Frutos de Utopia seeks to impact the practical and creative transformation of the economic, social and political reality of small agricultural producers and popular classes through a strategy of collective appropriation of the alimentary chain. We develop social projects that integrate the necessities of those marginalized and exploited into proposals that emphasize alternative sustainable development,… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2010"
Alan Rayner’s critique of economic rationalism underlying both individual competitive capitalism and coercively cooperative collectivism
1. We see the world in terms of what it can do for us and to us as alienated observers or abstracted ‘ exhabitants’, not how we are inextricably involved in it as natural inhabitants. We see ‘boundaries’ as the limits of definable ‘objects’ and ‘space’ as ‘nothing’ – a gap or absence outside and… Continue reading
A defense of the open core business model
It seems to me that for an open source company to become commercially successful, it needs to have an unfair advantage against its competition – something that they cannot copy, use, modify or provide to their customers. Red Hat Network is such an example; CentOS and Oracle may copy the bits of the Linux distro,… Continue reading
Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment
“The May 2010 issue of Cornell Law Review is a treasure trove of essays about the cultural commons. Rarely has the subject received such focused and sustained academic exploration in a major law journal.” – David Bolier http://www.onthecommons.org/legal-scholars-probe-cultural-commons The lead article ‘Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment’ authored by Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann… Continue reading
The Spiderweb Project – a citizen-owned WiFi mesh network
This is an announcement I found on an Italian facebook page. It is about a project in two Italian towns to construct a citizen-owned WiFi mesh network that will allow direct communication of all participants and will link into the internet at provider level. Here is a translation of the (Italian) announcement. I believe that… Continue reading
Mamading Ceesay: Introducing Samuel Bowles’ work on (in)equality
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Mamading Ceesay. Please note we have conversion problems with the format of the text, so please read the original here. ### Introducing Samuel Bowles [Samuel Bowles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel\_Bowles\_\(economist\)) is probably the most important economist you’ve never heard of and it wouldn’t surprise me if he won the Nobel Prize… Continue reading
P2P Community Policing
It’s becoming increasingly feasible, thanks to the desktop and network revolutions, for a growing share of functions previously carried out by the centralized regulatory state to be performed by voluntary P2P networks. “Watching Big Brother“; “BP: WikiLeaks’ Finest Hour?”; “The Desktop Revolution in Worker Protection“; “A Labor Department of One“; “The Rising Cost of Evil… Continue reading
Central Bank of Ecuador Supports Complementary Currency Development
Here is a report by the Pachamama Alliance, via Miraluna’s blog “Trust is the Only Currency”. This piece of news brings a different dimension to complementary currencies. When a country’s central bank is seriously looking to promote the adoption of alternative means of payment to complement the official currency and to stimulate economic activity that… Continue reading
Chris Carlsson on Nowtopian p2p resistance and creativity
What Nowtopia doesn’t address is the relationship of these temporary ruptures to more predominant forms of working class activity and resistance. How can we link up these many DIY movements and projects to already existing forms of resistance in the workplace, neighborhoods, the watersheds and the streets. How can these linkages strengthen and expand these… Continue reading
The maker generation as an educational revolution
the Maker Generation could be in for a fantastic time when it comes to learning by doing, and when it comes to being able to augment that experiental learning with observation of example. Confused of Calcutta (JP Rangwaswami) offers a number of reasons why we are witnessing this emergence: (see the video here as well)… Continue reading
How to use for the gamers’ collective intelligence for social good
Prepared by Remi Sussan: Jane McGonigal is one of the best specialists of the new gaming scene, which is not, as some may believe, based on ultrasophisticated computer technologies,; but on the notion of “alternate reality game”‘ or “pervasive game” : those games involve the player in a narrative through a multiplication of channels, the… Continue reading
David Bollier on the Academic Commons
Excerpted from a longer lecture: David Bollier: “In my remarks today I want to explain how networking technologies are changing the economics of creating and sharing knowledge — and how this change has enormous potential to empower academic disciplines and institutions. While there are all sorts of new initiatives transforming teaching and learning, I will… Continue reading
The era of extreme neoliberalism and the end of the European social state
Europe is dying. If its trajectory is not changed, the EU must succumb to a financial coup d’êtat rolling back the past three centuries of Enlightenment social philosophy. The question is whether a break-up is now the only way to recover its social democratic ideals from the banks that have taken over its central planning… Continue reading
Eva Waskell and the Election Integrity Movement (2): a personal statement and appeal from Eva
This is an update to our item on the report by Gordon Cook. We received the following letter and appeal by Eva Waskell: “I have been involved with election integrity for over 25 years and this is what I have observed. While the issue is certainly vast in scope, extremely complex, intractable, and politically sensitive,… Continue reading
Faroo – a distributed P2P search engine
Bernard Lunn asked the question in the beginning of April: “Could P2P Search Change the Game?” His article describes a German startup and their gamble to revolutionize internet search and perhaps, in time, rival Google. It seems difficult to imagine that anyone could challenge the well oiled machinery that is Google with their successful, ad-based… Continue reading
Stephen Downes on the threefold opening of education
This appeared in the IDC discussion on open and p2p learning (June 19). Stephen Downes: “What is wrong with the idea of “instead of paying thousands of dollars can I pay 199 for iCollege” is not that you can’t get a course for that kind of money – you can – but rather the concurrent… Continue reading