Book: Jodi Dean. Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Duke University Press (Sept 2009) The above should be an interesting book: From the publisher: “Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies is an impassioned call for the realization of a progressive left politics in the United States. Through an assessment of the ideologies… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2009"
Is planning avoidable in an age of urgent global crises
Very interesting interview of Leo Panitch, which is centered around the need of democratic planning:
Michael Goldhaber on the end of the narrative self
Michael Goldhaber, expert in the logic of the Attention Economy, wonders if we are witnessing the end of the ‘narrative self’? Michael Goldhaber: “Thoughts emerging from a conversation with Sandra Luft of San Francisco State U (who bears no responsibility though): “Who am I?” Or, “Who are you?“ How we answer such questions clearly changes… Continue reading
Chicago’s experimenting with participatory budgeting
As reported by Catherine Austin Fitts in the Solari report: “The participatory budgeting networks are abuzz with excitement about the participatory budgeting effort being introduced in the 49th Ward of Chicago. The Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University is in the lead on the Chicago effort as part of its Participatory Democracy Project… Continue reading
What about communication?
This above question I asked myself after reading two very inspiring pieces of work. The first is the PhD. of Mark Elliott, ‘Stigmergic Collaboration. A Theoretical Framework for Mass Collaboration’. The second is a paper from Paul B. Hartzog, ‘The Autocatalysis of Social Systems and the Emergence of Trust’. Paul argues that every act of… Continue reading
The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft
Essay: “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft” By Lisa Nakamura. In: Critical Studies in Media Communication (May 2009) The author writes on the IDC mailing list: “I’m hoping to develop it into a longer piece. It’s about the racialization of labor in World of Warcraft, and… Continue reading
Crowdsourced customer service by lead users
In the New York Times, Steve Lohr reports on the new trend of using unpaid volunteers for customer service, in this case by Verizon, for the purpose of high tech advice: Excerpt from the NYT: “Mr. McMurry is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies and venture capitalists are… Continue reading
The Four Pillars of an Open Civic System – O’Reilly Radar
Posted by John Geraci on O’Reilly Radar The Four Pillars of an Open Civic System Everyone is talking a lot about open government and transparency these days. It’s exhilarating stuff, and it’s even more exciting to see governments get behind it, creating sites like data.gov in the U.S. for the public to access government information… Continue reading
Abundance and scarcity in the current meltdown
An interesting contribution by Nathan Cravens, which appeared in the Open Manufacturing mailing list: “Labor overall has lost scarce value, unable to earn enough to purchase enough scarce goods to continue increases in scarcity generation as expressed by state centralized currency. Yet, because without viable network facilitators to help write adequate instructions to produce, locate,… Continue reading
Dmytri Kleiner: a proper place for the market
This is an update to the debate about post-capitalism, by mutualist Dmytri Kleiner: “I believe that we must use money and markets in building the new society in the shell of the old, I do not however hold them as an ideal. I fully believe that specialization of labour implies exchange, however exchange does not… Continue reading
Open source energy management in buildings
This article by Katie Fehrenbacher in Earth2Tech, mentions the OpenLynx project, started by Anno Scholten, vice president of business development for NovusEdge. This article discusses the energy management issues of large commercial buildings, a previous article had discussed home-based systems. Excerpt: “How can open source help commercial building energy management? Scholten started the project about… Continue reading
The Energy Trap
A core change to our fundamental economic and social model that substitutes physically moving products globally to virtually moving information about products. Where virtual presence is substituted for actual visitation and nothing is made that isn’t bought. Like any shift in fundamental substrates, this a process of creative annihilation (as opposed to the much milder… Continue reading
The Digital Nexus of Post-Automobility
Yesterday we presented the first excerpts from a report on the future of transportation: The Digital Nexus of Post-Automobility, published by the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. Authors are K. Dennis and J. Urry. Here’s a presentation of this important report, with excerpts on car to car swarming. Dennis and Urry: 1. Summary: “In this… Continue reading
ICTlogy » Darwin at the Information Society: adaptation (and benefits) or extinction
Ismael Peña-López posted this on his blog : Darwin At The Information Society: Adaptation (And Benefits) Or Extinction by ismael peña-lópez main categories: cyberlaw, governance, rights | digital divide | digital literacy | information society | participation, engagement, use, activism | e-readiness other tags: i2tic, jordi_graells, marta_continente, sessions_web [comments: 7] On Wednesday 10th June 2009,… Continue reading
PireneLab
From the Citilab website : Innovation blows down from the top! From 11th to 14th of June, catch PireneLab in the resort of Espot There’s Innovation at the top! From 11th to 14th of June, catch PireneLab in the mountains of the Pyrenees (Lerida province) – workshops to develop new projects in a rural environment…. Continue reading
Geeking out from participatory culture to participatory democracy
“Geeking out” is another word for political and social engagement through skills-based participation, i.e. it concerns bridging participatory culture and participatory democracy. Henry Jenkins has an interesting contribution on this topic. Henry Jenkins (excerpts): 1. “In a recent report, documenting a multi-year, multi-site ethnographic study of young people’s lives on and off line, the Digital… Continue reading