Recommended by Nicolas Mendoza, this is a lecture based on comparing the internet-induced social transformations with those of the Gutenberg era: Review by By Amir Taaki: “Falkvinge starts with a history of the Gutenberg printing press. Within two centuries Europe saw the rise of Lutherism (the biggest challenge ever to the catholic church) and dozens… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2012"
Venture Capital Investments in P2P Companies
Excerpted from an analysis of funding data by Don Jones: “VCs are continuing to support peer-oriented companies, whose overall reach extends across a number of sectors. An initial public offering remains unlikely in the near future due to the relative immaturity of new entrants, with the possible exception of room rental marketplace Airbnb. Still, venture… Continue reading
Person of the Day: Daniella Jaeger on Kickstarter
Here are excerpts from an interview conducted by Shareable magazine: “I like to think of crowd-funding is part of a whole wave of social entrepreneurship, how do you think Kickstarter’s mission differs from the average tech start-up? Kickstarter’s focus is on creative projects. It’s a blend of patronage and commerce, a place for musicians, filmmakers,… Continue reading
Interesting insights on coworking business models from the 2nd Global Coworking Survey
Desktop magazine’s 2nd Global Coworking Survey has interesting insights on the emerging ecosystem of coworking spaces: The 2nd global coworking survey was conducted by Deskmag in cooperation with the team from Coworking Europe: “Can we realistically describe coworking as “succesful” when only 40% of spaces are currently profitable? The answer is yes – when you… Continue reading
Solar Sinter Project
A very interesting experiment/project by Markus Kayser as part of his MA studies in Design Products on Platform 13 at the Royal College of Art: “In a world increasingly concerned with questions of energy production and raw material shortages, this project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance. In… Continue reading
The long term problem of capitalism is the long term
Excerpted from the GMO Quarterly Letter of investor Jeremy Grantham. February 2012 Strongly recommended analysis. Jeremy Grantham: “The Financial Times has had a plethora of recent articles examining possible deficiencies in capitalism. The general opinion is that this is not capitalism’s finest hour. The financial crash revealed a chronic weakness in establishment economic theory, whose… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: The Digital Divide in User-Generated Content
Excerpted from a Guardian editorial by Mark Graham: “Profound digital divisions of labour are evident in all open platforms that rely on user-generated content. On Flickr, countries in the north are covered by much thicker clouds of information. Google’s databases contain more indexed user-generated content about the Tokyo metropolitan region than the entire continent of… Continue reading
Video of the Day: How to join Anonymous
Well done:
Empire vs. Jedi: The Strategic Implications of Drone Warfare
In a recent discussion I had with Vinay Gupta, Gupta hinted that(as I read him anyway): 1) the American corporate state’s apparent descent into lawless fascism (as evidenced by the passage of provisions for indefinite detention without trial in the NDAA and the recent seizure of MegaUpload), combined with 2) the likelihood of failed or… Continue reading
Person of the Day: Leo Burke, teaching the commons to MBA students at Notre Dame
You would expect Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business to focus its teaching on making profits from the world as it is instead of asking students to explore how to fundamentally change it. But that means you probably haven’t met business Professor Leo Burke — a former entrepreneur, Motorola executive and, in his student days,… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Arduino The Documentary
Produced in 2010 and also mentions interaction between open hardware and business: Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.
Book of the Day: Code Wars
Code Wars: 10 Years of P2P Software Litigation. Rebecca Giblin. 2012 The content industry spent the better part of the last decade seeking to hold P2P software providers liable for the infringements of their users. Its emphatic victories against the providers of Napster, Aimster, Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa led directly to a massive shakeout of… Continue reading