Date archives "August 2011"

The War on Individual Property and Common Sharing by the IP Maximalists

We often proceed from the assumption that filesharing has created a new ethics, but we often forget that the other side has also shifted the debate tremendously, and has undermined longstanding civic practices and attitudes regarding the sharing of knowledge. Thanks to Stephen Downes for reminding us of this. Stephen Downes: “I think you may… Continue reading

Transitioning (2): Fostering New Governance through the Creation of a World Transition Organization

Second in a series on the transition to a sustainable economy. Excerpted from Christian Arnsperger: “The fundamental idea that global collective action is needed is perfectly sound. That this collective action should be aimed mainly, or even exclusively, at reinforcing — or, as it were, propping up — the current system by “reforming” it is… Continue reading

Four challenges for the Open Source Spaceflight Hardware Movement

Republished from J. Simmons: (the original has links) “Discussion of open source spaceflight hardware groups reveals a number of repeated challenges facing this movement. These challenges include licensing open source hardware, the development of web-based project management tools for engineering, overcoming the costs associated with engineering software, and resolving the conflict between open source methods… Continue reading

Global Class Warfare: Global Capitalist Class vs. New Transnational Labour Class

Italian communist and political activist Antonio Gramsci’s core concepts like hegemony, organic crisis, passive revolution, historic bloc, transformismo, war of position and war of manoeuvre are central for our understanding of today’s complex global capitalist system, as well as the catastrophic changes that are currently taking place in it. Recently, Stephen Gill, a prominent neo-Gramscian… Continue reading

Hungarian interview on p2p infrastructures and ChokePoint Project

The image above is from a Hungarian publication which interviewed us recently. They asked us a few question like how the ChokePoint Project differs from OpenNet Initiative with it’s focus on concentrating mostly on the possibility of complete Internet blockouts and the ways to circumvent it by means of “distributed internet infrastructures”. Arpad: “Could we specify, with examples,… Continue reading

The Role of Open Methods in the Development of the First Airplane

Interesting case study from J. Simmon: “The Open Source Spaceflight Hardware Movement has its roots in both the growing open source hardware movement, which is itself based on the open source software movement, and the application of open methods in aerospace engineering which dates back to the earliest days of the field. In fact, this… Continue reading

The Challenge of Open and Decentered Learning and Knowledge Creation

The Challenge of Open and Decentered Learning and Knowledge Creation Call for Symposium Papers – To be held at the 8th International Conference on Networked Learning will be held on 2-3-4 April, 2012 in Maastricht, The Netherlands (http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/). Symposium organizers: Joseph Corneli, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, [email protected]; Marisa Ponti, Department… Continue reading