Excerpted from Open Source Ecology: “Even if your machines are making and repairing other of your machines, eventually you will come to a broken machine that can’t be made or repaired by the other machines in your possession. Who do you call? Why not call your own competent little self? For most people, the difference… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2015"
Support the Art of Healing the Earth
Please check out and consider donating to this important project by filmmaker and ecologist John D. Liu. Reposted from the IndieGogo Campaign site. All humans need to know restoring the Earth is possible and leads to a more abundant and happy life! We know how natural Earth systems function and that there is a strong… Continue reading
Video: Medea Benjamin on How Individuals Can Participate in Systemic Change
Recommended 4 minute explanation on the relation between individual engagement and choices and systemic change: “Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, discusses her personal journey in systemic thought; how corporate and militarist forces converge to keep the U.S. in a state of perpetual war; and how social movements build deeper interconnectivity to develop a genuine alternative.”… Continue reading
UN Special Rapporteur: “Copyright might run counter to human rights”
Extracted from TechDirt. You can read the full article here. Back in March, Tim Cushing wrote about a rather remarkable report from the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, in which she warned that copyright might run counter to human rights. As if that weren’t enough, Shaheed is back with… Continue reading
Supporting a documentary on the next economy
Tammy Lee Mayer writes: “We are motivated to explore and promote the stories of people that are already building tools for the next economy – and over the last few years there has been an explosion of people and organizations who are creatively meeting the challenges we face. From timebanks to digital currencies, new lending… Continue reading
Primavera de Filippi: Decentralized blockchain technologies vs. the surveillance state (video)
Primavera de Filippi (Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Ethereum) on Decentralized blockchain technologies: “In this new era of technological transition, decentralized technologies are gaining more and more adoption. Often regarded as a means to promote individual autonomy and civil liberties, the same technologies could (and already have been) used by centralized entities, in order… Continue reading
Christian Arnsperger on Capitalism as Imaginary Scarcity
Excerpted from Christian Arnsperger: “Generating constant economic growth within a framework of constantly expanding globalization—this is, in a nutshell, the capitalist project when it comes to economic development. I want to argue that such a view—the massively dominant view—of development is existentially wrong….to move towards a genuinely post-development view, we need to tackle the issues… Continue reading
World History as a Thermodynamic Process and the coming of a Third Global World System
Excerpted from Peter Pogany: “The present analysis is interfused with the thermodynamic theory of world history, which is briefly summarized below. Human population and produced artifacts together may be perceived as a material entity, an aggregation of atoms or, even more generally, that of subatomic particles. This entity, culture, has undergone exponential growth through human… Continue reading
The danger from and reasons for the emergence of Death Star Platforms
Excerpted from Neal Gorenflo: “Bill Johnson of StructureC3 referred to Uber and Airbnb as Death Star platforms in a recent chat. The label struck me as surprisingly apt: it reflects the raw ambition and focused power of these platforms, particularly Uber. Uber’s big bet is global monopoly or bust. They’ve raised over $8 billion in… Continue reading
The pattern of the coming changes
What we take away from Somero 2015 is a model and a map of social, economic, and technological change that forces us to rethink and refine the framework of work. And internally, for the Indianos, it is the beginning of a new time with a new way of understanding what las Indias is. Last night… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Michel Bauwens & Kevin Flanagan at Idea Camp 2015.
During the Idea Camp 2015, Vivian Paulissen, Knowledge Manager at the European Cultural Foundation hosted a conversation with Michel Bauwens and Kevin Flanagan of the P2P Foundation, about their personal interest in the Commons. Why do they dedicate their entire work and life to the cause of the Commons? ECF’s second Idea Camp took… Continue reading
Cracking Capitalism vs. The State Option
Reposted from Guerrilla Translation. Amador Fernández-Savater, interviews John Holloway. The original Spanish text was translated by Richard Mac Duinnsleibhe and edited by Arianne Sved. In 2002, John Holloway published a landmark book: Change the world without taking power. Inspired by the ‘¡Ya basta!’ [Enough is enough!] of the Zapatistas, by the movement that emerged in Argentina… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens NZ Lecture Tour: P2P Design, Open Source Collaboration, & the Sharing Economy
A heads up to all New Zealand Commoners: P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens will be in town from November 24 to December 2nd. Catch him if you can. The following text is extracted from this most charming url: http://www.enspiral.com/bauwens Michel Bauwens NZ Lecture Tour: P2P Design, Open Source Collaboration, & the Sharing Economy Founder and Director, … Continue reading
Video: David Graeber on debt and what the government doesn’t want you to know
Watch this short 3-minute video:
How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service
This is a very interesting article in Ars Technica written by John Brodkin. It relates how the people living on Orca island in Washington State in the north western U.S. got together to arrange a decent internet connection through local WIFI connectivity, fed by a long range connection to the mainland where decent cable connectivity… Continue reading
Support and awareness for P2P-friendly Digital DIY in Europe?
DiDIY (Digital DIY) is an European H2020 research project in which I work these days. Its looks at (emphasis mine) the “emergence of new scenarios in the roles and relations among individuals, organizations, and society, in which the distinction between users and producers of physical artefacts is blurred, and new opportunities and threats emerge accordingly”. … Continue reading