* Report/Book: Digital Public Spaces. Ed. by Drew Hemment, Rachel Cooper et al. FutureEverything, 2013 Here is a summary: “This publication gathers a range of short explorations of the idea of the Digital Public Space. The central vision of the Digital Public Space is to give everyone everywhere unrestricted access to an open resource of… Continue reading
Date archives "April 2013"
On the Relation Between P2P Systems and Wisdom-Generating Forums
An excerpt on the following theme: * WHAT DO “WISE DEMOCRACY” AND POWERFUL DIALOGUE AND DELIBERATION PROCESSES HAVE TO DO WITH PEERNESS? By Tom Atlee: “There is a seeming contradiction between p2p systems and the approaches to wise democracy that I’ve been advocating. P2P systems generate self-organization out of similarities and power equity: People eagerly… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: GIVE for Globally Integrated Village Environments
GIVE is an initiative by Franz Nahrada to promote the expansion of Global Villages. GIVE works in seven fields, explained here in more detail: (1) Global Villegiatura – Trans Market Economies “In a time when fewer and fewer productive industries supply the global markets with the full range of industrial basic goods, we have to… Continue reading
Dirk Helbing on the Democratic, Participatory Market Society
” the company “Recorded Future” – apparently a joint initiative between Google and the CIA – seems to investigate people’s social networks and mobility profiles.” After describing a present-future society where all our private data are controlled by corporations (“Google as God“) and governments, Dirk Helbing, a Professor of Sociology at ETH Zurich, proposes the… Continue reading
David Bollier: It’s Time to Start a Chamber of Commons
Republished from David Bollier (the original has links): “Scholar of networked behavior David Ronfeldt has proposed an idea whose time may have arrived: let’s create a new federated network of commons enterprises called the “Chamber of Commons.” The term is a wonderful wordplay on the more familiar group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the notoriously… Continue reading
Your own data as open data
Republished from Laura James at OKF: “The Open Knowledge Foundation believes in open knowledge: not just that some data is open and freely usable, but that it is useful – accessible, understandable, meaningful, and able to help someone solve a real problem. A lot of the data which could help me improve my life is… Continue reading
The Triangle of Commons Contributions
An interesting graphic from Fredy Le Rouge at Sensorica:
Comments on the crisis at Open Source Ecology
Two comments on the crisis in the OSE project, by Hudson Luce: 1. ” I’d bet that the “open-source” projects which fail or turn for-profit all have one thing in common: one single person who owns the enterprise, de jure and de facto. Nobody else has any real say in what goes on, it’s the… Continue reading
How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
“Digital technologies may bring to a head, once and for all, the discrepancy between what a society could produce and what it actually does produce under capitalism. The Internet is the ultimate public good and is ideally suited for broad social development. It obliterates scarcity and is profoundly disposed toward democracy. And it is more… Continue reading
An Authors-direct publishing hub for p2p book distribution: Beetroot Books
Stacco Troncoso likes this initiative: Mind blowing initiative … I’ve always thought that there should be an Authors-direct publishing hub for p2p book distribution from author to reader. Beetrock Books want to enable that and, plant trees in the process. “Find out how, with your help, Beetroot Books plans to help independent writers, by providing… Continue reading
Accounting for Common Wealth: Income, GDP Growth and Double Counting
Tom Walker, who works on the issue of labour as a commons, introduces his article thus: “I would like to share with you the short essay below that I wrote in memory of Jonathan Rowe on the occasion of the publication of his book, Our Common Wealth. As Jonathan wrote in his chapter on “Accounting… Continue reading
The Approval Economy as an alternative to P2P Trade economies
Heather Marsh describes the logic of the approval economy. Excerpted from “Georgie BC“: “To benefit all of society, an economy needs to be based on service to all of society. In today’s economy, service is bought and sold as a good; instead goods must be provided as a service. An economy benefitting all of society… Continue reading
State of the Maker Movement 2013: explained to the White House
Nathan Cravens recommends watching the following video: “I highly suggest setting aside an hour to watch that Whitehouse Hangout video carefully with note-taker in hand. It provides a clear picture of the state of the movement and where it can head. Excellent group of people for this chat.”
Research on How Inequality is Eroding Democracy
Michael Brooks interviews Heather C McGhee on the Stacked Deck that confirms how the outsize influence of money misaligns decisions that would favor what the majority of the population supports. Very good conversation:
Biological Evolution of Friendliness as Possible Basis for Networked Economy
The story from Science Daily is reprinted from materials provided by ETH Zürich, via AlphaGalileo. * Thomas Grund, Christian Waloszek, Dirk Helbing. How Natural Selection Can Create Both Self- and Other-Regarding Preferences, and Networked Minds. Scientific Reports, 2013; 3 DOI: 10.1038/srep01480 1. Context “Economics has a beautiful body of theory. But does it describe real… Continue reading
Three Commercial Difficulties for P2P Marketplaces
Excerpted from Connor McEwen: 1. Behaviour Change “For many of the early adopters in the sharing economy, the experience of a peer to peer interaction is significantly better due to their unique characteristics. They like meeting a new person, or the fact that they’re reducing their environmental footprint, and therefore are willing to use a… Continue reading