Reflection on the three commons: from the digital commons to the common stock commons Most readers will be familiar with two types of commons, which have often been discussed. The first commons is the natural commons, consisting of all that nature and the cosmos has given us, without any human effort, through humanity may be… Continue reading
Date archives "May 2011"
Mark Pesce on the Promises and Pitfalls of a Sharing Society
I haven’t yet experienced a talk by Mark Pesce that wasn’t illuminating. This lecture is aimed at a general audience and focuses on deep social changes accompagnying the networked society, in particular the shift to sharing, in particular on how it affects daily life and habits. Watch this video:
Why is Open Hardware inherently sustainable?
Reflections on the role of Open Hardware and Peer Production in insuring a sustainable world In this article, I want to list the reasons why I believe that the trend towards open and distributed manufacturing is a vital part of ensuring a sustainable society. For those that are not familiar with it, open hardware is… Continue reading
Rethinking taxes and welfare in a cryptocurrency world
Cryptocurrency is coming. It could be Bitcoin, it could be something else, it could be a new trading framework that incorporates many cryptocurrencies. The important thing is that in a decade’s time, governments will have lost the ability to look into their citizens’ wealth and income. This, in turn, means that no taxation or welfare… Continue reading
Mushin Schilling on sharing vs. the Cartesian fallacy of separation
Excerpted from a wonderful meditation by Mushin Schilling in the Spring/Summer issue of Kosmos Journal: “Sharing is natural and it does have direction. But before this becomes a naturally dominant part of our culture, we might first have to let go of the Cartesian myth. We might need to see through the erroneous belief that… Continue reading
Peer production in art
I would like to share my experience of an art project taking place in Greece of which I am a core member. This project, to my knowledge, is one of the first projects in the country -and perhaps one could say, one of the first worldwide- which simultaneously combines three different forms of human expression,… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Gordon Cook’s Report on the Core Global Research Networks in their relation to the edge
As a more ambitious goal, I am seeking to establish whether or not there can be a community-of-interest between the high-end research groups and a rapidly growing grassroots “edge”. These are efforts of small communities of mostly younger people located currently at the edges of twentieth century, large, corporate-based society. * Book / Report: Fast… Continue reading
Constructing, living, and demanding Participatory Democracy in the #spanishrevolution Camps
‘We, the unemployed, the underpaid, the subcontracted, the precarious, the young … demand a change towards a future with dignity. We are fed up of reforms, of being laid off, of the banks which have caused the crisis hardening our mortgages or taking away our houses, of laws limiting our freedom in the interest of… Continue reading
#spanishrevolution – Conceptual Map of #acampadasol Madrid
From Una Linea Sobre el Mar – click here for full version
The #spanishrevolution’s Icelandic moment: Message from Hordur Torfason to the protesters in Spain
“When we grow up, we want to be Icelanders!” Hordur Torfason, whose protests in Reykjavik led to the current situation in Iceland, has sent this message of support to protesters in Spain. (In English with Spanish subtitles). For more background on the relationship between Iceland and the Spanish movements, read Spain’s Icelandic revolt Some background… Continue reading
G8 vs. Internet
From the G8vsInternet campaign: The Internet is the place where we meet, speak, create, educate ourselves and organize. However, as we are at a turning point in early web history, it could either become a prime tool for improving our societies, knowledge and culture, or a totalitarian tool of suveillance and control. After 15 years… Continue reading
Analysis of the May 15 movement in Spain
the 15thMay Movement reveals that far from being the passive agents that so many analysts take them to be, citizens have been able to organise themselves in the midst of a profound crisis of political representation and institutional abandonment. The new generations have learned how to shape the web, creating new ways of “being together”,… Continue reading
Al Jazeera’s Network Revolution: a timeline and account of the cyberwar accompagnying the Arab uprisings
Worth watching for its timeline of the not so visible digital side of the struggles:
Wikipedia as an Epistemological Revolution: from individualist expert to collaborative knowledge
Excerpted from Maria Bustillos: 1. “Wikipedia is the foreshock of an epistemological earthquake to rival the one set rumbling by Johannes Gutenberg ca. 1439. Bob Stein, founder and co-director of the Institute for the Future of the Book (and co-founder, in 1984, of the Criterion Collection company) has been writing persuasively in this vein about… Continue reading
The Sangham seed and p2p lending movement in India
Farmers are “misled” into believing the promise that the high-input, chemical-intensive, single-crop agriculture of the so-called “green revolution” is their salvation, he says. So when it fails, they end up trapped in a debt spiral that too often leads to despair and suicide. “Those that say that the green revolution will save the world should… Continue reading
An alliance between labor and enterpreneurs
I’ve argued repeatedly that social change is dependent on finding the right form of alliance between peer producers, and workers generally, and real enterpreneurs. In the U.S. heartland, this seems to be happening, as documented in the Washington Monthly. There is a lot of fine analysis in this article by Barry C. Lynn, which I… Continue reading