Very interesting introduction on transition processes which often depends on just a few people. Subtitled in english. Watch the video here:
Date archives "November 2013"
The internet and the globalization of the small
Excerpted from a talk by Natalia Fernández of lasindias.net: (we recommend reading the whole article) “What has changed because of the emergence of the Internet and the logic of distributed production?” Natalia Fernandez writes: “In the first place, the structure of communications changes. We’re going from a decentralized world (the world of the telegraph and… Continue reading
Video of the Day: The Right To Save Seed
An enlightening introduction to the complex world of seed patents from http://open-solutions.info/ . Orignally posted with commentary from Cat Johnson on Shareable.net
The Structural Flaws of Global Economics and the Problem of Erroneous Value Equation
A living whale swimming in the ocean has no economically recognized value to anyone, but harpooned, is worth up to a million dollars as meat. A 2,000 year old redwood tree that produces oxygen, sequesters CO2, cleans toxins from the atmosphere, stabilizes topsoil, prevents flooding, and creates habitat for pollinators and other species that are… Continue reading
Open Source 3D Printing as a Means of Learning: An Educational Experiment in Two High Schools in Greece
Ninth of a 10-posts-series on P2P Lab’s 2013 publications. Full reference: Kostakis, V., Niaros, V. & Giotitsas, C. (Forthcoming). Open source 3d printing as a means of learning: An educational experiment in two high schools in Greece. Information, Communication & Society. Summary This research project attempts to examine to what extent the technological capabilities of… Continue reading
Bitcoin may be less secure from attacks than thought: Cornell computer scientists
Dishonest miners could conceivably gain control of Bitcoin, the distributed electronic currency, say two Cornell University computer scientists in a recently published paper. In an article titled Bitcoin is Broken, the problem is explained in layman’s terms. The problem the paper identifies is that a dishonest pool of miners could be more successful than the… Continue reading
Educational Project: People's Political Economy
People’s Political Economy Francisco Mello Castro: “The PPE propose is to Empower people from different communities to understand the political and economical fundamentals of the economic crisis through democratizing the discussion. By doing so, they allow people to better engage the problems Europe faces today, and t0 look for new solutions. They started study groups… Continue reading
The Failure of For-Profit Couchsurfing
Couchsurfing made a deal with the devil – venture capital money – and lost its base. It’s a lesson to any social network that aims to connect people in meaningful ways. Excerpted from Nithin Coca: “As a long-time Couchsurfer, I felt that once management put the values of venture capital funders over the organic, self-organized… Continue reading
The over-scaling of the neoliberal period dooms it to its demise
Excerpted from a talk by Natalia Fernández of lasindias.net: (we recommend reading the whole article) “What is optimal scale? The optimum size for the use of resources, starting with capital itself, that are used as means of production. Logically, scale is optimal for a particular market size and for a given technology. If markets do… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Collective Intelligence and Neutral Point of View in the Case of Wikipedia
Abstract An increasing number of organizations or communities today are harnessing the power of collective intelligence to tackle problems that are too big to be solved by themselves. While several prior studies have shown that collective intelligence can lead to high-quality output in the context of uncontroversial and verifiable information, it is unclear whether a… Continue reading
Yochai Benkler on the Role of New Media for 21th Cy Journalism
Excerpted from an interview conducted by the Harvard Law Record, on the occasion of Benkler’s role as witness in the Manning trial. The rest of the interview covers mostly surveillance issues. OTR: Could you discuss the role New Media plays in the 21st century and the future of Journalism? YB: I think a core feature… Continue reading
The Bank Guarantee That Bankrupted Ireland
Excerpted from Ellen Brown: The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed—from the forced conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages, to slave trading of the natives in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century “potato famine” that was really a holocaust. The British got Ireland’s food exports, while… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Democracy and the Commons
In today’s video Michel Bauwens interviews Marvin Brown and Smàri Mc Carthy buy cialis in australia The interview was produced by Alain Ambrosi, at the Economics and the Commons Conference which took place in Berlin from 22 to 24 May 2013. For more videos on the commons see http://www.remixthecommons.org/
Fred Breinersdorfer’s One-Stop Film License proposal
Extracted from Techdirt Interesting proposal by someone actually working within the content industry. Breinersdorfer suggests a license which would allow for authorised copies of films to be freely available on online platforms… as long the proceeds are shared with the content creators. As soon as the usual terms of protection for theatrical release after the… Continue reading
Educational Project: The School of Open
The School Of Open = “a community of volunteers from around the world passionate about peer learning, openness, and the intersection of the two”. “The School of Open is a community of volunteers focused on providing free education opportunities on the meaning, application, and impact of “openness” in the digital age and its benefit to… Continue reading
The Commons is about Non-Exclusivity by design
Excerpted and adapted from Silke Helfrich: “At 4’23 in the video I say (see below): Commons are not the presence of non-exclusivity but the absence of exclusivity. While Carolina Botero in her suscint keynote put it as follows (attributed to Dusollier): Commons is not the absence of exclusivity but the presence of non-exclusivity – which… Continue reading