According to Postrank, these are the ‘best’ articles which appeared in 2011: – 2021: the tipping point for peer to peer banking and government taxation – Slavoj Zizek on cloud computing as corporate enclosure of the ‘general intellect’ – Franz Hörmann on the End of Money – Open Source Ecology Brochure – From Open Business… Continue reading
Date archives "May 2011"
John Perry Barlow tells it straight to the G8: Innovation needs to be freed
John Perry Barlow used the eG8 to demolish IP monopolies claims. Other internet advocates backed up the critique of the repressive approach proposed by Sarkozy, see below. Excerpt: “Barlow was a late addition to a panel on intellectual property; his name wasn’t even included on the schedule. But he accepted the invitation even as colleagues… Continue reading
Police Violence Dismantling Barcelona Camp #spanishrevolution #acampadabcn #yeswecamp
Another great round up by Amaia Arcos: [View the story “Police Violence Dismantling Barcelona Camp #spanishrevolution #acampadabcn #yeswecamp” on Storify]
Launch of the School of Commoning in London
Full announcement from Mark Jagdev, one of the co-founders, is here. The website of the school is here. Excerpted from the announcement: “George Por, Anna Betz, myself and others have co-founded the School of Commoning as an online and offline forum for commons education based in London. We have established ourselves as a Community Interest… Continue reading
Smári McCarthy: Traditional free speech rights are obsolete, towards the IMMI approach
The dream team of free speech regulations, as envisaged by the IMMI project:
Book of the Week (3): Towards an interconnected Collaborative Civilization
* Book / Report: Fast Thinking. a Research and Education Network Renaissance. Gordon Cook. Volume XIX, No.s 11-12, XX, No.s 1-5 February – August 2011 (To receive the URL for downloading the entire book,(twenty dollars US via paypal) fill out the request here) Gordon Cook, who is the driver of a network of communications infrastructure… Continue reading
Bringing the political economy back into the city
An interesting short essay by Columbia U., New York U. and LSE professor Saskia Sassen published at openDemocracy on May the 4th: It’s 2030. Governments are poor and in hock to big banks. The urban poor and the impoverished urban middle classes in rich countries have had to scramble to survive . Bit by bit… Continue reading
Twitter’s increasing enclosures
Twitter, which has been a very open system, will increasingly become one where the important interactions are controlled by the company.* For-profit companies owning and developing communication platforms always comes at a price. They need openness to attract users, but need to enclose to capture scarce market value. Ben Brooks describes recent going-ons at Twitter:… Continue reading
Urbanism as hacking: the digital generation’s tactical urbanism
“What if saving a rundown city wasn’t about building expensive new infrastructure — hardware, so to speak — but instead reprogramming the existing infrastructure? …Changing the software of the place? Nimble, flexible approaches to improving the urban environment are emerging all over the United States — the Better Block projects that started in Dallas, the… Continue reading
Media dynamics in TV vs Twitter: “Twitter news curation is the anti-playstation for wars”
I propose that Twitter and social media curated-news distribution is quite different compared with traditional news dissemination through television. Twitter-curated news often puts us at bayonet distance to others –human, immediate and visceral– while television puts us on a jet flying 20,000 feet above the debris –impersonal, distant and unmoved. Interesting meditation excerpted from Zeynep… Continue reading
Can Ripple credit routing develop into an actual currency?
The world of alternative currencies is abuzz right now with discussions of the pros and cons of Bitcoin, a peer-based currency that is being “mined” using the capability of computers to solve a complex mathematical problem. A good summation of the discussions is on Quora, in the different answers to the question: Is the cryptocurrency… Continue reading
Online and blended learning is NOT automated delivery of facts, and NOT less work for teachers
A warning from Howard Rheingold, which first appeared as a Facebook ‘note’: “I’m disturbed by the hype about online learning as a “disruptive” force in education. I started reading Clay Christensen’s book with enthusiasm, because I like his ideas about disruptive innovation, but was jaw-droppingly disenthused when it became clear that he thought online learning… Continue reading
Spanish Protest Movement Beyond Ruling Party Defeat
Amaia Arcos posted this on Monday after the Spanish election resulted in a huge defeat for the ruling Socialist party: [View the story “Spanish Protest Movement Beyond Ruling Party Defeat” on Storify]
The Sony Effect: Information War and Class Struggle 3.0
In his dense but incredibly good “Hacker Manifesto“, McKenzie Wark posited a new class struggle between the class of vectoral capitalists, vs. the hacker class. (this is different from my own theory of netarchical capital vs. peer producers, but nevertheless related). I’ve been following such conflicts closely via a specialized tag in Delicious. But there… Continue reading
Book of the Week (2): Gordon Cook on the need to understand and strengthen the vital Global Research Networks
* Book / Report: Fast Thinking. a Research and Education Network Renaissance. Gordon Cook. Volume XIX, No.s 11-12, XX, No.s 1-5 February – August 2011 (To receive the URL for downloading the entire book,(twenty dollars US via paypal) fill out the request here) Gordon Cook, who is the driver of a network of communications infrastructure… Continue reading
The dark euphoria of the next ten years
Bruce Sterling is in a very dark mood here, but it’s hard to dispute his summary of the hard years confronting young people today. It’s a long talk but worth sticking with. If the embed function does not work, go here to watch it. Video: