Raspberry Pi is an open source general purpose computer about the size of a credit card that runs Linux and has great graphic and networking capabilities … all for 35 dollars or less. A simpler version costs 25 $. There are many things Raspberry Pi or Raspi, as it’s also called, doesn’t have like –… Continue reading
Date archives "March 2012"
Rehabilitating clicktivism / slacktivism as symbolic action
Excerpted from the always enlightening Zeynep Tufekci: “My argument is this: the concept of slacktivism is not just naïve and condescending, it is misinformed and misleading. What is called commonly called slacktivism is not at all about “slacking activists”; rather it is about non-activists taking symbolic action—often in spheres traditionally engaged only by activists or… Continue reading
Three Design Principles for a New Political and Economic Operating System for Humanity
A proposal by Hendrik Tiesinga. Hendrik runs multistakeholder dialogues and has a website on “Natural Innovation“. You have to read the proposal in the context of what he calls “the 3 Ground Rules of 20th Century Welfare State Capitalism”: * Rule 1 – Linear Production Models and Absolute Ownership Rights * Rule 2 – Equity… Continue reading
The new class structure of neoliberal capitalism
Excerpted from Guy Standing‘s book on the Precariat: “The globalisation era generated a class fragmentation that threatens democratic governance. At the top, in terms of income, above older representatives of capital, an elite of absurdly affluent figures emerged as global citizens, detached from any nation state but able to influence governments wherever they wished. Stretching… Continue reading
John Thackara: When Renewable Energy Becomes a Snake Oil Recipe
An excerpt, from a critique of a recent WWF report that has an optimistic reading on renewable energy generation. John Thackara: “”At the heart of The Energy Report is the concept of a global scale ‘smart’ electricity grid that would balance periods of low wind or sun in some areas by harvesting the wind or… Continue reading
Report: Next steps after the Rome forum on Income, Commons, Democracy
A bit late, but still important, via Orsan Senalp’s blog: “Over February 10-12 European Alternatives organised an important three-day transnational forum in the Teatro Valle in Rome with over forty organisations from eight European countries. Here is our plan for follow-up. European leaders seem unable to imagine social and economic alternatives to the European crisis,… Continue reading
Hurling towards the globa-local, the fourth stage in human history
In the near future anything heavy will become intensely local while at the same time the limits to things that are ‘light’, ideas, philosophies, information will travel even further than today—literally and figuratively. This is a new paradigm for humanity and it has huge implications for the complete reordering of society. * Article. Local Economies… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Openness Undermines Advertizing
Excerpted from the Human Iterations blog: “Openness is antithetical to a core presupposition of advertising: people are susceptible to suggestion and anecdote because they don’t have enough information–or time to process that information–when it comes to purchasing choices. Forget everything you’ve learned about madison avenue manipulations. Those manipulations are only possible when people have any… Continue reading
Clay Shirky: asymmetric competition in the political sphere
Digital networks have acted as a massive positive supply shock to the cost and spread of information, to the ease and range of public speech by citizens, and to the speed and scale of group coordination. Three conditions inter-relate for the success of the revolution: 1) dissatisfaction with a present regime that has been losing… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Reinventing Discovery – The New Era of Networked Science
Book: Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science. Michael Nielsen. Princeton University Press, 2011 Abstract In Reinventing Discovery, Michael Nielsen argues that we are living at the dawn of the most dramatic change in science in more than 300 years. This change is being driven by powerful new cognitive tools, enabled by the internet,… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Is There Such a Thing as Ethical Capitalism?
Excerpted from Occupy UK activist Kerry-anne Mendoza: “Technological and scientific progress rely on the broadest population of educated, innovative, critical thinkers with access to means of contributing ideas, skills and capabilities to achieve breakthrough results. Yet in order to safeguard the profit from any venture, it makes economic sense to have the smallest group of… Continue reading
The DIY Copyright Revolution
Source: Michael Weinberg This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. On Feb. 29, Future Tense will host an event on the Make movement and do-it-yourself innovation in Washington, D.C. For more information and to sign up for the event, please visit the NAF website.) It is… Continue reading
The Greek Experiment : showing how far finance can push down living standards
A must to understand the current global crisis, by Michael Hudson, why “Athens burning” is a important neoliberal experiment:
Book of the Day: The Sharing Economy – Solidarity Networks Transforming Globalisation
Book: The Sharing Economy: Solidarity Networks Transforming Globalisation. By Lorna Gold. Ashgate, 2004 Overview At the start of the new millennium, the feeling of hopefulness which marked the dawn of this new era has darkened sharply. Ancient divisions have re-emerged, exposing the fragility of a globalised world in which there is little sense of being… Continue reading
Project of the Day: The Group Pattern Language
Interesting “Pattern Language for Bringing Life To Meetings and Other Gatherings, also produced in the form of a card deck, produced by Group Works: “About the Group Pattern Language Project and the Card Deck Why are we doing this? Our world is, to a very real extent, based on dialogue. Every action taken that involves… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Open Market Sustainability
“For the first time since the creation of the Cold War economic engine, domestic demographic trends and advances in housing, transportation, farming, and resource utilization make a strategic market reset possible. A massive pool of pent-up demand and an equally large reservoir of stranded capital can underwrite a three-part reset in the critical nodes of… Continue reading