American society is increasingly made up of people who’ve been conditioned through 2-3 + generations of fear, media framing, and corporate/bureaucratic caste system manipulation. Practically every avenue and direction either beats people down, or herds them into cubicles, or fenced-in fake and winding road communities. Worse yet, many more are lost and forgotten poverty stricken cities and rural communities.

Culture, substance, and spirituality are largely lost, or just a caricature for some people with leisure time to adorn like fashion accessories at best (with a few exceptions). American society is becoming far adrift without an anchor in this modern ocean. And every month we collectively become more and more lost. The more that we double down on our existing system, the more destructive and expensive for everyone involved it becomes. It starts to cost the lives, freedom, and sanity of everyone it is connected to, as it chugs it’s way toward eventual full scale collapse.

On the ethical/social level, the recent US Presidential elections have begun to break the “spell” of American national politics. We are approaching the end game of traditional media driven American politics when everyone *knows* that (for instance) Clinton and Trump are both implicated in lying, but the majority of people expect, or go along with expecting each other to just take a side, instead of just stating the facts as they are.

Some historians state this is similar to what happened toward the end of the Soviet Union. Many people purportedly knew the system was based on falsehoods, but everyone carried the lie forward and enabled it for some years, until it finally broke.

wrote in “The Cheating Culture” about the dramatic rise of fraud and cheating as a new foundational way to operate in America http://www.cheatingculture.com/about/ . Callahan argues (correctly in my opinion) that this “Cheating Culture” is driven by income inequality. In turn, income inequality is driven by deliberate caste/class systems that coerce people into tiered positions in US society, where resources typically flow from many to a wealthy few. Simultaneously, the wealthiest interests economically capture the regulatory mechanisms created by public oversight systems. The net effect is a deepening of the foundation for corporate control of government.

The 240-year American experiment cannot carry forward much longer under the current paradigm. The core function of American government is Empire. Any historic variation from Empire has been an exception to the goal of conquering people, and land and remaking it into American culture, and implementing a caste/class system within. A lack of ethics, and lack of human, cultural tradition, and spiritual grounding has won out in American culture. And this victory is now costing communities their safety, prosperity, well being, and even sanity and lives in some cases.

The picture painted by Occupy Wall street of the “99% and 1%” is just the tip of the iceberg as this system starts to decline. The appetite for corporations to extract wealth from communities continues unabated. Fundamental infrastructure is now being destroyed in the name of wealth extraction (such as the water systems of Flint, a result of the bait and switch emergency manager scheme to take private control of public resources), and the threat of oil infrastructure destroying the Standing Rock Sioux Missouri River water supply. Bodies of water, such as Lake Erie are now subject to algae blooms that make the water toxic. Each year sets record temperatures as more carbon is released into the atmosphere, while simultaneously more forests and wild ecologies are stripped for the purpose of making money from arguably unneeded development and resource extraction in the name of economic “growth” (read: to make wealthy people wealthier at all our expense). These are the actualized costs of our bankrupt American culture. As these costs mount, American people are afforded less and less agency over time on local and national levels to change the system and advocate for themselves. Instead, precedent is set to favor already financially wealthy and politically powerful people (mostly corporations).

The likely end game under sustained current conditions is not going to be good for many people. Quality of life is likely to decline significantly for many. As Dave Pollard wrote last year our choices in Energy, Ecology, and Economy are driving us toward this end game. So, whether your livelihood is tied to Energy, Ecology, or Economy (directly, or indirectly), your end game is likely collapse under the current conditions. We are now understanding as a species that we are in the midst of a human-initiated Mass Extinction, radical changes to our climate, and destructive reformation of natural ecologies into weaker, less robust systems that fail to self-regulate temperature, water flows, and collection of sunlight and conversion into nutrients. We therefore have to now resort to excavating long-sequestered carbon resources and burning those, because we have lost our knowledge of symbiotically using the existing ecologies in intelligent ways.

Many Americans can intuit this. And this intuitive perception is creating the conditions for change. But America really has no alternatives at this point. The hungry maw of the American Machine gobbles up everything that emerges, co-opts it, and turns it into another extraction mechanism for wealth hoarding for a few.

The time of the Seventh Fire

Throughout the history of America, there has been an alternative all along. An alternative that has been maligned, demonized, marginalized, victimized. But within it are the traditions, knowledge, wisdom, culture, spirituality and connection with natural systems that contain the ingredients America needs to evolve and change and adapt away from it’s pathway toward collapse. This alternative is the 566 recognized Native American tribes of the US. The time is now to start a process based in respect and reconciliation to exercise this alternative. The purpose of this writing is to attempt to create a pragmatic plan, and justification for investing in this alternative to the existing American system.

“In the time of the Seventh Fire an Osh-ki-bi-ma-di-zeeg (New People) will emerge. They will retrace their steps to find what was left by the trail. Their steps will take them to the Elders who they will ask to guide them on their journey. But many of the Elders will have fallen asleep. They will awaken to this new time with nothing to offer. Some of the Elders will be silent because no one will ask anything of them. The New People will have to be careful in how they approach the Elders. The task of the New People will not be easy.

