In an article that argues that ChromeOS won’t succeed because it’s role is already fulfilled by iOS and Android, Paul Bucheit makes an important analysis of the current stage of p2p computing. Paul Bucheit: ” The basic idea is that apps and data all live on the Internet, which is has been renamed “The Cloud”… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2010"
The destruction of the universities in the neoliberal age
Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees. We are reproducing an editorial from Terry Eagleton… Continue reading
Discovering Gaza bloggers
Al Jazeera international, which I don’t have easy access to but strikes as the best global TV news broadcasting station available, has an extensive collection of material available for re-use through Creative Commons. Here is an example with documentary material on Gaza bloggers:
Using ‘quantitative easing’ for productive investments instead of unproductive bailouts
Ellen Brown is my favourite monetary and economic analyst, and consistently comes with productive proposals that would make a huge difference for the population at large. This is from a much longer analysis of quantitative easing, which I urge our readers to read in full here. In this excerpt she comes to her conclusion, which… Continue reading
The Commons and the Public
A contribution by Franz Nahrada: “Its hard to say what “commons” exactly is, its rather that we are aware of some elementary facts totally obscured by neoliberal propaganda. Just a few scattered thoughts on this. 1. “Structure” versus “Process”: we have this parallel memes of “commons” versus “solidarity economics” and I tend to think that… Continue reading
Douglas Rushkoff: What Wikileaks tells us about the need for a second, “People’s Internet”
Excerpted from Douglas Rushkoff: “The real lesson of the WikiLeaks affair and subsequent cyberattacks is not how unwieldy the net has become, but rather how its current architecture renders it so susceptible to control from above. It was in one of the leaked cables that China’s State Council Information office delivered its confident assessment that… Continue reading
A status update on the free culture movement in Ireland
An update on Irish developments by our friend Kevin Flanagan: “The local hackerspace is going well there is a nice community of people growing in and around it, a nice mix or artists, tech heads and entrepreneurs. Since the Free Culture Forum I’ve set up a mailing list to support people interested in Free Culture… Continue reading
Is the Commons a anticapitalist concept?
Republished from a 3-party treatment of a George Caffentzis essay on March 4, 2009: George Caffentzis: A Tale of Two Conferences: Globalization, the Crisis of Neoliberalism and Question of the Commons. Earlier, we reviewed his description of the revival of the Commons, and how it is rooted in a long-standing struggle to destroy forms of… Continue reading
Penser les Communs, Michel Bauwens à Berlin: french-language interview on the commons
Though I like public speaking, I usually don’t like to watch myself do it. This French-language video is different, the clarity of the questions, the professionalism of the interviewers and of the editing crew of Remix the Commons created a very clear interview about the topic of the Commons. If you like some insight about… Continue reading
The endangered status of the commons in South Asia
The forces ranged against CPRs are too many and too powerful. Despite recognition of their economic and environmental contributions, the role of CPRs in maintaining and building ‘social capital’ and in providing sustenance to the rural poor has been decreasing in recent decades. Ironically, whereas concern for CPRs is on the increase in terms of… Continue reading
Commons advocate David Bollier launches new blog
David Bollier informs us: “I am thrilled to announce the launch of my new blog/website, www.Bollier.org. It will be the primary showcase for my latest discoveries, adventures and reflections about the commons as I step off in some new directions. I invite you to become a regular reader, get the RSS feed, put me on… Continue reading
An update on the Reenchanted World: the Greening of Religions through Sacred Earth Theology
(republished from May 2010) The paperback version of James William Gibson’s “A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature“, one of our favourite books, is out. Here is some additional information: – an excerpt at Reality Sandwich – a radio interview on the theme of radical gardening here Here’s an excerpt with… Continue reading
Homebrew Industrial Revolution, Chapter Four: Back to the Future
[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. In this case I’m posting only one excerpt from Chapter Four, which is the shortest in the book.] Even with the… Continue reading
The emergence of a libertarian left in the U.S.
Kevin Carson is optimistic that a anti-capitalist free market left is starting to influence the debates in the U.S.. Excerpt: “As modest as Wilkinson’s and Boudreaux’s concessions may seem, I’m convinced that nothing of the sort would have happened ten or fifteen years ago. Back then, such commentary would have passed completely unremarked on in… Continue reading
Google’s “Open Books” are less open than Amazon’s “closed books”
I do blame Google, though, for the way it has conscripted the word “open” for marketing purposes, rendering it meaningless in the process. Nearly every Google product release is accompanied by marketing copy about how Google’s product is more “open” than everybody else’s, and that this “openness” is its key virtue. Sometimes, as in e-books,… Continue reading
WikiLeaks and Network Politics
I feel we’re in the midst of one of those pivotal moments in history where from here onwards, nothing is the same again. Not that now is dramatically different from before – there have been incremental slow and steady changes moving from day to day to get us here. But now is the time when the… Continue reading