Below, I’m focusing on trends in business and politics. WHAT DID I FORGET? Thanks for adding further suggestions to our comment field. What has been important in 2009, that is not reflected here? Shareable has an excellent list of important trends related to the creation of a sharing economy and civilization as well. IN BUSINESS… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2009"
Eliot Spitzer calls for an open source investigation of AIG and the bailouts
Excerpt from an editorial in the NYT: “A.I.G. was at the center of the web of bad business judgments, opaque financial derivatives, failed economics and questionable political relationships that set off the economic cataclysm of the past two years. When A.I.G.’s financial products division collapsed — ultimately requiring a federal bailout of $180 billion —… Continue reading
Ellen Brown: Greece, Iceland and Latvia should follow Argentina’s lead
After an analysis of the financial situations in the 3 countries of the outer ring of Europe, Ellen Brown makes an important and convincing case that they should call the bluff of the EU and IMF. (the original article has links) Ellen Brown: “Iceland, Latvia and Greece are all in a position to call the… Continue reading
David Loy on the Relationship between Individual and Collective Awakening
Via Tikkun Daily: David Loy: “The basic difficulty about responding to the “climate emergency” – and a host of related eco-crises such as desertification, and what is happening to the world’s oceans, and mass extinction (half of the earth’s plant and animal species may disappear by the end of this century) – is that climate… Continue reading
The commons and the market: the debate
Four interesting contributions on their inter-relationships: * Alain Lipietz: “We have just seen that the rules of access, and the share of benefits and burdens that come with managing a common resource, may represent a “stack” of various community interests. The conflicts that may arise in allocating the respective benefits and burdens, will likely become… Continue reading
Should P2P Metaphysics adhere to the spiritual concept of Manifoldness instead of Oneness/Wholeness ?
= should a P2P metaphysics move away from conceptions of oneness/wholeness and instead opt for a manifoldness? This contribution by Mushin shows how conversation by social media, including Twitter, can lead to collective insights into complex philosophical matters. So his contribution is of interest both regarding content and form. See also the comments for an… Continue reading
The State of Distributed Labour
A lengthy, complete, readable and fascinating report on the important Internet as Playground and Factory conference, which was organized by Trebor Scholz last month. A short excerpt to give you a taste: “Jonathan Zittrain, in what may have been the most entertaining, broadly accessible, and example-rich presentation at IPF, mostly probed cases of paid distributed… Continue reading
The commons are not immune to issues of power
Those who love the commons and reciprocity rightly highlight the risks entailed by their necessary relationships with politics and the State, with money and the market. This caution should not lead them to isolate the commons from the rest of the world, however, or from the reign of the State and market. State and market… Continue reading
The deep changes in Iran
Finally, an analysis of Iran that gets its right! Between on the one hand the naive embrace of a Twitter Revolution, and a equally superficial dismissal of the internet because it purportedly only reaches a minority, what matters is a long term understanding of how it changes the social fabric. There are no automatic winners… Continue reading
A new Commons Manifesto
Via Silke Helfrich, who writes that: “This thesis paper (4 pages) was developed in collective authorship in the context of the Interdisciplinary political salons of the Heinrich Böll Foundation‘s, „Time for commons,“ 2008/2009.” The full manifesto, “Strenghten the Commons now” is available here.
Open Everything TEDx Brussels Video
Not sure if this is appropriate for Christmas eve, but p2p is a message and practice of peace: (by the way, found via Spezify) Thanks to DPUIC for letting me attend this conference. I’m glad my university T-shirt is clearly visible.
Video on the Transition Town movement
A video presentation of the Transition Town movement: In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.
Social Implications of Local Fabrication
Cube Spawn is a new project in the personal replication / rapid local prototyping field. On their site is an interesting piece on the advantages of localization strategies: “How would things change (meaning society in general) if local fabrication became the predominant form of production? This is speculative, but some likely consequences emerge: Converting to… Continue reading
10 points on the mandatory use of open standards in Hungary
Nyílt Szabvány Szövetség, Open Standards Alliance recently posted 10 points on the mandatory use of open standards in Hungary: Hungarian Parliament has made the use of open standards mandatory by law in the intercommunication between public administration offices, public utility companies, citizens and voluntarily joining private companies, conducted via the central governmental system. This… Continue reading
Participatory Aspects of Radical Orthodoxy
In our recent article on Red Toryism, part of our ongoing investigation of neotraditional approaches, we mentioned its rootedness in the theological approach called Radical Orthodoxy. Andrew Willis of Spectrum Magazine gives some details about its radical nature and relation to ‘participation’: “What is so radical about it? RO is firstly a critique of modernity… Continue reading
Open API-based business models
Put simply, a business offering up its services in a highly consumable, repurposable, and online form enables anyone to “onboard” themselves and begin innovating on top of the business data that the API provides. These relationships then embed the provider’s data feeds deeply into 3rd party products. And don’t forget that APIs are typically integrated… Continue reading