Most people, when they think ‘evolution‘ also think ‘survival of the fittest‘ – this conjurers up images of a dog-eat-dog battle for survival. However how does this battle manifest? There has been a debate going on in biology as to how to frame evolutionary activity; was it considered that evolution was a response predominately to… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2010"
Peer Governance as a third mode of governance
A republication of my 2006 manuscript on P2P, drawing on Bob Jessop: “Following Bob Jessop, we will define peer governance as follows: “[Peer] Governance is defined as the reflexive self-organisation of independent actors involved in complex relations of reciprocal interdependence, with such self-organisation being based on continuing dialogue and resource-sharing to develop mutually beneficial joint… Continue reading
Mesh Potato – Roll out your own telco
Awsome Foundation’s May Felloship goes to the VillageTelco’s Mesh Potato, a prototype for a lightweight, low-cost, and low-power unit that is a building block for rolling out your very own decentralized P2P phone network. The Mesh Potato is an Open Hardware project to create a wireless Access Point (AP) combined with an Asynchronous Telephony Adapter… Continue reading
Video Codec Copyright Battles
There is a battle going on over the technicalities of digital video compression – and some are worried that it might have implications way beyond debates over technical formats – right into the heart of the creative process itself. You see, there is something very important, that the vast majority of both consumers and video… Continue reading
From Do It Alone to Do It Together
A crucial distinction, by Henry Jenkins (excerpt): “Do It Yourself rarely means Do It Alone. For example, much of what youth learn through game playing emerges from “meta-gaming,” the conversations about the game play. Trading advice often forces participants to spell out their core assumptions as more experienced players pass along what they’ve learned to… Continue reading
Geert Lovink on free culture and artists revenues
At the moment the amateurs are blocking the careers of entire generations of young professionals. With this the rich knowledge of professions is threatened to disappear (for instance those doing investigative journalism). We have to stop this talent drain and not create economies that have to live off charity. Free networks should take themselves more… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Understanding Digital Activism
“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 little understood. This new field, its dynamics, practices, misconceptions, and possible futures are presented together for the first time in Digital Activism Decoded.”… Continue reading
A critique of Kamenetz’ Edupunk book: in praise of institutions
Excerpted from Dean Dad, a dean of a community college, and a must read to bring balance in the debate, and the unspoken bias that for-profit is always better than public: “When you boil it down, her argument is that the “unbundling” of the package of goods offered by colleges will free up students to… Continue reading
Games for and against empire
Excerpt from an interesting analysis by Nick Dyer-Witheford: * Article: Empire@Play: Virtual Games and Global Capitalism. CTheory, May 2009 (with Greig de Peuter) “We use “Empire” in the sense proposed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to designate a post-Cold War planetary capitalism with “no outside,” but we modulate their account to take greater consideration… Continue reading
Internet and Voting
On 3-4 June, European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) will hold a conference entitled “Internet and Voting” at the European University Institute. The conference is jointly organized by Alexander H. Trechsel and Mark Franklin, EUDO at the EUI and Bernie Grofman, University of California, Irvine, and coordinated by Andrea Calderaro, EUI The Conference will explore new theoretical and/or empirical insights into… Continue reading
P2P Strategies in the Late K stage of Globalization
A contribution from Neal Gorenflo of Shareable magazine on the intersection between complexity theory-based stages of social evolution, and p2p strategies for social change: “My colleague Michel Bauwens asked me to share some thoughts about the timing of a shift to a P2P world using the panarchy model developed by the Resilience Alliance as a… Continue reading
Umair Haque: Towards an ethical economy based on allocative and creative advantage
The past of advantage was extractive and protective. The future of advantage, on the other hand, is allocative and creative. Umair Haque goes through four categories of business advantages, two new, and two old ones: “The future of advantage: Allocative. Google’s advantage was built on allocating attention to content and ads better than its rivals…. Continue reading
Crowdsourcing and the new alienating nature of work
Now, this is scary: IBM could shed three quarters of its workforce, due to crowdsourcing! And this meditation on payment by Andy Oram is not very re-assuring. Clearly, crowdsourcing is creating new imbalances, some of them to the detriment of workers, as pointed out by Jonathan Zittrain: “Zittrain, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law… Continue reading
Massimo Menichinelli on the State of Open P2P Design in 2010
Our friend Massimo has been interviewed, “in-depth”, by Bertram Niessen at Digicult/Digimag: (All the articles on the recommended italian/english networked art magazine digimag are released under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License) “Bertram Niessen: Reading through your website, the subjects of posts range from social service design to car design. How would you then define open p2p… Continue reading
Raj Patel on Mexico’s Slow Politics
“In his recent book The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, Raj Patel documents how the Mexican Zapatistas are practising slow politics, using village-wide assemblies and rotating governing councils to draw all community members into decisions about local governance.” * Excerpt by Raj Patel: “In the fifteen years since that… Continue reading
Glaxo to Crowd Source Malaria Drug Research
The Wall Street Journal reports that, in a bid to find a new and effective drug to treat malaria, drug maker Glaxo is sharing basic research data on the net. The move is billed as a test of open source principles in the development of new chemical compounds. The article, titled Glaxo Tries a Linux… Continue reading