Believe it or not, I only discovered arKos last Friday, through this Slashdot announcement: a project (apparently) very similar to the percloud, which is my own proposal for a Free Software alternative to Facebook, Gmail &C.
Date archives "October 2013"
Trend of the Day: Ad Hoc Temporary Social Networks
Ad Hoc Temporary Social Networks Mike Elgan: ‘Young job applicants are being turned away because of pictures posted of them drunk and shirtless at high school parties. People are being judged for the opinions, behaviors and associations they no longer have. Personal growth can be invalidated because a shot of your entire life, from adolescence… Continue reading
Transition Proposals Towards a Commons-Oriented Economy and Society
In the context of the Ecuadorian transition project towards a open commons-based knowledge society, see Floksociety.org, and to complement the prior analysis of three competing economic models in the age of peer production, I have formulated some transition proposals, on how to get from Phase 2, emerging peer production in the context of the dominance… Continue reading
Journal of BioUrbanism Issue 2
Below is an extract from the introductory editorial by Eleni Tracada to issue 2 of the Journal of BioUrbanism. It gives a good introduction to the contents of this issue. This is followed by a sample research paper on the use of public space in Nigeria. For more on P2P Urbanism see http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Urbanism_Projects Prof. Nikos… Continue reading
Fire in the Blood – Medicine Monopoly Malice
I recently had the opportunity to watch the excellent Fire in the Blood. The film documents aids activists’ struggle against big pharma’s patent monopolies to make treatment available to the worlds poor. “An intricate tale of ‘medicine, monopoly and malice’, FIRE IN THE BLOOD tells the story of how Western pharmaceutical companies and governments aggressively… Continue reading
Doubts and pitfalls regarding a basic income
Excerpted from Francine Mestrum: “Why is the BI not on the agenda of the left if it is so interesting? If the advantages are so clear and irrefutable, and if it even can erode capitalism, why not organize a huge campaign in order to promote it? Why not support the citizens’ initiative? A first doubt… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Vocativ – Crowdsourcing News
Vocativ is a crowdsourcing news service, currently in beta. Vocativ aims to let you report, share, and discuss stories that matter. Vocativ collects information from contributors and harvest sources across the web and social media. Using technology to evaluate the credibility of information and the reliability of the sources in real-time. http://www.vocativ.com/
In Croatia: crowdfunding platform for community energy projects
Excerpted from a proposal by Mak ?ukan and Robert Paši?ko: “Are crowdfunding and renewable energy a good match? And at the same time, can we get the public to participate in projects that will benefit their communities? As we wrote back in July, we found that energy cooperatives offer a big “Yes!” to each of… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: the International Simultaneous Policy Organization
“The International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) is a growing association of citizens worldwide who use their votes in a coordinated, effective way to drive all nations to co-operate in solving our planetary crisis. ISPO goes beyond merely demanding greater political accountability by offering citizens a new way of restoring genuine democracy lawfully and peacefully, one… Continue reading
The State of the Latin American Commons
Overall, there is a “upturn in communal land tenure over time … many legal and political changes that have reinstated communal property regimes. Many countries, such as Brazil, Honduras, Venezuela and Nicaragua, have formally recognized the communal rights of indigenous communities to their traditional territories. Excerpted from David Bollier: “The Journal of Latin American Geography… Continue reading
The digital rights victory of the #noal218 civil society movement
” the extension of the term of copyright was defeated. However, the #noal218 movement did not take the victory as an end in itself, but as the beginning for a positive agenda on access to culture and copyright. The Uruguayan copyright law is extremely restrictive: it penalizes everyday socially accepted practices and it is in… Continue reading
New Publication – The Ethical Economy: Rebuilding Value After the Crisis
“Can the ethical turn that we are presently witnessing among corporations, consumers, investors, employees, activists, and other stakeholders – their desire to address a number of concerns beyond the profit motive – become a basis for a new “social contract” in which the interests of business and the interests of society can coincide? In other… Continue reading
Seeing Food as a Commons
Excerpted from David Bollier: “What would the world look like if we began to re-conceptualize food as a commons? Jose Luis Vivero Pol of the Centre for Philosophy of Law at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium has done just that in a recent essay, “Food as a Commons: Reframing the Narrative of the Food… Continue reading
Open Science Tour Diary (4): Celya Gruson-Daniel
Introduction During the Summer of 2013, Celya Gruson-Daniel, Founder of Hack Your PhD (HYPhD) went on a tour of Eastern Canada and the United States seeking open science advocates from Montreal to Boston to San Francisco to Seattle. She has kindly provided us with excerpts from her diary, complete with links to various interviews and sources. P2P… Continue reading
Events: Giftival Istanbul 11th-15th Oct
Giftival 2013
Three Competing Societal and Economic Models in the Age of Peer Production
A summary of my p2p ideas, written on September 21, 2013, in Quito. This is a draft which I am continuing to update here. I distinguish Three Models of Value Creation, Redistribution and Economic Development, with the following characteristics: 1. Under conditions of proprietary capitalism * Workers create value in their private capacity as providers… Continue reading