Date archives "December 2010"

Recognizing the tangible aspects of the intellectual and cultural internet freedoms: the buy a satellite project

The text below is extracted from a longer critique on the libertarian version of internet rights, which ignores the material basis on which this freedom to share depends. Reacting to a lecture by Steven Kinsella, Malcolm Harris formulates the main critique here: “Kinsella’s idea of scarcity comes down to what can be physically grabbed. So,… Continue reading

How legislation is always linked to transgression

Excerpted from a long and really interesting interview of Yann-Moulier Boutang, conducted by Gaëlle Krikorian , and which appeared in the book: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property. Excerpt: “GK: Until recently, most countries, despite enforcing their own laws protecting intellectual property, were not held to the same standards that are in… Continue reading

Homebrew Industrial Revolution, Chapter Five: The Small Workshop, Desktop Manufacturing, and Household Production (second excerpt)

[Michel Bauwens has kindly invited me to serialize excerpts from my recently published book The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto.  Over the next several weeks, I will post two excerpts from each chapter.] The Expansion of the Desktop Revolution and Peer Production into the Physical Realm. 3.  Reduced Capital Outlays for Physical Production. As… Continue reading

The problem with the Conservative ‘Tory’ Mutualism in the UK

Tories see mutualism as a way to dismantle the state, not to reform business, argues William Davies: “What’s interesting about the swift reframing of the crisis, from a problem of bad private investment to one of bad public spending, is that it has been perfectly mirrored in policy debates about ownership and governance. References to… Continue reading

Kevin Carson responds to Greer’s “End of the Internet” prediction

(republished from July 2010) Digital technology and the network revolution are at the heart of what’s creating the potential for a low-impact, less resource-intensive economy. Green and high-tech are allies against mass production and the mountains of deliberately obsolete goods piling up in our landfills, and against the globalist economic model of truck/containership warehouses linking… Continue reading

Wikileaks as an ‘exploit’ against ‘protocollary power’

The analysis below refers to the following book analyzing the logic of Protocollary Power in networks (i.e. the power of invisible architectures): * The Exploit: A Theory of Networks. Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007 Excerpted from Alison Powell: “Galloway and Thackeray argue that the network is merely a… Continue reading

David Bollier on How NATO Misconstrues the Commons

Excerpted from David Boller: “In September, a group of NATO brass, security analysts and other policy elites held a conference called “Protecting the Global Commons.” Attendees were mostly unknown to us commoners, but they are described as “senior representatives from the EU institutions and NATO, with national government officials, industry, the international and specialised media,… Continue reading