An escape from the crises of economy, sustainability and governance is a huge and urgent task that may last a generation. From this perspective, the three trends of the “alter-globalisation” movement could be seen as politically complementary rather than competing strategies. An imaginative understanding of this kind could be the basis of a shared approach… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2009"
Book of the Week: The Viral Spiral of the Commons movement
Book. David Bollier. Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own. New Press, 2009. David’s book is an indispensible recount of the re-emergence of the Commons as a theme, but also as a movement and its already concrete realisations. For our ‘book of the week’ treatment, we will choose from the… Continue reading
Peer producing DNA
It will become clear to those practicing open-source personal genomics that genes are not destiny; they are our common wealth. Excerpts from Kevin Kelly, who writes a long piece on DNA sequencing, and it’s being rendered illegal, but to no avail. It is indeed one more area where the miniaturisation of production methods means that… Continue reading
Three proposals for achieving open government data
In a recent article for OSBR, Jennifer Bell offers a useful summary of 3 different sets of proposals that would easy the implementation of open and transparent government by making public data easily accessible to citizens. Jennifer Bell: 1. A new information architecture separating data layers “The UK’s Power of Information Task Force has proposed… Continue reading
The beginning of the rebirth of social movements
A seismic change is taking place in British universities. Around the UK, thousands of students have occupied lecture theatres, offices and other buildings at more than 20 universities in sit-down protests. It seems that the spirit of 1968 has returned to the campus. While it was the situation in Gaza that triggered this mass protest,… Continue reading
A good source on collaboration
Evan Rosen of the Culture of Collaboration, with Joe Solomon, created an interesting collective Twitter feed: “Micro-blogging can also be used to aggregate content from multiple blogs and sources. Considering that other bloggers have compelling thoughts and ideas about collaboration and realizing the potential for one-stop-shopping for collaboration blogs, Joe Solomon and I created @GoCollaboration… Continue reading
The necessary critique of transhumanism
Dale Carrico doesn’t let up in his critical work against the transhumanist subcultures. Here’s an easy summary of his main arguments against the movement(s): “I can only speak for myself, but I take transhumanist formulations seriously because they seem to me to exert a disproportionate and deranging influence on technodevelopmental deliberation at the worst imaginable… Continue reading
Harnessing Online Campaign Workflows for Governance
The following is excerpted from Digital Government through Social Networks: A Natural Alliance? by Britt Blaser, Joe Trippi, and David Weinberger (read the entire paper here). The progression from passive observer to fire-breathing activist is now well known and has now been built into the architecture of all future successful campaigns. In fact, the universality… Continue reading
A connectionist explanation of the Semantic Web
Semantic web technologies are a bridge or translation channel between the two sides of connectionism. All human thoughts, actions, and memories want to be deciphered, structured by machines, and machine structures understandable by humans. Brilliant explanation by Kevin Kelly, inspired by Nova Spivack. It distinguishes human from machine networks and locates the Semantic Web in… Continue reading
A call for Open Government in Canada
Jennifer Bell of the VisibleGovernment.ca project calls for citizen participation towards obtaining more open and transparent government in Canada. Her call is partly inspired by the experience in the US and the recent promises of the Obama administration. Jennifer Bell: “In the last two weeks, more than one grass-roots forum has appeared to advance a… Continue reading
The netroots vs. Obama: what should they do?
Obama is not the perfect vehicle for progressive ambitions, but that does not mean there is not a historical opportunity for social change, argues Dale Carrico, who regrets the kneejerk purist reactions of many on the left. Now is the time to put pressure on the administration. Dale Carrico: “The Netroots should be a prop… Continue reading
Conflict arbitration at the Wikipedia
Details about an important aspect of peer governance, from an interview of Jonathan Hochman by Tisch Shute: (Known as Jehochman on Wikipedia, the interviewee serves as an administrator and as a leader in addressing online harassment, disruption and sock puppetry.) “One of the things I did was to try and clear people out who were… Continue reading
A worldwide infrastructure for interconnected objects and environments
Pachube looks like an extremely interesting approach to interlinking objects and environments. Excerpts from an extensive interview of the founder Usman Haque by Tish Shute. Usman Haque: “I would like to see Pachube able to help two particular processes: 1) to make it straightforward for developers and manufacturers to web-enabled their products and services; and… Continue reading
The TwoShirts gift-giving community
TwoShirts is a gift-giving community Here’s the description of their aims: “Twoshirts is a community of gift-giving where people freely give and receive all kinds of different things in our items listings, from appliances, to clothing, to help and services. Twoshirts members have given away over 1000 items to each other since we started in… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Networking Futures
Book: Jeffrey Juris. Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization. Duke University Press, 2008 We discussed this book, which has been called the ‘Bible of the Alterglobalization’ movement by net-critic Geert Lovink, before, but we are given it extra treatment as book of the week, for it’s in-depth treatment of the network aspects of the… Continue reading
Will “Customization” companies be able to survive?
The replicator blog asks an important question: Will “Customization” companies be able to survive long term? Or will the technology become vertically integrated? Go to the original article for the associated links. “Companies like Zazzle, Cafepress, Spreadshirt, Ponoko, Shapeways, etc. all offer a valuable service to the market. Each provides customers with access to custom… Continue reading