I heard quite a few unhappy reactions to the Drumbeat Festival, from p2p sympathizers in Barcelona, but this may be due to the cultural clash between the customary optimism of can-do U.S. participants and a more cautious European culture? (disclaimer: I was invited at the last minute in a quite convoluted process, but declined due… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2010"
Managing the Commons: Voluntary cooperation and monitoring lead to success
via PhysOrg According to the standard prediction, in which each individual follows only his own interests, large-scale cooperation is impossible because free riders enjoy common benefits without bearing the cost of their provision. Yet, extensive field evidence indicates that many communities are able to manage their commons, albeit with varying degrees of success. How do… Continue reading
The Self-Repair Manifesto
The struggle for a Berlin Riverbank Commons
A short note from Bertram Niessen summarizing recent struggles in Berlin: “Berlin witnessed a huge mobilization against the urban renewal plans for the Spree river in the last years, Media Spree Versenken (take a look also at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediaspree#Protests). Basically, the city council approved a plan for the transformation of parts of the Spree in an… Continue reading
An assessment of the International Commons Conference in Berlin: year zero of a global political/policy-oriented commons movement
Here is my assessment of the International Commons Conference held in Berlin, at the start of the month: With the Commons Strategies Group (David. Bollier, Silke.Helfrich,, Bea Busaniche, and myself) and associates from the Heinrich Boll Foundation (Heike.Loeschmann) and E5 (Julio Lambing), as well as a host of enthusiastic volunteers of a support committee, the… Continue reading
Response to Brian Davey of Feasta: How Immaterial Abundance can assist a Steady State Economy
Michel Bauwens: Brian Davey has written a very stimulating text, published here yesterday, which warns of equating the abundance of immaterial culture with the abundance of material production. This is a very important argument, with which we basically agree. Nevertheless, I also believe that Brian Davey fails to see the importance of immaterial abundance in… Continue reading
Wikileaks, the New Network News Ecology, and the Super-Empowered Individual
Good insights in a Metamute article. Excerpts from Felix Stalder: 1. “WikiLeaks is one of the defining stories of the internet, which means by now, one of the defining stories of the present, period. At least four large-scale trends which permeate our societies as a whole are fused here into an explosive mixture whose fall-out… Continue reading
The ‘Capitalist’ Commons as Plan B to save the system from fundamentalist neoliberalism?
In an extensive essay, George Caffentzis thinks we must be weary of commons that are conceived as saving the system of capital from fundamentalist neoliberalism, and believes we must learn to distinguish between ‘capitalist commons’ and ‘anti-capitalist commons’. The essay examines the Zapatistas, Live8 and the Hobohemia Commons of the 30’s as case studies helping… Continue reading
Brian Davey: Beware of Fake Abundance
My conclusion is that, to talk about abundance is a very misleading message. Commons have much to offer us – sharing ideas without intellectual property constraints will help us, sharing scarce production and energy and pooling production arrangement and infrastructures will too, sharing may bring us into human relationships with many psychological and emotional rewards…. Continue reading
James Quilligan on Cap and Rent for Climate Change
From a commons perspective, the narrowing of climate policy to tradable permits and taxes presents us with false choices, reflecting a profound dichotomy in the Market State: an epistemological confusion between price and value. Carbon trading and taxation both adhere to the behaviorist/structuralist principle that truth can be found only in people’s language and behavior—not… Continue reading
Distributed Manufacturing Milestone, or Hula Hoop?
John Robb reports what he regards as a breakthrough: a micromanufacturing start-up that makes a piece of plastic for mounting an iPhone on a tripod. Jeff Vail has wondered, in the past, when micromanufacturing will break out of its current ghetto of making trinkets and stuff for niche markets, and instead produce “primary goods.” This… Continue reading
Towards open source place-making
How to deliver a Big Society – a place that acts as a catalyst to and inspires grassroots local activism – in the most bureaucratic, statist and controlled public space of them all: the built environment? Here’s one answer: ‘open source’ place-making. This is an approach to urban development that centres on the making of… Continue reading
Critical Art Ensemble on the import of garage biology today
Steve Kurtz interviewed by Alessandro Delfanti: The Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of artists and activists based in the USA that work on the boundaries between science, technology and radical politics. In 2004 Steve Kurtz, one of the members of CAE, was arrested by the FBI under the charge of bioterrorism after the… Continue reading
Felix Stalder: Opposing the Cultural Flatrate
At the recent Free Culture Forum in Barcelona, which I attented, the cultural flatrate was the central polemical topic. Most attendees, such as Peter Sunde of the Pirate Bay, seemed opposed. Here’s one of the voices opposing the flatrate taxation proposal. Felix Stalder: “One of the main themes of the discussion was the culture flatrate… Continue reading
Public domain healthcare campaigns vs. patent-based healthcare campaigns: contrasting Polio (success) with AIDS (failure)
This Land Is Our Land is about what Bollier describes as “one of the great explored dramas of our time: the epic struggle between the marketplace and the commons.” And as the footage in the film—of paralyzed children, of AIDS sufferers literally wasting away—makes forcefully clear, that struggle is not just the material for theoretical… Continue reading
Be Love > Do Good > Have Everything : on the difference between neutralists and synergists
A contribution by Timothy Wilken, MD: *What do I mean by the phrase to Have Everything? It is simple really, if you choose to BE unconditional LOVE, if you choose to DO only GOOD, then you can TRUST that others will choose to insure that you HAVE EVERYTHING that you want and need. Within a… Continue reading