If the New People will remain strong in their quest the Water Drum of the Midewiwin Lodge will again sound its voice. There will be a rebirth of the Anishinabe Nation and a rekindling of old flames. The Sacred Fire will again be lit.

It is this time that the light skinned race will be given a choice between two roads. One road will be green and lush, and very inviting. The other road will be black and charred, and walking it will cut their feet. In the prophecy, the people decide to take neither road, but instead to turn back, to remember and reclaim the wisdom of those who came before them. If they choose the right road, then the Seventh Fire will light the Eighth and final Fire, an eternal fire of peace, love brotherhood and sisterhood. If the light skinned race makes the wrong choice of the roads, then the destruction which they brought with them in coming to this country will come back at them and cause much suffering and death to all the Earth’s people.” The Walleye War: The Struggle for Ojibwe Spearfishing and Treaty Rights By Larry Nesper

We are now at the precipice of the time to choose this road. The cold hard reality is that we will never have a choice under the current Economy/Ecology/Energy/Governance system, as the choices under the current system have already been made for us. So, to actually arrive at a place where there is now a true choice between these two roads discussed in the quote above from Larry Nesper’s book, we need a way to reform our Economy/Ecology/Energy/Governance system. Only a smaller fraction of people in America are currently ready to really do what it takes to reform those systems. However, as the late psychologist Clare W. Graves noted, there are some conditions for change that humans need fulfilled before they are ready in a bio/psycho/social way to really change. Those conditions are:

1. Potential
2. Solution to existential problems
3. Feeling of dissonance
4. Gaining Insight
5. Removal of barriers
6. Opportunity to consolidate

The alternative I suggest meets these conditions, and I will illustrate how in the following writing. First I will discuss the type of change proposed. Then I will discuss how the proposed change meets Graves’s Six conditions.

The type of change proposed in this writing is for Americans to start to voluntarily elect to apply for membership to Federally recognized tribes who are willing to participate in this effort. Elsewhere on this website, it has been suggested that people should or will start forming “Neotribes“. For America, this is a mistake. As mentioned previously, American culture is too young to function in a tribal way. For America, it would be much better for people to instead become new members of the already existing tribes. The new members of tribes would join newly formed bands, or some other component, where they work to learn the language, traditions, and history of the tribe they have joined. The new members would also work to help these tribes re-acquire unceded lands territory in a US government and internationally recognized way (likely through tribal and international courts as well as US government courts).

The goal, to start with, is to recreate this map as soon as we can:

As the process of restoring unceded territories unfolds, participants would work together to both return large amounts of the territory to pre-colonial state, and to re-orient large portions of bio-regional food systems toward traditional food uses of these territories. Restoring Elk, Moose, Bison, Wolves, Beaver, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and plants into a retrieved robust/diverse natural ecology again. Traditional foodways can be expanded to provide a perpetually sustainable and year-round food system that is not beholden to doomed Energy/Economy/Ecology systems. The traditional Native American way of molding and shaping the land in concert with it’s ecology can produce millions of pounds of food if enough land is dedicated, and people are active in procuring the bounty. I will expand on this point with evidence and examples in a future post.

In addition to the above, North Native American language and traditions possess concepts that do not exist in Western culture/traditions, or have been lost or massively suppressed. The cultures, while not dominant, are superior in philosophy, ethics, spirituality and humanity. In all of these areas, the American extension of Western culture has failed profoundly, and is headed toward disintegration, permanent division, increase of fear and xenophobia. Before it is too late, it is time to recognize this failure, and germinate the dormant seed of an ancient and better culture, and give it a chance to lead, instead of to be the most oppressed and marginalized.

Six conditions for Change

Below is a discussion of how this alternative meets Graves’s Six Conditions for Change mentioned above.

Potential

The existing American people have the skills to make this change, but cannot lead it. So, if they start to treat existing Native Americans as equal partner and leader in this change, instead of as marginalized wards of state, by actually switching citizenship to these nations, and recognizing them with either dual citizenship, or wholesale change, the other piece of the potential puzzle is met by the existing native peoples.

Solution to existential problems

Americans largely lack solutions to the current existential problems mentioned above. This writing is an attempt to start to pragmatically suggest solutions.

Feeling of dissonance

If the current election, and recent events over the last 7 years in America are any indication, dissonance is widespread in America now. The goal is to see a change take place before the dissonance grows to unbearable levels.

Gaining Insight

From the widespread protests of 1999 in Seattle, to the recent campaign of Bernie Sanders, to the efforts to spread permaculture, re-localize local food and economy systems, and create more diverse communities based in peace and tolerance, where this emerges people see progress. But, much of this progress is still rooted in systems of Energy, Ecology, and Economy that leave the progress open to future exploitation and extraction. So, a change to Native American tribal governed America would also need to be done in a way that offered insights to participants that their elected change is working. Many Americans are in dire need of a reconnection with the “spiritual”, and not in a way that appropriates and co-opts, but instead in a way that reconnects in genuine ways. This alternative will provide that insight.

