Via Wired Science, an excerpt on the One Block Off the Grid project: “While researchers have struggled for half a century to push down the cost of solar photovoltaic modules, an innovative web service is creating communities of customers who pay less for solar panels through collective bargaining with installers. One Block Off the Grid… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2009"
Open Infrastructures I: conference report
This report on the conference in Manchester on November 3, on “Media Ecologies for Post-Industrial Production” should have been published 3 weeks ago, but got an erroneous draft status. Without further ado: This was an important week in the history of the P2P movement. I recently reported on the Free Culture Forum, which brought together… Continue reading
Ethical value creation and the economy: an Italian case study
A contribution by Adam Arvidsson: “The following is an attempt to use an empirical study of an actual instane of value co-creation. In essence: value depends on the ability attract affective investments from a co-producing audience. Such affective investments can be attracted through the promotion of a particular kind of ethos. The people who supply… Continue reading
Rethinking agriculture with Charles Fourier
(via Paul Fernhout) Here is an abstract from a document about an alternative vision of agriculture related to Charles Fourier’s thinking, written by Joan Roelofs. The illustrated pdf version is here. Abstract: “Charles Fourier has been disdained or ignored by political scientists, even by theorists. Some of his ideas were “mad,” but so many others… Continue reading
Comparing our weightless economy with that of the foragers
Kudunomics refers to property rights for the information-based economy, the topic of a talk by Samuel Bowles. He looks at the foraging economy to understand the knowledge economy. (the Kudu is an antelope of some sort hunted in Tanzania for its massive caloric value. When one is killed, it’s widely shared, perhaps 2/3 outside of… Continue reading
Special issue of OSBR on Value Co-Creation
Is it possible for companies and the users of their products to form mutually beneficial relationships that create value? The concept of value co-creation attempts to answer that question and it is the editorial theme of the November and December issues of the OSBR. Check the Table of Contents here. Excerpt from the editor’s summary… Continue reading
Online conflict in the light of mimetic theory
I am sure most readers of this essay know well the “community cycle” – the way on-line communities get started, they thrive with peaceful, civil conversations, helpful strangers and kind atmosphere, and later how suddenly some seemingly innocent misunderstandings grow into flamewars, people stop listening to each other and only want to win the fight…. Continue reading
Controversy in Second Life as it Removes Free Content From Web Search under Pressure of Top Merchants
Via Marc Garrett: “In a move that continues to shake the Second Life community of content creators, merchants, and consumers, Linden Labs has declared that free virtual content will no longer be searchable without listing payments on their website portal See: (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Managing_Freebies_on_Xs treet_SL_Roadmap_FAQ); and additional fees will be added with the intention of discouraging content… Continue reading
Are spanish judges exemplary digital rights defenders?
Eddan Katz (EFF) points at the following article, showing how Spanish judges are quite exemplary in safeguarding public p2p rights: Spanish Court Dismisses Complaint From Nintendo Against Counterfiet DS Cartridges, Since They Add Functionality “It seems that Spain is a country that is pretty consistently figuring out that we shouldn’t just throw out all other… Continue reading
The EU Commission and IPR: the wrong fork in the road
Below is La Quadrature du Net’s response to the European Commission’s communication on “Enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market” (COM(2009) 467) Download the memo in pdf here: On September 11th, 2009, the European Commission released a new communication on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in the Internal market…. Continue reading
P2P Approaches to Politics: some choice citations
For the sources, go here. * The Constellation Method of Social Change In spite of current ads and slogans, the world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible. – Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Freize… Continue reading
Dealing with (e-)waste, the scarcity of social equity, and the potential for abundance in the knowledge economy
Real economic abundance can come about only when the demand for a good is finite and the plentiful supply makes the abundant good affordable enough to all members of society. It lists an abundance-nurturing ethic as a major goal of abundance management, and encourages economists to make abundance together with scarcity their conceptual point of… Continue reading
John Wilbanks: how open science differs from open source software
I propose that the point of this isn’t to replicate “open source” as we know it in software. The point is to create the essential foundations for distributed science so that it can emerge in a form that is locally relevant and globally impactful. We can do this. But we have to be relentless in… Continue reading
Open Everything P2P Presentation for TEDx Brussels
With the help of the Prezi staff (thanks to lily fischer and zoltan especially), I am happy to be able to present my first presentation on “Open Everything” for the TEDx Brussels event at the European Parliament:
The emergence of algorithmic authority
Algorithmic authority is the decision to regard as authoritative an unmanaged process of extracting value from diverse, untrustworthy sources, without any human standing beside the result saying “Trust this because you trust me.” This model of authority differs from personal or institutional authority. … Algorithmic authority handles the “Garbage In, Garbage Out” problem by accepting… Continue reading
Strong IPR regimes counterproductive for climate change technology transfers
SciDev summarizes the conclusions from a new report undertaken by Asian research institutes: “The notion that climate technology cannot be transferred to a developing country unless it has strong intellectual property laws — a cherished belief among developed countries — has been called into question by a new study. Five Asian research institutes collaborated to… Continue reading