I have opened a page at SpokenWord.org to make it easier to find the P2P Foundation podcasts. I’ll be adding all of the podcasts from the archive as well as any new material. You can find the page here & subscribe in an RSS reader or iTunes etc.
Date archives "May 2009"
Towards an economy of flows
We believe there’s good reason to think that value is shifting from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. Put more simply, we believe that flows trump stocks. An excerpt from John Hagel in the Harvard Business (Review) blog, where he arguest that a revolution has occured in the way value is created: ” As the world… Continue reading
Towards a copyright for fans, as well as critics
The celebrated American science-fiction writer Steven Brust produced a fantastic, full-length novel, My Own Kind of Freedom, inspired by the television show Firefly. Brust didn’t – and probably can’t – receive any money for this work, but he wrote it anyway, because, he says, “I couldn’t help myself”. Brust circulated his book for free and… Continue reading
The Participatory Turn and the overcoming of spiritual narcissism
The paperback edition of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies (SUNY Press, 2008), is coming out this July and can be now pre-ordered at the SUNY Press web page. Here is an extract from a modified version of an introductory text on the Plurality of Religions and the Spirit of Pluralism, by editor Jorge… Continue reading
The sad sad story of Rosia Montana & Corna Valley
In the Distributism blog, John Medaille reviews and comments upon a PBS documentary on a mining project in a poor valley of Romania. The project aims to totally destroy the mountain for gold-mining purposes. The long commentary, worth reading in full, contains the following interesting passage comparing real wealth to financial wealth, and how the… Continue reading
Two ways for the state to adapt to networks
While networks on their own might be democratising, equalising, liberating – the hybrid forms are not, because they inject aspects of command at key points as substitutes for voluntary agency. Very interesting contribution by Andy Robinson: “I think part of the crisis since the 70s has to do with networks and hierarchies. The “old” system… Continue reading
A review of trends towards modular, adaptive ‘P2P’ architecture
Detailed discussion by Eric Hunting: “The ideal situation for P2P architecture is where you can produce structures of small to large scale using intuitively simple modular systems with components on a human scale that are easy for the solitary individual to manipulate and which encode aspects of safety and structural engineering into their interface standards… Continue reading
Governmental transparency in the Netherlands
Openness and transparency can be identified everywhere. In order to innovate by means of co-creation, or just to make public data accessible for everyone. The latter is not always that easy to accomplish, or at least is it not happening on a scale that can be desired. A Dutch journalist is now very much dedicated… Continue reading
What is a P2P Mensch?
A meditation on P2P ethics by Ryan Lanham: A mensch is a person of integrity and honor. These are very old age words. Can they be applied to a new age media phenomenon like P2P? Speed, zip, bang. The web invents brevity and tolerates partial and ill-formed, ill-spelled, slang, emotives, emoticons, and poly-participation. It doesn’t… Continue reading
The Peer Production of Public Policy
A new p2p-research project by Matt Cooperrider. Matt: I’ve recently been exploring how peer production methods can be used to build smarter public policy. One benefit of this approach is that the community that drafted the policy would then become a political force urging its passage. Such a scenario might provide a means to counteract… Continue reading
Conditions for the next long wave
This is a somewhat more fleshed out version of my previous thoughts on the conditions for a next long wave. Text: This is a general presentation of the nature of the present crisis, and how we can realistically expect a renewed period of growth, and on the role that peer production can play in this… Continue reading
Thomas Lord, on Why We Need Free Network Services, and not just Copyleft
Copyleft is not enough. Free software web services must technologically resist needless centralization of services A text by Thomas Lord, from O’Reilly Radar, which appears in the comment field, here. Thomas Lord: ” Background The concept of software freedom relies on an assumption that users will normally have control over the computers they use. A… Continue reading
Transforming destructive speculative capital for green reconstruction
First, how to build a clean energy economy, creating millions of good jobs in the process; and second, how to create a financial system focused on channeling money toward productive investment as opposed to destabilizing speculation. In fact, the link between these matters becomes clear once we pose the simple question: how can we pay… Continue reading
Why combining GM foods with organic agriculture is a bad idea
Vandana Shiva: “Monsanto’s contribution to the suicide economy is by extracting super profits from farmers in the form of royalties and by intentionally transforming seeds from a renewable resource that farmers can save to a nonrenewable resource that they must buy in the market every year … The government should impose a moratorium on GMO… Continue reading
Social Technologies in an age of amoral corporations
Knowledge is almost always being produced in service of power – not as a liberating force from it and there is always a gap between what a society proclaims about it’s goals and aims – and the functional outcomes of its institutional policies and procedures. Article: The Question Concerning Social Technology. By Joshua-Michéle Ross. O’Reilly… Continue reading
Losing control of the information landscape
The study highlights how in a moment of major, unexpected crisis the institutions of power – whether political, governmental, military or corporate – face a new, acute vulnerability of both their influence and effectiveness. Report: ‘Skyful of Lies’ & Black Swans: The new tyranny of shifting information power in crises’ by Nik Gowing. Reuters Institute… Continue reading