The following refers to Christian Siefkes book, From Exchange to Contributions: Generalizing Peer Production into the Physical World. (Edition C. Siefkes, Berlin, 2007), and the occasional critique that the proposed effort sharing scheme is in fact a market. Christian Siefkes: “Markets are based on private, uncoordinated production using privately owned means of production, whose output… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2009"
Thomas Greco on implementing regional mutual credit clearing associations
Reality Sandwich republishes an extensive excerpt from Thomas Greco excellent new book on monetary transformation, which we featured here before. An excerpt from that larger excerpt, focused on how to implement bank-replacing ‘credit clearings’ on a regional level. Thomas Greco: “Doesn’t it therefore make more sense to nurture the businesses that are already part of… Continue reading
Bre Pettis on Rapid Prototyping
Enthusiastic presentation on the joys of do it yourself production: Video: Rapid-Prototyping – Interview mit Bre Pettis (6:43)
Wim Nusselder on Quarternary Economics
A repost from January 2006: We recommend the reading of Wim Nusselder’s vision of the evolution of economics towards a quarternary stage. We summarize his views, give excerpts,and offer some addtional commentary at the bottom of this entry. This is an economics based on Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle… Continue reading
Evolving images of the divine and increased human cooperation
Certainly a book that will be on my reading list: Robert Wright. The Evolution of God. The following is an excerpt from a review by Dan Cryer in the Boston Globe: “Wright assumes from the outset that religions change. And the most trustworthy means of explaining why is to trust “the facts on the ground’’… Continue reading
Fairthlough on the 3 forms of organizational power
This is a repost from January 2006: In my presentations on the emergence of the peer to peer mode of production, governance, and property, I always insist on the difference between decentralized and distributed systems, with P2P applying to the latter. This differentiation is echoed in the theory of Triarchy, which makes the interesting distinction… Continue reading
The seven errors of government
Summary of an interesting blogpost by Dave Snowden, summarized by David Gurteen: “1. You get what you measure, so if you set a target humans will achieve the target at all costs, ignoring context or the unstated goals that the outcome based target was attempting to achieve. 2. Outcome based measurement can make people far… Continue reading
Non-dualistic change dynamics
Decreasing your reliance on a preconceived end or means of getting there can offer a new point of departure for new possibilities that were not previously available. To me, this applies as much to individuals in their personal lives as much as it does to people in organisations. Interesting meditation on change dynamics, by Stephen… Continue reading
The crisis of value and the death of classic TV
In a brilliant analysis of a rapidly growing crisis for TV stations, Henry Blodget writes: As with print-based media, Internet-based distribution generates only a tiny fraction of the revenue and profit that today’s incumbent cable, broadcast, and satellite distribution models do. As Internet-based distribution gains steam, therefore, most TV industry incumbents will no longer be… Continue reading
Wikipedia and the typology of online tribal governance
There is a really good review of Mathieu O’Neill’s Cyberchiefs book. We covered that important book before, but are here excerpting the interesting typology of governance used by the author. This is followed by a summary of the case study on Wikipedia where this framework is applied. From the review: “The flowering of freedom is… Continue reading
Peer Governance and Wikipedia (interview with Hartzog; discussion with Bauwens, Cedric & Hartzog)
This last post concerning the interview part includes Paul Hartzog ‘s philosophical position followed by an intriguing “discussion” amongst Bauwens, Hartzog and Cedric (read the previous interviews here and here). Interview with Hartzog Question: How does governance without government come possible? In your work (2005, 2008) you firstly define what governance and government imply (“government… Continue reading
James Boyle on the Disaster of Scientific Enclosure through Copyright
Via Stefan Meretz: “Great talk of James Boyle about the cultural desaster automated copyright (since the 1970s) brings and the missing second layer (the links) of scientific publications, because they are not available on that web, which was created for scientific purposes.”
Three kinds of tribes
Can contemporary affinity communities be called tribes? This concept is used by Seth Godin (see video below) and by Mathieu O’Neill in his analysis of peer group governance, Cyberchiefs. I personally doubt it’s a good conceptualisation but this will be for another discussion. This one here starts with a contribution by Tom Haskins, who after… Continue reading
Robert Reich calls for government investment in the Commons
Consumer spending is unlikely to return to the levels it once reached, and so the economy will not recover until the government finds ways to invest in the common goods we all share. Not long ago, I was talking to someone who once had been a deficit hawk but had been turned into a full-blooded… Continue reading
Michael Zimmer: the three laws of social networking
Michael Zimmer explains the logic of corporate control of social networks through three laws: The three Laws of Social Networking are: 1. Promoting the open flow of personal information allows maximum profitability 2. Allowing user control over their information flows is counter to profit maximization 3. Provide some privacy controls, but make it hard He… Continue reading
Harvard Study; Loose Copyright Law is a Good Thing
Economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman have released a draft study that tackles a number of myths about p2p and file sharing such as that a download does not equal a lost sales, that more music and films than ever before have been created.
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