In my book Religion in Human Evolution and its sequel, a work-in-progress titled The Modern Project in the Light of Human Evolution, I have been exploring a new metanarrative by means of an extended hypothesis about religion and equality in human evolution — a hypothesis that is open to correction at every point and raises… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2012"
Book: The P2P Manifesto in Greek!
The “P2P manifesto: Creating the world we want within the confines of the world we want to transcend” is the first book in the Greek language that deals with the P2P theory. Soon the pdf of the book will be freely available under a CC license while the physical copies will be sold throughout Greece… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Cyberspace and the Self-Management of the Self
* Book: A CONNECTED ROOM OF ONE’S OWN. (Cyber)space and (self) management of the self. By Remedios Zafra. Translated by TOM SKIPP . Fórcola ediciones, 2012. Description from the publisher: “A Connected Room of One’s Own is an insightful essay about intimacy, about the spaces of privacy and the Internet; a book which sets out… Continue reading
Open Peer to allow direct peer-to-peer signaling to initiate connection between people, using browsers
While WebRTC is a protocol that allows direct communication between individuals on the internet, using their browser, there is a bottleneck that needs to be resolved. WebRTC is being enthusiastically described in a recent article on VentureBeat: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web But there is a problem: WebRTC does not… Continue reading
On the need for a political economy of global sharing
Excerpted from Adam Parsons, the editor at Share The World’s Resources: “There are many reasons why we should be talking more about sharing today in the field of politics and economics. For a start, examining government policies through the lens of sharing helps us to navigate the often complex debates of rival political parties, and… Continue reading
A proposed three-ponged strategy for global counter-governance in the p2p age
Can hollowed-out, privatized government to effectively cope with the increasing complexity of social and environmental crises such as global warming? Poor Richard thinks not, and proposes a strategy for global counter-governance in a p2p age: “I agree that the failure of government regulation to curb the destructive activity of large corporations is only likely to… Continue reading
Thomas Olsen on the New Taxation Paradigm
Introduction by Thomas Leif Olsen: “As taxation is both an administrative and a political issue of prime importance to all societies and their power-structures, are changes in modes of taxation both rare and slow. Income taxes, profit taxes and VAT dominate, and are so heavily entrenched in our societies so we hardly even notice how… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Virtual Guilds and the Future of Craft
* Article: Virtual Guilds: Collective Intelligence and the Future of Craft. By Leonardo Bonanni and Amanda Parkes. The Journal of Modern Craft, Volume 3—Issue 2 July 2010, pp. 179–190 Abstract: “The apprentice model is making a resurgence through online craft communities or virtual guilds. These groups are growing through the mainstreaming of computercontrolled manufacturing and… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Digital Labor
* Book: Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. Edited by Trebor Scholz. Routledge, 2012. Proceedings and essays derived from an important conference in NYC which focused on the relation between play and labor (‘playbour’), that was organized under the impulse of Trebor Scholz. Below, I’m also posting my own contribution, i.e. Theses on… Continue reading
Towards Partnerships between P2P groups and international geopolitical and non-state sovereign entities?
Excerpted from a discussion by Poor Richard: “P2P culture will help to establish many strong, self-reliant economies at the local geopolitical (or Eco-political) level by forming partnerships between the P2P guilds, leagues, etc. and progressive local communities. These partnerships will maximize economies of scope via open, peer processes such as peer production and crowd-sourcing. These… Continue reading
Self-understanding through peer to peer and the commons
From a discussion in keimform.de of p2p ‘subjectivation’ by Stefan Meretz: “Selbstentfaltung. The literal translation of this German word is “unfolding oneself” and denotes the ”ability to develop oneself in any way one desires”. In terms of terminology this might be a bit ambiguous since quite a few esoteric teachings use the same term with… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Citizen Science Alliance
The Citizen Science Alliance is a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators who collectively develop, manage and utilise internet-based citizen science projects in order to further science itself, and the public understanding of both science and of the scientific process. The CSA writes that: “These projects use the time, abilities and energies of a… Continue reading
Leadership in Open Communities: the founders document dilemma
Source: Suresh Fernando Let me begin by posing a question: under what conditions, in the absence of a Founding Document specifying hierarchy or leadership, are we willing to explicitly grant someone status as a leader of a group? I spent a few years of my life working hard to realize my vision for scalable, open,… Continue reading
Should we aim for P2P Guilds and Leagues instead of P2P Phyles?
“Such guilds and leagues as may be created in the service of p2p culture will be able to confederate in any number of flexible ways. So too can those peer groups who, despite my valiant efforts of persuasion, prefer to call themselves phyles, tribes, clans, pods, schools, gaggles, or ganfaloons… In many cases peers will… Continue reading
Influence of Peer Reviews in Making Choices
Social media has become one of the most discussed platforms that bring people of similar interests together. There are other online agencies and websites that focus on encouraging people of similar interests to share their opinions, views, principles and suggestions. The P2P Foundation is one such organization that follows peer-to-peer technology to raise consciousness towards… Continue reading
Message to the debt taliban in the U.S. Congress: sovereign states can’t go bankrupt
David Graeber in conversation with Max Keiser, on the insights from his book on the history of debt: