What is going on in Greece is more than a riot; it’s an exergesis. The murder of a 15 years old student by two policemen gave the handle after a night of rage for days of revolt. An argument amongst a group of anarchists, who were absolutely unarmed, with two policemen left the boy dead… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2008"
Reliability vs. efficiency (2): system reliability should take precedence over efficiency
We continue Roberto Verzola’s important contribution to a ‘green’ p2p economics theory. After the critique of the efficiency criterion, he focuses on system reliability as a better criterion for economic development. We publish the first part of the article, and refer to the original for the more detailed technical elaboration which follows our excerpt. Roberto… Continue reading
OpenStreetMap continues to grow
A status report via TechCrunch UK: Go to the original article for the links. “OSM now compares favourably versus some professionally gathered geodata. Most impressive has been the takeup in Germany: 300 volunteers mapped 99.8% of Hamburg (German), and there is now a German-language OpenStreetMap book. OSM has spawned numerous related projects, the most prominent… Continue reading
What stage of history are we in?
How deep is this crisis? Robert Paterson makes a ‘deep wave transition’ argument, which you can read here. It boils down to: so deep that neither the state nor Obama can do much about it, and he points to the failed policies of Roosevelt: “History is perspective – you have to have deep perspective to… Continue reading
Freemium, a business model for P2P
The people reading this blog are already convinced of the merits of P2P and open alternatives. Most would also like to see a wider spread of these alternatives. One way of making this happen is by showing companies how, open can be profitable. The model Free + Premium = Freemium Slideshare presentation meet Freemium The… Continue reading
Reliability vs. efficiency (1): the critique of efficiency as key economic and policy criterion
This is an update to Roberto Verzola’s views on gain maximization vs. risk minimization, which we featured here. In this piece, he proposes reliability as an alternative criterion for socio-economic decision-making instead of efficiency. This first part starts with a critique of efficiency. Roberto Verzola: “Efficiency is a measure of how well transformation of matter… Continue reading
Swishing your wardrobe
Another example of the widespread emergence of non-monetary p2p exchanges .. See also: Swap-O-Rama Via the Daily Mail: ‘swishing’, the eco-fashionista’s word for swapping. “The idea is that you can end up with a completely free wardrobe, while disposing of those instantly regretted purchases (which seemed like a good idea at the time) in the… Continue reading
The inexorable drive towards slow money
Reproduced from John Robb in Global Guerillas: “Within a successful transition to a resilient community, one of the earliest signs of progress will be a radical decrease in the community’s monetary velocity. Essentially, this means that an ever increasing share of the money that flows into your community, stays within your community. Money, otherwise destined… Continue reading
Principles for an open transition by Obama
Via the Open Government US site: Principles for an Open Transition: “President-elect Obama has made a clear commitment to changing the way government relates to the People. His campaign was a demonstration of the value in such change, and a glimpse of its potential. His transition team has now taken a crucial step in making… Continue reading
A p2p money update from Thomas Greco
Here’s what Thomas has been up to: “Daniel Pinchbeck is the publisher of an online magazine, Reality Sandwich. At his request I provided an article titled, Toward a New Economic Order, which was published a few days ago. You might want to have a look. I’ve been asked to provide some additional articles with specific… Continue reading
Open source for the classroom
A message from Steve Hargadon, Founder of Classroom 2.0: “Because I’m a passionate advocate for Free and Open Source Software in K-12, I’ve been feeling for a while that the time is right for a stand-alone social network around its use. There is a good K-12 Open Source group within the Classroom 2.0 community, but… Continue reading
How positively should we frame p2p messages?
This is from a more extensive email discussion on Global Village strategies, by Swedish advocate Mats Eriksson, who has been recently successfull in linking up to village rejuvenation in Russia. The key to success, he argues, is to abandon the language and strategy of opposition, and talk about leveraging. Mats uses an interesting analogy from… Continue reading
Nowtopia: redefining politics as we know it
Book: Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today Chris Carllson has written a very important book, that is closely related to our aims at the P2P Foundation: “Outlaw bicycling, urban permaculture, biofuels, free software, and even the Burning Man festival are windows into a scarcely visible social transformation… Continue reading
Makezine’s third annual open source hardware guide and gift directory
Go here to check Makezine’s definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2008. Makezine writes: “Each year we do a guide to all open source hardware and this year there are over 60 projects/kits – it’s incredible! Many are familiar with Arduino (now shipping over 60,000 units) but there are many other projects just… Continue reading
ITQ’s for fishing (2): “commons-based”
Via David Bollier: a specific response to my question in this entry: is the ITQ fishing solution a market or a commons? David: “Re ITQs, the Economist article seems to be based on a recent Science article about a study on ITQs, which alleged that ITQs are a market-based solution because of the individual rights… Continue reading
Appeal: support the Entrepreneur Commons project
Via Marc Dangeard: “I need your help raising the attention on an idea I have submitted on Change.org: As you may know, I am currently working on the Entrepreneur Commons, trying to foster collaboration between entrepreneurs as way to create an inclusive selection process for funding, rather than the competitive models that we currently have… Continue reading