Full information in: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rsoc The developments widely known as Web 2.0 are mainly characterised by the overwhelming ability of users to collaboratively create content. The impact this is having on a wide range of social processes, as varied as marketing and personal relationships, politics and tourism is making these development a fascinating focus for interdisciplinary… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2011"
A critique of the scarcity-paradigm of western conservationists in the South
The Yaka hunter-gatherers of Congo see no difference between the loggers and the conservationists, and their perspective is informed by a perspective of abundance, cointerpoised to the scarcity-creating practices of western power. * Article: Managing abundance, not chasing scarcity: the real challenge for the 21st century. Jerome Lewis. Radical Anthropology. No. 2 This is a… Continue reading
P2P Essay of the Year? The Radical Implications of a Zero Growth Economy
If you read only one essay per year, it probably should be this one, and I find myself agreeing with its basic premise about the necessity of a really radical re-orientation of the totality of the current system. One seeming contradiction however, the author both rejects market forms as compatible with human survival yet points… Continue reading
A festival to democratize audiovisual production in Bogota in September
Via Carolina Botero: Ciudad Bolívar in the poor periphery of Bogota will be hosting during september 16 to the 23rd the IV Festival Internacional de Cine y Video Alternativo y Comunitario “Ojo al Sancocho” www.ojalsancocho.org. This festival is held annually with the main objective of democratizing the audiovisual culture among communities of this poor peripheries… Continue reading
The Tea Party as a death cult
Excerpted from William Rivers Pitt, who has watched the GOP Presidential debates where the audience cheered, “let him die”, about a hypothetical case of a uninsured dying man: “On Monday night, candidate Ron Paul was given a hypothetical about providing health care to a dying man who lacked health insurance. Wolf Blitzer, who moderated the… Continue reading
On outdated tests, technology and learning
Cathy Davidson responds to an essay in the NYT, which wonders why high tech enabled education does not deliver better test scores: “We cannot keep educating kids for the efficiencies of 1914 (when the multiple choice test was invented). We must, if we are responsible, educate them for the world they already inhabit in their… Continue reading
The Commons in Marx’s Thinking: not what you think …
Just as Hardin’s later reflections on the Commons point out that there is not a ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, rather it is systems in which people do not collectively decide on their use of resources that are the ‘Tragedy’, so at the end of his life Marx’s analysis became one that advocated, not a march… Continue reading
What kind of management for cooperatives?
Cooperatives have tended to place themselves in the contradictory stance of imitating the authority structures of corporate management, without even having enough financial competence or even knowledge of basic good business practices to increase the retained earnings of that business without massively exploiting both non-management staff and the members. With just a little bit of… Continue reading
“A self-standing financing model to help sustain the non-market digital commons” with Philippe Aigrain
What if we consider that sharing a digitally published work in one’s possession with other individuals is a fundamental right? What if we break away from the idea of compensating the entertainment right holders for supposed harms resulting from this sharing and ask ourselves what is a reasonable reward and financing model for sustaining a… Continue reading
When dominator systems can’t respond to the challenges of the time, mutuality-based systems become a necessity
We are emerging from a long dominator era into one that demands mutuality. The dominator (hierarchical) mode appears strong, but in reality is too slow to respond to the crisis of the time. Mutualism, on the other hand, is liable to be too fragile in the face of dominator pressures: the only way to resist… Continue reading
Mexican indignados join the fray
Excerpted from David Bacon: “The hundred organizations that cooperated in organizing the zocalo protest called their rally the National Day of Indignant Mexicans. Their purpose was to present an alternative to the “official” picture painted by Calderon, and to call for a different direction for the country. They charged that, in five years, the number… Continue reading
The right copyright policy for Europe is not IP maximalism
Via: Economic data do not support that a strengthening of IP is beneficial to Europe. Excerpted from Joe Karaganis, author of Media Piracy in Emerging Economies: “Where do the EU’s economic interests lie? Let’s look at the numbers: * According to the World Bank, Europe’s audiovisual imports exceed its exports by a ratio of around… Continue reading
CulturaDigital.Br Festival
More than an event for the exhibition of ideas and projects, the CulturaDigital.Br Festival is a space for encounters between agents of digital culture from Brazil and all over the world — producers and activists who operate in the intersection between culture, politics, technology. From December 2-4th, MAM-Rio and Cine Odeon in Rio de Janeiro… Continue reading
The New Model Army – How the US Copied al-Qaida to Kill It
I’d written before on the idea of the ‘new model army‘ – a military force structured along the lines of P2P theory (voluntary self-aggregation of effort). It seems like former US commander, Stanley McChrystal, took some of the ideas of P2P into a radical reorganisation of the US military – in effect becoming more like… Continue reading
The important role of Social Media in solving humanity’s Collective Action Problems
The most crucial problems humanity faces are collective action problems. These range from the health of our democracies to global warming, from financial and asset bubbles to social unrest. The very survival of our species may depend on finding a way to organize our way out of situations in which there is a strong conflict… Continue reading
Why are conservatives the only ones criticising capitalism’s failings?
As the veteran leftwing historian, Eric Hobsbawm, wryly observed of John Paul II’s regular fulminations against untamed global markets: “It is not encouraging when the only person of global importance to condemn capitalism is the Pope.” On Thursday, during his visit to Spain, Pope Benedict was echoing the same theme, stating : “Man must be… Continue reading