Removal of barriers

In the case of this proposed change, “removal of barriers” constitutes the work to help tribes achieve full sovereignty, and to actually join those tribes in favor of the existing US regime. It is also desirable for all indigenous people in the existing US territories to continue to develop relationships and create lasting connection and even federation, to achieve strength in numbers.

Opportunity to consolidate

The opportunity to consolidate this change is inherent in it’s success. Retrieving and developing a better philosophy, spirituality, and culture will pay off in immediate, and long term ways for all participants. It will also create a model that can be used around the world as an effective and available way to resolve the damage from Industrial paradigm activity to the earth’s species and climate.

One thing is for sure: if we are to survive as a species, it is now time to start thinking about where our best solutions can be found, even if they contradict our previous cultural assumptions about what is desirable, and what is not. We need to start looking past our collective assumptions about what is “superior” to what, and start think about, and be ready to accept what can truly help us, vs doing nothing and rejecting all alternatives while our system plods onward toward destruction.

In the next post in this series I will detail more of the practical ways this alternative can be realized in America in the months and years to come.

The post Osh-ki-bi-ma-di-zeeg: A New Political Revolution in America appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There is very little work or thinking around how an individual arrives at being a genuinely effective participant in a “P2P” economy. Effective ongoing cooperation, participation in a commons, collaborative output all require that an individual understand fundamental concepts about how to be an effective participant. “P2P” activity will grind to a halt when participants lack basic needs (food, energy, culture, access) on the individual scale.

In any economy: if you invest in the existing assets, you raise the chances that the economy will prosper. The asset of “P2P” systems is the person (not the system, model, software, knowledge. Therefore, to catalyze “P2P” systems, the focus of investment is most effective when directed towards improving the conditions of each person. Systems, models, theories are only really important insomuch as they further the fundamental goal of improving conditions of participants.

We are decidedly not all “Peers”: we do not all share an even playing field. It is practically inevitable, in part due to the reality that we do not all achieve the actual status of being true “peers”, that some will “win” at the expense of others. However, in every system, we are all “persons” with identities and struggles on the individual and immediate family scale.  I think the mistake being made now among at least some people and institutions exploring real-world “P2P” economies is to focus so much around the group scale. This approach is actually force – fitting “P2P” economies into 20th century industrial paradigm containers.  The greatest asset of mass-systems is the mass of people as a collection, and the system that makes controlling the mass possible. The mass system is optimized by trying to control the mass with more effective systems of control.

The hard work of evolving peer-to-peer economies is rising to the challenge of investing in the asset of the system: people as individuals who elect to co-invest in one another. How do people as individuals and small family units start producing what they need  on the individual scale? How can we start to support more people in being truly self-sufficient participants of many-to-many systems? The only way that I can see is to invest in the individual.

The post Person over Peer appeared first on P2P Foundation.

cc by-nc http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6169/6183800770_d8e78ce798_z.jpg

The park is surrounded on all sides by police barricades and news media vans and broadcasting equipment from all over the world. More than a month in to this, the people who have been camping here for a long time are generally reflecting that they are getting tired of being used as props in media stories. They turn down offers to be photographed, and can be selective about giving interviews. On days with nicer weather, the park is also crowded with tourists. But, on this day, it was mostly wallstreet workers passing by and talking, the occupiers, the media, and the police.

The police have this weird observation tower/camera/trailer thing parked next to the square.

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The observation tower on the trailer sits a good 25 feet or more up in the air. The glass in the windows is darkly tinted. Generally the police are respectful and nice in the park.  It’s my impression without knowing more that the violence that made the news recently happened around the corner from here when the group decided to march on the trade buildings just down the street. If you spend time in the middle of the park, you’ll usually find people sympathetic to the OWS effort, debating or discussing issues like gas fracking, health care reform, etc. You’ll also find people on the edges and sometimes within offering advice, or questioning the effectiveness of the approach and issues of the occupiers.

I listened in on this activity for an hour or so. I witnessed a woman who works on Wall Street debate with a man that lives in Queens who was wearing a sign demanding the arrest of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. The woman said it was not realistic to demand arrest of the wealthiest people and their enablers, and that we should focus on the future and not the past. The man with the sign stuck to his message, and said that he couldn’t accept any other resolution than jail time, especially given how much jail time the non-wealthy tend to contribute to the reform and betterment of our society. I watched this play out over and over. The people occupying this park are dealing with relentless doubting, attempts to erode their values and focus, hour after hour, day after day, all while sleeping on the ground in the elements, and being eyeballed by police hovering around them 24/7. I decided that I would spend the rest of my time on Thursday night playing “question the questioners”.  I inserted myself into every exchange I could find where people were there to doubt and demoralize. And when I heard them say “you will never make a difference doing things this way” or “what you really need to do is (insert agenda here)” I would reply “how do *you* know that this will ‘never work’?” and “how long have *you* been doing what you are suggesting these people do?” etc. These people don’t have a lot of solid arguments when you put them on the spot while they are right in the middle of putting someone else on the spot.  They can’t really tell you why this is doomed to fail. Nor do they have good answers for why people should do what the doubter thinks they should do instead of what the occupier is there to do.  If you know me well, you can imagine that this activity was a lot of fun for me for a while. However, when the novelty wore off, and I kept hearing about “working groups”, I wanted to see what that was about.

