Date archives "December 2008"

Is the internet subsidized by the poor?

We reproduce an intriguing critique by Roberto Verzola: “It was appropriate technology advocate E.F. Schumacher, author of the widely-acclaimed book Small is Beautiful, who once said that technologies often carry a built-in ideology which is so deeply embedded that one can’t have a technological transplant without getting at the same time an ideological transplant. Among… Continue reading

Book of the Week: Liberating Voices (2): the Public Domain

Book: Douglas Schuler. Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution. MIT Press, 2008 We continue and conclude our treatment of the book about patterns for social liberation, with a second excerpt on Public Domain Characters, provided by the author Douglas Schuler. Douglas Schuler: “Public Domain Characters (John Thomas and Douglas Schuler) is discussed in… Continue reading

Yerzies: advanced user manufacturing

According to the Mass Customization & Open Innovation News blog, Yerzies is a new site that brings user manufacturing to a substantially new level of complexity. MCOIN writes: “Beyond printed tee shirts, Yerzies enables the creation of stitched sweatshirts and mixed-media designs that include many advanced processes to create apparel which more closely resembles the… Continue reading

Bernard Lietaer: the most urgent actions to be taken now that the banking crisis of 2008 has hit

Echoing David Bollier’s theme that large centralized financial systems are failing us, as evidenced by the meltdown, Bernard Lietaer proposes we turn to mutual credit systems as a peer to peer inspired solution, and he has a number of key documents on his website explaining the topic. You can find there: * White Paper on… Continue reading

Umair Haque on the new kind of capital we truly need

Next-generation businesses are built, instead, on human, social, natural, and cultural capital. An excerpt from an important editorial. Umair Haque: “The value equation of industrial-era capitalism was toxically imbalanced. Why is industrial era business so destructive – why does it slash and burn rainforests, endanger entire species, vaporize culture and community, marginalize the poor and… Continue reading

Douglas Schuler’s Liberating Voices: Patterns for Change from the Grassroots

Book: Douglas Schuler. Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution a call for social change based on a peaceful revolution in grassroots information and communication. Inspired by the vision and framework outlined in A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander’s classic 1977 book about architecture and urban planning, Liberating Voices presents a pattern language containing 136… Continue reading

David Bollier on the financial meltdown as sign of Peak Hierarchy

David Bollier engages with our Peak Hierarchy hypothesis in his remarkable On the Commons blog. Peak Hierarchy is the hypothetical inflection point at which time at which distributed organizations become stronger and more versatile than centralized hierarchies. Bollier asks: what if the financial meltdown would be a sign of this happening? He states: “The fall… Continue reading

Free software as a counterpoint to the dangers of transhuman technologies

From Christian Einfeldt of the Digital Tipping Point, in a debate on the dangers of transhuman technologies, including quantum computing: “Most of these issues can be resolved by assuring the right to fork the code and wise management of commit privileges over the code. If a trusted community has commit privileges, then we know what… Continue reading