After reading this item about a French modular housing initiative, I asked Eric Hunting for his commentary. He promised a full article later, but already sent some comments. Eric Hunting: “I’ll try working on an article on the state of the art in modular architecture and its relation to P2P modes of development. I have… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2008"
P2P as a post-capitalist mode of production: video interview
I get the occasional interview, but I’m particularly happy with the video interview and associated transcript done by Robin Good. We spent a marvelous day on his motorbike in May this year, seeing places I would never see as a tourist, and he created a relaxed atmosphere for a conversation-style interview. I think the value… Continue reading
Transforming education towards peer learning
A growing number of people and organizations in various sectors are focusing on communities (of practice) and networks, as a key to improving their performance. What are these forms for knowing and learning, and what are the ramifications for human resources management and development in organizations? What sparks their formation and creates engagement for members?… Continue reading
The influence of money on peer production and governance practices
PhD Thesis: Managing the Bazaar: Commercialization and peripheral participation in mature, community-led Free/Open source software projects. Evangelia Berdou. Glyn Moody introduces an important research project: “As open source becomes more widely used, people have started exploring how and why its approach to developing software works so well. The pioneering analysis here is Eric Raymond’s Cathedral… Continue reading
Walden Bello´s Primer on the Financial Meltdown
One of the clearest explanations of the financial meltdown, read it in full here. Walden Bello: “The tendency for capitalism to build up tremendous productive capacity that outruns the population’s capacity to consume, owing to social inequalities that limit popular purchasing power. Profitability is thus eroded. But what does the crisis of overproduction have to… Continue reading
Open Source Ecology project looking for volunteers
Marcin Jakubowski’s OSE is still the most important P2P experiment in the world, and he is looking for volunteers and other forms of support. Here’s the latest message with full details and links. And here’s a description of the project is at Appropedia. Marcin writes: “We’re looking for volunteers, and if our funding goals succeed,… Continue reading
The Climate Energy Challenge: a 7 step stragegy
Dave Pollard strongly recommends us to watch this video by with Thomas Homer-Dixon. He explains why: “Thomas Homer-Dixon has some important ideas on the climate change front. I was a big fan of his book The Upside of Down which describes what is needed, starting at a grass-roots level and pushing upwards, to respond to… Continue reading
Does open facilitation favour groupthink?
I’m personally not an extremely big fan of unconferences. The reason for me is essentially this: I work very hard at understanding the topics that are significant to peer to peer, and the result is a structured narrative. Without the whole, it is difficult to just jump in with small details. Therefore, and I know… Continue reading
The collective intelligence of precognizant dreaming
John L. Petersen reports on an intruiging experiment, The Map. We’ll know by October 7, the predicted date for one unusual event, if one of the precognition tools is working, see below. He explains: “About three weeks ago, now, I received indications from four unrelated sources known personally to me suggesting that that some significant… Continue reading
The Transition Handbook – now GFDL at Appropedia
I’ve very pleased to report that The Transition Handbook is now available online and under an open license at Appropedia This is particularly heartening for me because I can claim my own small part in making it happen, which helps me to sleep at night… It all started with a short blog post about one… Continue reading
How to turn virtual designs into physical objects?
The best presentation for beginners on the current and future state of Open and Distributed Manufacturing, is the Advanced Civilisation site of Charles Collis. See in particular the overview on how to turn virtual designs into physical objects. The site is designed to be understood by non-technical people. Check out the site map for a… Continue reading
Debating Peer Review and its more open Alternatives
Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, in an editorial for the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA 2000:172: 148-9) once wrote: “The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists… Continue reading
Barbara Marx Hubbard: we are not dying, but being born
Hubbing is the new model: Hubbing as a financial model: It does look like a network marketing model applied to fundraising. Any thoughts?
Special Issue on Open Educational Resources
European journal Elearning Papers devotes its 10th issue to five essays on the state of Open Educational Resources: “This issue of eLearning Papers is dedicated to the thriving work around Open Educational Resources (OER) by committed individuals, institutions and user communities. Five selected papers by the guest editors investigate the organisational, social, cultural, pedagogical and… Continue reading
Progressive conditions for financial and economic reform
Dean Baker, “Progressive conditions for a bailout”, real-world economics 243-249, http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue47/Baker47.pdf This paper was written on 20 September 2008 by Dean Baker. While the conditions for the bail-out now have been set, nothing would prevent a new administration from introduding a transformative package as outlined here. Dean Baker: “The events of the last month showed… Continue reading
The consistent failure to monetize the immaterial economy won’t go away
Kevin Carson’s fifteenth ‘Org Theory’ chapter has been consistently quoting my work on the crisis of value (which is of course, very indebted to the similar views of Adam Arvidsson). Here therefore is a very good overview of the topic, by Kevin Carson: As Michel Bauwens describes it, it is becoming increasingly impossible to capture… Continue reading