A paragraph from a draft paper of mine titled “After the crisis: Towards a new social contract” for an April 2010 conference at Tallinn University of Technology: ….. Has Leviathan been open-sourced? One can articulate that all this relatively new theoretical universe successfully replaces Levathian with open source, collaborative production models, which motivate and elevate… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2009"
“Forge lock in” is not the problem. It’s the choices that people make, that are the problem.
(the following is derived from ongoing conversation among Sam Rose, Paul B Hartzog, Rick Adler, and Keith Smith [and probably others I am currently forgetting about) At http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1282 Eric S. Raymond writes: The worst problem with almost all current hosting sites is that they’re data jails. You can put data (the source code revision history,… Continue reading
A P2P Revolution in Healthcare?
Insulin-dependent diabetics, for example, quickly learn how to manage their blood glucose levels at home by matching their insulin dosage to changes in their diet and physical activity. Many diabetics have also joined online communities to share information and advice, sometimes viewing each other as more trusted advisors than their own doctors. Diabetics who take… Continue reading
Conflict in Adoption of Collaborative Networks: Call for Papers
Via Athina Karatzogianni: Call For Papers for The Inaugural Conference of the Virtual Communication, Collaboration and Conflict (VIRT3C) Research Group at the University of Hull VIRT3C@Hull 2010: Developing the Virtual Society: Conflict in Adoption of Collaborative Networks 19-20 March URL = http://virt3c.wordpress.com/ Public Keynote speaker: * Geert Lovink (Institute for Network Cultures and University of… Continue reading
Revisiting Social Welfare in P2P
An important research paper from the p2p team at T.U. Delft: Report: Revisiting Social Welfare in P2P. Rameez Rahman, Michel Meulpolder, David Hales, Johan Pouwelse, Henk Sips. Delft University of Technology, Parallel and Distributed Systems Report Series More info via [email protected] Abstract: “Extensive work has been done on studying freeriding and incentivizing cooperation in peer-to-peer… Continue reading
Cory Doctorow. Makers
Cory Doctorow. Makers (Tor, 2009). The major themes I’ve written about here lately — the decline of traditional mass-production industry, the crisis of value and shift of production outside the cash nexus, the rise of micromanufacturing (see “The Homebrew Industrial Revolution“), the digital/network culture — are all central to Makers. And given my research and… Continue reading
P2P Foundation Online Influence Markers
It’s always nice to hear that one’s work has some kind of real impact, even if it’s only online impact, since this presumably influences real people with real life actions. Topsy claims to have highly accurate influence algorythms. You may want to have a look at http://topsy.com/s?q=P2P+Foundation, Which concluded that we reached nearly 4,000 retweets… Continue reading
Gerd Leonhard: Towards a Digital Music License, in the UK and the world (Open Letter to Peter Mandelson)
Great summary of the filesharing issue and how to solve it by marrying consumer interests and artists income alike. Source: Open Letter to Lord Mandelson, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills (UK). By Gerd Leonhard, October 12, 2009 “Dear Lord Mandelson, The proposed “3 Strikes” legislation is flawed in… Continue reading
Progress on the dataportability front
data portability and the trust it engenders are key to fueling the growth of the open web Webmonkey has an interview with Google’s Brian Fitzpatrick, the lead of the dataliberation front project, which aims to make all data put into Google systems portable, and easy to get out again. From the intro, an excerpt on… Continue reading
Open City New York: an update by Matt Cooperrider
Below is a response from Matt Cooperrider, organizer of the Open Government NYC meetup group to a previous article about open cities. “While Mayor Bloomberg’s recent initiatives are innovative and forward-looking, perhaps his most valuable role for the openness movement in New York CIty has been as a foil. This is a mayor so strong… Continue reading
The Planning of the Meltdown
When the history of the end of the neoliberal era will be written, Matt Taibi’s investigative reporting will be centrally featured. In his latest contribution to Rolling Stone, the machinations behind the fall of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns are detailed. It’s a must read essay that makes for gripping reading, with the unfortunate conclusion… Continue reading
A call to the Pope to support Open Access
In his latest encyclical letter Pope Benedict XVI argues that rich countries are asserting their intellectual property with “excessive zeal”, especially in the field of health care — a statement that has led some to conclude that the Pope has been converted to the Open Access (OA) cause. Whether or not this is the case,… Continue reading
The economic rationale for ‘collaborative goods’: complementing Ostrom
Mark Cooper could easily have been the third leg of the stool of the recent Nobel Prize for economics, which rewarded research into the economic rationale of non-market modes. Thanks to Jaap van Till for reminding us of a commentary on a landmark essay on the rationale for choosing collaborative goods. The commentary by Harold… Continue reading
Why Monetary (Re-)Design is Important
Great explanation by Eric Harris-Braun of why the design of currency is so important. “Recently I’ve had some discussions about our MetaCurrency work with folks trained in economics. For some reason it seems particularly hard for some of them to grok what we’re up to. More than once I’ve been told that working on changing… Continue reading
Supporting indigenous communities and biodiversity against the enclosure of the commons
For indigenous communities, biodiversity has always been a local, commonly shared resource on which they have been dependent for their livelihood. The current moves in many countries of the South to introduce new intellectual property laws under the GATT/WTO agreements to, in effect, ‘enclose’ these ‘commons’ and bring them under a regime of private property… Continue reading
Are Generic Biologics Impossible?
Democracy in Action is hosting a campaign for the inclusion of a workable path towards the approval of generic versions of biologics, into healthcare reform legislation. Apparently, biologics are more than 20 times as expensive as your normal run-of-the mill pharmaceutical drug. There seems to be a certain reluctance on the part of pharmaceutical producers… Continue reading