Rowe was a well-known commons activist, being remembered here by his friend David Bollier. Original post written under the title My Friend Jonathan Rowe (1946-2011): An Appreciation. It is rare for a political activist and a poet to cohabit the same body. Rarer still for that strange hybrid to intersect with my life and share… Continue reading
Date archives "May 2011"
Trusts Today (1): Replacing Private Trusts with General Public Trusts
A proposal from the “Holte” blog: (written in a U.S. context but could be applied in other settings as a new public policy mechanism) “Essentially the Public General Trust is given “trusteeship” over a self-funded public function. For example the “Health Care” system could be constituted as a public trust and that would give the… Continue reading
Open Source Ecology Brochure
The official trifold brochure for Open Source Ecology is now available: You can download a ZIP file containing the brochure in GIMP or Photoshop and jpg format. There are 2 pages, front and back. If you are printing these, make sure that you use the Rockwell font, which is also included in the download. As… Continue reading
Is Zeitgeist 3 about the commons?
Stefan Meretz of keimform.de gives his impressions after viewing the third iteration of the Zeitgeist series. Stefan Meretz: “So, what is the film about and what has this to do with commons? The movie is full of informations. One has to concentrate enormously to follow all facts and statements (especially for non-english watchers reading the… Continue reading
The emergence of an ethic and wisdom and communion
In a heartfelt Easter message, my good friend Richard Hames, who lives in Bangkok, after relating his personal evolution to date, starts an interesting meditation on acquiring a wisdom of communion, an indispensable trait for those wanting to engage in positive social change. Richard Hames: “A global population fast approaching seven billion inhabitants, most with… Continue reading
The subjectivity and intersubjectivity of voluntary peer networks
Excerpted from a discussion by Gideon Rosenblatt: “In networks, authority is distributed and agreed to voluntarily. There is no centralized power with final say over what does and doe not happen or with the power to enforce compliance by network members. Power makes relationships work within a hierarchy. I do what you say, ultimately, because… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Utopian and Critical (P2P) Visions on Energy
* ENERGY. Scientific and Artistic, Utopian and Critical Visions. Acoustic Space. Issue No. 8 Rasa Šmite and Raitis Šmits have edited and published a very rich collection with contributions exploring the issue of energy, which gives substantial space to p2p approaches. Acoustic Space comes out as a peer-reviewed international journal for transdiscplinary research and is… Continue reading
From Open Business Models to a Commons-Oriented Economy
Michel Bauwens will be speaking on “From Open Business Models to a Commons-Orientated Economy” at 17:30 on Wednesday May 4th at DERI, NUI Galway Ireland. This is an open, public talk. From the flyer: Commons-based peer production, as the generalization of the free software mode of production identified by Yochai Benkler, has steadily moved from… Continue reading
Is there a scientific basis for peer to peer economics?
According to our contributor Poor Richard: “This is the best article on the science of economics (almost an oxymoron until now) I’ve ever read. Reverse engineering from reality is the basic scientific method, and it has been sorely lacking in a mythic economics full of fictitious rational agents, “free” markets, and invisible hands.” He’s referring… Continue reading
Comic for kids about Free Software
Various teachers and authors produced a short comic for kids explaining the advantages of the use of Free Software. The work was produced using Free Software design tools such as OpenOffice and Inkscape. The comic, that is part of the book “Free Software for little people”, is now available in english, portuguese, croatian and spanish…. Continue reading
PR company copyrights term “radical media”, threatens to sue activists
this post by Pontus Westerberg appeared originally at eatanicecream.com Radical media has a long history in social movements, from The British Worker, launched during the 1926 TUC General Strike, via audio cassettes with subversive messages passed around during the Iranian revolution, the Zapatistas, Samizdat and Indymedia to blogs, Facebook and Twitter used during the recent… Continue reading
Why is Facebook ‘disappearing’ anti-cuts sites in the UK?
Here below is an account from the Open Rights Group, by Jim Kollock. Jon Worth explains that the problem is largely technical, i.e. the organisations being unware that associations cannot represent themselves as individual people, i.e. using ‘profiles’ instead of ‘pages’. Jim Kollock: “News has broken today that a number of activist groups pages and… 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 emerged… Continue reading
The role of state in social transitions
We are thus entering a world that is very different from the one in which Poulantzas lived – together with us. Thus, many of his/our former analyses do not apply to new historical realities. But this is not a major flaw for social theories. Only metaphysics pretends eternal validity. Social theories are not supposed to… Continue reading