Report: Rob van Kranenburg, The Internet of Things. A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID. Report prepared by Rob van Kranenburg for the Institute of Network Cultures with contributions by Sean Dodson. An important new report: “The Internet of Things is the second issue in the series of Network Notebooks. It’s… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2008"
A bricolaged policy response to the financial meltdown
The financial instruments that are in the background and the real cause of the financial metldown are very complex and hard to understand, including by the politicians who are now concocting policy responses. For civil society players it is just as difficult. But help is coming. The very best report I have seen on the… Continue reading
The mechanics of sharing physical design information: an appeal for global cooperation
Jon Kuniholm of the Open Prosthetics project and the Shared Design Institute launches an appeal for collaboration for a global infrastructure for open design communities. Please use our Ning Forum discussion to respond. Jon Kuniholm: “I’m particularly interested in the mechanics of sharing physical design information, and I’d like to get some wiki-based discussion going… Continue reading
How well is the P2P Foundation doing online?
By the time you read this, our wiki home page should have reached 333,333 visitors and on the 6th of October, as I write this, “There have been a total of 4,534,546 page views”. But there is better news still. Steve Rubel writes that “After thinking about this a lot I have reached the conclusion… Continue reading
On the progressive aspects of cloud computing
Because of its importance, I’m exceptionally reposting a whole article, by Ryan Paul. The following article is an editorial in Ars Technica that argues against the rejection by Richard Stallman of cloud computing. For links to the mentioned projects, go to the original article here. It’s entitled: Why Richard Stallman is wrong when he calls… Continue reading
P2P-oriented city initiatives and Barcelona’s Citilab
I travel a lot, see quite a few places and people, so I have to be spare with my enthusiasms, but I want to make an exception to honour the wonderful people who invited me to Barcelona, or more precisely, to the suburb Cornellia. So far, my model for city-based digital empowerment has been the… Continue reading
The Value Shock
Steve Borsch has a nicely written commentary on the current crisis and how it is partly related to the way we are starting to conceive of value. Read the original here. I’m only reproducing an interesting quote on how two different value logics play out in a Star Trek episode, then below I would like… Continue reading
How ‘open’ and participatory policies transformed Medellin
Great case study by Warren Feek, Executive Director of The Communication Initiative. I’m reproducing it in full because it shows the importance of policy and how it is connected to openness, transparency, and ‘public spaces’ (commons), the three underlying principles of peer to peer. Warren Feek: “Can there be any argument with a policy that… Continue reading
Open Accreditation through a Open Achievements API?
There is a very lively debate going on about Open Accreditation, the ability to self-generate educational assessments. There’s a good summary of various contributions here. Here’s a quote by David Wiley: “Maybe instead of hacking WordPress, we should be hacking degrees. Anyone up for a completely informal, completely open, homemade certificate-style diploma? A handful of… Continue reading
Liquid Publications as an alternative to Peer Review
Via Geert Lovink. Liquid Publications is an alternative vision of collaborative scholarship that does require peer review, Geert Lovink introduces the context for this new concept: “ Gloria Origgi of interdisciplines.org spoke. She is an Italian philosopher, based in Paris at the CNRS, who works on trust and reputation. The old system of ranking the… Continue reading
The new cultural economy and the cultural commons
The Winter 2004 of Capital and Class had an interesting article by Jim Shorthose and Gerard Strange about the intersection of the new autonomous culture and the economy, which should be worth reading. It’s entitled “The new cultural economy, the artist and the social configuration of autonomy”.. See the quote from page 4, to see… Continue reading
Social Media Aggregators
Andrew Dubber of New Media Strategies has an interesting review of social media sites from the point of view of musicians … There are way too many to monitor, let alone update on your new musical activities. But there is a new generation of social media aggregators that let you input your information once, then… Continue reading
Educate yourself about the monetary system
So far, I have not been a great fan of the cult documentary Zeitgeist, as I never mustered the courage to go through past the conspiracy theory beginnings, though many people insist it gets better if you do in fact continue watching it. However, the new Addendum is a must see for its explanation of… Continue reading
Smart Grids, P2P Energy, and Global Warming
There is a lot of talk about the installment of ‘smart electricity grids’, as part of the solution against global warming. But is that really so? Here is an interesting contribution to the debate by Bill St. Arnaud, from the arch-econ mailing list. He insists that a key enabler would be for systems that allow… Continue reading
Leadership in Open Innovation Communities
Despite their bazaarlike, egalitarian, argumentative, unplanned, chaotic appearance, open innovation communities rely heavily on strong leadership to function effectively and to resist splintering, forking, and balkanization. We continue our coverage and processing of major research articles on the concrete workings of peer governance. Today we discuss: Brokerage, Boundary Spanning, and Leadership in Open Innovation Communities…. Continue reading
The importance of peer to peer facilitation and learning leverage
If we take an integral view of social change, then it is clear that we cannot have a technologically deterministic view that technology alone is changing the world. Rather, it changes the world when it is taken up by powerful social forces that use it to change their life situations. This means it is also… Continue reading