“Commodity ecology is the local watershed democratization of commodity choice and their interactions”: “Decentralized material sustainability is its own political sustainability. This means judging novel technologies and materials on more than simply soft sustainability (material sustainability), it means hard sustainability that integrates a degree of judgment on whether the technology or material can be implemented… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2011"
Introduction to the New World of Alternative Currencies
First in a series by Eli Gothill: (find out more here) “The words ‘money’ and ‘currency’ are used synonymously in everyday language. However, the rising importance of collaborative consumption and social networks is bringing another, broader definition of ‘currency’ into focus. To understand the impact of new social technologies for trading and sharing, an analysis… Continue reading
Towards a Labor Commons: Considering Employment as a Common Pool Resource through Social Accounting
“Not only can employment be regarded as one more common pool resource among others, it can also be argued that it is the common pool resource par excellence – the instance that stands as the single most far-reaching and democratically vital model of a common pool resource. Donald Stabile alluded to something in this vein… Continue reading
The political role of generating artificial debt crises
What is happening in Greece, the U.S. and an increasing number of other countries is not an economic necessity, but a political project to further disenfranchise the mass of the people, dismantle social solidarity, and increase the revenues of the top layers of society. Watch this video by David Harvey:
WikiLeaks’ Brilliant MasterCard Commercial Parody
Watch this video:
Community Wireless Networking as a Culture and Economics of Autonomy
The following is excerpted from an interesting essay on building community-based wireless meshworks. * Essay: Software Freedom and The Global Commons: Community Wireless Networking as a Culture and Economics of Autonomy. Magnus Lawrie. 12th January 2011 Magnus Lawrie writes: “The existence of CWNs raises questions about the propertization of com- munications network infrastructure and bandwidth…. Continue reading
The open content economy now reaches one sixth of U.S. GDP
Question: does that study include the open source software economy or not? Thanks for letting us know. Excerpt: “The 2011 study, “Fair Use in the U.S. Economy,” which was commissioned by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, incorporates data from 2008 and 2009 found that despite the economic downturn, industries that rely on fair use… Continue reading
At Syntagma, the higher square of protest and the lower square of reconstruction
Excerpted from Stathis Gourgouris: “In just a matter of days, a whole other city was organized on the footsteps of the old Royal Palace that houses the Parliament, particularly in Syntagma Square proper, what came to be known as the “lower square.” In the “upper square” directly in the face of Parliament now guarded by… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Toward a Bioregional State
* Book: Toward a Bioregional State. Mark Whitaker, 2005. I missed this book when it came out, but I consider as important as choosing Marvin Brown’s Civilising the Economy as book of the year in 2010. This is a very important book about what needs to be done to achieve a sustainable ‘world structure’. 1…. Continue reading
Stephen Fry: Sharers are not criminals
Vibrant speech in defense of (file)sharing, worth listening too:
Open Hardware at the Open Knowledge Conference 2011
The Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin went really well. 400 people came for it from around the world. Topics discussed were Open Data, Open Science, Open Education, Open Hardware and others. I will report here the most important aspects around the Open Hardware part of it and some other interesting things. Richard Stallman shared one… Continue reading
Report on the internationalisation of the #Europeanrevolution
Via: Report on the LISBON INTERNATIONAL MEETING of July 13th: “International press: They compiled an archive of press divided in three folders: one with international artcles about the local situation, another about international movilisations and another about France, available to visitors in the information table and updated every day. They also compiled a digital archive… Continue reading
Anonymous launches three-phase plan
Watch this video, and savour the privilege of living in these times of deep change:
Jobs for a frugal economy
This was originally proposed in a letter to President Obama: Excerpted from Warren Johnson: “What is needed is a way of creating jobs at less cost and use of oil. This could be done by encouraging the creation of sustainable ways of life by offering assistance to those who would like to live in the… Continue reading
Clay Shirky on why journalism needs to be publicly supported
Via Boing Boing: “Clay Shirky is getting ready to teach NYU’s Journalism School undergrads, and he’s posted “Why We Need the New News Environment to be Chaotic,” a call-to-arms to produce a wide variety of journalisms that — unlike the newspaper business of yore — has a wide variety of business models that don’t all… Continue reading
Is Culture a Commons … or is it Free?
Culture cannot be a commons, says Nina Paley on her blog. “Economists talk about rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods, but Culture is neither rivalrous, nor non-rivalrous; it is anti-rivalrous.” By this, Nina means that culture is outside of the framework of being owned or not being owned. Culture can’t be owned, she says, and as a… Continue reading