Michel Bauwens is participating in the 7th annual Designs on E-learning 2011 conference, held at Aalto University in Helsinki from 27 to 30 September 2011. The following is part of a selection of blogposts used to prepare the conference. Since we’re on the topic of the future, and we’re discussing potential developments in the field… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2011"
Book of the Week: Barefoot in Cyberspace
Will the internet make us more free? Or will the flood of information that courses across its networks only serve to enslave us to powerful interests that are emerging online? How will the institutions of the old world – politics, the media, corporations – affect the hackers’ dream for a new world populated not by… Continue reading
A potpourri on the commons
This potpourri of interview segments and statements on the general theme of the commons was produced by the School of Commoning and the Campaign for Commons Literacy. With contributions from Silke Helfrich, Mark Jagdev, George Por, and many others, including myself. You can support their crowdfunding campaign here:
David Graeber on forgiving American poor people’s debt.
David Graeber speaks about cancelling poor American people’s debt with Democracy Now:
Why is copyright a monopoly?
Excerpted from Rick Falkvinge, explaining why he consistently uses the concept of ‘copyright monopoly’: “If you listen to copyright lawyers discussing in courtrooms, they never use the casual language of “we hold the copyright to this movie”. Rather, they will use the legalese expression “we hold the exclusive rights to this (…)”. Now, legislative language… Continue reading
Hastily Formed Networks: Collaboration in the Absence of Authority
* Article: Hastily Formed Networks: Collaboration in the Absence of Authority, Peter Denning. Reflections; Volume 7, Number 1 From an interesting special issue of the journal Reflections: Peter Denning: “Disasters, such as the 2004 tsunami or Hurricane Katrina, give rise to hastily formed networks. He focuses on the results of research, some of it action… Continue reading
P2P Panelling for the Electronic Arts in Istanbul
I participated in an ISEA (International Symposium for the Electronic Arts) panel in Istanbul last week. Ruth Catlow of Furtherfield.org, who so generously invited me to attend a panel on digital infrastructures for climate change, wrote a review of the panel, from which we are excerpting. The original article is much longer and contains many… Continue reading
GDP, Sloanist Management Accounting, and Central Planning
[Excerpted from “The Great Domain of Cost-Plus: The Waste Production Economy,” Center for a Stateless Society, 2010] A large share of what’s conventionally counted as “output” consists of waste production. Many areas of our national life are governed by accounting systems that count the consumption of inputs as an output. For example, economists’ calculation of… Continue reading
Berlin Pirate Party Success
[View the story “Pirate Party Success in Berlin” on Storify]
The Future of Peer Production: An evening of discussion with Michel Bauwens
Monday, October 24, 2011 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM (PT) Palo Alto, United States Institute for the Future (IFTF) and Shareable Magazine invite you to join us for a evening of discussion with Michel Bauwens, Founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives, about the promise and challenges of the emerging peer-to-peer society. Michel’s basic thesis is the dominant… Continue reading
Of Ants, Networks and Nodes
Ants are highly networked insects. They are a social insect that organises in the mass of individuals into a ‘super-organism’. As such ants are often studied for insights into self organisation and network flow. It was assumed that most individuals in an ants nest followed the same set of key rules, however new research suggests… Continue reading
Oxcars and FreeCultureForum 2011 – 27 to 29 of October 2011, Barcelona
27 to 29 of October 2011 – Barcelona Oxcars and FreeCultureForum 2011 Networks for a R-evolution Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we can now do for it ;-). http://whois–x.net/english/oxcars-and-freecultureforum-20112011 is the year when the consciousness of a global network has emerged. The massive and strategic use… Continue reading
Sprawl, Car Culture and the Interventionist State
[excerpted from “The Waste Production Economy,” Center for a Stateless Society, 2010] The main force behind urban sprawl is disregard of the cost principle. Local governments build subsidized freeway systems and ever further outlying bypasses in order to “relieve congestion,” only generating new congestion as the new roads fill up with new traffic from the… Continue reading
Exploring the Tech DIY of ‘Hackerspaces’
Image by Flickr user quapan. Podcast episode from Science Friday – listen here When the humble garage workshop just isn’t enough, or basement tinkerers tire of trying to go it alone, some turn to ‘hackerspaces,’ organizations that provide space, tools, and like-minded colleagues for unusual do it yourself projects. With Maker Faire in town this weekend,… Continue reading
Slavoj Zizek on the ‘P2P’ bio-urbanistic approach of Nikos Salingaros
Slavoj Zizek writes in Living in the End Times, Architectural Parallax, p. 273-4: (and see below, for an extensive extract from Nikos Salingaros) “For Nikos Salingaros, the pursuit of formal or critico-ideological concerns in place of adapting to nature and the needs of ordinary human beings defines “bad architecture” which makes people uncomfortable or physically… Continue reading
Pacification by Capuccino, the geographic unconscious, and the Right to the City
Excerpted from a report of a lecture by David Harvey, and his critique of gentrification. However, for good measure, it is really useful to read the quality comments, which challenge some of David Harvey’s points, below the original article in Fast Company. Greg Lindsay: “The connections between urbanism and capitalism go deeper than that. In… Continue reading