Date archives "October 2015"

Essay of the Day: Collective Individuation as the Future of the Social Web

* Article: Collective Individuation:vThe Future of the Social Web. By Yuk Hui and Harry Halpin. Digital Studies, 2013. Summary: “We are in the epoch of networks. The world is now rapidly being perceived as a vast space of interlocking networks of seemingly infinite variety: biological, productive, cybernetic, and – most importantly of all – social…. Continue reading

Patterns of Commoning is Now Published!

After two years of working with more than 50 contributors, Silke Helfrich and I are pleased to announce that Patterns of Commoning is now available in both English and German editions. The books have just arrived back from the printer and are available from our distributor Off the Common Books and Amazon (US). You can… Continue reading

The four necessary characteristics of open business formats

A compilation of insights from Abhijit A Prabhudan: “Open business formats in any legal form have to focus on four aspects as identified for them to exist. The four broad aspects being purpose, ownership, governance and transactions exchange. Absence of focus on any of these will make the organized activity not different from existing firms… Continue reading

Essay of the Day: Do Artifacts Have Politics ?

Still a very relevant classic article: * Do Artifacts Have Politics? By Langdon Winner. Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity? (Winter, 1980), pp. 121-136 From a discussion by Dan Lockton: “Many academic fields touch on areas relevant to this subject, from architecture to computer science. Perhaps the closest single exposition of… Continue reading

Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval on Digital Labour and Modes of Production

Excerpted from Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval: (text without the associated graphs) “Michael Porter (1985) introduced the notion of the value chain that he defined as “a collection of activities that are performed to design, produce, market, deliver and support its product” (Porter 1985, 36). The term value chain has become a popular category for… Continue reading

A critique of the ‘subtle hierarchism’ of the Teal Organizations concept in the book ‘Reinventing Organizations’

“The veracity of (these claims) cannot of course be tested – but it conveniently allows for someone at the “highest” stage of consciousness to “understand” a lower level but not the other way around. (Or far worse, that anyone objecting to the theory is simply told they are operating from a lower level of consciousness,… Continue reading

A key concept for p2p society: Cosmo-Localization

In a recent podcast Jose Ramos introduces the “Know global, fabricate local’ injunction of p2p-based sustainable manufacturing (or the open source circular economy), and calls it cosmo-localization. He “describes the dynamic potentials of the globally distributed knowledge commons in conjunction with emerging capacity for localized production of value”. He explains that: “The imperative to create… Continue reading

Decalogue for the Protection of Whistleblowers

Decalogue for the Protection of Informants and Whistleblowers   0. What is an Whistleblower? The Necessity of a legal definition that is clear and useful to society. First of all, we should define what a Whistleblower is. In our experience many people have tried to use XnetLeaks for denouncing corruption as a way to settle… Continue reading

Douglas Rushkoff on the illusion of multi-tasking and that we can do it all

“You Can’t Have it All”, writes Douglas Rushkoff for CNN: (sent by the author via email) “Technology has always been about choice: Fire allowed us to choose to live in colder climates. Electric lighting offered us the choice to read at night. Drugs give us the freedom to choose stressful, self-destructive lifestyles. And digital technology… Continue reading

The heart of change today: less scale, more scope, lower cost

The analysis of the contemporary ‘direct economy’ by Las Indias’ David de Ugarte: “This common pattern is an across-the-board reduction in the scale of productive units and the growing centrality of economies of scope. What are economies of scope? The disproportionate improvement of productivity obtained from two things: * The capacity obtained through the intensive… Continue reading

100 Women who are co-creating the P2P Society: Jean Russell on Thrivability

Jean M Russell is a social ecosystem designer, culture hacker, and facilitator. As a founder of the thrivability movement and expert on collective thriving, Jean speaks to and with change agents, innovators, builders, and edge-riders around the world. Her work on thrivability, innovation, philanthropy, and cultural shifts has been highlighted in the Economist, Harvard Business… Continue reading

European Parliament fails to provide a strong regulation to unambiguously protect net neutrality

The text voted today has many uncertain points and inconsistencies that undermine Net Neutrality due to pressures coming from the Telcom Companies. These uncertainties leave room for the Telcoms to develop new business models based on discrimination and scarcity, to the detriment of users’ online freedoms and the Internet’s innovative potential. The drafting process of… Continue reading

Onwards to the billion people march ?

Reposted from Adbusters, here’s a beautifully written lead-in to the #BillionPeopleMarch   This human experiment of ours is plummeting toward a thousand-year dark age and we don’t have a plan to pull it back from the brink. But there is one beautiful strategy that could save us, a big-bang moment. A day when the people… Continue reading