Date archives "November 2010"

An interview with Isaac Mao on the concretisation of Sharism in China

Sharism, broadly speaking, is an ideology that attempts to reconcile the sometimes idealistic cultures of open source and new media theory with the tech business community, creating viable options for both content sharing and progressive models of profitability. Expanding on a conception of “cloud intelligence” that he has presented previously in several exhibitions and essays,… Continue reading

An update on the maker movement in Africa: Interview with Mark Grimes

This panorama (of the maker movement) is extremely exciting, but it’s entirely based on north-american and european perspectives. What the makers are, what they do and what are their motivations is mainly defined within the boundaries of needs, wishes and imageries of rich countries. Digicult publishes a very interesting interview with Mark Grimes, on the… Continue reading

Beyond State Capitalism: The Commons Economy in our Lifetimes

Great and clear text by James Bernard Quilligan: “In considering the essential problem of how to produce and distribute material wealth, virtually all of the great economists in Western history have ignored the significance of the commons — the shared resources of nature and society that people inherit, create and utilize. Despite sharp differences in… Continue reading

Filesharing has stimulated innovation and creativity, says new research

Has file-sharing helped society? Looked at from the narrow perspective of existing record labels, the question must seem absurd; profits have dropped sharply in the years since tools like Napster first appeared. But a pair of well-known academics argue peer-to-peer file sharing has weakened copyright in the US… and managed to benefit all of us… Continue reading

Q & A with Douglas Rushkoff on taking control of our tech

Following last week’s excerpt of Douglas Rushkoff’s new book Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for the Digital Age, we follow with a Q&A with the author, featuring questions from Shareable’s community of contributors and advisors. On Wednesday, October 13 and Thursday, October 14, we invite our wider community of readers to engage with Rushkoff… Continue reading

Hilary Wainwright on the fakeness of the Big Society

From a right-on editorial in the Guardian. For Hilary’s extensive work on P2P Public Services, see here. The original article has extra links and references. Hilary Wainwright: “David Cameron has invited us to “join the government of Britain”. He pledges to put us into “the driving seat, to take the decisions that affect the life… Continue reading

Economies of the Commons 2 – Paying the costs of making things free

Economies of the Commons 2 Paying the costs of making things free International conference, seminar and public evening programs Amsterdam & Hilversum November 11 – 13, 2010 Economies of the Commons 2  is a critical examination of the economics of on-line public domain and open access resources of  information, knowledge, and media (the “digital commons”)…. Continue reading

China’s ‘networked authoritarianism’

I came across a blog post by Rebecca MacKinnon, a journalist, free speech activist, expert on Chinese Internet censorship and co-founder of Global Voices Online. “… China is pioneering what I call “networked authoritarianism.” Compared to classic authoritarianism, networked authoritarianism permits – or shall we say accepts the Internet’s inevitable consequences and adjusts – a… Continue reading

The importance of community trust in the new neighborhood sharing systems

This interesting comment was written by Shelby Clark, the President of RelayRides, a peer to peer based carsharing system: “If there’s one major media outlet that has continued to “get” the shift towards collaborative consumption (the move from hyper-consumption towards shared ownership that RelayRides is a big part of), it’s The Economist. This week they’ve… Continue reading

New Book: The Telecommunist Manifesto by Dmytri Kleiner

* Book: The Telekommunist Manifesto. Dmytri Kleiner. Institute for Network Cultures, 2010 Dmytri Kleiner’s new book is available for download via http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/%233notebook_telekommunist.pdf From the Publisher’s Description: ” In the age of international telecommunications, global migration and the emergence of the information economy, how can class conflict and property be understood? Drawing from political economy and… Continue reading