Co-operatives and mutuals have performed impressively in the recession, with turnover across the board up 9.6% since 2008, compared to a shrinkage of 1.7% in the UK economy. That resilience is also seen in start-up success: 98% of co-operatives are still trading three years after formation against 65% of ordinary companies. Interesting fact uncovered from… Continue reading
Date archives "January 2014"
The second wave: forking the Bitcoin Protocol and what it means for the future of money
Excerpted from Carl Miller: “A programmer can piggyback on the bitcoin code, customise it, and within a day give you your own currency. There are around 70 cryptocurrencies currently being traded in reasonable quantities. At the moment, most have tinkered around with bitcoin to offer some kind of additional edge. Litecoins offer faster transactions. Worldcoins,… Continue reading
Podcast of the Day: A peer to peer approach to governance, production and distribution of knowledge
James Alexander Arnfinsen interviews Michel Bauwens for Levelei.no From the shownotes to the episode: “In this episode I´m joined by Michel Bauwens, who is the founder of P2P-foundation which works to promote, research and develop different forms of peer to peer practices. He starts out by describing his engagement with civic entrepreneurship, where the P2P-foundation… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: From the Popular Front to the Populous Fronts
What kind of alliances were behind the massive social movements of the last few years ? Excerpted from Howard Slater: “In the days of the Arab Spring, Syntagma Square, the Occupy Movement, the public sector strike and the education struggles we were witness to a renewed ‘popular front’ of sorts. A ‘populous front’ that brought… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Reputation-Based Governance
Reputation-based Governance Definition “Reputation–based governance is a way of executing (and as we will see, possibly, of choosing) policies that hinges on the reputation of the actors involved, by a systematic use of an appropriate digital information system that computes reputation measures and makes them accessible to all.” [http://www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2010] Description From an article with the… Continue reading
Toward Resilient Architectures 5: Agile Design
by Michael Mehaffy, Nikos A. Salingaros, originally published by MetropolisMag.com Courtesy Steve Slater As humanity progresses into an increasingly technological 21st century, we are confronted with a historic and alarming paradox. Over the last two and a half millennia, our species has made historic progress in achieving (partially but substantially) ancient ideals of democracy, human rights, justice,… Continue reading
Technical Meshworks as a mode of social governance
Excerpted from Primavera De Filippi: “Beyond the benefits of costs and elasticity, little attention has been given to the real power of mesh networking: the social impact it could have on the way communities form and operate. What’s really revolutionary about mesh networking isn’t the novel use of technology. It’s the fact that it provides… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Sustaining the Commons
Sustaining the Commons. By John M. Anderies and Marco A. Janssen. Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, 2013. Book Review by David Bollier: “For newcomers to the commons wishing to acquaint themselves with Elinor Ostrom’s work, it can be a hard slog. Her scholarly treatises, while often quite insightful, can be quite dense in… Continue reading
Commons – Practices, boundaries and thresholds | lo Squaderno no. 30
“Only through practices of commoning in space and time that update the commons and strengthen their (counter-)power, especially through anti-capitalist struggles, will different experiences be able to coalesce into a coherent political project, moving those experiences beyond their specific, and sometimes narrow, confines.” The December special edition of Lo Squaderno on Commons – Practices, boundaries… Continue reading
Neoliberal shrinkage and the coming dark age of the end of Empire
Interesting conversation / interview with Michael Hudson which provides parallels between today and the end of the Roman Empire. Well worth listening to. Watch the video here:
Constructing Resilient Futures
Excerpted/Republished from Seth Godin: ” Accuracy, resilience and denial … three ways to deal with the future. Accuracy is the most rewarding way to deal with what will happen tomorrow–if you predict correctly. Accuracy rewards those that put all their bets on one possible outcome. The thing is, accuracy requires either a significant investment of… Continue reading
Intelligence-Based Design: A Sustainable Foundation for Worldwide Architectural Education (publication)
by Nikos A. Salingaros & Kenneth G. Masden II – INTELLIGENCE-BASED DESIGN: A SUSTAINABLE FOUNDATION FOR WORLDWIDE ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION (download the publication, pdf, 59 pages) Originally published in IJAR (International Journal of Architectural Research), vol. 2- Issue 1: Intelligence-Based Design: A Sustainable Foundation for Worldwide Architectural Education. Description: “Architectural theory as currently taught in modern universities throughout… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. By Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas. Atria Books Book Review Excerpted from a review by Elizabeth Genthner: “In Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, authors Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas examine current problems with the… Continue reading
Commotion 1.0 mesh networking toolkit makes neighborhood networks easy to build
Commotion 1.0 is an open-source toolkit that provides users software and training materials to adapt mobile phones, computers, and other wireless devices to create decentralized mesh networks so they can connect and share local services. A mesh network can function locally making local sites and services available, but when one user connects to the Internet, all… Continue reading
Exploring the intersection of design, social innovation and public policy
“This book edited by Ezio Manzini and Eduardo Staszowski documents and presents some reflections on efforts of DESIS Labs in Europe, Canada, and the United States that are participating in the Public and Collaborative Thematic Cluster. It includes 11 articles that present from a critical perspective the labs’ projects and activities during the 2012-2013 period…. Continue reading
Monetary History (3) : Medieval prosperity and the lack of usury
Excerpted from Ellen Brown: (from chapter 5 of the book, Web of Debt) “Modern schoolbooks generally portray the Middle Ages as a time of poverty, backwardness, and economic slavery, from which the people were freed only by the Industrial Revolution; but reliable early historians painted a quite different picture. Thorold Rogers, a nineteenth century Oxford… Continue reading