Date archives "May 2010"

Craig Venter synthetic life fallout: P2P pharmaceuticals and fuels?

“…from the point of view of technology, a code generated within a digital computer is now self-replicating as the genome of a line of living cells. From the point of view of biology, a code generated by a living organism has been translated into a digital representation for replication, editing, and transmission to other cells.”… Continue reading

What exactly would constitute connectivist dynamics?

It is based on these criteria that we arrive at an account of a knowing network. The scale-free networks contemplated above constitute instances in which these criteria are violated: by concentrating the flow of knowledge through central and highly connected nodes, they reduce diversity and reduce interactivity. Even where such networks are open and allow… Continue reading

Four Rules against the False Abundance of the Eternal Growth Economy

Here is how the physical side of the Economy of the Commons should function! And below, a meditation of how one can choose for abundance over scarcity approaches by turning rival goods into non-rival ones. 1. The rules of the abundance economy Excerpted from the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, which… Continue reading

The El Cumbre conference report: 4) neotraditionalist degrowth vs. left developmentalism

Conference: People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth We are finalizing our serializing of an extraordinarly stimulating report by Massimo de Angelis: Today, how the contradictions of “Bien Vivir” where at play in the Mesa 18 alt.conference: “This aporia between bien vivir as relational field of commoning outside capitalist markets,… Continue reading

The El Cumbre conference report: 3) the contradictions and paradoxes of the Bien Vivir concept

Conference: People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth We are continuing our serializing of an extraordinarly stimulating report by Massimo de Angelis: Today, what to think of “Bien Vivir”: “In our working table we had a round of opinions of what bien vivir meant to different people. Here is a… Continue reading

El Cumbre Conference report: 2) Should we talk about “Mother Earth”

Conference: People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth We will be serializing an extraordinarly stimulating report by Massimo de Angelis: Today, on the use by the climate change conference of the Mother Earth concept: “Evo Morales was definitively right in saying that the difference between the meetings in Copenhagen and… Continue reading

How Dutch Pragmatism Nurtures a 21st Century Economy

A well chosen cover accompanies the above title. The cover is an old church in the city Maastricht, in the deepest south of the Netherlands. It articulates the progressive attitude of the Dutch that have chosen to invest heavily in an optic-fibre broadband infrastructure nationwide. A decision that was made 13 years ago, back in… Continue reading