The following is the nearly complete excerpt of a draft interview for a Wired article, of Jonas Andersson, p2p filesharing researcher and Swedish cultural commentator, focusing on the situation in Sweden, but the subject matter of this new force in politics easily transcends the local situation. Jonas’s blog, Liquid Culture is consistently thoughtful in its… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2009"
Open Hardware Camp in London on December 4
Via Vinay Gupta: – Open Hardware Camp – Collaborative Strategies and Challenges of Making Things the Open Source Way Organized by: 40Fires in partnership with Nesta Location: Nesta HQ Date: 4th of December Time: 10:00 – 20:00 This is an event to bring key projects, their participants and stakeholders together in the emerging field of… Continue reading
Politics, Participation and Technics in Web 2.0
The issue of participation is the pivot between those who understand the web in the context of wider social and cultural transformations and those who see it primarily as a communication medium. In Benkler the problem of participation is construed negatively: the network is ‘freer’ than previous forms of media and this removal of the… Continue reading
Wikipedia and Research Ethics
First, some background: In the chapter of my book Cyberchiefs on governance in the English-language Wikipedia, there is a section, as in all my case studies, which deals with conflict. Within this section there is a sub-section which focuses on the management of disruptive users, particularly people who create fake identities, known in Wikipedia as… Continue reading
The revival of a P2P relationship with nature
Excerpt from a new book, A Reenchanted World: The Quest For A New Kinship With Nature, by James William Gibson, featured by In These Times. Theme: After the eclipse of modernity, the sense of kinship with an endangered natural world is returning. James William Gibson: ‘Through the 1990s and early 2000s, a new and striking… Continue reading
Documentary: The End of Poverty
A suggestion from Dante-Gabryell Monson: The End of Poverty? is a 2008 documentary film directed by Philip Diaz. The film was selected for the international critic’s week award at the 2008 Cannes Festival. Here’s a more complete description from YouTube, followed by the trailer: “The feature-length documentary The End of Poverty? won critical acclaim at… Continue reading
Book: Building a Whole Earth Economy through Right Relationship
Via Paul Fernhout: Book: Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy. by Peter G Brown. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009. “In Right Relationship, Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver use the core Quaker principle of “right relationship”–respecting the integrity, resilience, and beauty of human and natural communities–as the foundation for a new economic model. Right Relationship poses… Continue reading
Reforming GDP metrics, an assessment
From an interview by Miren Gutierrez (IPS) of HAZEL HENDERSON, sustainability metrics pioneer, on recent proposals by Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen. Excerpts: IPS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked award-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, and 20 other experts to find new ways to measure growth. The panel issued a report that says that… Continue reading
The social enterpreneurs controversy
Cause Global reports on the charge of elitism against social enterprise funding and control. Excerpt: “There’s a growing debate in the social enterprise world, not only about who’s a social entrepreneur but about who’s being left out of the club. True, the exceptions and misconceptions abound, but the debate settles around two main points —… Continue reading
Eric Hunting on Defining Post-Industrial Design
Looking at the different Maker blogs, I could see that there was an emergent set of information standards forming ad hoc by a popularity-driven process of selection as well as limitations -chiefly in graphics as people generally can’t produce their own drawn illustrations so resort to photos and video. The people who first started publishing… Continue reading
The toll of inequality
The excellent political magazine Soundings (UK) dedicates a special issue to inequality. A summary: “Inequality can quite literally be lethal, writes Göran Therborn in Soundings. One study, of 18 000 Whitehall civil servants, has shown that the risk of early death closely followed the office hierarchy: “After age, smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol concentration and a… Continue reading
Hazel Henderson on Green Finance
Great intro by Hazel Henderson to developments in sustainable and socially responsible investing, green sustainability metrics, and the necessary overhaul of finance and business education. By Hazel Henderson: “Marking the 20th Anniversary of SRI in the Rockies offers more than an opportunity to review the hard-won progress of investors to prove that socially responsible investing… Continue reading
Leapfrogging towards post-industrial development
That is the opportunity that the development of Africa presents. Rural Africa missed out on the industrial revolution that raised the living standards of the industrial nations. It is a fresh canvas where we can paint a new picture of development. We can work together, learning from the mistakes of the past, using the sustainable… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Cooperative economics from an evangelical point of view
As Wendell Berry says, we live in an economy that is based on the seven deadly sins. Book: God’s Economy: Redefining the Health & Wealth Gospel. By Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Zondervan, 2009 An intriguing book, so I asked the author, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a number of questions, to which he gracefully responded. Interview: “1. Why exactly do… Continue reading
Student support for open access reaches 5 million
The incredible growth of the student interest in Open Access, especially the depth of their commitment to advocacy, sends a strong signal that this movement is here to stay. Heartening news: “The student Right to Research Coalition, a group of national, international, and local student associations that advocate for governments, universities, and researchers to adopt… Continue reading
A tribute to the Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649
The start of a 3-part fiction on this historical movement of commoners is below. First, a short intro (more here): “The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterized the English Civil War of 1642 – 1649. What bound these people together… Continue reading