Democratic Reason thus establishes the superiority of democracy as a way of making decisions for the common good. * Book: Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. By Hélène Landemore. Princeton University Press, 2012 The publishers write that: “Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases…. Continue reading
Date archives "June 2013"
Disputing the enclosures of digital commons (2): openness as counter-measure
Excerpted from TOM SLEE: “Capital erodes, alienates, and distorts efforts to build value on non-commodified sharing, and openness demands that capital is given unfettered access to the commons. Are digital commons and urban commons doomed to feed the hand that bites them? Perhaps not. Among all the contradictions of the commons, Harvey identifies one that… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Open Cyprus and the Cyprus Bank of the Commons
“This is a call for all people living outside Cyprus. We would love to hear from you your ideas, your own activities, in your own communities, anything that may help in practical ways to implement those ideas in Cyprus… We are united in this struggle against an economic system that has proven not to be… Continue reading
Selected Citations on Open and P2P Currencies
For the source links, go here! To survive and thrive, human systems *need* a not just a network view, but a multi-dimensional, multi-scaled view and definition of systems. this will help us see how many, many people can operate and multiply many forms of wealth within systems that previously seemed easily depletable. Peer networks are… Continue reading
Book of the Day: the Global Auction of Public Assets
* Book: Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market & Public Private Partnerships. by Dexter Whitfield. Spokesman Books, 2010. This book “demonstrates why new public investment priorities are needed with radical changes in global financial markets and the abandonment of the Public Private Partnership model.” The publishers write that: “This… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Biohackers and the Politics of Open Science
a book about Open Source in Genomics, not only the diybio movement but more in general how open science culture and practices interact with today’s innovation and market system. * Book: Biohackers. The Politics of Open Science. Alessandro Delfanti. Pluto Press, 2013. Excerpted from Alessandro Delfanti: “The three cases I present in this book are… Continue reading
Tom Atlee on the struggle between horizontal and vertical solutions
To the extent we fail to develop those (horizontal) capacities and continue to simply rely on the services and controls of dominant and dominating (vertical) politics and economics, we tie ourselves to the painful collapse of those unsustainable systems. Excerpted from Tom Atlee: “The report from the Guardian UK describes accelerating government and military planning… Continue reading
Disputing the enclosures of digital commons (1): gaming commons-based reputation systems
Excerpted from TOM SLEE: “In the digital world, sharing-economy sites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor are built on reputation systems, which are digital commons prone to erosion. The value of these systems is their trustworthiness, so the work of tending them must be non-commercial: payments for ratings automatically tarnish the integrity of the system. But… Continue reading
The Ura.Ru pothole campaign
Exemplary social-media enhanced activism in Russia:
The paradox: why p2p marketplaces cannot really be called “peer to peer”
I explained it here to my Basque friends:
Stefan Meretz on Demonetization
Stefan Meretz‘s contribution to the Money Stream of the Commons and Economics conference, arguing against complementary currencies and for demonetization strategies: “The question of how we deal with and act within the given monetary environment is crucial for the commons movement, since the monetary logic and the commons logic are opposites. Contrary to the claims… Continue reading
Zizek’s critique of pure horizontalism
Let Zizek make you think: Local self-organisation cannot replace the need for a strong state-civic infrastructure and “large regulatory mechanisms”.
Resisting the ERT public TV closure in Greece: support the “Free the ERT archive” initiative
Find out more here! “The initiative “Free ?R?’s archive” was taken by citizens who suggest an alternative to manage the Commons, public information included. It aims at the modification of the proprietary character of the Greek audiovisual archive owned by the public radio-television (?R?), which hinders the free and coequal access to a cultural treasure… Continue reading
How to rein in the internet lords: the dangers of feudal security
It’s the Internet lords’ popularity and ubiquity that enable them to profit; laws and government relationships make it easier for them to hold onto power. These lords are vying with each other for profits and power. By spending time on their sites and giving them our personal information — whether through search queries, e-mails, status… Continue reading
Dispatch from Euzkadi: Distributed p2p economies and regional innovation
El P2P (peer to peer) es un cambio de paradigma en la manera de organizarnos, compartir, producir e interactuar. Hablamos de un nuevo modelo socioeconómico en red, distribuido, basado en las relaciones entre pares, desde lo común, libre y abierto. I was invited to speak at an event for Basque innovators, organized by Innobasque …… Continue reading
The Caravan of the Commons: documenting young commoners at work
Though produced in May 2012, this documentary following a caravan of commoners travelling through Europe, is still very much watching to see grassroots commoning at work. Watch the video here: “”Common Struggles” is a documentary that tells the story of the search for the meaning of Common Goods (Commons) in Central and Eastern Europe. European… Continue reading