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Date archives "March 2014"
The Fate of a Corner Grocery in Austria
The corner grocery used to be the corner stone of every neighborhood. Take it away and the neighborhood will fall apart. Here’s another sad story from Austria, one of millions in the age of supermarkets and cars. This particular story is told in German language here. This image was shot back in 1994, a place… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Xinchejian Hackerspace Shanghai
Xinchejian Hackerspace Shanghai Emily Parker writes: “Xinchejian, founded in 2010, means “new workshop.” It occupies a rented room in a Shanghai warehouse. Members pay around $16 a month to use the space and tools, and on Wednesday nights it is open to the public. The Taiwan-born David Li, a 40-year-old programmer and a co-founder of… Continue reading
Time for cooperative government and pro-cooperative political representatives
Any politician who pretends that more cooperative working will spring from a debilitatingly shrunken state is either ignorant or disingenuous. It is no help to keep loading a greater burden onto cooperators while non-cooperators are allowed to siphon off more resources under the cloak of deregulation. A cooperative government is one that not only acknowledges… Continue reading
The Stress Reservoir
Christopher Alexander, The Phenomenon of Life, pages 376 – 378: “We shall understand the negative effect of environment on human freedom more deeply by considering the phenomenon of stress. Broadly speaking, the reaction to each unsolved problem, or annoyance, or conflict that is encountered creates in the individual some level of stress (1). Stress is… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Making Place for Abundance
* Article: Making Place for Abundance. Wolfgang Hoeschele. From the Summary: “How can we build an economy of abundance, that seeks to create the condition of abundance when all people, regardless of their background, now and in the future, are enabled to thrive ² and numerous animal and plants species can likewise thrive?I present here… Continue reading
How Can Crypto-Money Become a Money of the Commons ?
Excerpted from Andrea Fumagalli: Current (aka BTC, Bictoin) “crypto-money … is part of the traditional financial system. There is no emancipation, but subsumption. There is no alternative, but compatibility. The question becomes: how can crypto-money, once freed by institutional constraints, be able to lead the attack to the heart of oligarchy of financial big intermediaries?… Continue reading
Rise of the Machines
Source: BestComputerScienceDegrees.com
Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto reconnects with P2P Foundation after five years
Last night at 2:18am Alexia Tsotsis, Co-Editor at TechCrunch tweeted at me asking me to email or DM her. Intrigued, I did so. Turns out, in response to the Newsweek article (see here if you can’t get to that) claiming to have the real identity of Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, the ‘real’ Satoshi posted on… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: The Peer Production of Large-Scale Networked Protests
* Special Journal Issue: Organization in the crowd: peer production in large-scale networked protests. By W. Lance Bennett, Alexandra Segerberg & Shawn Walker. Information, Communication & Society. Volume 17, Issue 2, 2014, pages 232-260. Special Issue: The Networked Young Citizen. From the Abstract: “How is crowd organization produced? How are crowd-enabled networks activated, structured, and… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Peercover
Extracted from The New Scientist: Hal Hodson: “INSURANCE is an unfortunate fact of life. We pay large premiums to cover ourselves for bad events that often never happen. But there is another way. An online insurance firm called Peercover lets groups of people insure each other on their own terms and at a fraction of… Continue reading
IndieBB: Open Source Biotech for Everyone
“I want to create a kit that will let everyone get involved in genetic engineering, and from there to help democratise synthetic biology so we can all have a chance to shape the future of technology. It starts with this; humble, but important. If you agree, please help out by pledging, or by spreading the… Continue reading
Film: Winstanley – A look into the life and times of the Diggers
A friend recently recommended Winstanley the 1975 film by Kevin Brownlow with Andrew Mollo. The film offers a glimpse into the life and times of Gerrard Winstanley, 17th century English Protestant religious reformer and political activist. In his time Winstanley was famous for his pamphlet ‘The New Law of Righteousness’. For those disenfranchised after the… Continue reading
Towards an Anti-Ecocide Law in Europe
Republished from Charles Eisenstein: “Designer Vivienne Westwood expressed anguish and alarm at the worsening state of the planet, at a press conference yesterday. “The acceleration of death and destruction is unimaginable,” she said, “and it’s happening quicker and quicker.” Speaking in support of the European Citizens’ Initiative to End Ecocide, her words echo a growing… Continue reading
Featured Article: Why Precariat is not a ‘bogus concept’, by Guy Standing.
Excerpted from Open Democracy: Guy Standing: The precariat, a class-in-the-making, is the first mass class in history that has systematically been losing rights built up for citizens. So, why is it the new dangerous class and how is it differentiated from other class groups in the evolving global labour process? Ways of looking at the… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: The Milan Research Unit on Direct Democracy
Excerpted from A. Massimo Calderazzi: “The most relevant among possible changes is demolishing our political system, based on domineering parties and on lifetime careers of lousy politicians. The way to achieve their annihilation is shifting from elections to sortition. Elections were and are for oligarchy. Sortition shall be again the ultimate way to enfranchise the… Continue reading