In early 2008 at the University of Michigan, drawing on inspirations like www.spacing.org, www.talkingstreet.com, and Malcolm McCullough’s work on “networked cities”, Lauren Myers and I created a presentation/idea on “Urban Ghosts” which asks the question: How can we make visible in the landscape the invisible geography of loss? Our urban history is replete with buildings… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2008"
Debating copyright law in Giessen, Germany
The morning discussion of the second day of the conference Das Internet. Zwischen egalitärer Teilhabe und ökonomischer Vermachtung, focused on Intellectual Property legislation. A qualified panel consisting of Professor Lawrence Solum, University of Illinois, John Henrik Weitzman, Creative Commons, Berlin, Alexander Peukert, Max Planck Institute and Giorgios Gounalakis, Universtät Marburg discussed the future of IP… Continue reading
Open Genomes: voluntarily sharing your health data
The International Herald Tribune reports on a research project where people share information about their personal genomes: the Personal Genome Project. Excerpt from a 3-page profile and report: PGP is “a study at Harvard University Medical School aimed at challenging the conventional wisdom that the secrets of our genes are best kept to ourselves. The… Continue reading
The flattening of knowledge by the simulacrum of “information”
Charles Hugh Smith, of the recommended Two Minds blog (October 18), has a review of what makes the web so positive as a human tool, but also covers the drawbacks. His main argument is that the use of the web requires deep knowledge, in order to sift through quality. C. Smith writes: “If you already… Continue reading
Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network: Commons in the air…
Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (AWMN), launched in 2002, is a social, non-profit initiative that aims to connect people and services through the wireless technology in cooperation with educational institutions, state authorities and other wireless communities in Greece. The participation in AWMN’s network is open: it is a network of people for the people. According to its… Continue reading
Open-Source Wind Farm Design Software
Via CleanTechnica: “”A New York software company has announced the scheduled release of its open-source wind farm design software. Albany-based AWS TrueWind designed the openWind software so that a range of end users, from individuals to wind energy developers, could apply and adapt the software their own particular set of data. The openWind application is… Continue reading
Open Everything in London on November 6
From the organizer’s wiki: On 6 November 2008, London will host an Open Everything event, a global conversation about the art, science and spirit of ‘open’. The conversation will cover, well, everything. Qualifier: the ‘thing’ in question is built using openness, participation and self-organisation. There are people coming to talk about open technology, media, education,… Continue reading
Thesis on Open P2P Design
The Italian student Massimo Menichinelli has put his excellent thesis online, in English and in a pdf format. You can find it here. Summary: “This short book represents a summed up and multilingual version of my thesis, and also as an introduction to the openp2pdesign.org website (with its 1.1 version). My research behind openp2pdesign.org, in… Continue reading
Update on the Bagley Wikipedia controversy
A contribution by Zbigniew Lukasiak: “The wikipedia governance drama unfolds with new facts: I don’t know how should I treat The Register – is it a trustworthy source? The connection to the current financial crisis looks rather sensationalistic – but the alleged facts are interesting. Especially this: Though Bagley went to extreme lengths trying to… Continue reading
Open hardware as the next wave
“In a sense, hardware is becoming much more like software, up to the point where you actually fabricate an object,” von Hippel says. “That’s why you’re starting to see open source techniques in hardware. Design is largely going to shift out from manufacturers to the communities.” To thrive in this next wave, hardware manufacturers will… Continue reading
eBay should opensource Skype
A call from Glyn Moody in Linux Journal: “So here’s a thought for eBay: why not open-source Skype and its protocols? There are many advantages. First, it would largely avoid nasty surprises of the kind that China provided (Skype said that the snooping occurred “without our knowledge or consent”.) It wouldn’t be possible to prevent… Continue reading
Most recent P2P lecture and video
This one was done in Barcelona, Saturday October 11, for Citilab’s “UrbanLabs” conference. It’s a more explicitely political intervention than usual, thanks to the Wall Street crash.
Practical advice on surviving a meltdown
A contribution by Thomas Greco: “Mike Adams provides some pretty good advice on his website, NaturalNews.com. Take a look at his comprehensive special report, How to Build Your Financial Safety Net. The thing that’s missing in Adams’ report is how to protect a nest egg. How do you protect the value of the assets you… Continue reading
Open Source Ecology Compressed Earth Block Proposal
Marcin writes: We have released v0.1 of the OSE CEB Proposal, which is a summary of our product release plan for the CEB press. This helps put the entire CEB project in perspective to supporters. The abstract reads: Herein we provide a short overview of the Open Source Ecology (OSE) enterprise development model and deployment… Continue reading
DistriBrute: P2P Powered Desktop Deployment
Possibly significant for showing the commercial uptake of p2p-oriented technical solutions. Via Torrentfreak: “Keeping large networks up to date can be a costly practice. Large corporations or government institutions often need dozens, if not hundreds of servers to distribute updates and patches, for which they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.” More details:… Continue reading
New book: Egalitarian and Hierarchical Impulses in Institution Building
Book: Organising and Disorganising: A Dynamic and Non-Linear Theory of Institutional Emergence and its Implications. Dr Michael Thompson. Triarchy Press, 2008. Via the author, the following description, of what I think should be a very significant book from a p2p point of view: “Following his previous seminal work in this area (see panel on right),… Continue reading