Next month I will be in Minneapolis to speak about the relationships between p2p/Open(standards, software, education, manufacturing…) and Catholic Social Doctrine at this symposium. I will present a paper titled “Catholic Social Thought and the Openness Revolution: natural travel companions”. I will have some time both before and after the event, so it would be great… Continue reading
Date archives "March 2013"
The sharing economy and the new class warfare
It’s easy to think that if this trend continues, it might lead to a division of people into two classes: those who use the sharing economy services to live more comfortably, and those who are enabling this lifestyle because their income depends on it. Is this the future we want? Excerpted from Juho Makkonen, who… Continue reading
Lionel Maurel: Free Culture vs. Commons Culture (in French)
When I was invited by Communautique last year to speak in Montreal, the most impressive contribution was by Lionel Maurel, a young French legal expert on cultural rights and restrictions (free culture, IP, Creative Commons, copyleft, etc…). Here is a very interesting French-language interview concocted by the great video production team of Remixthecommons, and entitled:… Continue reading
The Spanish P2P Wikisprint on March 20
This is our first P2P Foundation Wikisprint and we are really excited about your participation in mapping and expanding Spanish language P2P resources. So please get involved and help spread the word. David Bolier has written a great overview which we reproduce for you here. Originally posted – http://bollier.org/blog/spanish-p2p-wikisprint-march-20 “Next Wednesday, March 20, a fascinating… Continue reading
Revolutionary Plots: Key citations on P2P in Agriculture and Food
Find the sources here: …everything old is new again. The resurgent interest in local foods and home-scale preservation—from canning, jamming, freezing, brewing, fermenting, and otherwise experimenting with food—is happening coast to coast. Taking up the pot and the pan, the cheesecloth and strainer, the canning jar and the wine bottle, homesteaders are beginning to reweave… Continue reading
New Italian book on peer-producing society through common good enterpreneurship: Societing Reloaded
“We at AOS have contributed a chapter about the emergence of ubiquitous, peer-to-peer, forms of intelligence in the city, and on its effects and transformations on how people learn, work, express, collaborate, communicate, relate and perceive their environment: the co-creation of the city.” * Book: Societing Reloaded. Pubblici produttivi e innovazione sociale. Curated by Adam… Continue reading
On the necessary “value revolution”
“By attaching too much emphasis on self-interest and personal gain in relation to the concept of sharing, the altruistic aspects of sharing could be undermined and the more benevolent motivations of those who share could be increasingly ignored … the evidence suggests that those who share because they are told it will save them money… Continue reading
Distributed financing for distributed energy: the 3 models
Excerpted from David Roberts: (the original has many links) “The biggest barrier to spreading renewable energy is its high up-front costs. Some of that is helped by state and federal financial incentives, but those are expected to decline sharply in coming years. However, there is a positive countervailing trend: innovations in the financing and ownership… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Alan Watts on Passionate Production
Intrinsic motivation and passionate production are key to participation in P2P projects. In this wonderful short video spiritual teacher and zen master Alan Watts discusses the importance of living life to it’s full potential.
Feeding the 3D printer – how open source solution helps save on costs
3D printers need 3D ‘ink’. Mostly, that’s plastic that can be melted by the print nozzles and be deposited to produce the part being printed. The plastic comes in the form of a plastic wire – a filament that is quite costly: $ 40 to 50 per kilogram. John Robb’s Resilient Communities blog has a… Continue reading
Replacing profit maximization and extractive ownership with living enterprises and generative ownership?
Excerpted from Majorie Kelly: “Dominant ownership designs of today are built around profit maximization, central to that imperative is the need to grow. As Herman Daly and others have so eloquently articulated, the growth imperative threatens the living system of the Earth. When we take apart the system to see where this imperative resides, we… Continue reading
Living the peer-funded musical life: Amanda Palmer’s moving testimony
Rock artist Amanda Palmer, who collected $1.2 million from her fans through crowdfunding, movingly describes her experiences, from crowdsurfing via couchsurfing, to crowdfunding:
Tom Atlee on the rebirth of a p2p-based democratic journalism
Republished from Tom Atlee: “Below are two mind-bending stories about journalism, with profound implications for the functioning of democracy – including its death and potential rebirth. * 1: Mainstream Media Meltdown! ROBERT W. MCCHESNEY – Salon: This report is excerpted from ‘Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy” – * 2. Bob… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: The “International Student Movement”
Excerpted from Zachary Bell: “On Nov. 14, 2012, tens of thousands of students flooded the streets of Montreal to express opposition to the proposed tuition hikes. Iain Brannigan, one of approximately 65,000 participants, often took part in the city’s frequent, massive student protests — but this day was uniquely exciting for him. As the University… Continue reading
GitHub is making peer production more peer-produced!
“GitHub, I believe, is doing to open source what the internet did to the publishing industry: It’s creating a culture gap between the previous, big-project generation of open source and a newer, more amateurized generation of open source today.” Excerpted from Mikeal Rogers in Wired, who argues that: This isn’t just a tool: We’re witnessing… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: The Embassy of the Commons in Poland
An information hub for everyone interested in spreading the Commons and P2P paradigms in Poland. An introduction by Petros of Freelab: “It is time to bring on some good. Some common good. Welcome to the Embassy of the Commons. The Commons is the methodology in which people organise around resources, to fulfill human needs in… Continue reading