Bill St. Arnaud, in a document titled A personal perspective on the evolving Internet and Research and Education Networks (a Google document “for discussion purposes only”) says that some momentous changes happened in the Internet’s structure, just when most of us weren’t looking. Michel Bauwens sxcerpted the document into the P2P Foundation wiki and asked… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2010"
Towards an open smart grid for distributed energy
More details and links in the report here. Excerpt: “Will the smart grid eventually follow the path of the Internet with truly open standards? Several up-and-coming companies are betting that the answer will be a resounding “yes” and are in the process of looking to sign up utilities and customers that want to embrace the… Continue reading
Worldbike video
Video intro to this global transportation design project, by Ross Evans and friends:
An introduction to transfinancial economics
Robert Searle has been working for quite a long time on a wiki page at the p2p foundation, concerning an integrated view of an alternate economic system. Here’s the introduction: “Transfinancial Economics,or TFE is an emerging global paradigm for economic and financial reform. It is concerned with the possible introduction of a Non-Debt Based Economy… Continue reading
Third CopySouth Workshop International Conference on Copyright Issues
The CopySouth Research Group (CSRG) invites you to attend and join in the debates at its three day international conference on copyright to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the end of June. It is an important moment to discuss these issues. Around the world, the antiquated assumptions of copyright law and ideology… Continue reading
“Digital Activism Decoded” book available for download
The book Digital Activism Decoded, the first book to map the field of digital activism, is available now for download. Full information here. Citizens around the world are using digital technologies to push for social and political change. Yet, while stories have been published, discussed, extolled, and derided, the underlying mechanics of digital activism are… Continue reading
Open Data, Open Society: a research project about openness of public data in EU local administrations
As some readers may already know, I regularly follow Open Government and Open Data issues. This month I have started working on a research contract for the Laboratory of Economics and Management (L.E.M.) of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, in the context of the Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe (DIME) program (1)…. Continue reading
Superuse: a recycling design community
Presentation of this interesting resource by Eric Hunting: “Adaptive reuse -the repurposing of found artifacts and structures, particularly industrial in nature- has been a fixture of architectural, interior, and industrial design since the early 20th century. As an ad-hoc practice it is probably as old as our species itself, our cultures and technology originating in… Continue reading
ICEGOV2010 – 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
ICEGOV2010 – 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance 25 – 28 October 2010, Beijing, China www.icegov.org CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS IMPORTANT DATES First Submission Deadline – 7 June 2010 (extended) Notification Deadline – 2 August 2010 Final Submission Deadline – 23 August 2010 Author… Continue reading
Shanzhai: the illegal Chinese version of open and distributed manufacturing
The Chinese experience already shows the productivity of open and distributed manufacturing, though their shared designs are often the result of reverse engineering: “They do not just produce copycat phones. They make original design phones as well, as documented in this PDF (it is in Chinese, but the pictures are cool; the collage above is… Continue reading
One social web – linking social networks
One social web is an open source effort to make social networks compatible with each other. “Social networks are becoming an increasingly important part of our daily communication. Yet they are closed environments that do not allow you to friend, message or share across networks. We dream of a world where all social networks are… Continue reading
Homebrew Industrial Revolution, Chapter Two. Moloch (second excerpt)
[Michel Bauwens has kindly invited me to serialize excerpts from my forthcoming book The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto. Over the next several weeks, I will post two excerpts from each chapter (one excerpt a week).] In keeping with the need for stability and control Galbraith described above [see previous post], the technostructure resorted… Continue reading
Lambeth’s Cooperative Council and cooperative municipalism
Lots of participatory city innovations here in Lambeth (UK), which warrant a full copy of the commentary by Steve Reed in the Guardian: (the original article has links to more Guardian reporting on the experiment) “The Guardian has reported Lambeth’s ambition to become Britain’s first co-operative council. The proposals, part of a consultation launched this… Continue reading
Towards a new productive paradigm: when walking makes the path
A repost from Golpe de e-Estado. How can be explained peer-to-peer processes, the growth of Wikipedia in comparison with the Britannica Encyclopedia or the growing importance of Linux in contrast to Windows. Even the success of Google can be hardly explained within the classic economic paradigm. The classic economic paradigm was tailored for industrial economies…. Continue reading
Challenging the Learning 2.0 formula
Henry Jenkins insists, participatory culture is NOT Web 2.0: “There has been a growing tendency to describe the application of these participatory culture principles to the classroom as “education 2.0” and as we do so, to take the highly visible corporate “web 2.0” portals not simply as our ideal model, but also as the source… Continue reading
Book of the Week (2): Understanding the digital activism divide
Book: Digital Activism Decoded. Ed. by Mary Joyce. Idebate Press, 2010 A last and extra excerpt from this important new book, this time by Kate Brodock, from a chapter entitled “Economic and Social Factors: The Digital (Activism) Divide”. The chapter describes how contextual factors beyond digital infrastructure can affect digital activism outcomes. Kate Brodock: “…Research… Continue reading