A short animated film to introduce Rachel Botsman’s important insights on collaborative consumption: Throughline with Mindful Maps presents Collaborative Consumption: An RSA/Nominet Film Competition Short Film from Kate Hammer on Vimeo.
Date archives "February 2012"
Essay of the Day: Anonymous as an Antinomian Movement
Excerpted from Dan McQuillan: “Anonymous has been a direct link between the Arab Spring and the global Occupy movement, with a visible presence in camps and protests as well as online. But they are only part of a plurality of currents that echo the English Dissenters of the Interregnum. It was the Diggers who most… Continue reading
Discussing OWS: The Black Block is the cancer of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, argues Chris Hedges
Excerpted from Chris Hedges, who minces no words in this harsh critique of the Black Block: “Black Bloc anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left. In Zerzan’s now defunct magazine Green Anarchy (which survives as a website) he published… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Matthew Champion on Internet and Democracy
Excerpted from Matthew Champion: “There are two main schools of thought on this: that the internet’s inherently democratic potential is yet to be realised (cosmopolis theory or the cosmopolitan interpretation), or that its innate undemocratic nature is taking effect (the citadel theory or the citadellian interpretation). A third, less frequently argued position on the internet… Continue reading
European Forum in Rome: Income, Common Goods and Democracy
European Forum in Rome: Income, Common Goods and Democracy // Rome 10-12 February, Teatro Valle Throughout Europe, we are witnessing massive transfers of resources from the public to the private sphere. The political responses to the crises are defined by austerity measures and by cuts to social spending, driving Europe further into recession. From Greece… Continue reading
Book of the Day: No Straight Lines
Book: No Straight Lines. Alan Moore. Bloodstone, 2011 In No Straight Lines, Alan Moore argues that we have reached the nadir of the adaptive range of our industrialised world. Now faced with an unsustainable trilemma of social, organisational and economic complexity, we have entered an era in which the rules we have previously organised our… Continue reading
The Future of Learning in a Connected World
SOURCE: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub How must learning and education adapt to digital society? That’s the question hundreds of technologists, futurists, researchers, and educators will take on in the “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World” conference, Mar. 1-3, in San Francisco. With provocative talks, inspiring case studies, and panel conversations… Continue reading
The Pirate Bay: Year of the storm
Source: The Pirate Bay blog “The Pirate Bay will reach an age of 9 years. Experiencing raids, espionage and death threats, we’re still here. We’ve been through hell and back and it has made us tougher than ever. The people running the site has changed during the years. No sane human being would put up… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Urban Food Revolution
Book: The Urban Food Revolution. Peter Ladner. New Society Publishers, 2011. Our reliance on industrial agriculture has resulted in a food supply riddled with hidden environmental, economic and health care costs and beset by rising food prices. With only a handful of corporations responsible for the lion’s share of the food on our supermarket shelves,… Continue reading
GPL enforcement sparks community flames
Brian Proffitt – ITWorld The debate over enforcement of the GPL took an interesting turn this week, after one developer’s call for more projects to begin enforcement proceedings against alleged GPL violators of the Linux kernel. Red Hat kernel developer Matthew Garrett, who has long railed against downstream Android vendors who are very likely violating… Continue reading
Paulo Coelho calls on readers to pirate books
Source: Alison Flood – Guardian.co.uk Bestselling Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho is joining in with a new promotion on the notorious file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, and calling on “pirates of the world” to “unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written”. Coelho has long been a supporter of illegal downloads of his writing, ever since a… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Leaderless Revolution
The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century. Carne Ross. Blue Rider Press. 2012. The Leaderless Revolution explains why our government institutions are inadequate to the task of solving major problems and offers a set of steps we can take to create lasting and workable solutions ourselves…. Continue reading
Person of the Day: Ezio Manzini on design for sharing and sustainability
Interview conducted by Sarah Brooks for Shareable magazine. Introduction: The Context “Ezio Manzini is an Italian design strategist, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable design, author of numerous design books, professor of Industrial Design at Milan Polytechnic, and founder of the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability) network of university-based design labs…. Continue reading
Open Source eBook Reader and Mobile Media Device
Shareable reports on Microtouch: An Open Source, DIY eBook Reader and Mobile Media Device Created with minimal hardware resources and much ingenuity, the Microtouch is a neat gadget you can make yourself or you can buy pre-assembled. Shareable says about it: Mobile devices are inherently compromised. The iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch all operate within… Continue reading
The Pirate Bay Will Stop Serving Torrents
Source: TorrentFreak In a month The Pirate Bay will no longer offer downloads of .torrent files. Instead, the largest torrent site on the Internet will only provide so-called magnet links to its visitors. The first step in this direction was made today with The Pirate Bay replacing the current default torrent download links with magnets…. Continue reading
Book of the Day: How to Get What You Want Through Community Self-Government
* Book: Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community. Thomas Linzey and Anneke Campbell. Rose Aguilar writes: ” In the new book, “Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community,” Linzey and Anneke Campbell, an environmental justice documentary filmmaker, argue that it’s time to stop begging… Continue reading