In my opinion this is a must-see talk by Aral Balkan of Indie Phone who we have briefly mentioned before on the blog; watching this many things fell into place for me – of course the business model of many services depends basically on spying on the users and then selling that data, then telling… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2014"
Free Is a Lie
Towards an Equality of Contribution in the Common Good Economy
The UK conservative think thank led by Phillip ‘Big Society’ Blond, calls for an equipotential common good economy, inspired by the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. Joanne Green of ResPublica explains: “But what type of inequality do we really need to focus on addressing – is it an inequality of opportunity or outcome? Politicians… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Prototypes for Open Source Urbanism
What would a city look like if its infrastructures were designed, built, certified, and managed by its residents? Cities worldwide are witnessing today a transformation of their infrastructural and material landscapes. In the name of ‘open technology’, ‘open hardware’, or, more broadly, ‘open source urbanism’, citizens are wiring the landscape of their communities with the… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Ambient Commons
* Book: Malcolm McCullough. Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information. MIT Press, 2013. URL = http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ambient-commons “The ambient commons consists of all of those things in our built environment, especially in cities, that we take for granted as part of the landscape: architectural design, urban spaces, designs that guide and inform our travels,… Continue reading
Participatory Developments in Italian Cities
Excerpted from Eddy Adams: “In Turin, two young city employees set up an open innovation competition for public employees, called Innova.To. They issued a call for ideas to improve city services and products, and received 71 new proposals, many linked to smarter digital ways of meeting customer needs. As part of the campaign they engaged… Continue reading
Tactical Urbanism
Source image: http://www.mindjumpers.com/blog/ A special guest report by sentient citizen and P2P Urbanist Domenico Di Siena (@urbanohumano), from urbanohumano.org New tools for citizen empowerment This text is the result of my intervention in the ‘Hacking the City’ workshop organised by radarq that took place in Seville, Spain, on September 2012. My goal was to think… Continue reading
A New Kind of World
By Christopher Alexander. A world in which we experience, daily, our unity with the universe A world which is made like nature – and in which we are daily making nature A world in which the daily process of making, adapting, and deepening is a vital part of our lives A world in which there… Continue reading
Lessons of DIY Urbanism in a Syrian Refugee Camp
Governments are so accustomed to dictating their will, through coercion if necessary, that they find it unimaginable that people might willingly – and with creativity and enthusiasm – self-organize themselves to take care of urgent needs. So pause a moment to behold the remarkable Zaatari Refugee camp in Jordan. This settlement of 85,000 displaced Syrians… Continue reading
TECHNO-ECOLOGIES II. Acoustic Space, Vol. 12, special issue on Techno-ecological perspectives
“Techno-ecological perspectives have become now one of the key directions in contemporary discourses and are part of a larger paradigm shift from new media to post-media art. A range of practices which were once subsumed under terms such as media art, digital art, art and technology or art and science, have experienced such growth and… Continue reading
P2P Trendfest (10): a marketplace for Direct Public Offerings ?
Excerpted from Jessica Conrad: ““For the first time in a long time, Main Street investment is open to all,” claims Cutting Edge X’s (CEX) company website. The new social enterprise is dedicated to building a new, healthier, more sustainable economy through its Direct Public Offerings (DPOs) marketplace. Unlike private offerings, the mainstream way of raising… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation joins the Post-Growth Alliance
The P2P Foundation is glad to announce its participation in the Post Growth Alliance. The Alliance, created by our friends at the Post Growth Institute, has initiated dialogues among a growing number of collectives spanning 14 countries and with a commonly agreed-on set of values. The groups involved work tirelessly on behalf of ecological and… Continue reading
An International Call to protect the Teatro Valle Foundation from Eviction!!
The Commons “Italian Style” must continue their experimentation! Article Source – http://www.teatrovalleoccupato.it/appello-internazionale-per-valle-italian-style-must-continue-their-experimentation Since June 14 2011, a community of artists and militants has transformed the Teatro Valle, the oldest and most prestigious in Rome, then at high risk of privatization, into the “Teatro Valle Occupato”, one of the most advanced experiments of merger between political… Continue reading
P2P Trendfest (9): The Voxel-Based Mode of Production
Excerpted from Vasilis Kostakis and Marios Papachristou: “For Gershenfeld (2012), Lego exemplifies the digitization of material celebrating modular design, while conventional 3D printing represents just an analogue process, which often accumulates errors, based on digital files. ‘In comparison to traditional (analog) 3D printing in which material is deposited or solidified in an inherent continuum’, Hiller… Continue reading
Neal Gorenflo: Banning Uber Makes Seoul Even More of a Sharing City
Seoul City said it planned to ban Uber, the smartphone car-hailing service, and launch its own app for official taxis. Neal Gorenflo explains why this is a good thing: “I say bravo Seoul. Develop a local solution for taxi hailing. Keep control and wealth local. Keep it weird. Disconnect in intelligent ways from the brittle,… Continue reading
Support FreeLab’s translation of Peter T. Leeson’s “Anarchy Unbound”
Please support this crowdfunding campaign, proposed by our friends at FreeLab, and facilitated by Coopfunding. We are raising money for Polish translation of \”Anarchy Unbound\” book by Prof. Peter Leeson. \”Anarchy Unbound\” is a scholarly analysis of the self-governance regime, bringing contemporary and historical examples of the \”governance without government\”. Prof. Leeson is an acknowledged… Continue reading
Chris Steward on why we need Anti-Heroic Leadership
Excerpted from Chris C Stewart: “My mate Richard Wilson has just launched his new free eBook “Anti Hero” – pitched at institutionalising transformational personal development in our collective leadership. Focused on change in the UK, I think the logic and insights are relevant globally, but especially in industrialised countries. These para’s from the summary nail… Continue reading