Excerpted from Tom Atlee: “One of the key features of “the new economy” is sharing. More and more people are sharing housing, cars, bikes, tools, meals, skills, money, books, ideas, music, energy, recreation, projects, transportation, knowledge, problem-solving, visions, jobs, ownership, clothes, stories, time… Sharing is a resource in hard times as well as a source… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2012"
The Open Media Literacy Manifesto
A plea by Antonio Lopez: “Humans are learning creatures. We evolve through sharing. Everyone has something to contribute to the cultural commons. And the cultural commons must remain open. Meanwhile we are being globally mindfraked by less than a handful of multinational corporations. Our education system is crumbling and being ripped to shreds. The public… Continue reading
Occupying the Commons
The third issue of The Future of Occupy is out. FoO is an excellent compilation of the best writing and analysis around Occupy. The issue has five sections: Section 1: Reports from #OWS’s “Making Worlds: A Forum on the Commons” – blogs, videos and interviews reporting back on all the action from a seminal meeting… Continue reading
Preparing for the Gathering ’12: Enterpreneurship for social change ..
Calling it ‘anti-systemic enterpreneurialism’ is probably to strong a concept, but I do remember the aha moment at the Gathering ’11, when I heard the regular cheers of most of the audience for calls to fundamentally alter the mainstream system. Enterpreneurs who want to go beyond capitalism as we know it, yes, they do exist…. Continue reading
Unsourcing: good for companies but bad for capitalism?
In a very interesting discusison on the implications of ‘free labor’ for the current political economy, Aaron Peters defines ‘Unsourcing” as “unpaid, P2P mediated work that replaces previously renumerated work”. It is used more and more frequently by companies under the moniker of crowdsourcing and while it may benefit the efficiency and bottom-line of individual… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: How Renewables Will Change Electricity Markets
* Article: How renewables will change electricity markets in the next five years. By Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser. Energy Policy, June 2012. Excellent summary on the prospects for renewables in Europe, with atttention to distributed infrastructures, well worth making the effort. From the abstract: “Photovoltaic (PV) cells, onshore wind turbines, internet technologies, and storage technologies have the… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Eben Moglen on the Commons in the Global Economy
Prof. Eben Moglen speaking on “The Commons As An Actor in Transforming Global Political Economy” in the workshop “Software Patents and the Commons”, New Delhi, 1 Sept 2010.
Toni Prug: P2P Is Not a Mode of Production
Excerpted from Toni Prug: “p2p entirely depends on those economic activities that pay for the housing, clothes, food and other living costs of all contributors (wages, studentships, parents’ funds, inheritances … all earned or created in capitalist or other existing systems based on commodities, exchange, labour, money, value) and those activities determine the overall mode… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: The Liquid Democracy Association
“The Liquid Democracy Association is a non-profit and non-partisan organisation that works on innovative ideas and projects for democratic participation. Our goal is to establish a transparent democratic principle in both the political and social domain based on strengthening the citizens’ participation. We are working on ideas and projects that will make our modern democracy… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Chandran Nair on Turning Asia Away from Consumptionism
“Author Chandran Nair says Asia must avoid following the Western consumption-led growth model and come up with its own model of development, or face disaster.”
This is What Democracy Looks Like in a Workplace: the Software Coop in the UK
Source: Cyberunions Cyberunions Podcast: Episode 54 This is What Democracy Looks Like in a Workplace [powerpress] We have Stephen and Walton and … Some one else?? It’s coop fortnight and we’re speaking to MJ Ray about cooperatives. MJ is a member Software Coop How does it work? Production but consensus decision-making as far as possible – we are a collective (we… Continue reading
The Abundance debate (2): Maurizio Teli on the new post-scarcity epistemology of peer production
* Article: A practice-based perspective. A response to Stefan Meretz by Maurizio Teli. Journal of Peer Production, Issue #1: Productive Negation, 2012 A summary of the argument: “In his description of the patterns of societal change part of peer production as an emerging mode of production, Stefan Meretz provides a synthesis of his take on… Continue reading
Monetary transformation: Thomas Greco interviewed
An interview by Jay Taylor on his webcast program, Turning Hard Times into Good Times, on Voice America internet channel.
Video of the Day: Bernard Lietaer on Money and Sustainability
Bernard Lietaer explains the rationale for publishing the latest report for the Club of Rome, i.e. Money and Sustainability
Crowdfunding the Commons: Goteo.org Interview
Source: Shareable Goteo means “to drip” in English. Credit: David Purser, licensed under Creative Commons We are reinventing social and cultural practices. By necessity and desire. New ways of collaborating require, not the least, new ways of organizing financial means. In the cultural sector, commercial models based on copyrights (selling copies) and government funded models (subsidies)… Continue reading
The Abundance debate (1): Christian Siefkes on Digital Plenty Versus Natural Scarcity
Excerpted from Article: Beyond digital plenty: Building blocks for physical peer production. By Christian Siefkes. Journal of Peer Production, Issue #1: Productive Negation, 2012 The summary of the argument: “Commons-based peer production has produced astonishing amounts of freely usable and shareable information. While that is amazing in itself, many people think that it is all,… Continue reading