Daniel (daniel-at-ripplexchange.com) has posted a message on the Google group that discusses development and implementation of the Ripple p2p payment system. The message was sent to several communities to invite them to participate in the early testing phase. Ripple relies on reciprocal credit between peers to route payments between persons, even if they are not… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2010"
Third System Associations as prefiguration of P2P Politics
“”Contrasting with governmental power and economic power —the power of the Prince and the Merchant—there is an immediate and autonomous power, sometimes evident, sometimes latent: people’s power. Some people develop an awareness of this, associate and act with others and thus become citizens.* Citizens and their associations, when they do not seek either governmental or… Continue reading
Cooperatives and the state: the case of Venezuela
Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford asks whether the thrivability of the new cooperative movement requires a role for the state: “The legacy of worker coops in socialist states is controversial. Not least because political autonomy and voluntary membership are among the longstanding principles of cooperativism, while socialist models have subordinated these values to state… Continue reading
A New Social Contract for (Open) Science?
Alessandro Delfanti, in the article: Open science, a complex movement, the editorial of the new issue of the Journal of Science Communication, and which is based on the deliberations at the first Open Science Summit. “Science must be open and accessible, and diffusion of knowledge should not be limited by patents and copyrights. After the… Continue reading
A P2P search engine
Nathan Staudt based in the UK, pinged me to let us know about a p2p search engine. Of course, why had i not noticed any alternative search technologies, especially with different architectural approaches? Apparently this project has existed a long time already and i always feel sympathy as well fearful, when pitted against the obvious… Continue reading
The cooptation of commons and coops by the mainstream logic
* Article: Commons and Cooperatives. Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford. Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Vol 4, No 1 (2010). Special issue on The New Cooperativism. In the special issue of Affinities on The New Cooperativism, the article by Nick Dyer-Whiteford and Greig de Peuter specifically discusses the dangers of… Continue reading
Five conditions for a successful civilisational transition (2)
We continue our processing of the important points made by Kenneth McLeod in his investigation on how we can contribute to a succcessful phase transition for our economy. Here he focuses on capacity building: “I … believe … that we can make a start on sketching out the processes needed to catalyse and nurture a… Continue reading
Emergence, Crisis, and Replacement of the Era of Decentralized Networks
P2P is about how distributed network models are replacing decentralized network models. David de Ugarte retraces three moments in this phase transition. • Article: Emergence, Crisis, and Replacement of the Era of Decentralized Networks. By David de Ugarte Excerpted from the Book: The Power of Networks. Moment 1: The Emergence of Decentralized Networks David de… Continue reading
Three issues around the commons and cooperatives
“In the last decade, the commons has become a prevalent theme in discussions about collective but decentralized control over resources. This paper is a preliminary exploration of the potential linkages between commons and cooperatives through a discussion of the worker cooperative as one example of a labour commons. We view the worker coop as a… Continue reading
Five conditions for a successful civilisational transition (1)
From a longer text by Kenneth McLeod which is also a critique of traditional sustainability action: What we need to know to prepare for a transition, or at the very least, need to talk about together: “1. Industrial civilisation is heading for systemic breakdown at an accelerating pace. By almost any key measure our species… Continue reading
Discussion: Hierarchy in Peer Production
Three contributions on this important topic: Summarizing and commenting on John Heron’s views on Hierarchy for Autonomy: In true peer to peer networks, Heron writes, the role of hierarchy is to enable the spontaneous emergence of ‘autonomy in cooperation’: “There seem to be at least four degrees of cultural development, rooted in degrees of moral… Continue reading
Book of the Week (2): Knowledge and Learning in the Age of Innovation
* Book: Education in the Creative Economy: Knowledge and Learning in the Age of Innovation. Edited by Daniel Araya & Michael A. Peters. Peter Lang, 2010 For our second and last installment of this book of the week, selected because it makes such a clear linkage between education and p2p trends, we have chosen 2… Continue reading
Design in the Age of Sharing
01. Sharing by Design A recent post on Shareable made me think about how the culture of Sharing has been changing the discipline of Design after the success of Open Source and the Web 2.0. We are researching and discussing how we can bring collaboration into design processes and how we can use design processes… Continue reading
Phyles: the new neonomadic p2p business structure for the network age
Phyles are business-empowered communities: they are not companies linked to a community, but transnational communities that have acquired enterprises in order to gain continuity in time and robustness This new form is described in a remarkable and must read book, Phyles: Economic Democracy in the Network Century, written by David de Ugarte. David de Ugarte:… Continue reading
POiU – p2p nation has money, marketplace and promotes cooperation
POiU is an on line initiative intended to promote direct exchange between its members, both businesses and individuals. At the moment, the initiative is in public beta release, hoping to attract a sufficiently robust community to make being a POiU citizen a worthwhile thing to do. Here is how they describe themselves… The Country of… Continue reading
The new cooperativism
“Cooperative practices and values that challenge the status quo while, at the same time, creating alternative modes of economic, cultural, social, and political life have emerged with dynamism in recent years. The 15 articles in this issue–written by activists, coop practitioners, theorists, historians, and researchers–begin to make visible some of the myriad modes of cooperation… Continue reading