a potential directory. This is not it, but while a… Continue reading
Open Sustainability Network event
If you believe strongly that sustainable solutions should be shared whenever possible,then this may be for you. Curt Beckman writes: “We are gathering together a large community of like-minded groups and people, called the Open Sustainability Network (OSN), to work on overcoming barriers to openness and collaboration. Our first conference will be at San Francisco… Continue reading
Participation and Caudillismo in Venezuela
I know Gregory Wilpers from years ago, through his works on integral politics, an attempt to go beyond the left-right divide. I lost touch with Gregory when he moved to Venezuela, and heard of him again through a book he wrote on Chavez. It is entitled “Changing Venezuela by Taking Power” Venezuela is a country… Continue reading
Matter Energy Information
Yihong-Ding has been reviewing the book Programming the Universe, by Seth Loyd. His review has two parts, the first is on the quantum computing aspects of the book. The second part is of great interest, because it introduces a scientific metaphysics, which puts information on a par with matter and energy. Of course, I’m not… Continue reading
School of Everything, knowledge-sharing irrespective of credentials
Whether the people here have credentials or don’t, the School of Everything is for people seeking training/education for free and for teachers to find students or willing learners. It’s deceptively simple, another, “why didn’t someone think of this idea before?” that we can all appreciate.
Stefan Merten’s critique of Christian Siefkes Peer Economy approach
A well thought out critique of Christian Siefkes proposals and book, which are referenced and summarized here. Stefan’s basic charge is that the peer economy model is just a disguise for the continuation of the present system. See for the full article here. We publish it in two parts. Stefan Merten: Issue 1: Is Siefkes… Continue reading
Interview with Nikos Salingaros on P2P Urbanism (2): developing a pattern language
The second and last part of our interview. Q2: Here’s the next question, and I’d like to play advocate of the devil for a while. I hear your charge that modernists build inhuman cities and spaces, but I wonder if they were not just reacting to tradition, which was already gone in the 1920s and… Continue reading
A world changing youth generation
Comforting figures from Business Week describe a significant cultural shift. Excerpt: “Politically active and culturally aware, young entrepreneurs, like Coleman, are pursuing socially responsible business ventures in record numbers, say administrators at several top B-schools, including Babson College and the University of Arizona’s Eller School of Management. Defying tradition, students and recent grads are pitching… Continue reading
Reinventing Civil Society (3): The destruction of the mutual aid tradition
Continuing our treat of David Green’s book on civil society, we here present the history of how mutualism was destroyed, first by the medical establishment in 1911, and finally by the NHS reforms of 1948. Excerpt 1: The role of the medical establishment in destroying mutual aid David Green: “The freedom to experiment during the… Continue reading
Interview with Nikos Salingaros on P2P Urbanism (1)
This is the text of an email interview. Nikos has a very strong critique of contemporary architecture and proposes a bottom up approach based on identifying productive patterns. Q1: We’ve been covering some of your work on a new ‘peer to peer’ urbanism in our blog. Perhaps we can explore this connection further. First of… Continue reading
Satellite Broadband for 3 billion people
According to an article in Network World, a company called O3b which stands for those “other 3 billion people,” a reference to the world’s population that still can’t access the Internet, is planning to put 16 satellites into medium-earth equatorial orbit to provide broad band internet access. The company, which is based in the U.K.’s… Continue reading
Patents are harming university research
Via Techdirt. There’s increasing evidence that patents are harming basic research as well. “The Bayh-Dole Act, allowed universities to start patenting their research. And, patent it they did. However, as the NY Times notes, rather than foster new research and innovation, this resulted in much less collaboration, much greater secrecy and much higher costs to… Continue reading
John Robb’s failed state hypothesis
We presented John Robb’s take on resilient communities last week. The need for it is based however on his concurrent analysis of p2p warfare trends, which combines a conviction that the current state system will melt down, and that global guerilla’s, i.e. small interconnected groups that can inflict damage way beyond their size, will increase…. Continue reading
The seriously cool Willow Project: Open Source Robotics
Relayed by Matt (Digiblade): “The Willow Project is a seriously cool effort to bring robotics to the masses: think of it as Lego Mindstorms all grown up. The project makes all their hardware and software designs open source, so anybody with the capability can take part, downloading existing designs and uploading their own. You don’t… Continue reading
Reinventing Civil Society (2): The tradition of Communal Liberalism or Civic Capitalism
We continue our treatment of the book by David Green, Reinventing Civil Society, which represents a conservative approach to the topic. In the following excerpts, Green introduces his own intellectual tradition: “Liberty rests on people taking personal responsibility for the maintenance of the institutions, morals and habits fundamental to freedom. This tradition of `communal liberalism‘… Continue reading