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The information people pointed me to 60 Wall street, which is an indoor atrium across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, that was staked out by OWS as a place to go and work on agendas, etc as the weather gets worse. I made my way there, and on the way I noticed the street I was walking down, near the NYSE, was dotted with weird irregularly-shaped barricades designed to funnel people into single files lines, and presumably irregular-shaped to make it more difficult to climb on. The sides of the street also had crowd control barriers the whole way down the street. When I came to the atrium, I found circles of people with laptops open, etc so I dove in and started listening to what people were saying. The first group I joined was a “health care” group. This group was made up of young political activists, as well as a pediatrician from NYC, and some nurses from NYC. They were discussing how to leverage the attention that OWS now has, by presenting a different image. They came up with the idea to dress in their doctor and nurse uniforms. They also planned several events that would bring out lots of health care workers to demand access to health care for everyone. Other groups discussed a myriad of other issues. In all cases, the groups I witnessed are evolving their approaches and focus on a daily basis. They are gathering resources and support at a very fast pace, and spend an amazing amount of time coming back and coordinating with everyone at general assemblies. The process is amazing, and itself constantly being evolved by participants.

I learned from some of the participants who were visiting NYC from Boston, Portland, Seattle, and other far off places that the focus of working groups is different depending on the unique local conditions. Some people in some cities are taking more direct local and regional political action, and are less focused on the media. Occupy Wall Street has no choice but to deal with the media, which has a constant presence in the form of corporate networks from around the world, and independent news reporters, bloggers, photojournalists, etc. Many of the occupiers that I witnessed seemed rather burned out on the constant presence of journalists. The occupiers often turned down offers to be photographed, put on video, or interviewed. People from Anonymous (the hacktivist group) were actively trying to help occupiers enforce their wishes not to be photographed. I overheard one person who claimed to be with Anonymous admonish a reporter that they would “come find him” if he didn’t stop photographing some people who kept declining his requests.  The occupiers also have their own social media access. Fellow Contactcon participant Isaac Wilder and Charles Wyble have set up their “Freedom Tower” distributed internet technology at Zuccotti park and it is working to provide an uplink to clearchannel. The real promise in “Freedom Tower” is not just the relatively low cost (around $1500) but the conventions and community being built up around the technology, which will make it easier for others to participate, and evolve over time. I’ll talk more about  about Freedom Tower in the part 2 follow up to this post.

All in all, I was really glad I took the time to spend parts of 2 days at Occupy Wall Street. It was an intense and eye opening experience, and I found some real respect for the people occupying this space and carrying out this experiment. I think anyone who has lots of predictions about what is going to happen, will likely end being surprised by what comes out of this. A clue for me came from both the persistance in the face of hourly doubt and demoralization, and the focus on collective co-evolution that I witnessed among this group.

This is it for part 1. Part 2 will consist of a description of the contactcon event, and what I learned from, and took away from that experience.

The post Reflections on Occupy Wall Street and Contactcon (part 1) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

You can help us develop this project by donating here: http://rockethub.com/projects/1349-understanding-today-s-economic-transformation we have a limited time to raise these funds, thank you for your consideration.

Do you want to understand what is driving our evolving economy in a way that you can use today?

It is no longer news that the old economy is collapsing around us. But it is easy to miss the new economy that is emerging. This project will produce a guide that brings together research and a model into a set of literacies for understanding today’s changing global economy. This guide will be based on:

1. research on today’s changing global economy as an evolving system.
2. a complex systems simulation people can use to understand important dynamics transforming that system.

This work will draw on work from key thinkers in fields ranging from social media to economics (for example, Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Lawrence Lessig, Chris Anderson, and Elinor Ostrom).

Merging the work of these key thinkers with the dynamics of the model will reveal how what is collapsing creates opportunities for what is emerging. The resulting guide will provide you with scenarios and suggestions for creating strategies to help you move forward in the new economy.

The Creative Team

Future Forward Institute:  http://futureforwardinstitute.com

• Sam Rose is an expert in open-source software, hardware, open data and open knowledge background. Sam has participated in curriculum development, research and real world implementation in the areas discussed in this proposal.
• Richard C. Adler is an electronic records archivist, former Borders buyer/merchandiser, and information culture historian who bring a historical perspective on the long-term trends and pivotal events that created the old economy and what factors may influence the creation of the economy to come.
• Paul B. Hartzog is a scholar of panarchy, complex systems, emergence, ecology, cooperation, commons, culture, politics, economics, and social theory.

Note:

1. RocketHub is not an investment or charity. It is an exchange: funds from fans for rewards from me.
2. It’s an All & More funding mechanism: if I don’t reach my financial goal I get to keep what I raise. But if I do reach my goal, I get access to exciting opportunities.

