You do not escape the world of big corporates and big government by wishing for a trustless set of technologies that collectively resemble a technocratic crypto-sovereign. Rather, you use technology as a tool within ongoing political battles, and you maintain an ongoing critical outlook towards it. The concept of the decentralised blockchain is powerful. The… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2014"
Milton Keynes is the first Cooperative Municipal Council in the UK
Milton Keynes Council has become the first local authority under no overall control to declare itself co-operative. The council became “a co-operative council, improving services and citizen empowerment” at its full meeting on 10 September. It agreed to adopt co-operative values and principles and to “re-think the role of councillors as community connectors, brokers and… Continue reading
Crowdfunding Campaigns for CommonsScope & STIR
I don’t normally feature crowdfunding campaigns in my blog because there are so many worthy ones to support. But here are two projects that I have a special affection for: An ambitious campaign by CommonsSpark to raise money for a new mapping project called “CommonsScope,” and a set of twelve workshops to build local economies… Continue reading
Neil Postman – Technology Is No Substitute For Human Values
Neil Postman offers a critique of our modern philosophical condition by challenging our widely held assumptions concerning education, technology and media.
How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology
How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology: Lessons From the First Hackers’ Conference By Fred Turner from the Department of Communication at Stanford University In the mid-1990s, as the Internet and the World Wide Web went public, a utopian near consensus about their likely social impact seemed to bubble up out of nowhere. The Net would… Continue reading
Citizens Act Against Corruption
Open access to information is the best strategy against corruption. Corruption won’t be ended by those who are corrupt; only organised citizens can do it, and that is exactly what we are doing. There is a lot of talk about corruption in Spain these days because of many cases that have come to light lately…. Continue reading
Three Rules for Starting a Neighborhood
By Christopher Alexander. Original text here. Consider a neighborhood, or neighborhood-to-be, which is now receiving your attention for the first time. Let us assume that a rough boundary of the area has been established. The area may be part of an existing city, in need of new life or refurbishing. It might equally well be… Continue reading
Video: Guy Standing on How the Precariat Should Be Reframing Social Protection
This Inaugural Lecture by Professor Guy Standing entitled “Precariat And Peasant: Reframing Social Protection For The 21st Century” was given on 19 June 2013 at SOAS University of London. Watch the video here at:
Xnet and the Anti-Corruption movement in Spain
Dossier-Anticorrupcion v.int Eng
What happens to Occupy Democracy in London shows Britons no longer have freedom of assembly
We exceptionally republish the editorial of David Graeber on the repression of Occupy Democracy: “From last Tuesday, Parliament Square was wrapped in wire mesh. In one of the more surreal scenes in recent British political history, officers with trained German shepherds stand sentinel each day, at calculated distances across the lawn, surrounded by a giant… Continue reading
Dada Maheshvarananda on Cooperation the Commons and Life After Capitalism
Back in February of this year I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Dada Maheshvarananda who was visiting Ireland to promote his new book After Capitalism Economic Democracy in Action I took the opportunity to interview Dada to learn more about his views on Cooperativism, the Commons and the place of spirituality in… Continue reading
The Ronin Institute Vision of Democratic Scholarship
At the Ronin Institute, we are assembling a twenty-first century community of Research Scholars who are addressing the important and interesting questions that are now being neglected by universities, and who are doing it at a fraction of what it would cost in the old system. We hope that you will support us, or maybe… Continue reading
A new food production oriented makerspace in the making in Melbourne
Atmospheric video on a makerspace in the making in the Footscray neighborhood in Melbourne, with the participation of p2p foundation friends like Jose Ramos: