There is an interesting discussion going on about how the flow of data moving around the internet gives it a ‘shape’ and what that shape means. You can see this discussion written up in an interesting article in the New York Times; ‘Scientists Strive to Map the Shape-Shifting Net‘. So what is mean by the… Continue reading
Date archives "March 2010"
Petroleum Commons and Indigenous Commons: Real and distorted commons in Ecuador’s Amazon region
Excerpt from a longer piece by Massimo de Angelis, on the occasion of a trip in Ecuador, and the opposition of the Yasuni people against oil drilling, in which he also gives details about the spiritual underpinnings of their struggle: “I am in Ecuador at the moment, where I arrived with my family 6 days… Continue reading
Peer to Peer energy production and the social conflicts in the era of “green development”
This article by George Papanikolaou appeared in a special issue of the Greek bi-lingual Re-Public magazine, Issue on P2P Energy, 2009 The same issue has articles by Erik Hunting and myself, as well as many others, and they are consistenly interesting. Abstract “Since the direct production process is the one that defines distribution, the single… Continue reading
Teacher 2.0: distributed learning and their disruption of the old institutional models
George Siemens describes how networks disrupt traditional teaching: The old model, he writes, “works well when we can centralize both the content (curriculum) and the teacher. The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning. Simply: social and technological networks subvert… Continue reading
Adrian Bowyer’s Open Source 3D Printer: showing the RepRap
Dr Adrian Bowyer of the RepRap project shows us around his lab at Bath University:
Open Koffie Speciaal!
Via drs. Jan Willem Duijzer, Date: 2010/3/17 Chief Information Officer LNV; Directie Organisatie en Bedrijfsvoering (DOB) ; Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit Dames en heren, De volgende Open Koffies zijn op maandag 22 en 23 maart. Ja, u leest het goed! Er zijn er dit keer 2 achter elkaar gepland: de Koffie van maandag… Continue reading
Ecovillages as intentional communities
Interview via the always excellent Peak TV of Diana Leafe Christian of Ecovillage News:
The Catholic view on cooperatives
Part of my ongoing investigation on neotraditional economics, updated regularly here: Joe Hargrave: ” It is possible to combine regulated markets and even command economies with private property, and social forms of ownership with free markets. It is the latter model that is best aligned with both Catholic social teaching as well as sound economics…. Continue reading
Financial transparency instead of fair trade certification?
We are sometimes asked why we do not use fair trade certification. The answer is really simple: Certification takes the place of “consumers” having direct access to information themselves. These organizations vouch for the practices of companies enabling these companies to keep their larger business practices private and away from public scrutiny. We want to… Continue reading
The post-postmodernist era of terminal crisis and phase transition
The current rupture moment has frozen us. We are thoroughly jaded by the dreams of “progress” associated with modernity and capitalism, but unable to venture in another direction. Can we confront our situation? Can we be the ones we have been waiting for? Adbusters, the excellent ‘culture jammers’ magazine, tries to determine the characteristics of… Continue reading
Tribes, p2p and collective intelligence
After the family unit proper, which is a special kind of group, based on the desire for sexual reproduction and the raising of a “new crop” of humans, tribes are the smallest natural groups in which we humans find safety and comfort. Tribes were, for a long time, the predominant form of human social organization…. Continue reading
Netsukuku and the construction of a p2p cloud
Netsukuku is a p2p based new routing protocol that could – for the purpose of linking users’ computers in a p2p cloud – replace the IP numbers-based addressing and routing that is the system currently in use to link servers to users in the internet. The Italian language edition of Wired Magazine featured Andrea Lo… Continue reading
Forban – simple local-link opportunistic p2p free software
This is an interesting piece of open source software produced by Alexandre Dulaunoy who can be reached at (a at foo dot be). Forban is a kind of p2p application for link-local and local area networks. Forban works independently from the Internet and uses only local area capabilities to announce, discover, search or share files…. Continue reading
The real meaning of currencies: flow tv
Draft excerpts of a new documentary on open money by Alan Rosenblith: Milk & Honey: Tracks In The Snow from alan rosenblith on Vimeo.
UrbanLabs OS – a co-created operating system for the city
UrbanLabs OS – a co-created operating system for the city, based in Citilab-Cornellà UrbanLabs OS 1 Mission 2 Opportunities 3 Challenges 4 Possible components of UrbanLabs OS 5 Skills needed 6 General process of the project 7 Platforms to use 8 ToDo list Mission Conceive, develop, test, implement and distribute components of a new operating… Continue reading
The social impact of Playbour
Pat Kane, author of the marvelous book, The Play Ethic, is interviewed here by by James Wellman of the Future Laboratory: The interview: “How will play become much more important in terms of work? For finding leaders? For what we do? Will it help with getting the jobless into work? Will it help the elderly… Continue reading