Our new article on the demographics and motivations of an Open Source Hardware (OSH) community, the Finnish eCars – Now! -community, has now been published in First Monday. The study is based on a survey of the community members (conducted in 2010) and subsequent interviews. The demographics of the members of the OSH community resemble… Continue reading
Date archives "May 2011"
Can our civilisation really change?
This meditation by Derrick Jensen answers the questions negatlively: our civilisation will never change and become sustainable. So what do we do? I don’t (necessarily) agree with the ideas presented here, but, it definitely forces us to think:
The ephemeralization of value
Timothy Lee explains why classic measurement schemes like GDP fail to register very real increases in value and innovation: “Official economic indicators are a bad way to measure our generation’s low-hanging fruit. To understand what makes software-powered innovation distinctive, it helps to contrast it with the industrial-age innovations that proceeded it. For most of the… Continue reading
Jan Servaes talks to Vandana Shiva: biodiversity, seed commons, eco-agriculture and social justice
“Dr. Vandana Shiva, named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 7 most-influential women in the world, one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, and coordinator of Navdanya, an Indian movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade (more… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens interviewed on “Culture File”
Luke Clancy spoke to Michel Bauwens ahead of the #mindfield event in Dublin, Ireland. Originally posted on Culture File
Authority and Power within Anonymous
Excerpted from a very interesting analysis of Gabriela Coleman: “Who participates in Anonymous? What connects the different faces? Where and how does authority lie, pool, and disperse? Technically, Anonymous is open to all and erects no formal barriers to participation. However there are forms of tacit and explicit knowledge, skills, and sympathies that lead some people… Continue reading
Thinking about corporate internet platforms, their politics, and the commons
This is an interview I had forgotten about, but I believe explains quite well the contradictions at work within corporate platforms. This is a good background for the Platform Politics conference taking place May 11 to 13 in Cambridge.
Michel Bauwens Interviewed by Furtherfield
Excerpted from an interview conducted for Furtherfield, by Lawrence Bird on 17/12/2010 It’s a commonplace now that the peer-to-peer movement opens up new ways of creating relating to others. But you’ve explored the implications of P2P in depth, in particular its social and political dimensions. If I understand right, for you the phenomenon represents a… Continue reading
MondoNet, a global wireless mesh network
According to an article in ITWire A team from Rutgers University is trying to create the next generation version of the Internet, dubbed MondoNet, based on a global mesh of wireless access points that would be resistant to surveillance and state censorship and control. The head of the project, Aram Sinnreich, is an assistant professor… Continue reading
The gradual disappearance of open wireless networks is a tragedy of the commons
Excerpted from a call to arms from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “Stories like the one over the weekend about a bunch of police breaking down an innocent man’s door because he happened to leave his network open, as well as general fears about slow networks and online privacy, are convincing many people to password-lock their… Continue reading
From self-directed to networked-directed learning
Excerpted from George Siemens: “Self-directed learning has a long research and philosophical tradition. Malcolm Knowles figures prominently in discussions, but roots go back to Dewey, and even further, to humanist philosophers. While connectivism begins with the individual, it stresses the growth of connections and connectedness in learning and knowledge. Self-directed learning explains the attributes of… Continue reading
Games Go to War
DARPA – the US agency who makes weapons and stuff, are taking the non-game area of submarine design, and gamifying it. The aim is to crowd-source information on the subject, via a game: DARPA wants you to help it develop better anti-submarine warfare tactics and it has designed a sub-hunting computer game it wants you to… Continue reading
Everything Open and Free: A model for Hacking Everything
Michel Bauwens will be speaking about “Everything Open and Free: A model for Hacking Everything” on 08 May · 12:30 – 14:00 Exchange Dublin, Exchange Street Upper, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland Sign up for free here This is the last in the current season of Knowledge lectures, it will be presented by Michel… Continue reading
Franz Hörmann on the End of Money
In the Keimform blog, Stefan Meretz introduces an excellent video interview from Wien TV of Franz Hörmann, who explains the ‘illusion’ of contemporary money as a ‘separate’ substance, and wants to replace it by simple accounting units that record exchange. In the blog, Stefan Meretz also attempts to refute such theses. Both points of view… Continue reading
Trusts Today (2): Turning failing newspapers into publicly owned trusts?
Excerpted from David Bollier: “That’s the template that we ought to be exploring more aggressively: converting vital private businesses into public trusts that legally and financially belong to the public. Just look at how the St. Petersburg Times has prospered under just such an arrangement. Upon his death in 1978, the paper’s owner, Nelson Poynter,… Continue reading
New Book: “The Why and How of Open Education – With lessons from the openSE and openED Projects”
From Andreas Meiszner: This UNU Book on ‘The Why and How of Open Education’ is an introduction to Open Education (OE), giving practical guidance on the design and delivery of OE courses while wrestling with theoretical considerations of this new and emerging domain. Educators are the main targets, but it will also be relevant to… Continue reading