Source: PR Newswire In a major challenge to the world’s dominant credit rating agencies, two not-for-profit rating providers announced a strategic alliance today. Both of the NGOs – Wikirating and Public Sector Credit Solutions (PSCS) – employ crowdsourcing techniques to improve credit ratings. Zurich-based Wikirating uses the same technology as Wikipedia to gather and aggregate… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2012"
To Be A Maker in Lagos
Photos of the Maker Faire in Lagos, Nigeria:
Book of the Day: Cultures and Ethics of Sharing
Book: Cultures and Ethics of Sharing / Kulturen und Ethiken des Teilens, edited jointly by Wolfgang Sützl, Felix Stalder, Ronald Maier, Theo Hug. Innsbruck University Press, 2012 Description “It is a bilingual (English/German) collection of papers on empirical and theoretical aspects of sharing, both on-line and off-line. Some papers develop quite optimistic perspectives, but others… Continue reading
Paul Hartzog on the Advantages of Scale of Openness and Peer Production
A post on issues of scale in industrial vs. peer production, by Paul Hartzog Citations Centralized hierarchies should not be too rudely rejected, but should be seen as effective methods of production during specific periods when connectivity is low. Only as technology makes cooperation among large numbers of people possible does decentralization become a feasible… Continue reading
Occupy Sandy – the 99% organizes for disaster relief
Occupy Sandy is a series of spontaneous relief efforts by people inside of and close to the occupy movement. It came together in the first days after the storm devastated large parts of the eastern US coastline and did quite some damage to New York City transport infrastructure and housing. In what seems an uncharacteristic… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Abolishing Education and Liberating Creation
Manifesto: Abolishing Education and Liberating Creation. The Beginnings of a Manifesto and Practical Guide. Jeruviel Stardust Earthen-Hornbroth. (Pre-Release September 2012) Thesis Excerpted from the draft introduction: In order to manifest a world free of all oppressions, a world in which many worlds fit, we must simultaneously seek to abolish education—the concept, practice, and all of… Continue reading
Walter Mignolo: Coloniality: The past and present of global unjustice
Walter Mignolo, discusses essential issues of polycentrism and collaboration in post-coloniality: (excerpt) “”Hegemony, in a polycentric world, would require of pluriversality to a universal principle–an apparent contradiction that deserves careful attention. If the principle of pluri-versality is uni-versaly (that is, globally) assumed, then dialogues and alliances of civilizations—instead of competitions between imperial nation-states and dependency… Continue reading
Public Domain Call for arts!
Source: Amelia Andersdotter Every year loads of European artistic works enter into the public domain, that is, the copyright protection granted to the work expires and the material becomes free for use (with or without attribution depending on jurisdiction). In 2013 te works from all over Europe passing into the public domain are works for… Continue reading
GOSI: A Concept for a Global Open Source Initiative
Franz Nahrada informed us of this initiative: “Something like this HAS to emerge sooner or later, when some bright people understand that there is no way out for business as usual and the competitive game does not work any more for the rest of us.” A Concept for a Global Open Source Initiative _GOSI_ Based… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age
Book: Steven Johnson. Future, Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age Description “Is there a new political philosophy emerging from things like open source software development; massive community sharing hubs like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and Reddit; peer-to-peer social networking; experiments in “Liquid Democracy,” and the rapid spread of resource sharing tools like ZipCar, AirBnb… Continue reading
Asbjørn Wahl: The 1 % won’t compromise with the unions that they believe they can defeat
The interview with Asbjørn Wahl made during his stay in Zagreb, at the conference “Economy of Crisis Capitalism and Ecology of the Commons”, 22.-24. November. Wahl counters the argument of those who suggest Keynsianism sort new comprimise can be forced on capitalist classes, by counter-argueing that today it is a furtile effort because the 1%… Continue reading