Local networking of smartphones is taking off in places where there are emergencies. Urgent need to co-ordinate actions, be it of protest or rescue. Latest entrant in this space is FireChat, an app that lets iOS and Android Phones connect and form a local network using bluetooth connectivity. The range isn’t great, but it works…. Continue reading
Date archives "October 2014"
The emergence of dynamic ownership
Reddit’s CEO, Yishan Wong (formerly of Facebook) is doing the right thing. He’s planning to make Reddit’s users into owners, depending on their contribution to the site. There’s a way to create a form of liquid ownership that doesn’t require Wall Street. This new method is based on the bitcoin blockchain. That technology makes it… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Piketty, Marx, and the Political Economy of the Internet
* Article: Fuchs, Christian. 2014. Thomas Piketty’s Book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Karl Marx and the Political Economy of the Internet. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 12 (1): 413-430. From the Abstract: “Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has resulted in a sustained political and academic debate about capitalism in the 21st… Continue reading
Video: Donnie Maclurcan, on moving to not-for-profit enterprise models for a sustainable future
“What would a world filled with truly sustainable businesses look like? Join this thought-provoking session to hear how, according to Professor Donnie Maclurcan, not-for-profit enterprise will be at the heart of a sustainable future by 2050. Outlining research from Donnie’s forthcoming book with Jennifer Hinton, How on Earth, this presentation will explore what it takes… Continue reading
Smart Cities are a bad idea in unequal societies like India
Is the “smart” city the “one size fits all” solution to the myriad problems that plague the cities and towns of the subcontinent? One quickly realises that it is not; rather, the “smart city” will evade the intolerable strains on public and private life posed by the ungovernable Indian city. Excerpted from Janaki Nair: “Though… Continue reading
5 tips for making better team decisions
Here is a guest contribution from our friend Richard D Bartlett, one of the developers at our favourite decision making tool, the wonderful Loomio. It was originally published at medium.com Hi I’m Richard D. Bartlett: I work at Loomio, a team building an online tool for group decision-making. We started building software to coordinate activists, and… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Question of Organization after Networks
* Book: Organisation of the Organisationless: The Question of Organisation After Networks. by Rodrigo Nunes. Post-Media Lab / Metamute, 2014 Description “Rejecting the dichotomy of centralism and horizontalism that has deeply marked millennial politics, Rodrigo Nunes’ close analysis of network systems demonstrates how organising within contemporary social and political movements exists somewhere between –… Continue reading
The Market, State, and Commons
Excerpted from the following Essay: * Providing Direct Access To Social Justice By Renewing Common Sense: The State, the Market, and some Preliminary Question about the Commons. By UGO MATTEI. Uninomade, 2014 Ugo Mattei: ” In the wake of urgent challenges to both the European Union and the global system, the inadequacy of both state… Continue reading
Debunking six myths about open access scientific publishing
Excerpted from Peter Suber: “The six most common and harmful misunderstandings about open access: 1) The only way to provide open access to peer-reviewed journal articles is to publish in open access journals Open access delivered by journals is called “gold” open access and open access delivered by repositories is called “green” open access. The… Continue reading
Why Clay Shirky Just Asked His Students To Put Their Laptops Away
multi-tasking is bad for the quality of cognitive work Excerpted from Clay Shirky: “I teach theory and practice of social media at NYU, and am an advocate and activist for the free culture movement, so I’m a pretty unlikely candidate for internet censor, but I have just asked the students in my fall seminar to… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: The Network of Spiritual Progressives
The U.S. movement, coalescing around the magazine Tikkun, which works for an economy based on love and care, as the “new bottom line” From a recent presentation on their value priorities: 1. Family Matters We are tired of the Religious Right claiming to promote Family Values while all the while creating policies and practices that… Continue reading
Capitalism, Not Technological Unemployment, is the Problem
[Cross-posted from Center for a Stateless Society] At Slate, Will Oremus raises the question “What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?” (“The New Luddites,” August 6). Rather than being “the cure for economic doldrums,” he writes, automation “may destroy more jobs than it creates”: Tomorrow’s software will diagnose your diseases, write your news… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: The University as a Hackerspace
* Article: Winn, Joss (2014) The university as a hackerspace. In: Friction: An interdisciplinary conference on technology & resistance, 08-09 May 2014, Nottingham. From the Abstract: “In a paper published last year, I argued for a different way of understanding the emergence of hacker culture. (Winn 2013) In doing so, I outlined an account of… Continue reading
If you want cheap, affordable housing: Keep the Land In Trust
The planning system enables developers and landowners to make large profits while the public sector struggles with infrastructure costs and making homes affordable. Any new housebuilding policy should keep control over land and retain its value for the public good, argue Steve Bendle and Pat Conaty. In Trust was written for the Fabian Review Summer… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Occupy Finance
Book: Occupy Finance — A Book by the Occupy Alternative Banking Group URL = http://altbanking.net/projects-2/our_book/ Description “This book is our reckoning. Some of us have long experience in the world of finance, having worked in banks or hedge funds. Others of us are teachers, lawyers, students, or Teamsters who started out with a limited… Continue reading
Contra Rifkin (2): no, the commons are not anti-market
Excerpted from Eric Raymond: “Perhaps the most serious error, ultimately, is the way Rifkin abuses the notion of “the commons”. This has a lot of personal weight for me, because I have lived in and helped construct a hacker culture that maintains a huge software commons and continually pushes for open, non-proprietary infrastructure. I have… Continue reading