The post P2P Funded project: Understanding Today’s Economic Transformation appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Systems Matter

First, system-effects matter. Cities exist in networks of flows that depend on existing infrastructure. That infrastructure has system-level properties, and it is these properties, not merely the properties of the cities themselves, that produce system-wide effects. For example, in “Nature’s Metropolis” William Cronon explains the systemic effects of railroads and grain elevators on the development of the American midwest. In fact, the field of “environmental history” is rife with analyses of how differing contexts have shaped civilizations.

In his article, Glaeser acknowledges that cities exist within broader environments, but then he lays his argument at the feet of the people within those cities. In other words, for Glaeser, network effects and systemic properties seem to be relevant only insofar as they alter the properties of the parts, not of the system as a whole. Cities change because of their positions in an ecology of cities, and people change because of their positions in an ecology of other people, but he fails to adequately acknowledge that the system itself has properties outside of its effect on the the properties of its parts.

Comparing the Parts

Second, Glaeser’s comparison of Seattle and Detroit with respect to density also falls short.
Glaeser’s claim about “[d]ense, smart cities like Seattle,” offered at the expense of Detroit, is hard to square with the fact that Year 2000 U.S. Census data ranked Detroit as 84th in municipalities over 50,000 ranked by density, and Seattle 87th. The Census Bureau’s 2010 estimates still rank Detroit as the eleventh largest city in the nation.

To be sure, much of this confusion can be laid at the feet of Economics as a discipline, which has been notoriously remiss in it’s recognition of systemic effects. Macro-level systems-thinkers from Keynes to Schelling have consistently pointed out the shortcomings of micro-level analyses. Even post-Internet, Economics has tended to reject any claims that connective technologies fundamentally alter the landscape, for ex. Hal Varian’s“Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy”.

What’s Missing?

After a recent visit to Detroit, Millicent Johnson, community engagement manager at Shareable.net and a native of New York City, noted:

It may be more pronounced here, but if we stay on the current track of trying to house ourselves in single family homes, consuming without regard for practicality or sustainability, and looking to a single source for our well being—in our case straight-up consumer-driven capitalism, there is no need to look into a crystal ball, the snapshot of our future is staring us in the face in the stereotypical shots of Detroit.

But, I believe Detroit also holds the key to the future of this great nation. We must evolve to a more sustainable way of living if we are to survive, and I think we all innately sense it. We know that two-income-dependent housing prices, while unemployment and underemployment approaches the double digits, does not add up.

Harvard Law School professor, Yochai Benkler, urgues us to recognize the “increased diversity of ways of organizing production” in the new economy.

“The point is that the networked information economy makes it possible for nonmarket and decentralized models of production to increase their presence alongside the more traditional models, causing some displacement, but increasing the diversity of ways of organizing production rather than replacing one with the other. This diversity of ways of organizing production and consumption, in turn, opens a range of new opportunities for pursuing core political values of liberal societies — democracy, individual freedom, and social justice.”

from Freedom in the Commons

From this perspective, when Glaeser asks: “Can Detroit find the road forward?” the real response is “Detroit isalready on the road forward.” By freeing itself from the constraints of legacy infrastructure, Detroit gains the flexibility to “harness complexity” to explore and adapt to a new era (see Axelrod and Cohen, “Harnessing Complexity”).

“I really think it’s a blessing that we’ve been deconstructed. We just have to build it right this time. If we do, we can show the world how to live in a sustainable way, with a city that can move quickly to adapt to whatever changes comes its way” said Mike. (Mike Han – Community Development Director of “I AM YOUNG DETROIT.”

from Detroit, Community Resilience, and the American Dream

The post Real Cities, Real Transformations appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Our friend Smári McCarthy is campaigning to evolve the political system in Iceland. Smári recognizes that constraining freedom of speech/expression in any medium destroys everyone’s freedom, and protects no one. He also recognizes that government is for people, not for companies and interests. He wants to do nothing less than re-write the constitution of Iceland. I hope he succeeds in helping to change and evolve the government of Iceland.

More from Smári:

In 1874 Iceland received its first constitution from the Danish king as a result of popular demand for increased home-rule. In 1918 the country became sovereign under the Danish crown, and in 1920 a new constitution to this effect was enacted.

In 1944, after being disconnected with Denmark for over a year,Iceland proclaimed independence. A temporary constitution, mostly based on the constitution of 1920, was accepted, with an article stating that it should be renewed within the year.

Now 66 years have passed without the constitution being re-evaluated.

After the financial crash of 2008 the Icelandic people, understanding the need for democratic reform as well as economic reform, started to make demands for a constitutional assembly. After the government collapsed in early 2009 the new government coalition of the Social Democrat Party and the Left-Green Party agreed to organize a constitutional assembly, although for many months this idea looked like it would be buried.

In late October 2009 a national assembly was held in Iceland, where 1500 people were randomly selected from the census to work over the course of a day to create a new set of guiding principles for Iceland.In the aftermath it was decided in parliament that the popular demand for a constitutional assembly was so great that the issue could no longer be ignored.

