Date archives "July 2009"

The creative city mythology of Richard Florida

The Toronto Star reports on a backlash against Richard Florida’s Creative City policy proposals. Here’s a sample excerpt on the kind of local opposition that is emerging: “Richard Florida’s exotic city, his creative city, depends on ghost people, working behind the scenes. Immigrants, people of colour. You want to know what his version of creative… Continue reading

Len Krimerman on solidarity and subjectivity

As part of the larger pool of contributions to ZNet’s Reimagining Society debate, Len Krimerman discusses the Solidarity Economy movement at length. This article is well worth reading in full for its strategic assessment and recommendations. Here, we excerpt Len’s discussions of the strengths of the movements, closely related to how it deals with subjectivity,… Continue reading

Value Creation outside the Cash Nexus

A contribution by Kevin Carson: “The shift of value-creation outside the cash nexus provoked an interesting blogospheric discussion between Tyler Cowen and John Quiggin. Cowen raised the possibility that much of the productivity growth in recent years has taken place “outside of the usual cash and revenue-generating nexus.” Quiggin, in an article appropriately titled “The… Continue reading

The six discontinuities of human evolution and the participatory universe

“Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics.” Wheeler called this subjective self-creation, “the participatory universe. From an extensive meditation by Kevin Kelly, inspired by the theses of philosopher Bruce Mazlish. Kevin Kelly on the first four discontinuities: “Philosopher Bruce Mazlish claims that the eyes of science have… Continue reading

Barcamp Transparency

BarCamp Transparency, Oxford UK Wiki Twitter Open discussion for a more open world. Increasingly, the UK has become a surveillance society: one in which we aren’t allowed to see the workings of government, nor governmental information relating to our towns and cities, yet are captured on camera more often than citizens of any other country… Continue reading

Strategies for enhancing the evolution of cooperation

John Stewart is the author of Evolution’s Arrow, a book that argued that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover the best adaptations. And it has discovered new and better mechanisms. The book looked at the evolution of pre-genetic, genetic, cultural, and supra-individual evolutionary mechanisms. In an… Continue reading

Can we re-size civilisation?

To survive, the institutions of these massively oversized systems have waged a continuous and brutal war against communities, the natural human structures that we instinctively seek to belong to. Aboriginal communities all over the world have been systematically exterminated, their members slaughtered or moved into institutional structures and forced to adopt the civilization monoculture constructs…. Continue reading

The Solidarity Economy and the Commons: report from the Graz “Solcom” workshop

A report by Andreas Exner: “On 2.-3. July, a workshop on Solidarity Economy was held in Graz, Austria. Organized by Andreas Exner (www.social-innovation.org) and Bernhard Mark- Ungericht (Univ. Graz, Dep. of International Management), it was kindly supported by the Arbeiterkammer Steiermark (Labor Chamber, Styria) and the Dep. of International Management. This enabled us to invite… Continue reading

The disaster in waiting of the non-commons approach to climate change

With the Senate debate over climate now beginning, there is still time to turn back from cap-and-trade and toward fee-and-dividend. We need to start now. Without political leadership creating a truly viable policy like a carbon fee, not only won’t we get meaningful climate legislation through the Senate, we won’t be able to create the… Continue reading