Sociologist Frances Fox Piven and labor organizer Stephen Lerner discuss how Occupy Wall Street could grow into a major political movement: From Democracy’s Now description: “Famed sociologist Frances Fox Piven and labor organizer Stephen Lerner discuss how Occupy Wall Street could grow into a major political movement that draws millions into the streets. “I’m absolutely… Continue reading
Date archives "March 2012"
A vision of San Francisco as the Partner State City
Excerpted from Chris Carlsson: “With my tongue only partly in cheek, I propose that San Francisco take the lead in visionary urban transformation. “Jobs” as we know them are an obsolete way of organizing life. I propose a complete rethinking of what municipal government does, no longer “governing” so much as facilitating, allowing us to… Continue reading
How the new forms of common value creation challenge both the market state and state capitalism
These evolving dynamics — the decommodification of common goods through co-governance and the deterritorialization of value through co-production — are shattering the liberal assumptions which underlie state capitalism. The emergence of this new kind of management and valuation for the preservation of natural and social assets is posing a momentous crisis for the Market State,… Continue reading
Project of the Day: FEAST Brooklyn, Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics
FEAST Brooklyn is a recurring public dinner designed to use community-driven financial support to democratically fund new and emerging art makers: At each FEAST, patrons give a $20 donation for which they receive supper and a ballot. Diners spend the evening reviewing a series of project proposals and conversing with the artists behind each idea…. Continue reading
A critique of prefigurative politics
There is a lot of food for thought in this discussion/interview of two Platpus Affiliated Society members. Excerpted from Jacob Cayia: ” I’m very suspect of any attempt to give a political dimension to anthropology, which is something that has come into vogue recently with the Occupy movement and some of its figure-heads like the… Continue reading
Ecological overshoot and revolutionary change
Interesting video interview, in five parts, with William Catton: “This is Part 1 of an interview with William R. Catton, Jr., conducted on August 9, 2008 at his home near Tacoma, Washington, USA. Catton is the author of the seminal book, “Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change,” published in 1980. In the interview he… Continue reading
P2P Economics and the role of mutualist phyles: talk at the Winchester School of Arts
Sean Cubitt and Jussi Parikka, two academics at the very top of my list of people I respect, honoured me with an invitation to their school, the Winchester School of Arts. Here’s a record of the talk, focusing on P2P Economics and the role of mutualist phyles … Michel Bauwens at WSA from WSA Global… Continue reading
Project of the Day: The Collapsonomics Course
This is a one-week residential workshop at Schumacher college on Collapsonomics April 30 – May 4, 2012, by Vinay Gupta and Dougald Hine Vinay Gupta writes: “There will be three main areas that I’ll be focussing on, and I’ll take the risk of speaking for Dougald a little on this too. The first is modelling… Continue reading
From closed incubators to open incubators and open startups
The Open Startup Paradigm, a platform built on bitcoin to drive innovation. Listen to this presentation on Open Corporations here:
The Guardian in conversation with Don Tapscott
Video conversation on the occasion of social media week:
Joe Karaganis on Copy Cultures in Emerging Countries: the failure of enforcement
Very clear presentation on why IP enforcement is not working in low and middle income countries, and why new legislation abolishes due process.
Book of the Day: Occupy World Street
* Book: Occupy World Street. A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform. by Ross Jackson. Chelsea Green, 2012. From the publisher: “Ordinary citizens the world over have long paid the price for the swashbuckling behavior of the corporate and political elite. We’ve seen the reigning establishment widen the gap between rich and poor,… Continue reading
Electronic Countermeasures – a demonstration project at Netherlands GLOW festival
Network-enabling data transfer drones as nomadic communication infrastructure. A project inspired by similar technology developed by the US military to bring networking to countries where governments are being overthrown… Vimeo has the video of this fun project demonstrated at the GLOW festival in the Netherlands last year. Electronic Countermeasures @ GLOW Festival NL 2011 from… Continue reading
Why the P2P Foundation is paying its salaries in Bitcoin
Michel Bauwens and Nicolas Mendoza: The P2P Foundation thinks that readers may be interested in the following recent development. First, one word about the structure of the P2P Foundation. The Foundation is first of all a virtual and physical community of contributors, people who volunteer content for our wiki, blog and other resources. This is… Continue reading
Insect Media wins prize for innnovative scholarship
* Book: Insect Media. An Archaeology of Animals and Technology. Jussi Parikka. University of Minnesota Press,2010 One of the P2P Foundation’s best books of 2011, Insect Media by Jussi Parikka, won the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Anne Friedberg book award 2012 — awarded annually for Innovative Scholarship! Read about the award here, and… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The role of faith in the creation of a counter-hegemony for the commons
* Book: Faith of the Faithless. Simon Critchley. In an interview with the excellent STIR magazine, the author explains why an attention to faith is an essential attribute to social chance strategies. Excerpt: Q: In The Faith of the Faithless you quote Gramsci as saying: “For socialism to overcome Christianity, it has to become a… Continue reading