On June 25th 2010 law 90/2010 was enacted creating a mandate for general elections for a constitutional assembly consisting of 25-31 nonpartisan individuals, based on single transferable vote in additionto a gender quota rule. The elections for this assembly are to be heldon November 27th 2010, 10 days from now.

The electorate is the roughly 22,8000 voters in Iceland, and there are 523 individual candidates running in the election, all as individualsalthough some have known connections with special interest groups,political parties, and such. These relationships have been mapped by various websites. Various other websites provide filtering mechanisms of various sorts in order to help people weed out the best 25 candidates tovote for.

After the elections the assembly will convene in February 2011 and operate for 2-4 months during that year to draft a new constitution and propose it to parliament, along with suggested adoption mechanisms and protocols. If parliament accepts the new constitution it will be put toa referendum.

There has been an alarming amount of P2P activity in relation to this election. Campaigns are primarily being operated through socialnetworking sites, with a lot of pressure on candidates not to advertise in traditional media. A lot of individuals and organizations have been in direct contact with the various candidates in order to provide their own arbitrary filters, and in general there is a lot of buzz, but also a lot of uncertainty, as the number of candidates and the equidistribution of the attention is the source of great confusion. To reduce this confusion somewhat and to promote the elections as an important step towards more direct democracy, a broad coalition of candidates from various political leanings has joined forces to raise awareness about the forthcoming elections, operating on amicable grounds, and further, there are discussions about creating a “shadowassembly” using the Shadow Parliament Project’s software and organizational mechanisms, in order to facilitate broad discussions amongst the general public during the operation time of the assembly. In short, it looks like the opportunity for Iceland is great, but there are still a number of hurdles. It will be interesting to see the results, and hopefully this will lead to a great democratic upheaval,promoting and protecting networked societies in the future.

The post The first real P2P Political Candidate appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Beyond mutual rating systems, there are a number of other ways cooperation and collaboration may be “gamed”:

Coercion

Of course, Douglas Rushkoff’s classic book by the same name (D Rushkoff – London: Little, Brown & Company, 2000) gives scores of examples about how human nature and it’s propensity to want to give, help, cooperate and collaborate are used to get people to the bidding of others.  Cooperation is “gamed” in some ways by pushing people to commit to relationships where most of the value flows away from them and towards you (perhaps with vague promises, or combined with other cooperation gaming techniques). Then, you can “freeride”  on their contributions once you’ve  locked them into committing.  In P2P networks, I contend this coercive attitude is actually increasing as more people gravitate towards sharing ecologies, gifiting cultures, and commons-based approaches.

Propoganda is also used in this way (on mass scales, and on person to person scales).  http://www.propagandacritic.com/ highlights many of the classic techniques employed in groups of all scales. The core point of employment of propaganda techniques is to convince others to come to a pre-fabricated conclusion. Appealing to emotion over reason, using convoluted logic, creating a “band wagon” effect.

Cascades

I wrote about this back in 2006 (incorrectly attributed to Paul Lamb in the smartmobs blog).  Also discussed on ZDNet and ZDNet “Koolaid guy saga”.  Very much along the lines of hoaxes that spread around the internet, the idea is to take advantage of people’s desire for being included (really another form of coercion), combined with people’s reaction to the novel, unique, and polarizing.  Muzafir Sherif had an early perspective on this with Sherif , et al work on “Assimilation and Contrast Effect” (Muzafer Sherif, Daniel Taub, and Carl I. Hovland, “Assimilation and contrast effects of anchoring stimuli on judgments.” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1958, 55, 150-155.)  Giving people black and white arguments to take sides on will push them to one side or another. Access to a medium where they can relay their side-taking, and resonance with wanting cooperate with your “side” can see the message spread extremely fast and widely through networks. In this way, an “information cascade” is used to game people’s propensity to want to collaborate stigmergically, or cooperate with “like minded” people, or to get support for opposing non-“like minded” people

Co-opting, one-way using, not giving attribution

This can be as simple as using from what is shared and contributing nothing back, to more subtle and artful forms of cooperation/collaboration gaming.  One of very worst and most widespread variations of this takes the form of not giving credit or attribution to contributors or sources of ideas, theories, and actual work.  Attribution is the currency of open and commons based systems. If you are not giving credit and attribution (which usually literally takes seconds to do) you are definitely gaming the system, and destroying the commons where the value you co-opted and subtly represented as your own,  was originally freely shared by others.  Not giving attribution, and co-opting value discourages future open contribution.  Not finding a way to contribute back or reciprocate value back to commons you are drawing value from, makes those commons unsustainable.

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“Education” for most is primarily about working on grinding you down as an individual until you finally forget about your unique local originality, history, diversity, and freedom. People in the US Midwest cities and countryside who accept, and even enthusiastically reinforce onto others the culture of resignation will thrive in the commercial, government and traditional University education sectors.

It’s commonly known around here that it is better to just accept your fate as the guy or girl that drives the lawnmower, sits in a cubicle, toils on a factory floor, delivers pizzas, or increasingly, collects unemployment checks, begs for money, breaks into business and residences to steal goods, etc. The vacuum of culture that was filled for decades by big corporations and their collaborators, is now being filled by decay and crumbling collapse of those same former industrial culture machines.

Sure, mass culture is depressing. And, yes, the collapse of mass culture is accurately more depressing if you allowed yourself to be worn down into thinking you were happy with mass culture. So, what will we fill the vacuum of the collapsing vacuum fillers with, then? What’s left if you were already supposed to be next to nothing in the first place? Well, we could start by working with the idea that we as individuals out here so-called “flyover country” are actually pretty kick ass all on our own. It is time to tell our stories with our own voices, create culture in our own spaces, learn and do without asking permission. Either that, or you can continue to be one of those people who slouches around smugly telling people  “that’ll never happen” every time they tell you about a new or interesting idea about how to do something right here, right now. If you are one of the mindless midwestern zombies that regularly repeats that mantra, congratulations: you’re at the very forefront and cutting edge in the effort of making nothing happen around here! Look around you, and you can see the fruits of your labour.

There are many people heading to the US Social Forum in Detroit who are thinking along the lines of inverting the logic of the zombies.

One example is “Cartography with your feet“:

Driven by the pressures of corporate competition, Midwestern capital elites envision a network of highspeed trains linking the scattered cities of flyover land into a dense urban grid. Oblivious to territories, histories and peoples you whisk your way from center to center like a roulette ball spinning through the global casino. What gets lost in the dreams of power are the connections between the city and the country, the earth and the sky, the past and the future.

What kinds of worlds are installed on the ground by the neoliberal planning processes developed in the technocratic universities? How to start building a cultural and intellectual commons that can seep into the fabric of everyday life?

The Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a call for longer, slower, deeper connections between the territories where we live. It’s a cartography of shared experience, built up by those who nourish lasting ties between critical groups, political projects, radical communities and experiments in alternative existence. Why not help build the commons by overflowing your usual daily routines? Why not make the journey to the US Social Forum into a chance to discover the worlds we can create right here in our own region?

This workshop draws from the inspiration of Grace Lee Boggs and the travels of the Compass Group on the “Continental Drift through the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor.” The idea is to propose an act of collective discovery and creation, carried out this summer by anyone who’s heading to the Social Forum. Multiple caravans each chart their particular pathways and organize their own activist campaigns, artistic exchanges, skill-sharing sessions, solidarity dinners or whatever else they desire on the roads to Detroit, then converge at the Allied Media conference and the US Social Forum to share stories, images and artifacts from their detours through the Midwestern labyrinth. Meanwhile, those with different priorities can invent their own forms of travel and exchange, explore diverging temporalities, set up “stationary drifts” in the neighborhoods they inhabit and continue the projects they’re pursuing, while the moving worlds pass through them.

By taking the time for a conscious experience of the territories we are continually traversing we can build up what Stephen Shukaitis calls an “imaginal machine”: a many-headed hydra telling tales of solidarity and struggle, daily life and outlandish dreams in the places that power forgets, leaving their inhabitants free to remember living histories and work toward better tomorrows. The Compass Group will present images, narratives and documents from their Continental Drift in 2008, then open up the concept to input and debate. With the help of anyone who’s interested, we hope to lay the basis for a collaborative process of self-organization and convergence at the USSF in Detroit and to sow the seeds of future meetings and projects.

The post Autonomous Learning, Sustenance, and Culture in the US Midwest: Invert the Logic of The Zombies appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Refarm the city (aka re:farm) is a collective project started and led by Hernani Dias with the purpose of developing open source software and hardware tools for urban farmers.

In its creators’ words, the project is a cross between a good meal (the crop, the seeds, the friends), hardware (the urban farm, the composter, the electronics, the sensors, the recycled materials), and software (applications that help you build a farm according to your needs, local crops, and gastronomy).

Re:farm seeks to provide people with tools to easily create, manage and visualize their urban farms. Its ultimate goals are to encourage the production and consumption of local goods, using methods that respect the environment, and promote organic agriculture, science, biodiversity, and local gastronomy.

The group has been hard at work for about a year now and, as you can see on their wiki, already has several sensors and boards ready to be reproduced, while other components (such as the software) are in advanced stages of design and development.

The tools being developed by the refarm the city project allow urban farmers to:

:: design a farm according to location, physical conditions, materials available, social network, and local gastronomy.

:: open access to low budget solutions and instructions on how to build, and what materials to use, for different models of urban farms.

:: monitor and control the farm in real time, on the computer (re:farm on the sofa), remotely (re:farm on vacations), and on the wall (re:farm on the wall).

:: visualize the relationship between personal needs and local farming conditions, based on data provided by the user, as well as data about local crops and different sustainable farming methods.

:: visualize the relationship between the current time of the year, local weather, vegetable growth, and farm maintenance.

