Via Andreas Exner: The reknowned Potsdam Institut for Climate Impact Research has released a remarkable report. It is remarkable concerning 2 messages: 1. Climate Change is occuring much faster than expected. We must reduce global Greenhouse Gas Emissions about 60-80% immediately. Since this is not to be expected, global warming of 2-2,4 degree Celsius is… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2009"
From Cloud Computing to Freedom-based Utility Computing
Cloud Computing risks undoing the gains of the free software movement in ‘owning and controlling our own code”. Thomas Lord examines the potential for achieving software and user freedom in the world of ‘cloud computing’ (a concept he rejects, preferring ‘utility computing’, see below). Thomas is writing within the context of the ‘free network services’… Continue reading
Re-opening the Commons
Christian Siefkes publishes an appeal for the re-opening of the Commons. We do have a problem with the approach of Christian and the Oekonux group: their approach is a ‘commons-only’ approach. But no mode of production and governance has ever been monolithic in any previous society, and when it was attempted, as say in the… Continue reading
Franz Nahrada on Videobridging for Virtual Village Universities
Concept video with case study of Austrian village:
The case for building free software cooperatives
An appeal and argument for free software cooperatives by Robert Hodges. (here‘s a listing of existing FLOSS Coops) Excerpt: “The fact that it is hard to make money off open source is a symptom of a larger problem: we are losing the wider social benefits that for many people are the real point of open… Continue reading
Imagining a commons-based approach to the development of culture
The very structure of open source development encourages the connection of previously disconnected projects, rather than the new creation of large-scale singular projects. What you end up with is a very functional and complete open source operating system, but one that lacks usability for a large part of the market. And this is due to… Continue reading
Cloud computing, Vendor Lock-In and the Future
From Ralf Schlatterbeck’s Austrian “Runtux” blog: The original article comes with many links. Ralf Schlatterbeck: “Cloud Computing is becoming increasingly popular — and it is a danger to your freedom. But we can do something about it. First, when the term Cloud Computing was introduced, it meant a set of low-level services like virtual machines,… Continue reading
Inaugural Conference of the Internet and P2P Research Group
This is a time of confrontation between older forms of communication and organization and new ways of sharing, collaborating and acting collectively. We seek to explore the conflictual/adaptational tension between hierarchical institutions and p2p and the issues arising by adopting p2p in various movements and organizations. From the organising team: (Athina Karatzogianni, Michel Bauwens, Majid… Continue reading
Peak Oil and the Meltdown (3): the alt.energy transition
My conclusion from a careful survey of energy alternatives, then, is that there is little likelihood that either conventional fossil fuels or alternative energy sources can be counted on to provide the amount and quality of energy that will be needed to sustain economic growth—or even current levels of economic activity—during the remainder of this… Continue reading
Will the Web bankrupt government?
Via Charles Hugh Smith: C. Smith writes: Correspondent Michael S. recommended this story on a parallel line of thinking: Yes, The Web Will Bankrupt The Government: Long-argument-short: The explosion of the web created so many new non-financial transactions, non-financial markets, and opportunities to create and enjoy oneself that don’t cost a penny, that ultimately we’d… Continue reading
Book of the Week (2): Towards collaborative democracy
Book: Wiki Government. How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful. Beth Noveck. Brookings Institution Press, 2009 An excerpt from Beth Noveck’s book, which we presented last Monday. Beth starts by outlining the lessons of her own Peer to Patent project, which point to the need to generalize the practice of… Continue reading
Peak Oil and the Meltdown (2): the volatility trap
We continue our processing of the essay by Richard Feinberg, which relates oil scarcity to the current crisis and sets clear limits on a eventual recovery. In this excerpt he explains that the volatility in oil prices, which confuses people, is part and parcel of the Peak Oil thesis. Richard Feinberg: Why Did Oil Prices… Continue reading
Trade exchange and credit clearing is not barter
Via Thomas Greco: People often ask me how the credit clearing process that I advocate might be established and where existing successful models are to be found. I point them to the commercial “barter” sector, the 75 year old WIR Bank in Switzerland, and a few exchange alternatives that have been emerging spontaneously from the… Continue reading
The U.S. as the New Argentina?
You just gotta read this if you want to be prepared for the post-meltdown world. In this text, Charles Hugh Smith* conducts a little thought experiment. Imagine you were part of the transnational elite class of the richest investors, and you know things are going terribly wrong. All the patches you have tried to keep… Continue reading
Peak Oil and the Meltdown (1): the role of oil scarcity as trigger
Richard Heinberg has published a crucially important guest post at the “Peak-Oil thesis” related Oil Drum website. This excerpt explains how the subprime trigger was preceded by an oil price crisis, which should be seen as the real cause of the current meltdown. Richard Heinberg: “Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on… Continue reading
Crisis at the Factor E Farm
Readers of this blog will know that we have consistently supported the Open Source Ecology project, which consists of creating a full set of open source technologies for resilient communities. We have not written this anywhere, but in conversations at the Oekonux conference we also suggested to Marcin Jacubowski that this was not yet in… Continue reading