Excerpted from a discussion by Rob Goodspeed: Rob Goodspeed: “In an incisive article on the subject last year, Tarleton Gillespie analyzed how the word “platform” was used by major players like Flickr, YouTube, and Google. (I mentioned his article previously but will summarize the thesis here.) In the article, he points out the contradictory ways… Continue reading
Date archives "April 2011"
Social ‘Nutrition’ Labels – Consumers keep an eye on company behavior
Patterned after the nutrition labels we see on many food products, the social ‘nutrition’ labels promoted by Project Label (http://projectlabel.org/) are a way to leverage consumer knowledge to provide an idea of what impact a company’s products are having on personal health, nutrition and safety, the social and community level, and on a planetary, environmental… Continue reading
Every Guest A Host: Inside A Nomad-Base
from Shareable (photo courtesy of John Thackwray) The doorbell rings. “Password please?” buzzes the intercom inside. “Helicopter” they answer outside. Real passwords don’t belong to this place, this game is just another way to check if the person is actually coming for the house, and to see how the new visitor might respond. If people say… Continue reading
Copying is not theft
It’s always good to repeat the basics against the onslaught of propaganda, Thank you Nina Paley, for this wonderful little video:
Russian Wildfires, Crisis Mapping, and the role of peer-governed social networks in areas of limited statehood
Patrick Meier relates a conference presentation by Gregory Asmolov on the role of ICT usage by communities in the case of state failures. Read the whole article here. The context: “I recently had the distinct pleasure of participating in a fascination workshop on “Information and Communication Technology in Areas of Limited Statehood: A New Form… Continue reading
Spiritual self-sufficiency vs. interdependent interbeingness
Excerpted from a wonderful article by Charles Eisenstein, whose new book, Sacred Economics, should come out in July 2011: * Article: Why the Age of the Guru is Over. Charles Eisenstein. Reality Sandwich, 2011 Charles Eisenstein: “No human being can hold the guru energy in post-modern society. This is old news – the age of… Continue reading
How Twitter Users Respond to a Crisis
This is really interesting initial research (also see here) looking into the earthquake in New Zealand and how users of social media, in this example Twitter, responded to the crisis. What seems to happen is users turn to social media as a means of self-organisation (information sharing) and self-informing (forwarding news deemed salient): So, this… Continue reading
The Partner State Approach: A First Definition
In my PhD Thesis The Political Economy of Information Production in the Social Web: Towards a “Partner State Approach” (soon to be published), amongst others, I try to provide a first, tentative definition of the concept of Partner State, walking on Bauwens’ thought. The understanding of the Partner State – around which it is attempted… Continue reading
Huffington Post contributions as open source participation
My own take is that yes, people were contributing to the Huffington Post in the knowledge that they would not get paid. But if you are the owner of a platform that profits from free contribution, you have the obligation to practice benefit-sharing towards the community of contributors, and to return at least part of… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens at Re-rooting digital culture – media art ecologies 13/05/11
Michel Bauwens will be taking part in a panel discussion at Re-rooting digital culture – media art ecologies unconference at the University of Westminster, London on Friday 13th May. There are only 60 places, so booking is essential. Info from the event website: Introduction Over the last decade the awareness of anthropogenic climate change has… Continue reading
The peer to peer origins of the medieval university
Interesting historical recall of the origins of the European university system, of which I was unaware, together with reference to a modern reformulation of this experience by José Ortega y Gasset: Kai Hammermeister: “When law students grouped together in Bologna in the 11th century to organize their instruction and to hire their professors, their bottom-to-top… Continue reading
Venessa Miemis’ Open Web Manifesto
Venessa Miemis: “A Manifesto For far too long, we have been asleep — silently accepting the reality presented to us. In this illusion, we are powerless. Conformity and convention have manipulated us into feeling alienated, afraid, and full of despair. Our souls are in agony to connect, be understood, share our inner light, and express… Continue reading
Marcin Jakubowski on open heartware technology as open-sourced blueprints for civilization
A really inspired, must-watch, presentation by Marcin Jakubowski on his Open Source Ecology project. At one point in the presentation I misheard “open hardware”, hence the title, as in a sense, gifting innovation and hardware designs is really an act of love towards humanity. Ted.com writes: “Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing a set of blueprints for… Continue reading
Cory Doctorow and the war against sharing
Max Keiser’s show on Russian Television, and his justified rants against ‘financial terrorism’, are always quite entertaining. In these two episodes, he interviews free speech activist, digital rights advocate, and p2p-oriented science-fiction author Cory Doctorow. Well worth spending your time on. In part one, the interview starts at 25 minutes in the video and discusses… Continue reading
Is “Blue Labour” sufficiently inoculated from Blairite neoliberalism?
In everything I have ever written or done I have criticised the domination of capital and argued for the democratic renewal of the Labour movement to resist its power. That is all I stand for really. Resistance to commodification through democratic organisation. That’s the position. Labour as a radical tradition that pursues the common good…. Continue reading
A business model for peer learning based on complementary currencies
A proposal by Mark Frazier: How ” to promote resilience in his community, especially relating to education? … Some ideas for a sustainable, self-organize learning initiatives. … The approach involves mixing established ingredients – including alternative currencies – in new ways. The key elements are: 1) (Re-)Introduce the founding idea of European universities ( http://j.mp/ijB7Wa… Continue reading