“Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures. New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory,… Continue reading
Date archives "January 2015"
Alternatiba and Blockadia: the twin pillars of translocal eco-territorial struggles
“From our point of view, although these two processes have distinctly different points of departure; they open up spaces that both enlarge and radicalise the citizens’ dynamics for climate justice. They enlarge it because they are grounded respectively in the opposition to the devastating project that is affecting our daily lives, and the development of… Continue reading
Video: understanding the functioning of a steady-state economy
Interesting explanatory video:
Desktop Regulatory State: Education and Credentialing (Chapter Seven — Second Excerpt)
Chapter Seven — Fundamental Infrastructures: Education and Credentialing [This is the twelfth installment in my serialization of my book-in-progress, tentatively titled Desktop Regulatory State] , and the second of two installments on Chapter Seven. Because I have split some chapters into multiple new ones since the previously posted excerpts, there is a loss of continuity… Continue reading
Gongkai, the Chinese ‘reciprocal’ way of sharing IP, one of the factors of their industrial success ?
Excerpted from “Bunnie”: “About a year and a half ago, I wrote about a $12 “Gongkai” cell phone (pictured above) that I stumbled across in the markets of Shenzhen, China. My most striking impression was that Chinese entrepreneurs had relatively unfettered access to cutting-edge technology, enabling start-ups to innovate while bootstrapping. Meanwhile, Western entrepreneurs often… Continue reading
P2P Foundation 2014 in Review Part 4 – What our friends have been doing
Continuing our series of reviews of 2014. We invited some of our friends to share with you reflections on their work on P2P and the Commons throughout the year. Annemarie Naylor 1) what did you do in 2014, related to p2p/commons work Launched the Common Libraries initiative; supported a number of community owned telecommunication network… Continue reading
Let’s leave behind the age of fossil fuel. Welcome to Year One of the climate revolution
Excerpted from Rebecca Solnit: Tiny towns standing up to Big Oil. Gigantic marches taking on the future. Technology that works. We started to save ourselves in 2014, but we must make 2015 worth remembering – before it’s too late It was the most thrilling bureaucratic document I’ve ever seen for just one reason: it was… Continue reading
Olivier Auber on the P2P Money and Crypto Currencies Manifesto
Watch this recent presentation for FOSSa here:
There is no such thing as free software
Reproduced from the Journal of Peer Production by Christopher Kelty: “Free software does not exist. This is sad for me, since I wrote a whole book about it. But it was also a point I tried to make in my book. Free software—and its doppelganger open source—is constantly becoming. Its existence is not one of… Continue reading
A Meaningful Skyline
Extract from Charles Siegel’s free e-book: Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices Original article here. Visually, it is best for a city to have a height limit of no more than six stories for fabric buildings. This is the scale that gives visual coherence to traditional European cities, where the cathedral and perhaps the campanile stand… Continue reading
Co-operative Commonwealth: De-commodifying Land and Money Part 3
Today we present part 3 from Co-operative Commonwealth: De-commodifying Land and Money a paper prepared by Pat Conaty for the 13th International Karl Polanyi Conference at Concordia University, Montreal on 6-8 November 2014. Pat is research associate of Co-operatives UK, a Fellow of New Economics Foundation and author with Mike Lewis of The Resilience Imperative… Continue reading
P2P Foundation 2014 in Review Part 3 – What our friends have been doing
Continuing with our review of 2014 we invited some of our friends to share with you some of the wonderful work they have been doing throughout the year. You might also like to check out Michel Bauwens What the P2P Foundation Did in 2014 (1): founders’ report The P2P Foundation Blog in Review: most popular… Continue reading
How the New Era housing estate Beat A Corporation : a victory for fair housing
Bravo to the New Era inhabitants and thanks to Russell Brand for his support!
Art is open source. A new world created by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
It is hard to define the personality of Salvatore Iaconesi. If you google him, several projects are coming on the screen and probably you are going to get lost among them. Is he a hacker, an activist, an engineer, an artist, a teacher or a skateboarder? We can say that every definition is right for… Continue reading
What the P2P Foundation did in 2014 Part 2 – Community
We continue today with our review of 2014. The P2P Foundation is a global network of activists and researchers so we have invited members of our community and friends from Brazil, Greece, Spain and the UK to share with you some of the wonderful work they have been doing throughout the year. Yesterday we published… Continue reading
Rojava in Kurdistan as a beacon of hope: a trip report
(In early December an international delegation visited Rojava’s Cezire canton, reported via Roar magazine) Excerpted from Janet Biehl: “Rojava consists of three geographically non-contiguous cantons; we would see only the easternmost one, Cezire (or Jazira), due to the ongoing war with the Islamic State, which rages to the west, especially in Kobani. But everywhere we… Continue reading