Great commentary from Nadia C. from crimethinc.com, subsequently adapted by FilmsforAction.org. Alnoor Ladha from The Rules forwarded this to us, and it reminded me of this must-watch skit by the late, great Gil Scott Heron. You know it’s true. Otherwise, why does everyone cringe when you say the word? Why has attendance at your discussion… Continue reading
With the release of a refreshingly pessimistic science-based documentary that connects human development with the global ecological crisis, there is even more reason for concerned citizens to take to the streets in unprecedented numbers to demand a radical shift in government priorities. Has the international community left it too late to prevent runaway climate change… Continue reading
Christian Felber announced during the recent Solidarity Economy conference in Berlin (September 2015) that more than 300 businesses are already using the Common Good accounting system. Here’s the book that explains why that is needed: * Book: Christian Felber. Change Everything. Creating an Economy for the Common Good. ZED Books, 2015 Here is the description:… Continue reading
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT The post reproduced below was the first draft version of the current capitalism/post-capitalism diagrams. These have since been substantially updated and the current versions can be found in this post at CommonsTransition.org
Excerpted from a very interesting interview by R.C. Smith of techno-philosopher Andrew Feenberg, who has been very influential on the formulation of p2p theory as well. Andrew Feenberg: “There is a long tradition of political theory in which technology is simply ignored. Politics is reduced to groups of people expressing their opinions. Philosophers don’t concern… Continue reading
Essay: Technology and Social Change: Some Shifting Patterns of Technological Contention. Steve Walker. Paper for the ISIS Summit in Vienna, 2015. From the abstract: “Feenberg (2002) analyses technology in terms of managerial autonomy to assert control over and through technological choices, implying the necessity of increased democratisation of technological relations in the workplace in achieving… Continue reading
* Report: Nicholas Diakopoulos. Algorithmic Accountability: On the Investigation of Black Boxes. Knight Foundation and the Tow Center on Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Here is an introduction to the thematic of the report: “The past three years have seen a small profusion of websites, perhaps as many as 80, spring up to capitalize… Continue reading
“The authors of this remarkable book have distilled the essence of the ideas and values taught at Schumacher College, a unique transformative learning centre based on systemic thinking and grounded in deep ecology, and they show how these teachings can be applied with many case studies of enlightened businesses. Holonomics is a powerful antidote to… Continue reading
Excerpted from Jamie Brown-Hansen: “Community credit, however, is currently a global landscape of local credit facilities. This is not yet a global credit facility. It is easy to offer community credit within a local network of trust. It is much harder to offer community credit for something you’d like to order from China. So the… Continue reading
* Essay: Repurposing the hacker. Three temporalities of recuperation. By Delfanti, Alessandro, and Söderberg, Johan. This essay describes the recuperation of hackerdom by capitalist society in three different stages. When on of the the authors, Johan, sent me the as yet unpublished draft for commentary, I wrote the following: “Two suggestions, one, I think there… Continue reading
A call for papers for a special issue of “Engaging Science, Technology, and Society” (eSTS), a new open access journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science: Demystifying Blockchain Through an STS Lens: Challenges and Opportunities of a New Infrastructure for the Commons “The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?” William… Continue reading
Brian Van Slyke and David Morgan talk about the launch of Green Taxi and other similar services, that aim to free mobility workers from a reliance on exploitative services like Uber (excerpt): “Green Taxi was … inspired by another cab co-op in Denver. Rather than pay for expensive leases from traditional taxi companies or give… Continue reading
The Humanist Management Network is “working on reconnecting the old humanistic traditions with the insights of the sciences to provide an alternative narrative for human organizing”. Michael Pirson explains: “The Humanist Management Network, of which I’m a founding partner, has been working on reconnecting the old humanistic traditions with the insights of the sciences to… Continue reading
Neal Gorenflo shares his report on the recent The City as a Commons conference, held in Bologna, Italy. For more coverage on the conference, check out David Bollier’s take on the event. The City as a Commons conference broke new ground earlier this month. As the first International Association of the Study of the Commons… Continue reading
An update from our friends at the unMonastery in Matera, Italy and, as you’ll soon see, beyond. Over the past 6 months the unMonastery has been going through a number of significant developments, explorations and experiments?—?these initiatives have had mixed results, some very successful and some borderline disastrous; the net effect has restricted our capacity… Continue reading
* Paper: Algorithmic Accountability: Journalistic Investigation of Computational Power Structures. By Nicholas Diakopoulos. Digital Journalism, 2015 Excerpted from a discussion by Stefanie Knoll: “How can the power of algorithms be understood and, when called for, controlled? We are only starting to understand how these strings of computer code are shaping our view of the world…. Continue reading