My main problem with the Jared Diamond/John Michael Greer/William Kunstler theory of “catabolic collapse” is that ignores one of the most central distinguishing characteristics of our technology: ephemerality. Thanks to technological change, over the past few decades the capital-intensiveness of emerging successor infrastructures has been collapsing faster than the existing infrastructure itself. The classic example,… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2013"
Current capitalism as an enclosure of labor
Excerpted from Kevin Carson, reacting to the attacks of Eric Raymond on the striking fast food workers: “Labor is different from other factors of production in one regard. Owners of land and capital will dispose of their full supply, guided only by one consideration: Revenue maximization. If labor were governed by the same law, workers… Continue reading
How does extreme manufacturing work
Jeff Sutherland explains the methodological ideas behind the Xtreme Manufacturing process used to design the WikiSpeed cars: First have a look at this graphic: “The diagram on your right shows the elements Joe combines to generate the process efficiencies XM achieves. As you can see most of the concepts like iterative development, continuous improvement and… Continue reading
Loomio’s Ben Knight on How Technology Can Transform Democracy
“Ben Knight is part of a cooperative social enterprise building Loomio, an online tool for collaborative decision-making being used by thousands of people in more than 20 countries. Ben will be picking through ideas around how technology can enable everyday democracy.” Watch the video here:
Project of the Day: Panthbadodiya Basic Income
Panthbadodiya Basic Income by Benjamin Fernandez The village of Panthbadodiya lies 30km south of Indore, in Madhya Pradesh. Known as the “Heart of India”, this central state has the country’s highest levels of malnutrition and largest tribal population. The ethnic majority here are the Bhil: under the classification system inherited from the British administration they… Continue reading
Guerrilla Translation on adopting the Peer Production License
After discussing the proposal within our team, we at Guerrilla Translation have decided to license our translated content under a Peer Production License. Extracted from “The Telekommunist Manifesto” as authored by John Magyar, B.A., J.D. and Dmytri Kleiner, the Peer Production License (henceforth PPL) is somewhat of a hybrid between a Copyleft and Creative Commons… Continue reading
Free Software and Surveillance: not as opposed as one may think
to trumpet free and open source software as an alternative to the surveillance systems it has helped to build is nothing but wishful thinking Tom Slee reacts to Jacob Appelbaum’s 29C3 keynote from December 2012, about the surveillance state: “The picture of hackers versus spooks, positioning free and open source software as an alternative to… Continue reading
What Is Life Like For an Amazon Worker?
With Amazon’s business model on the rise, it is important to seek out an inside view of life as an Amazon worker. These curious retail-warehouse hybrid jobs are becoming a staple of many middle American communities. For that reason, we would like to collect stories from Amazon workers, just as we have done with workers… Continue reading
International Open Science Wikisprint
#OpenScienceWiki OpenScience Wikisprint on Thursday, September 19th (International Event) An Open Science Workshop will take place in Geneva on the 19th of September 2013, from 10 am to 17 pm. It aims to map Open Science references and initiatives and, consequently, to enhance the P2P Foundation and Wikipedia coverage on the topic. Summary The workshop will be hosted… Continue reading
Berliners’ co-op aims to take over and run electricity grid
Successful bid by Citizen Energy Berlin for Vattenfall network will boost renewables and plough back profits, says activists’ group Arwen Colell was cycling down a Berlin street one afternoon when a friend from her choir group called her and said: “We should buy the electrical grid.” The idea was not out of the blue. Germany’s… Continue reading
Interview with Father Antonio Spadaro SJ on Cybertheology
Fr. Spadaro, editor of the Civiltà Cattolica Review, and author of the essay Hacker_Ethics_and_Christian_Vision, is interviewed by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. “* Let’s get into the details of cybertheology. What drives it, what does it tell us, where’s it going? We need to start with the human condition to answer… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Sustaining Time
Sustaining Time Michelle Bastian: “This project tackles not one, but two amazingly complex issues – time and economies – and so as part of setting up the project I’ve had meetings with each of the advisers and project partners to get a better idea of the kinds of issues they think it would be important… Continue reading
Five stages of grief in the death of the nation-state
Excerpted from John Bunzl: “As a consequence of destructive international competition, governments are severely restricted in the policies they can put forward and implement. Accordingly, we now have governments which are effectively powerless in the face of global markets and globalised money. The end result is that government, as it currently exists, is dying. …… Continue reading
Amazing visualisation of an open source collaboration project (CakePHP 2005-2013)
(CakePHP is a framework to make web applications faster) Watch the video here:
A critique of Solutionism, the “California Ideology 2.0”
Solutionism is ultimately central planning by another name. The arrogance of the urban planner reappears as the arrogance of the agent-based modeller and the Internet entrepreneur: the plan is still monolithic, but now takes the shape of a network. As Steven Johnson says, when his “peer progressives” see a social problem, they design a peer… Continue reading
Three times as many raw materials are used to export traded goods than are used in their manufacture
The researchers believe their analysis shows that the pressure on raw materials doesn’t necessarily decline as affluence grows. They argue that humanity is using natural materials at a level never seen before, with far-reaching environmental consequences. They hope the new material footprint model will inform the sustainable management of resources such as water. * Research:… Continue reading