The problem is that you can’t reverse engineer the wide scale adaption of new technologies through dominance once social change has occurred. In trying to stop piracy, The RIAA spread it further by fragmenting the media landscape. The Hypebot blog has a five-part thoughtpiece on p2p filesharing and ‘piracy’, from the perspective of a ‘digital… Continue reading
Date archives "March 2009"
Lifting the ban on parliamentary video quotes in the UK
If their MP doesn’t even have a website, what message does that send about their willingness to engage with their electorate? In a New Statesman editorial, Jo Swinson is Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire in the UK, calls on her colleagues in politics to take a more active role in participatory new media: An… Continue reading
Parallel visions of peer production
The academic journal Capital and Class has a well recommended special thematic issue (Issue no.97 Spring ’09) on peer production. The content of this issue is largely derived from the academic conference on peer production that was co-organized by Nottingham Trent University (with network sociality theorist Andreas Wittel) and the P2P Foundation, in November 2007…. Continue reading
Martin Wolf on the end of an era and the future of capitalism
Remarkably fortright editorial by the leading economic commentator of the Financial Times, Martin Wolf. The article is quite long but a must read, and the start of a special series on the Future of Capitalism. Here’s an excerpt: “In the west, the pro-market ideology of the past three decades was a reaction to the perceived… Continue reading
Unauthorized Copies Are Not Necessarily “Counterfeits”
Unauthorized copies of items that have trademark or copyright protection are NOT counterfeits. We are reprinting this important commentary from Dean Baker: “The difference is that an item that is actually counterfeit deceives the borrower. For example, a counterfeit Rembrandt would be sold with the understanding that it is in fact a painting by Rembrandt…. Continue reading
UK Government wants to kill net neutrality in EU
Via the ever excellent site from Glyn Moody: “The UK government is fast turning into the digital villain of Europe as far as the Internet is concerned. Not content with monitoring everything we look at online, it now wants to break Net Neutrality so that it can block out chunks of the Internet is disapproves… Continue reading
“Best” Science Blogs, Open Laboratory 08 available
Since 2006, Science Blogging has begun to transform scientific publishing, emerging alongside the Open Access model as a phenomenon that even the “glamour journals” must now take seriously. Indeed, Nature publishing group established the Nature Network social software platform (blogging/forums) for scientists in response to the surge in science blogging activity. http://network.nature.com/ Also since 2006,… Continue reading
Eric Hunting on the Open Source Urbanism workshop at Wintercamp
I have asked Eric Hunting, our peer to peer architecture expert, to comment on the Wintercamp event, which I blogged about before, and which also had a workshop on open source urbanism. Here is his contribution. Eric Hunting: “Winter Camp is an annual conference event by the Institute of Network Cultures which this year was… Continue reading
Are social networks really dumbing us down?
Despite recent claims to the contrary, Danah Boyd thinks this is not the case. Danah Boyd: “Lady Greenfield’s claims that social network sites are “infantilising” the human mind. She made a speech to the House of Lords to encourage people to research her hypothesis. There is NO EVIDENCE to prove her claims. Listening to her… Continue reading
Piracy and the decline of the state
…piracy is a barometer of order. It has been so since Roman times. When order weakens, pirates flourish. When order returns, pirates are hunted down and hanged. The piracy barometer tells us order is vanishing fast. That should not surprise us, since order in the post-Westphalian world depends on states… Piracy not suppressed represents history… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Chet Bowers: are computers an anti-commons?
Book: Critical Essays on the Enclosure of the Cultural Commons: The Conceptual Foundations of Today’s Mis-Education by C. A. Bowers, 2007 We return to the above book with one more excerpt. Chet Bowers is most concerned with unconscious and invisible bias which may be encoded in theories but also in ‘how’ we use certain tools… Continue reading
The maturation of network cultures as counter-institutions
What happens to a network when it grows, constitutes, transforms, and sediments? What are some successful projects that have scaled and managed to balance between structure and informality? What techniques, tactics, and procedures help networks stabilize and change? Why and under what conditions does it make sense to put the brakes on growth? What role… Continue reading
Dowward to tribes, or upward to networks?
John Robb offers an interesting challenge to the ideas that David Ronfeldt developed in his work on the evolutionary governance of societies. To summarize David’s scheme on
Linking Money to Food
Historically in the United States and elsewhere, local currencies are known to stabilize local economies when national currencies are troubled, such as bouts of hyper inflation or deflation and joblessness. This works because those accepting local money are also likely to seek out others who accept it too, creating a social dynamic that forms new,… Continue reading
How online communities differ from social networks
Matt Rhodes makes an important distinction: “For some the internet offers people the opportunity for people to represent themselves in a way that suits them. They can make themselves sound much more exciting than they really are in social networks if they so choose, talking about a band they just love and not showing certain… Continue reading
Darknets going mainstream through ease of use
In darknets, there is no public entry point to the network, making it difficult or impossible to know what’s being shared. The very term “darknet” makes the whole process sound mysterious and quite possibly illegal, but such a darknet can just as easily be used by a family to share photos and video content. Nate… Continue reading