This 2007 contribution by Doc Searls, deserves a close rereading. It explains two things well: 1) why advertising cannot possible be a reliable funding mechanism for much of peer production 2) why in the future economy, in many fields, the ‘because effect’, making money because you are doing something, as an after effect, will displace… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2008"
Where the power lies …: Facebook vs. Multiple Identities
Danah Boyd has an interesting post which distinguishes social networking sites, which people use to meet with strangers, and social network sites, meant to manage your existing social network. Turns out that Facebook considers itself an example of the latter and that it actively boots out people with multiple account. Interesting case study of a… Continue reading
Nathan Cravens launches Open Manufacturing forum for the creation of an Effortless Economy
Nathan Cravens has launched an Open Manufacturing discussion group. Here are some details about his personal motivation: “Over a year ago I formulated the concept of Effortless Economy to describe and observe the particular trends of ‘zero-point competition,’ a particular evolutionary activity I first sensed, then witnessed all around me as I began to look,… Continue reading
Open Solar Turbines
From a correspondence by Eric Hunting, these suggestions might be useful: “Suggestions by Eric Hunting: “Also, with your solar turbine project, are you familiar with pressure-tensioned parabolic mirrors? These have already been employed for solar stirling engines and the design is pretty simple. You basically have a rigid cylinder chamber covered in a reflective thin… Continue reading
Bryan Bishop on why Closure Engineering needs a recursive approach
This is a further reaction to the presentation of John Robb’s ideas on Resilient Communities that we published in two parts. What Bryan calls closure engineering is alternative systems that attempt to be self-replicating, but he identifies an important problem: they are many of them, many are abandoned, and their solutions and experiences are most… Continue reading
A Timeline for Distributed Manufacturing
In John Robb’s series on resilient communities, one paragraph strikes me as too optimistic, i.e. the timeline for expecting realistic local manufacturing. Here’s what John writes: “Already, the fabrication equipment necessary to build complex objects/products costs only $20-50 thousand (some systems are in the hundred dollar range) and the costs are plunging. Given the technological… Continue reading
Reinventing Civil Society (1): Mutual Aid Societies in the 19th Century
In the book: Reinventing Civil Society (Civitas, 1993), David Green writes: “Markets generate more prosperity, but `more goods’ do not make a good society. The challenge we face today is to identify a sense of community or solidarity that is compatible with freedom. Competitive markets coordinate the efforts of people who may be self-interested, even… Continue reading
P2P Authors talking about their books
From David Levine’s Hearsay Culture interview program, and other sources including our own directories on books, podcasts and webcasts, we have selected for you, a series of authors passionately talking about their books. If you have little time to read, but can spend time listening during your commute or otherwise, this will provide you with… Continue reading
Douglas Rushkoff on the party of thought vs. the party of violence
What should we think of the U.S. Elections? Especially as a pluralist network? Consider this entry an update to the Predator State article. Can we be neutral towards those kind of forces? Consider this hair raising theocratic video from Sarah Palin’s local church … , and then ask yourself whether you would like to live… Continue reading
New podcast on the P2P Society
David Levine of the Hearsay Culture radio program in Stanford has done an 50-minute interview with me, the 72th in an excellent series. David was a skillfull interviewer who had clearly done his homework, so this conversation allowed us to go deeper than usual. Listen to it here. (our other interviews are listed here) The… Continue reading
Exploring Resilient Communities with John Robb (2): the infrastructure
Resilience comes in two main parts: food production andindustry, supported by two underlying infrastructural elements: smart local information networks and local money systems. 1. Agricultural and food resilience As the first solution for farming, John Robb proposes subscription farming: “In addition to entrepreneurial mini-farms, local farming can also be supported through subscriptions (aka Community Supported… Continue reading
Trusted search trumps untrusted search
What is my most valuable source of information? Without any doubt, it is the delicious network feature, which lets me directly peep into the minds and discoveries of people I respect most, such as Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, McKenzie Wark and four dozen other people. I’ve always wished that when I search, I could use… Continue reading
Exploring Resilience Communities with John Robb (1): definition
John Robb, master analyst of global guerilla warfare, is very pessimistic about the potential of the current global system to prevail. This means that he expects, like us, a strong trend towards relocalization. However, his vision is more radical since he expects a global breakdown. Hence, the need for a distributed network of resilient local… Continue reading
An update on Christian Siefkes’ Peer Economy (3): Characteristics of Sharing Networks
We continue our coverage of Siefkes’ discussion of his Peer Economy workshop in Hiddinghausen, where he proposed the idea of a Commons Network. In the same article, he proposes an interesting typology of such a commons. I suggest that perhaps we could distinguish sharing networks in case of Granted Property, and talk of a Commons… Continue reading
Cyber-Conflict and Global Politics
P2P security scholar Athina Karatzogianni has edited an excellent collection of essays on cyber-conflict. (unfortunately it is only avalailable at extortionate prices) The abstract says that: “This volume examines theoretical and empirical issues relating to cyberconflict and its implications for global security and politics. Taking a multidimensional approach to current debates in internet politics, the… Continue reading
How many kinds of free? Indirect generosity as a business model
We are talking here about free price, not free speech. Chris Anderson’s book offers a triarchy of three kinds of free: “The cross-subsidy model: the razors-and-blades model, as well as loss leaders of all sorts, from “free gift inside” to “free toaster for opening an account The media business model ranging from free-to-air broadcast radio… Continue reading