* Book: NEO IN WONDERLAND – A Tale of Money That Changed Our Future”. By Kenji Saito. From the author, “Last year, I published a Sci-Fi fantasy novel to illustrate the goal of my research, as a sequel to Prof. Jun Murai’s book about the Internet for children. I have translated the novel into English,… Continue reading
Date archives "January 2011"
Book of the Week (2): What is the Nature of Freedom in A2K demands?
* Book: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property. by Gaelle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski (eds.). Zone Books, 2010 This book takes as its subject this new field of activism and advocacy and the new political and conceptual conflicts occurring in the domain of intellectual property. In this second and last excerpt, co-editor… Continue reading
The Play Ethic, Ten Years After
Our friend Pat Kane reflects on 10 years after the launch of his work on The Play Ethic. Pat Kane: “There’s nothing like the tenth anniversary of your own cultural meme to help you mark the passage of time. My Observer magazine cover article on The Play Ethic, titled “Play For Today”, first appeared on… Continue reading
The Solidarity Economy in Japan: a status report
* Article: Japan’s Lost Decades and a Women-led Socio-Solidarity Economy. Yoko Kitazawa at ASEF II Tokyo November 2009 From the Solidarity Economy website, By Yoko Kitazawa, Asian Alliance for Solidarity Economy, an excerpt with 3 case studies: “In Japan, we can find the solidarity economy in the practices of the daily lives of people and… Continue reading
Community Resilience in Detroit: out of the ashes comes opportunity
Read this wonderful reportage from Detroit, where a new way of life is being born. “Within 15 minutes I had the numbers of young entrepreneurs and people starting their own non profits, as well as established nonprofit and foundation types. When I expressed how overwhelming her kind gesture to a complete stranger was she said,… Continue reading
Douglas Rushkoff calls for new ‘true’ internet
Douglas Rushkoff, in Shareable magazine, calls for abandoning the internet and the construction of a new one. I must disagree that it is an either/or proposition. Yes, indeed, the current internet infrastructure has become corporatized and is under the control of censoring governments, but unlike fully centralized media with one point of access, the internet… Continue reading
Towards a productive use of sociopathy: money and social change
Over the last century, the varied forms of cultural and social rebellion were neutralized by being co-opted — yet in this process society also changed and adapted. Mass society integrated the human liberation movements of the last centuries into the fabric of daily life, on many levels. To stay relevant, the corporate marketers and cultural… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property (1)
* Book: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property. by Gaelle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski (eds.). Zone Books, 2010 This book takes as its subject this new field of activism and advocacy and the new political and conceptual conflicts occurring in the domain of intellectual property. Our first excerpt is below, after the… Continue reading
Martin Pedersen’s analysis of Yochai Benker as advocate of a capitalist commonism
An excerpt from the thesis of J. Martin Pedersen: Property, Commoning and the Politics of Free Software. J. Martin Pedersen: ““We have seen how Benkler’s work contributes to an expansion of the economistic framework that enables it to better capture the dynamics of social production. These social relations he defines as outside the market and… Continue reading
A critique of ‘realistic pessimism’
A contribution from Eric Harris-Braun: “The power and awesomeness of where we are now, the pure raw potential is massive and unprecedented, and is proven by the enormous amount of waste, of all kinds, that we are generating. This power and potential is real. The limits of peak oil, and the limited capacity of our… Continue reading
A reply to Eric Harris-Braun’s critique of collapsism, by Brian Davey of Feasta
Brian Davey responds to yesterday’s excerpt: “So, Eric Harris Braun doesn’t like the word “collapse” because “to call what’s happening now a “collapse” I think keeps us from stepping into the very “myriad opportunities it presents,” because it keeps us thinking in the old way. If instead we conceive ourselves as part of a living… Continue reading
Arduino, the documentary, is out
Well done, well worth seeing, with all the protaganist of this world-changing project: Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.
Last Mile Meshwork Cooperatives
There is a movement just starting up – it is not very well developed yet – that has as its vision the establishment of an independent layer of connectivity between end users, by means of directly networking (mesh network) Wifi or similar wireless connections. The connectivity layer is owned by users, who form a cooperative which… Continue reading
The dangers of reductionism in network theories
intricate networks are subject to chaotic storms and sudden, violent collapse; but such emergent behaviours cannot be understood apart from the political economy of capital, and the specific ideologies of neo-liberalism that power them The argument and the examples are to0 complex to summarize and quote from here, but I recommend the reading of Sean… Continue reading
Clay Shirky on changing forms of Hierarchy & Leadership
Clay Shirky talks about the newly emerging organizational advantages of group leadership, as opposed to the traditional forms of structural hierarchy from which organizations originally developed:
Wikileaks in the context of the open data / open information movements
Michael Gurstein does not only relate Wikileaks to the open information movements, but also reveals the internal discussions within the Wikileaks community. The original article has links. Very interesting contribution!, excerpt:: “If open data is a necessary element of “open government” then one would expect that open information might be an equally significant component as… Continue reading