* Article: Massimo de Angelis, Crises, Movements and Commons. Borderlands e-journal, VOLUME 11 NUMBER 2, 2012. Massimo de Angelis has written an interesting essay on how to correlate the growth and re-emergence of the commons, with the rythms of the rise and fall of social and political movements, with a view on the transformation of… Continue reading
Date archives "January 2013"
Good taxation is commons taxation, i.e. taxing unearned income from unproductive rents
In today’s neo-rentier economy the bottom 99% (labor and consumers) owe the 1% (bondholders, stockholders and property owners). Corporate business and government bodies also are indebted to this 1%. The degree of financial polarization has sharply accelerated as the 1% are making their move to indebt the 99% – along with industry, state, local and… Continue reading
Trend of the Day: Distribution Hacking (marketing as coding/engineering)
The following is from the P2P By Design blog: “That said, there is another emerging discipline with which I’m fascinated. It’s called “growth hacking,” or, as Danielle Morrill prefers, “distribution hacking.” Andrew Chen brought attention to the new title with his blog post, “Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing.” He writes: “Growth hackers are… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Designing for Transformation
* Book: Designing for Transformation: Stories, principles and practical ways in which we can innovate to a better future (No Straight Lines Project). By Alan Moore A summary: “Dynamic, disruptive and systemic change is presenting businesses and organisations with extraordinary challenges that are economic, technological, societal and cultural all are conjoined and hence complex…. Continue reading
From Vertical Power by Leadership to Horizontal Power by Leadingship
* Paper: From Vertical Power by Leadership for Someone to Horizontal Power by Leadingship for Everyone. By Rune Kvist Olsen. A call to arms to corporate heretics to intervene on the evolution of leadership, and save corporations from obsoleteness, which you can find here. A short excerpt from the conclusion: In challenging the corporate establishment… Continue reading
Building a Stakeholder Society as an Alternative to the Market and the State
“Especially important in this book is Race Mathews’ concept of “evolved distributism,” distributism adapted to a twenty-first century technology and economy, and where patterns of ownership can go beyond the small farm or workshop which the original distributists saw as the norm. Although such small shops and farms are by no means outdated, distributism is… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Internet of People for a Post-Oil World
* Book: The Internet of People for a Post-Oil World. By Christian Nold and Rob van Kranenburg. Situated Technologies Pamphlets 8: Spring 2011 Here’s a summary: “The authors articulate the foundations of a future manifesto for an Internet of Things in the public interest. Nold and Kranenburg propose tangible design interventions that challenge an internet… Continue reading
Strategizing the commons (1): Introduction
* Article: Massimo de Angelis, Crises, Movements and Commons. Borderlands e-journal, VOLUME 11 NUMBER 2, 2012. Massimo de Angelis has written an interesting essay on how to correlate the growth and re-emergence of the commons, with the rythms of the rise and fall of social and political movements, with a few on the transformation of… Continue reading
Trend of the Day: Hackerspaces and DIYbio in Asia
* Article: Hackerspaces and DIYbio in Asia: Connecting Science and Community with Open Data, Kits and Protocols. by Denisa Kera . Special issue (#2) of the Journal of Peer Production on Bio/Hardware Hacking, 2012. In this fascinating article, Denise Kera describes two particular examples: * Indonesian fermentation-hacking: Bacteria want to be free “In South East… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Money and Sustainability
* Book: “Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link” by Bernard Lietaer, Christian Arnsperger, Sally Goerner and Stefan Brunnhuber. Triarchy Press, 2012 This is a report from the Club of Rome to Finance Watch and the World Business Academy. Hazel Henderson has reviewed the book: “Enter Bernard Lietaer and his co-authors and their deeper analysis in… Continue reading
Values for the Left in an Age of Distribution
Stephen Downes, in a contribution to the IDC mailing list, offers a critique of the ‘atomism’ as key value of the right, and autonomy-in-diversity as the key value of the left. “I have always described myself as ‘left’ and I have been described as everything from a Marxist to a ‘moderate socialist and radical democrat’…. Continue reading
Michel Bauwens in conversation about P2P enterpreneurship in the LUZ co-working space in Rio de Janeiro
Intimate conversation with co-working social entepreneurship in Rio. Never have I met so many people willing to change their lives and leave the traditional system as in Brazil. Everyday I would encounter several people who would say, “I quit my job”, in order to undertake more meaningful and socially just pursuits. Listening to them gives… Continue reading
Defending the PsyCommons from the PsyEnclosures of the Psychological Professions
Denis Postle has written an important book, Therapy Futures, which we will present soon. Here is already an introduction in the form of a call to defend the “psychological commons”, which are just as real and necessary as the other commons. Excerpted from Denis Postle: “Enclosures of commons become problematic and often unjust when they… Continue reading
Eric Hunting on Open Source Parametric Design
Eric Hunting, On Parametric Design and the Emergence of a Design Science: “On the blog complexitys.com, devoted to the subject of parametric architecture, an article recently appeared on the related subject of associative design featuring an intriguing video illustration of a design system for urban development planning. Though the article was in French with no… Continue reading
Overcoming the problem of labor, overcoming the problem of its disappearance
On ZNet, Michael Albert of Parecon and Christian Siefkes of Peercommony discuss their respective approaches to social change. Parecon is to my mind a very ideological approach, which claims to have the answers, and the answer is a system of generalized democratic planning, which has totally abolished the market space, and to my mind, is… Continue reading
Jerry Michalski’s Global Brain of Contrarian Thinkers
Gordon Cook‘s newsletter on technology infrastructures regularly devotes special issues to people he deems of special interest. In the latest issue, he discusses the work of Jerry Michalski and his “Brain”, an immense mindmap of leading contrarian thinkers and their concept. In the introduction that we excerpt, he puts Michalsky’s work in relation to that… Continue reading