I often cite this project, along with Encommuns.org, as exemplifying attempts to go beyond the fragmentation of the alternatives, in order to create true economic value streams across and beyond a given territory. In this context, the work of Stephanie Rearick and team is exemplary. Stephanie Rearick explains: “A Mutual Aid Network (MAN) is a… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2015"
Permanent Future Lab
The Permanent Future Lab (PFlab) is a initiative for sharing open and closed source technology started in early 2015 by Jurjen de Vries and Samir Lahiri As of November 2015, it has locations in Utrecht, Den Haag and Eindhoven. These are the core values of PFlab: Innovation. Play is essential. In a PFlab you find a… Continue reading
Bitmind and OVN space
Bitmind is an open project with the aim to help open enterprises, cooperatives and communities to distribute value between their members. It attempts to integrate knowledge production tools and team contributions tracking: mapping workflows, ideas, donations and incomes in a common graph of value. Moreover, Bitmind is co-operating with other initiatives interested in Open Value… Continue reading
Spirituality as engagement, and why a certain type of Buddhism won’t do
“We live in a world of outrageous pain. The only response to outrageous pain is outrageous love. What does an outrageous lover do? She commits outrageous acts of love. Which outrageous acts of love? Those acts of love that are a function of her Unique Self. In this way the Enlightened Unique Self who is… Continue reading
Video: John Higson on Sustainable Empowerment Platforms for an Ethical Economy
John Higson’s priority is how to involve a maximum number of people involved in decision-making processes in the creation of sustainable local economies. John Higson is a “social entrepreneur, and former branding consultant that got tired of creating added value for products that lack true value. John is convinced that our most wasted natural resource(s)… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Who are the Agents of Alternatives ?
* Book: Agents of Alternatives – Re-designing Our Realities. Ed. by Alastair Fuad-Luke, Anja-Lisa Hirscher and Katharina Moebus. Agents of Alternatives e.V., 2015 This is “an independently published open book exploring the visions, actions, tools and impacts of change agents, thinkers and ‘happeners’. From the description: “An independently published open book exploring the visions, actions,… Continue reading
A critique of Paul Mason’s PostCapitalism: on the danger of over-emphasizing the positivity of networks
Excerpted from David Beer: “I think there are some good reasons for us to hesitate before placing networks at the epicentre of any postcapitalist future. One potential problem we might have is with Mason’s attempts to differentiate between networks and hierarchies. This is something he does frequently in his book. As a result, networks’ disruptive… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Copyright Is Brain Damage
The provocative title of her TEDxMaastricht talk gives some indication of where graphic artist Nina Paley is coming from. She says she has decided to remove herself from the “permission culture” of copyright altogether and simply uses any art she feels suits the current piece she is working on. This seems to me to be… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Consumption
* Essay: CONSUMPTION IN COGNITIVE CAPITALISM: COMMODITY RIOTS AND THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT OF CONSUMPTION. George Tsogas. Knowledge Cultures, From the abstract: “We challenge the prevalent opinion that consumption does not seem to matter as much as production and defy the fetishism of industrial work. We explore the implications of the premise that under… Continue reading
The alternative to Death Star Platforms: Platform Cooperatives
This is a follow up to our excerpts on November 8 about the emergence of Death Star Platforms like Uber and AirBNB. Excerpted from Neal Gorenflo: “Below are five things platform coops must do to beat Death Stars platforms. 1. Incubate the Templates It will take focused, well-resourced, and consistent effort to work out the… Continue reading
The Importance of Care and Affections in our Communities: Copylove and the Invisible Commons
Can we have a commons without care and affection? A special guest post by Sofía Coca from Zemos 98. Copylove started in 2011 as a local informal network for investigations into commons and feminist practices. Later, it turned into a public and open investigation via www.copylove.cc (only in Spanish) led by Sofía Coca (ZEMOS98, Sevilla),… Continue reading
Video: Will the New Economy Be Capitalism, or Something Else?
Part of New Economy Week, a debate with Gar Alperovitz, John Fullerton of the Capital Institute, and others. Watch the video here, and see also the comments by Tiberius Brastaviceanu further down: Tibi writes: “I am also perplexed that there is no mention about p2p and block chain technology. Now, you might like or not… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Disenclosing the Crises of Imagination and Power
* Book: Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power. By Max Haiven. Zed Books, 2015 Excerpted from the introduction by Max Haiven: “In Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power (Zed Books, forthcoming), I argue that this sense of futility is the residual effect of the way capitalism ‘encloses’ not only our time, our communities and our… Continue reading
Two criticisms of Paul Mason’s Post-Capitalist Theses: underemphasizing finance and overemphasizing infotech
From an extensive and must-read review by Ann Pettifor: * On the illusory naturalism of Kondratieff cycles “My main beef with Mason’s book is that rather than define this period as one that was man-made – designed largely by the genius John Maynard Keynes and his Cambridge colleagues – Mason defines this period as a… Continue reading
A presenation of Colony, a platform for Decentralized Autonomous Organisation
How does this relate to the open value accounting project of Sensorica ? Watch the video here:
Rebuilding social power from the ground up
Interesting strategic reflections from Andreas Karitzis, one of the people who left Syriza after it signed the austerity agreement. Interview by Jacobin magazine. The following insights come very close to the p2p approach: “Many are gradually coming to understand that it’s not possible to change our basic coordinates without exploring new ways of creative social… Continue reading