I would argue in a first attempt to open up a different project of inquiry, that capitalist society is not to be understood as the outcome of a “progressive” uptake of “social innovation” by emerging agents of the new society, but rather as an unresolved struggle between dominators and dominated, that could only be processed… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2010"
Twelve Contemporary Commons Observations
By Alexa Bradley and Julie Ristau, On The Commons: “1. The commons and the creation of a commons-based society is a radical yet practical and necessary proposition for our times. 2. Commons exist all around us. We can learn from them. People everywhere for centuries have created both formal and informal systems to use shared… Continue reading
The Value Lost by Destroying the Public Domain
Rufus Pollock has just posted two important new papers on calculating the size of and ‘value’ the EU Public Domain. They answer the question: what do we loose by extending copyright thoughtlessly? Commentary by Mike Masnick at TechDirt: “The main assumption is often that there’s no “cost” to keeping works protected by copyright. In fact… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens interviewed on blog radio by Yvette Dubel
About the context of this interview, by interviewer Ms. Dubel: “I have become increasingly interested in the implications of his work in the transformation of organizations in the face of the level of innovation needed to address our current challenges.” *After the advertising ends playing and the interview audio loads in, fast-forward to the 15th… Continue reading
Towards open money that is specifically designed for peer production, and not for the traditional economy
Excerpted from Alan Rosenblith: “There is an often unspoken assumption for many of us in the currency design world that good currency design is what gets people to behave in new and more sustainable ways. In essence, if you can get enough people to participate in a well designed currency, their behaviors will be incentivized… Continue reading
Follow us on Twitter
We just set up a new twitter account, @P2P_Foundation so follow us if you are 140 character-inclined. We hope at least to get Michel reporting while he is on the move so you can reach him in near real-time.
Towards a Convergence of Free and Slow Culture in Global Relocalisation, based on a Common Change in Values
“In this paper, I investigate the ethics, principles, and activities of both geek and green communities of practice, and the practical and political issues they face. I hope to shed light on what the free culture and slow culture movements can learn from each other, and how they can work in synergy towards free, co-operative,… Continue reading
Case study on the Wikihow business and community “mission enterprise” model
The text below concludes our treatment of Mayo Fuster Morell‘s excellent paper on the Mission Enterprise Model of infrastructure provision to online communities, which represents a new breed of companies where profit is subsumed to the higher ethical goal of constructing autonomous communities. For the original paper, go here. Compare the Wikihow model below to… Continue reading
Book of the Week (2): which postnational identities in the network era?
* Book: From Nations to Networks. by David de Ugarte, Pere Quintana, Enrique Gomez, and Arnau Fuentes. As we indicated last Monday, this is very important and foundational book, that I strongly urge the P2P community to read!! In our second and last presentation, we focus on post-national identities and why they can’t be based… Continue reading
Social media, broadening empathy, and activism
Excerpted from one of the more interesting responses to Malcolm Gladwell’s article that the revolution won’t be tweeted. Below a must see video from Stefana Broadbent showing the link between social media and increasing intimacy. Maria Popova: “Online communities broaden our scope of empathy. (The digital anthropologist Stefana Broadbent has done some interesting work in… Continue reading
Beyond alternative currencies: towards asymmetric account systems for gift-based markets
I am finding myself increasingly surprised and dismayed at proponents of alternative currency who propose and promote systems that fundamentally offer very little change from our current system. In most cases these “alternatives” are simply non-governmental versions of the same transactional-scarcity model. The majority of innovation occurring currently is in inherently abundant informational goods and… Continue reading
Introductory Animation to Complementary Currencies
Well-done two part explanation of the advantages of using alternate currencies: Part One: Creating Our Own Money: Introduction Part Two: Creating Our Own Money: Examples
Phyles for platforms: Comparing the Corporate and the Mission Enterprise Model for the infrastructure provision of online communities
The mission enterprise model represents that profitability is not against community autonomous empowerment … while for mission enterprises the commons is the mission and the profit is the means, in corporations, the profit is the goal and the commons merely a byproduct. * Paper: Commercial providers of infrastructure for collective action online. Case studies comparison:… Continue reading
Why are neoliberal myths still dominating EU policymaking?
A number of French economists has started a signup campaign to the “Manifesto of the appalled economists”. It’s one of the best deconstructionos of the destructive neoliberal myth-making that I have seen published. It contains an explanation of “10 pseudo “obvious facts”, 22 measures to drive the debate out of the dead end.” The full… Continue reading
Governance issues between community and organization in Wikipedia and Creative Commons
The general question we are addressing is: How do organizations in digital information economy manage the boundaries to related focal communities? * Paper: Managing Boundaries between Organizations and Communities: Comparing Creative Commons and Wikimedia. Paper prepared for the 3rd Free Culture Research Conference, October 8-9, 2010, Berlin. By Leonhard Dobusch and Sigrid Quack. As far… Continue reading
Mitchell Tseng on Shanzai and Open Manufacturing
Mitchell Tseng has published a report on the Chinese Shanzai system as Open Manufacturing using Open Innovation The “Open Innovation” report is available as a scan at http://mass-customization.blogs.com/files/tseng-2010-open-manufacturing.pdf Here is a commentary from Frank Piller at the Mass Customization blog: “Before, the term open manufacturing often has been connected to the community of people that… Continue reading