In order not to yield to technological messianism, we should however be aware of the obstacles that the diffusion of these technologies is likely to meet, starting with those posed by the various actors who have opposite interests to their development, and those resulting from ecological constraints and the availability of resources. * Article: Additive… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2014"
Bren Smith on Ecologically Restorative Open Source 3D Vertical Ocean Farming
Powerful presentation showing how many individuals are working on sustainable alternatives:’ “Bren Smith’s vertical ocean farm in Long Island Sound grows seaweed and shellfish and is designed to restore ecosystems, mitigate climate change, and create blue-green jobs for fishermen.” Watch the video here:
A critique of the degrowth movement from Las Indias (1)
“P2P thinking” demands abundance, especially those who understood, right from the beginning of the P2P revolution, their connection with the development of distributed technologies and the reduction of optimal scales of production Excerpted from David de Ugarte: “The biggest mistake in the catastrophist view is not understanding the role of technology and, above all, the… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Tragedy of the Private and the Potential of the Public
* Report: The Tragedy of The Private. The Potential of the Public. by Hilary Wainwright. Published by Public Services International and the Transnational Institute, 2014
Help build the Jack Of All Trades Universe
We featured a introduction video to JoatU a few months back and we’re happy to see that they’re doing their best to scale up this great project. Please watch the video, read through the materials below and support them in their current crowdfunding campaign. Jack of All Trades Universe (a.k.a. JoatU) is a revolutionary, community-based, online economic… Continue reading
How Algorithmic Protocol Wars are rocking the Social Lending space
This article describes how some of the p2p lending spaces are trying to preserve a more equal distribution of their loans, to avoid cherrypicking of the best loans by the big banks and institutional investors. Excerpted from Amy Cortese: “Lending Club and Prosper focus on prime and near-prime borrowers, that is, consumers with FICO scores… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Mitigating Anticommons Harms to Science Research
* Article: Mitigating “Anticommons” Harms to Science and Technology Research. Paul A. David. The WIPO Journal : Analysis of Intellectual Property Issues, 1(2), 2010:pp. 59?73 From the abstract: “There are three analytically distinct layers of the phenomenon that has been labeled “the anticommons” and indicted as a potential impediment to innovation resulting from patenting and… Continue reading
Cooperativa Integral Catalana as a living model of open cooperativism
Enric Duran of the Catalan Integrated Cooperative has taken the time to comment on Michel Bauwens’ recent article on Open Coops, contrasting Bauwens’ proposals with the practical realities already under way in the CIC’s own forward thinking cooperativist environment. Bauwens’ summary of these proposals include four key proposals which Duran addresses below. To give some… Continue reading
Video: (Re-)Introducing the Sharing Cities Network
Watch the video here, and join the network:
Book of the Day: How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
Now with the vacation-credit labor system, secular communal society has what Catholic monasticism has had with Benedict’s Rule, a means of organizing a communal, labor-sharing economy without the use of money, and in the case of egalitarian community, with a participatory as opposed to an authoritarian form of governance. Kat Kinkade’s labor system innovation may… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Hong Kong’s “Occupy” Movement for Democracy
Reposted from Films for Action’s website, don’t miss this short video on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The Chinese government is facing what may be the most organized democratic movement in its history as more than 20 percent of Hong Kong’s 3.5 million eligible voters cast a ballot in the past week in an unofficial referendum to make… Continue reading
The old Big Players (banks) are taking over the social lending space
At Prosper, which has been courting institutional lenders over the past year, more than 80 percent of the loans issued in March went to those firms. Excerpted from Amy Cortese: “As the industry matures, a new class of investors is storming the P2P gates, and they include the very institutions that P2P had set out… Continue reading
Printing Open Source Solar Panels in your backyard ?
The Open Source Solar Pocket Factory seems like a game-changer: “Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein, two young inventors based in the Philippines, are taking their passion for clean free energy and developing a way to make it accessible and cheap for everyone. These guys are working restlessly to provide a product that could be used… Continue reading
Stellar: Ripple fork aims to make international transfers and conversion of currencies easier
Stellar is an open source, distributed protocol for the conversion and transfer of money. The code is based on the Ripple protocol, but with some differences in implementation. A description of how Stellar is going to work can be found in a blog post on the Stellar website. The network is being built, and the… Continue reading
Video: what is the ideal organizational DNA for the collaborative economy
Joshua Vial, founder of Enspiral, one of the icons of the collaborative economy, explains what he has learned about network-based, peer-based organizational forms that can enable people to change the world and make a living from it. Watch the video here:
Towards a first stateless commons transition plan: a partnership of P2P-F with the Catalan Integral Cooperative
The General Assembly of the Catalan Integral Cooperative has confirmed a proposed partnership with the P2P Foundation. This is an important development for several reasons. First, the Catalan Integral Cooperative is the first new type of cooperative that is entirely in line with the idea for a new type of coops engaged in the co-production… Continue reading