Is forking becoming a normal modality rather than an exception? Excerpted from Anil Dash: “There are several related technical concepts that can answer to the name “fork”, but the one I reference here is the dramatic moment when a software project undergoes a schism on ideological or technical grounds. Instead of merely taking their ball… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2010"
How commons’ rights differ from legal rights
Commons Rights differ from human rights and civil rights because they arise, not through the legislation of a state, but through a customary or emerging identification with an ecology, a cultural resource area, a social need, or a form of collective labor. Commons rights affirm the sovereignty of human beings over their means of sustenance… Continue reading
The insuffiency of the open data approach
This is an extension and part 2 to Michael Gurstein’s earlier critique, that covers the same ground of pointing out the insuffiency of a mere open data approach (the equivalent of ‘build it and they will come”): Excerpt without links, the original discusses examples to make the point. Dan McQuillan: “Open data doesn’t empower communities…. Continue reading
Leadership as Holarchy: leading/following in peer governance
(republished from January 2009) A more balanced appropriation of the governance lens sees leadership and followership as co-creative partners in the production of systems of organisational management and regulation. A more astute use of this lens will uncover the multilevel nature of leadership and followership throughout all layers of organisational activity. For example, followership has… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Plenitude, The New Economics of True Wealth (1): Author’s introduction
Responding to our current moment, Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead, it’s an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living, individuals and the country as a whole can actually be better off and more economically… Continue reading
Most retweeted P2P Theory items
In this third part of my review of Topsy’s calculation of most retweeted material of the P2P Foundation, I focus on my own personal work: Articles: – The next Buddha will be a collective – There is such a thing as peer money – The Emergence of Open Design and Open Manufacturing By others: –… Continue reading
Some theses on how p2p relates to the attention economy
I wrote this preparing my lecture for the excellent Paying Attention conference in Linkoping, Sweden: “1. When information becomes abundant, attention becomes scarce 2. Scarce resources can become a part of a for-profit economy which will do everything in can to attract the attentional flows in its direction 3. However, the attention economy can never… Continue reading
U.S. military pioneers distributed manufacturing
* Article: Military goes MOD A commentary by Eric Hunting: “This recent article from Treehugger details the US military’s recent deployment of containerized manufacture-on-demand facilities they call Mobile Parts Hospitals in Afghanistan. Though article erroneously notes that “there are not a lot of computerized machine tools and 3D printers in Afghanistan” when in fact, and… Continue reading
Most retweeted internal resource pages at the P2P Foundation
This is the second part of our review of Topsy’s list of most retweeted articles and resources from the P2P Foundation blog and wiki: Links to Internal Material – Our wiki’s home page – Our wiki section on shared design – Our directory of open hardware – Our mindmeister mindmap, Everything Open and Free –… Continue reading
Richard Stallman on Cloud Computing
An excerpt from a commentary by free network services advocate Benjamin Mako Hill, on Stallman’s latest essay criticising cloud computing (or more precisely, “software as a service”): Benjamin Mako Hill: “In his article, Stallman defines SaaS as, “a network server that does certain computing tasks … then invites users to do their computing on that… Continue reading
Why bikesharing should not be privatized
Via Shareable: An article by Carlosfelipe Pardo in Global Urbanist explores the prospect of bikesharing in London, and he explains why media companies run bikesharing programs around the world and why that’s a bad thing: “There is no public bicycle system in the world that has been able to finance itself only by operating costs…. Continue reading
Most retweeted P2P Foundation articles
We achieved a total number of retweets of about 7,708 in about 18 months. Amongst the top blog articles referencing extermal material are: – Estimating the development cost of open source software – Post-industrialism is self-liquidating (crisis of value) – Greenwashing – Open Source Cloud Computing – For a right mesh between organic and industrial… Continue reading
Michael Maranda & Tim Rayner’s call for Open Stewardship
Excerpted from Michael Maranda & Tim Rayner: “The openness meme has gained credibility and vitality in recent years, with an ever increasing range of proponents advancing the cause of open access, architecture, currencies, data, government, hardware, identity, knowledge, media, platforms, protocols, source code, spectrum, and standards. Despite the popularity of the prefix, however, the layeredness… Continue reading
Eben Moglen on the Economy of the Commons in the 21st Century
Excerpted from a transcript of a lecture by Moglen in New Delhi, India (“Software Patents and the Commons”), by Tech Chords: Eben Moglen: “In the 21st century though, the economies of scale of the hierarchical production don’t quite work. Moglen believes that digital culture and digital economic life do not reward economies of scale. They… Continue reading
Burning Man’s Open Source Cell Network
Daily Wireless reports on a neat low-power-consumption, open source cell phone network installed at Burning Man, the yearly festival in Black Rock City, Nevada, that serves some 50,000 people. The system is only “as big as a shoebox,” Edens says, and requires a mere 50 watts of power “instead of a couple of thousand” so… Continue reading
Institutional innovation through Moonshots that instill higher purpose in society
Interesting proposal for great projects as stimulus policy, by the ever excellent Umair Haque: Stimulating a Higher Purpose from Umair Haque on Vimeo.