* Book(let): Commons a Model for Managing Natural Resources. Ed. by Silke Helfrich. Coredem, 2012. Co-editor Silke Helfrich explains the theme: “Over the course of history, societies have developed specific ways to manage natural resources collectively, so as to ensure their prosperity and continuity. This most often took place on a local scale. These are… Continue reading
Date archives "April 2013"
Questions on Building the Commons for the 2nd Making Worlds conference
Questions prepared for the 2nd Making Worlds in NYC, focused on the theme of Building the Commons, from Stephen Collis and the Future of Occupy newsletter; (which links to the source material): * “How do communities identify with and participate in the process of commoning?”. We live in a time when competitive individualism is emphasized,… Continue reading
The fallacy of the dream of Decentralized (P2P) Trade Economies
Trade can’t solve the inequality issues, what we need instead is an approval economy, argues Heather Marsh. See the next installment on April 6 for the description of the logic of an approval economy. Excerpted from Georgie BC: “Peer-to-peer trading is being increasingly explored as a method to cut out corporate control of the trade… Continue reading
Digitally Enabled Collective Action in Areas of Limited Statehood: can ‘weak states’ be good for Peer Production?
Republished from Mayo Fuster Morell: “I recently met Steven Livingston (Professor School of Media and Public Affairs; The George Washington University) and his work brought me to think common-based peer production (CBPP) from a perspective that I found interesting. Steven Livingston addressed the question of Digitally Enabled Collective Action in Areas of Limited Statehood. One… Continue reading
Launching the First Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam in NYC!
“The power of open source hardware lies in the ability to build upon others’ work and good documentation is the key to making this happen.” Help bring Open Source Hardware to the next stage in New York City at ITP-NYU – April 26-28, 2013 !! Via Simone Cicero: More information here: “The growth of the… Continue reading
Working hours, energy expenditures and climate change: towards a cap and trade for working hours
There is a very strong correlation between hours of work and GHG emission — stronger than the correlation between population, labor force or GDP and emissions. Excerpted from Tom Walker: “A few years ago, the Sandwichman started wondering why nobody paid attention to the energy intensity of employment. People talk about “decoupling” GDP from energy… Continue reading
Proposals for creative art+science, participatory, and open environmental education in Gulf of Finland / Baltic Sea Region
Via Andrew Paterson: Six proposals are introduced below for creative art+science, participatory and open approaches to environmental education and awareness in the Gulf of Finland Year 2014- / Baltic Sea region. They were first presented by Andrew Gryf Paterson at the Gulf of Finland Year Trilateral Environmental Education seminar, Tallinn, 28.2.2013, and are part of… Continue reading
How Net Parties are changing the rules of the political game
It´s possible that Net parties may never govern a country. But it’s also very possible that, before long, they may change the rules of the political game forever. An article by Bernardo Gutierrez. Translation from the Spanish by Stacco Troncoso & AM Utronco/Guerrilla Translations. Bernardo Gutierrez: “The emergence of Partido X (Spain), Partido de la… Continue reading
Proposed Next Steps for the emerging P2P and Commons networks
In short, we need a alliance of the commons to project civil and political power and influence at every level of society; we need phyles to strengthen our economic autonomy from the profit-maximizing dominant system; and we need Chambre of the Commons to achieve territorial policy; legal and infrastructural conditions for the alternative, human and… Continue reading
Is there a crisis in Open Source Ecology?
This is the third “mass leaving event” I know of in OSE history (others were in 2009 and 2011). There has also been a steady stream of individual volunteers leaving because of the poor management. Money spent on OSE has been wasteful thus far because the management has been wasteful – constantly destroying and rebuilding… Continue reading
The rise and fall of Iceland’s Crowdsourced Constitution
Thorvaldur Gylfason gives a good summary on the origins, and, perhaps temporary, fall of the Icelandic constitution project: (exceptionally republished in full) “Following its spectacular plunge from grace in 2008 when its banking system crashed, inflicting huge damage on foreign creditors as well as on local residents, Iceland caught attention for trying to come to… Continue reading
Labor as both a commodity and a Common Pool Resource
Excerpted from Tom Walker: “The everyday experience of working people, economic policies of governments, bargaining priorities of trade unions and theoretical models of economists refute the idealistic maxim that labor is not a commodity. An early rationale for the proposition was given in 1834 by William Longson of Stockport in his evidence to the House… Continue reading