In our third and last installment concerning David Bollier’s new book on the Commons movement (Viral Spiral), we asked him for an update, i.e. to reflect on some action recommendations for the present and near future. Below, we add a video presentation where David explains his ideas to an audience in Graz, Austria, during the… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2009"
Is vendor relationship management doomed to fail?
As Doc Searls explained: “VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties … With VRM, the customer is in charge of the relationship. Not the vendor. We will be able to manage vendors… Continue reading
Solitude and connectivity
If boredom is the great emotion of the TV generation, loneliness is the great emotion of the Web generation. We lost the ability to be still, our capacity for idleness. They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude. Important excerpt from a thoughtfull essay that argues that ubiquitous connectivity may be… Continue reading
Towards a commons-based taxation?
A policy reform proposed by James Robertson et al. in the paper: SHARING THE VALUE OF COMMON RESOURCES. Citizen’s Income in a Wider Context. It will appear in: “Basic Income, Green Politics and Post-Productivism”; Special issue of the journal Basic Income Studies in December 2009 Excerpts: James Robertson: “Existing taxes are becoming less viable. For… Continue reading
The peer production of politics in the EU
Re-public has a special issue on the crisis in European politics with several articles exploring how deepening citizen participation may be a solution for it. Two articles caught our attention. The first is by our friend and colleague Vasilis Kostakis, and is entitled: European Union, production of politics and collective intelligence. It’s topic: “How could… Continue reading
The Take: the tale of a chocolate factory in Argentina
This is one of the top 5 posts in terms of popularity, since we started in 2006, and concern the factory take-overs in Argentina. The Take, (see also the companion book “Sin Patron”), is a documentary about a chocolate factory, written by Naomi Klein. From the official website: “With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one… Continue reading
Do we need more free software cooperatives?
In a comment to an earlier article on the “Corporate Commons”, our reader Donald made an interesting comment and suggestion: “In the context of the general conversation about corporate support of free software programming, I’ve often wondered why we don’t just have something structured more or less as a cooperative to hire and pay people… Continue reading
Ways to follow P2P Foundation updates
There are different ways to follow what we do in our blog, wiki, etc … Here’s an overview. First of all, please check the upper right column of this blog, and you will recognize to updating services that you can add to your feed readers, one for the blog, one for the wiki. Friendfeed has… Continue reading
Citizen reporting – how to make sense of a crisis
Crowdsourced newsgathering has become a real alternative to traditional reporting, especially where the press ‘dare not go’ because of political correctness or expediency, and in crises that develop so quickly that it becomes difficult to follow the stream of data about rapidly unfolding events. The Mumbai attacks were one such rapidly evolving crisis and it… Continue reading
Book of the Week: David Bollier’s Digital Republic (2)
The viral spiral, after years of building its infrastructure and social networks, may be approaching a Cambrian explosion, an evolutionary leap. Two days ago, we introduced David Bollier’s treatment of the emergence of the Commons movement, which he says resulted in a new fourth type of citizenship, i.e. “history-marking citizenship“. In the context of our… Continue reading
A critical meditation on the Google Earth experience, by Anna Munster
Excerpted from a recommended essay by Anna Munster: “I want to ask two key questions throughout this essay about Google Earth. First, what kind of image or image set does it render for us in relation to contemporary information culture? Its updating, mutating and compositing set of terrain and satellite images is often referred to… Continue reading
Virtual Private Networks against Internet Censorship
Via the WOICT mailing list: “Virtual Private Networks have been complicated to set up and difficult to maintain. However, with these two free, public tools, VPN is available to everyone. Your own private network is located overseas beyond the reach of censors using an encrypted tunnel so that governments and ISPs won’t even be able… Continue reading
A progressive interpretation of transhumanist politics
Do you have any references to recent more political, and specifically ‘progressive’, interpretations of transhumanism, especially also around abundance ? Above is the question I asked James Hughes, and below is his reply. James is Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies James Hughes: 1. Introduction “My read is that the idea… Continue reading
Open Instant Messaging may lead to new revolution in filesharing
A while ago, Robert Young had already predicted that the interoperability of instant messaging services with each other, and with the social networking sites, may lead to a quantum leap of filesharing potential: “Most IM services are essentially P2P systems… not too dissimilar from the technologies behind Napster and KaZaA. In fact, most IM platforms… Continue reading
Alvin Toffler in Japan?
I have a weakness for independent researchers, who leave their jobs to start the hazardous path of following a passionate pursuit of knowledge, as I tried to do, unsuccessfully, from 2002 to 2008. Larry Taub is such a person, and he visited me twice in Chiang Mai. He’s the author of a remarkable book, The… Continue reading
Peer production = cool mobilization
From an interview with Hayagreeva Rao, author of the book, Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations. For how it is distinguished from the companion concept of ‘hot causes’, see the full interview. Question: What is the concept of “cool mobilization”? Answer: Like hot causes, cool mobilization activates emotion and enables the formation… Continue reading