John Michael Greer argues that the age for societal reform that can avoid a catastrophe has long past, so small, seemingly doomed projects come into their own: “This is where dissensus and the deliberate encouragement of the eccentric, the improbable and the rejected come into their own. We are far past the point at which… Continue reading
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
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto
Over the past several months, on the kind invitation of Michel Bauwens, I have been serializing chapters from my recently published book The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto. As stated in the product description at Amazon, the book is A history of the rise and fall of Sloanist mass production, and a survey of… 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
Legal challenges to collaborative consumption
Video narrated by Janelle Orsi of the The Sustainable Economies Law Center:
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
Evo Morales on Climate Change
Some statements by the Bolivian president on the occasion of the Cancun climate summit: “On the need to discuss the rights of nature: “In past decades, the United Nations approved human rights, then civil rights, economic and political rights, and finally a few years ago indigenous rights. In this new century, it is time to… Continue reading
Are Social Media Replacing Corporations (and even government?)
Strong thesis by Dan Robles:
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
Against Profit Maximisation
The Roman Empire went under due to the excesses of power maximisation in the hands of a self-divinised elite of Roman emperors, and the Christian reforms may be seen as a civilisational effort to re-embed power into the larger interests of the community and the order of nature. We can argue that capitalism will go… Continue reading
Dwolla enables money transfers through Twitter and Facebook
According to an article on mashable (Send & Receive Money From Twitter & Facebook Friends With Dwolla) if you live in the United States, you can now send money directly to friends on facebook and to people who follow you on Twitter in a very simple and low-cost way. Dwolla (www.dwolla.com) links directly to your… 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
Against Corporate Personhood
we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion Excerpted from Charlie Stross: “The rot set in back in the 19th century, when the US legal system began recognizing corporations as de facto people. Fast forward past the collapse of the ancien regime, and into modern second-wave colonialism: once the USA grabbed the mantle… Continue reading
The end of network neutrality for the mobile internet
Excerpted from a commentary by John Naughton: “On Tuesday, the US Federal Communications Commission, which has the power to set the rules for internet use in the US, issued a ruling which administered the latest kick to the hornets’ nest. In an admirably succinct summary, my Guardian colleague Charles Arthur puts it thus: the FCC… 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