Update : Minister Mary Hanafin denies changes to copyright laws http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/20588-hanafin-denies-changes-to-c Please sign this Letter in response to the announced amendments to Irish Copyright law In response to the announcement of statutory amendments to Irish Copyright law that threaten Irish peoples privacy online Saor Cultur Eire (Free Culture Ireland) have penned the following letter in… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2011"
Towards Iconomics: the Creative Currencies projects in Latin America
Whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues,… Continue reading
Prospects for a leaderless revolution in the U.S.A.
In a recent analysis of the Egyptian protests by Horace Campbell, he identifies the most important characteristics of these “21st century revolutions”: 1. The revolutions are made by ordinary people independent of vanguard parties and self-proclaimed revolutionaries; 2. They are network-based and are developing innovative tools and technologies to foster autonomous, horizontal, and cooperative networks;… Continue reading
Why the Wikileaks backlash is futile
Excerpted from a new book by Micah Sifry: Book: Micah Sifry. WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency. ORBooks, 2011 “Here’s why the anti-WikiLeaks backlash is futile. The transparency movement is not going away. Today, the wall between powerful elected officials and the people they want to represent has started to come down. In America, political… Continue reading
Social media and social revolution: the great debate
From Al Jazeera, a great debate on the key role of social media in recent uprisings. The first nine minutes are an overview of recent events:
The three most valuable, common sense, conclusions about social media and politics
Reproduced and excerpted from a conference report by Michael Brooks. Don’t miss my comment and the added remark by Allison Powell below. And the embedded video interview with Clay Shirky listed at bottom is well worth watching. Michel Brooks: “1. Technology has always been a factor in social movements. From pamphlets to fax machines, activists… Continue reading
The great stagnation? Or: why internet productivity gains have been demonetized
Most of the economic growth during the Internet era has been largely unmonetized, i.e. external to the measurable market. This is most obvious for completely free services like Craig’s List, Wikipedia, many blogs, open source software, and many other services based on content input by users. But ad-funded Internet services also usually create a much… Continue reading
A Critique of the Abstraction and “Numbers Only” Approach of Mainstream Economists
(republished from December 2008) Steve Talbott, of the Nature Institute, (dedicated to neo-Goethean ‘wholistic’ science approaches) is a very thoughtful author on technology, who publishes a stimulating newsletter called Netfuture. In the December issue, he reflects on the meltdown and what has been wrong with the justifications of the economists. Here’s only the introduction. The… Continue reading
Towards a Distributed Internet
Douglas Rushkoff recently announced ContactCon in October, 2011 ( following up on his post http://shareable.net/blog/the-evolution-will-be-socialized ). Now, Venessa Miemis, in collaboration with Paul B. Hartzog, Richard C. Adler, and Sam Rose of the Future Forward Institute http://futureforwardinstitute.com , are working to facilitate a series of dialogues, starting with the following question: “What are the fundamental… Continue reading
Building a new education system, from the p2p ground up …
Another great video from Michael Wesch, how would you build a new education system, from the ground up, knowing what we know today? Michael “is back with a new video called “Rethinking Education,” a montage that pulls together sound bites of thought leaders (Tim O’Reilly, Yochai Benkler, Brewster Kahle, Ray Kurzweil, etc.) describing how technology… Continue reading
The ‘Inside Out’ Open Mesh Network
Shareable reported, in a recent post, on Open Mesh, an ultra low cost, zero configuration mesh network solution. The Open Mesh philosophy is to build simple, self-configuring mesh networks that can spread an internet connection throughout a complex of buildings or a neighborhood without any hassle of adjusting antennas or configuring the net. There is… Continue reading
New funding mechanisms for the P2P movement(s)
Though addressed to the ‘progressive movement’ in general, these comments apply to p2p efforts as well. Our p2p friend Suresh Fernando is involved as well, see below. If you like what you read below, please help crowdfund that project here. Excerpted from Joe Brewer: “If we are to build our capacity for the long haul,… Continue reading
Open Government vs Open Governance
By Maya Nair, based on work of Dan Bevarly: On a humble attempt to deciphere the theme of this week’s discussions, I stumbled upon http://www.aheadofideas.com/?p=590 written by Dan Bevarly which I later realised was also mentioned in one of the forums. I found it to be an easy read and decided to visualize the content… Continue reading
Background on the anti-freecultural policies of the new Brazilian Minister of Culture, Ana de Hollanda
Via Volker Ralf Grassmuck: From what we know about Ana de Hollanda so far, she is void of any political vision. There is also no indication that she is grasping the fundamental transition of culture in the digital revolution that she would have to steer her country through; of the potential it holds for education… Continue reading
Preferential attachment in p2p networks: is that really the issue?
In a much cited blogpost, Zeynep Tufekci had warned that p2p networks, such as those responsible for the Egyptian uprising, can quickly lead to the consolidation of new hierarchies, through for example the workings of the law of preferential attachment: “Preferential attachment means that a network exhibiting this dynamic can quickly transform from a flat,… Continue reading
Dakar: the alterglobalization movement and the commons
Silke Helfrich has a more extensive report from the Dakar World Social Forum, read it here. She concludes her report by referring to the increased recognition of the commons, and predicts that the next Forum may well adopt it as integrating framework: “At the World Social Forum in Dakar the commons were not yet discussed… Continue reading