Surprising findings from a recent EU report, discussed in the Telegraph: (excerpt) “The study, co-written by a Home Office adviser, says consumers benefit from the market for knock-off designer clothes at knock-down prices. It also rejects the complaints of designer companies, claiming that losses to the industry as a result of counterfeiting are vastly exaggerated… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2010"
The constraining role of IP and patents (1): case study of steam engine innovation
* Article: Do Patents Encourage or Hinder Innovation? The Case of the Steam Engine. by Michele Boldrin, David K. Levine, and Alessandro Nuvolari. The Freeman, December 2008 • Volume: 58 • Issue: 10 Excerpted from a longer case study cited above: “The impact of patents on innovation does have an objective answer. In this case… Continue reading
Beyond internet censorship circumvention
We can’t circumvent our way around internet censorship. I don’t mean that internet censorship circumvention systems don’t work. They do – our research tested several popular circumvention tools in censored nations and discovered that most can retrieve blocked content from behind the Chinese firewall or a similar system. (There are problems with privacy, data leakage,… Continue reading
Power as Integration
Power as Integration Meditation on the nature of power, excerpted from George Siemens: “Information is not power. And, neither is money. Or any of the other terms that get equated with power. Quite simply, integration is power. How an individual or organization forms a coherent view (integrates elements) internally and how it is related to… Continue reading
Production sharing without barter and money: is it possible?
In “egalitarian” communities one hour is worth one credit regardless of who is working or what is done, and involve either a “fair-share” labor system requiring a labor contribution without labor accounting, or “labor credit” systems requiring a “labor quota” and the accounting of a minimum labor contribution for a person to maintain membership in… Continue reading
Towards urban resilience
John Robb presents T.H. Culhane‘s Solar Cities approach which is much broader than just the issue of solar energy: (interesting aside before you read the excerpt below: Robb met Culhane at the Aspen conference, where he discovered none of the top environmental leaders in the U.S. had even heard of the transition town movement …… Continue reading
Why are Matrifocal Societies Using Dual Currencies?
The following is excerpted from a must read essay by Bernard Lietaer: * Article: The Monetary Blindspot. Bernard Lietaer The essay is extracted from chapter 2 of a book forthcoming with McMillan, edited by Simon Mouatt and Carl Adams with working title “Societal Change and Monetary Innovations” The scribd download has an nice graphic contrasting… Continue reading
John Michael Greer on intensive agriculture after post-“peak phosphorus”
John Michael Greer, on what kind of agriculture to expect after “peak phosphorus”: (excerpts) “It’s true, of course, that the rapid depletion of the world’s reserves of rock phosphate, a key ingredient in chemical fertilizers, is a serious short term problem. Today’s agricultural systems depend on chemical fertilizers, and there aren’t any other abundant and… Continue reading
On the divergence between the Transition and Green Wizards projects
John Michael Greer responds to a critique of his new appropriate technology movement, by Rob Hopkins of the Transition Town movement (see below): 1. Part One: excerpts from Greer: “Since the Green Wizards project got under way two months ago, I’ve wondered off and on whether it would field any sort of response from the… Continue reading
Karl Hess on social technology
Technology is always social, and technologies that are participatory will follow distinct logics:
Steve Keen: Why the meltdown will last
private debt is far higher than Government debt, even after the increase last year due to Rudd’s stimulus package. Government debt is currently 5.5% of GDP, whereas private debt—even though it has fallen slightly due to business deleveraging—is over 150% of GDP: 27 times the size of Government debt. The so-called debate that the major… Continue reading
Thesis: If computing is linked to the financial meltdown, then only a new computing regime can solve it
* Article: Computing and the Current Crisis: The Significant Role of New Information Technologies in Our Socio-Economic Meltdown David Hakken, tripleC, Vol. 8. No. 2, pp 205-220 David Hakken has written a very important essay, in a special issue of TripleC dedicated to the crisis, on how the present computing (and IP) regime, is linked… Continue reading
Eric Reasons: Value is not Capital
While the Internet’s disruption has made many a billionaire, it’s certainly well on it’s way to destroying some entire industries. And it seems to me, many of the institutions that are popping up to replace them don’t have the same capitalization, if they have capitalization at all. I know the Internet is adding Value, I… Continue reading
Umair Haque: The Generation M consensus and the Forcorporations
Umair Haque thinks there is a Generation M Consensus — the growing consensus of a global movement dedicated to toppling the old order, by doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Here’s are the principles. The original article has links and a critique of the old order as well. Of particular interest, his concept of… Continue reading