Excerpted from Emlyn: “As far as I can see, unis provide students roughly these pieces of value: * learning (largely replaceable with free online content / study guides) * networking (replaceable online, in fact a lot of why nerds built the net in the first place) * credentialing – this is still the hard one… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2011"
Transitioning (4): Introducing an Economic Transition Income
Fourth in a series on the transition to a sustainable economy. Excerpted from Christian Arnsperger: “The frugal economy will be a “socio-diverse” network of communities experimenting with frugal ways of life, a loose network of local economies producing primarily for the local population. There will still be some long-distance trade, but with transportation having become… Continue reading
Campaign for Commons Literacy — a fresh wind of social renewal
Hello fellow commoners around the world! Have you ever wondered why most of the world-changing ideas don’t stick, or as the Native Americans would say, “don’t grow corn?” That’s a phrase based on their philosophy of daily living, which simply means: “If what you are doing, learning, or thinking isn’t making your life and the lives… Continue reading
Joe Brewer: Global Revolution in Alternate Reality?
Back in the late ’90s, cyberpunk writer Neal Stephenson introduced the concept of “phyles” in The Diamond Age. Phyles filled the void left after encryped commerce and digital currencies had deprived the Westphalian nation-state of most of its revenues, and most of the world’s states were either substantially hollowed out or had collapsed altogether into… Continue reading
The Shining Example of Iceland and their people’s reaction to the financial meltdown
Excerpted from a useful summary by Deena Stryker (writing for the South-African SACSIS): “As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here’s why: Five years of a pure neo-liberal… Continue reading
Bernie Sanders on an offensive for working families in the U.S.
Great and stirring speech by Bernie Sanders in the conference of the United Steel Workers: (see right hand side of this page, for part 2 and 3)
Book of the Week: Share or Die (3)
Last Monday we presented “Share or Die” as book of the week. On Wednesday we published some great quotes from the book that can give you a sense of what you will find inside the book. Now you can go ahead and read the full book by yourself, it’s under an open license. Of course,… Continue reading
Does the death of big media mean the death of big ideas?
Megan Garber responds to an essay in the New York Times (by Neal Gabler), lamenting the dearth of big ideas, and blaming the fragmented mediascape for this trend. Megan Garber (excerpt): “In the Gablerian information environment, the Big Idea is a function of Big Media: The two both purify and amplify each other, entwined so… Continue reading
Ownership, peer subjectivity, and learning
* Article: Learning and Ownership. Stephen Downes, 2007 pp. 139+ In this reponse to Tony Karrer regarding the ownership of personal learning environments, Stephen Downes makes some excellent general points about learning, self, and ownership. Excerpted from Stephen Downes: “Some things cannot be owned. Owning humans, for example, is illegal. The ownership of a human… Continue reading
Transitioning (3): Fostering New Governance through Participatory Coordination and Communalism
Third in a series on the transition to a sustainable economy. Excerpted from Christian Arnsperger: “we are looking at the need for a new worldwide governance structure in the form of nested decision-making levels that will ensure a smooth and exhaustive use of citizen-generated information so as to counteract both the bio-environmental externalities and the… Continue reading
David Bollier on the Value Proposition of the Commons
Excerpted from a speech by David Bollier: (given at the Caux Forum for Human Security in Montreux, Switzerland, on July 13, 2011.) “The Value Proposition of the Commons This brings me back to the commons. One reason that I am so attracted to the commons is it gives us a vocabulary for imagining a new… Continue reading
Radical as a radish: on the politics of urban gardening
* Book: Radical Gardening. George McKay. France Lincoln, 2010 Excerpted from the introduction by George McKay in Stir magazine: “Radical Gardening is about the idea of the ‘plot’, and its alternate but interwoven meanings in the garden. There are three. First there is the plot of the land, the garden space itself, how it is… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Share or Die (2)
Last monday we presented “Share or Die” as book of the week, providing a general introduction and the table of contents of the week. This time we highlight some great excerpts of the book: Even though it wasn’t premeditated, a narrative does emerge in Share Or Die. There’s a common anxiety in the pieces in… Continue reading
Imagine the Future of Money by Jaromil
Imagine the Future of Money: Economic transformations, hacker culture and why we should be so lucky Jaromil words on this: Last week the Chaos Communication Camp took place in Berlin: the largest hacker camp in the world, taking place every 4 years in Germany, where the Chaos Computer Club was born 30 years ago. Usually… Continue reading
Drones, Open Source Warfare, and Peak Armaments
Excerpted from Greg Lindsay: “Drones are essentially flying–and sometimes armed–computers,” the Brookings Institution noted in a paper published last month. They’re robots who follow the curve of Moore’s Law rather than the Pentagon’s budgets, rapidly evolving in performance since the Predator’s 2002 debut while falling in price to the point where Make magazine recently carried… Continue reading
Understanding the condition of biolabour under biocapitalism
* Article: Life put to work: Towards a life theory of value. By Cristina Morini and Andrea Fumagalli (translated from the Italian by Emanuele Leonardi). Ephemera, special issue on Digital Labour, 10(3/4): 234-252 In the very interesting essay above, the authors introduce the concept of biocapitalism, which broadens the understanding of ‘cognitive capitalism’, and ‘biolabour’,… Continue reading