material agency seems to affirm the worst fears of distopian authors and gives credence to the excited musings of techno-rapture utopians. But if we focus on the mangle, the point at which we are actively building our future, I think we are forced to consider a much more complicated reality. The affordances of routers and… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2011"
Book of the week (2): Why Tackling Property Rights and Democratic Planning are a environmental necessity
* Book: The Rise of the Green Left” by Derek Wall. First, a Review “Derek Wall contrasts the long term sustainability of the shared Commons, written about extensively by Elinor Ostrom, with the inherent need for capitalism to create goods which become obsolete sooner and sooner, either via technical breakdown or aspirational shifts in fashion…. Continue reading
The principle of contribution vs the principle of community
In a discussion on the Apache Software Foundation and the GitHub coordination tool, Mikeal Rogers makes an interesting distinction between two different peergovernance principles, which are sometimes in tension: “On GitHub the language is not code, as it is often characterized, it is contribution. GitHub presents a person to person communication system for contributions. Documentation,… Continue reading
Surviving the atemporality of internet technology by becoming multi-temporal
Becoming ‘multi-temporal’, rather than multi-cultural: it used to be a very big problem for historians that they supposedly could not divide themselves from the outlooks and interests of their own age. I think we are approaching a situation where the outlooks and interests of our own age make very little sense. They just don’t bind… Continue reading
The Implicit Critique of Technology in the #OccupyWallStreet movement (1): combining hi and low tech
The low-tech vibe, partly born out of a structural necessity, has come to be symbolic of the movement itself. If Occupy is a thought experiment in questioning society and envisioning new possibilities, then the story of technology and Occupy is also about questioning the role modern technology has in our lives. Excerpted from Nathan Jurgenson:… Continue reading
An update on the Spanish Indignados: not dead, just distributed (#15M update)
This document, with the voices of Occupy Barcelona participants, is worth watching: Occupied Barcelona: The Spanish Election Rejection from brandon jourdan on Vimeo.
Dual currencies for dual human impulses
Edgar Cahn on the two impulses of human nature and corresponding money systems. Edgar Cahn interview from StormCloud Media on Vimeo.
Book of the week: The Rise of the Green Left and the Commons, by Derek Wall
A left take on the topic of the commons: * Book: The Rise of the Green Left” by Derek Wall. Derek Wall: “This book aims to inspire change and to resource it. The first chapter outlines what I see as the crisis and the solution. Basically ecological cycles are under assault on our planet, the… Continue reading
On the connection between Tahrir Square And The #OccupyWallStreet Movement
Via David Wearing: “In the rising wave of international protests happening under the Occupy banner, Cairo’s Tahrir Square has gained iconic status, frequently invoked by activists from New York and Oakland to Barcelona and London. The substantial differences between what is happening now in Zuccotti Park, or outside St Paul’s Cathedral, and events in Egypt… Continue reading
A potpourri of #OccupyWallStreet Videos (6)
0. Beautiful video on the November 17 mobilizations: 1. Daniel Ellsberg, On The Occupy Movement How different from the 60’s movement? The difference: the savagery of the policy repression using chemical warfare against peacefully protesting citizens. 2. Police lockdown and brutality on journalists at OWS : the end of journalistic rights? 3. A report from… Continue reading
In Brazil, a Mint Idea Gains Currency
Via Scoop.it – Alt money news The capivari—a currency named after a rodent—circulates only in one dusty, agricultural town 60 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. Ten months after introduction of the capivari—named after the capybara, a pig-sized rodent common in a local river—the currency is lifting fortunes of local retailers and gnawing holes in… Continue reading
The historical importance of the Italian referendum and victory for the water commons
The government, throught the law that has been repealed by Italian citizens, had intended to eliminate all wholly publicly-owned joint-stock water management companies. The water movements, in contrast, having won the referendum, intend to take now a further step and transform all the current joint-stock companies (even those totally publicly owned) into authentic public-law institutions,… Continue reading
Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to #OccupyWallStreet
Excerpted from Norm Stamper, police officer: “More than a decade later (after Seattle), the police response to the Occupy movement, most disturbingly visible in Oakland — where scenes resembled a war zone and where a marine remains in serious condition from a police projectile—brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of American law… Continue reading
Why such a level of coordinated and militarized attacks against #OccupyWallStreet campers?
Excerpted from Naomi Wolf: “US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by… Continue reading
Recovering local cultural values: De-growth in political practice
This is an abstract of a paper presented by Marco Boffi and Marta Guerini at the 17th International Sociological Association World Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden, in July of 2010. I have not been able to find a full text or slides for the presentation and I have slightly edited the English abstract for readability. The… Continue reading
The competing functions of #OccupyWallStreet
Excerpted from Peter Marcuse: “The Occupation movement that is spreading across the country has a number of purposes, plays a number of different roles, in the struggle for justice and a better life in our world. A confrontation function, taking the struggle to the enemy’s territory, confronting, potentially disrupting, the operations at the center of… Continue reading