Tiago Henriques, a member of the re:farm development team, is starting an urban vegetable patch at altLab (our Lisbon hackerspace). It would be great to see other hackerspaces join in

low budget humidity and water level sensors

watering system

physical interfaces for visualization of water level, humidity, temperature, and light

online data visualization of humidity, temperature, and light

xs farm on wheels (recently built in Buenos Aires during a 2 day re:farm workshop)

xl farm on wheels

re:farm on the wall :: 3 electronic boards and 1 chicken

the re:farm software helps urban farmers design a farm (according to location, physical conditions, materials available, social network, and local gastronomy), and visualize/control their farms in real time

the scarecrow contains the re:farm on vacations electronic board (watering control, soil temperature, soil humidity, and light information)

More information about refarm the city:

blog :: refarmthecity.org

wiki :: refarmthecity.org/wiki

photos :: refarm on flickr

The post refarm the city :: open source tools for urban farmers appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler

Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org

License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike

orginally posted at http://forwardfound.org/blog/?q=comparing-business-development-paradigms

Introduction

In a posting to http://localfoodsystems.org on Feb 04, 2010, Steve Bosserman introduced the idea of “Production Centered Local Economies”, and “People Centered Local Economies”. This article synthesizes Steve’s coining of those terms, and uses concepts developed by Sam Rose, Paul Hartzog and Richard C Adler of Forward Foundation to further explain the differences between these economies, from a business development perspective.

Product centered business supply chain development

This collapsing product-centered economic development activity tends to focus on creating “employment”, attracting business who bring “jobs” to an area. Communities are focusing on preventing the collapse of an unsustainable system, and are ignoring what is *emerging*. What is emerging is represented by the green line in Fig. 3 above. We are calling this “people centered business network ecosystem development”.

“People centered” means that control of infrastructure, access, distribution, resources, and co-governance are now on the scale of the individual person. When an individual person with this empowerment reaches their individual carrying capacity to operate, they will tend to reach out to others who are operating like them, and a connection-based network will emerge. Economic development here targets individuals operating as self-employed independents who network together. Independents, small businesses, community groups, working together, with government, higher education, and larger business are the new economic driver. The more control people have an on individual scale of infrastructure, access, distribution, resources, and governance, *and* the more connectivity there is between those people,  the that more growth happens in “people centered economic development”.

When control of infrastructure, access, distribution, resources, and co-governance are now on the scale of the individual person, a new way of coopertive co-managing of existing resources, and surpluses of production tends to emerge. That new way of co-managing is known as “Resource Sharing”.

To quote from http://forwardfound.org/blog/?q=resource-sharing-grounding-21st-century-economy :

“The absolutely essential understanding to be absorbed here is that commons management (cooperative co-manageent of resources) is not primarily a technical problem but a social one and that the key ingredient in the solution is information transparency. Therefore, implementation requires a thorough grounding in both social dilemmas (Kollock) as well as technology design.”

In other words: Production centered supply chain economic development can rely on technology alone to manage systems. People centered business network ecosystem development requires the engagement of all of the people in all areas of management.  Technology can help, and it can primarily help by helping people to access and see the landscape of the systems they are participating in, who is connected to whom, and how? What are the real limits to resources you are using with others? What is actually scarce, what is actually abaundant, and what decisions can you make together with others based on that information?

It turns out that learning, tools for problem solving, and even designs and plans and software as static objects are *not* scarce. It is very easy to copy them, especially if they exist in a digital form, and it takes very little resource to store them, and make them available to others. Individual people who are making these items tend to have very little to gain by making them scarce, as they often lack the resources needed to create that artificial scarcity around designs, knowledge, software, information.  People tend to discover that there is more efficiency in sharing these creations, and working together to adapt them to immediate and long-term problems they are trying to solve (see: “Giving it away, making money” Bosserman 2008).  This sharing begets more sharing when done in a way that is equitable for the people and the systems people are part of. This sharing also opens up access to individuals to control of infrastructure, freedom of access, a plausible way towards collaborating around needed distribution, and co-governance around the sharing of resources.

Fig. 4 above is a simple model of a non-linear system, where actions that are happening in the system are mapped, instead of roles. Actions are the focus, because all individuals now potentially have access to any “role” as it might have existed in production centered development. I can now be a designer, a marketer, a shop worker, etc  Co-governed systems are “mapped” as a network ecology by looking at the resources that are shared, co-governed, or already exist as a “commons”, and who the participants are. Value exchanges, and economic activity are mapped based on actions, not roles of people.   Sharing what is learned, what is created, creates a way in which many others may engage, and those people now have multiple ways in which they may engage. This creates a new engine for *exponential* economic growth that is driven by people who all have access to control, and so work together to co-manage their new-found powers of control. The engine, at it’s core, is “making, sharing, using”.

Viewing a system through the lens of actions, and having access to transparent information, gives you a view into ever-more emerging ways in which you can adapt previously-shared solutions towards emerging problems. Each adaptation of solutions to problems refines the quality of solutions available for future problem solving. This generates wealth in the ecosystem, and so is accurately described as a “wealth generating ecology”.

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