Written by Robert Raymond. Republished from Shareable.net Early last week, when Republican Lt. Gov. of Texas, Dan Patrick, suggested that the elderly should be willing to die from COVID-19 to get the economy back in action, something major shifted. If just briefly, the mask came off. Here was an elected official explicitly offering human sacrifices to appease… Continue reading
What the decentralized web can learn from Wikipedia
By Eleftherios Diakomichalis, with Andrew Dickson & Ankur Shah Delight. Originally published in permaweird In this post, we analyze Wikipedia — a site that has achieved tremendous success and scale through crowd-sourcing human input to create one of the Internet’s greatest public goods. Wikipedia’s success is particularly impressive considering that the site is owned and… Continue reading
Pooling Knowledge: Private Medicine vs. Public Health?
The Coronavirus and the Need for Systems Change, Pt.1 The Coronavirus pandemic raises many questions about public health, global diseases and the way we produce and distribute cures and treatments. Who pays for the corona vaccine and how? How is that innovation organised? Who profits? Commons Network has been an advocate in this domain (‘access… Continue reading
DLT4EU: Call for Applicants opens April 14
The DLT4EU program is about to launch its Call for Applicants. The applications will be possible from 14th April to 6th May and links to the registration of online interest form will be soon available on this website. To register interest and be considered for applying, teams must apply before 6th May 2020 (11:59pm GMT)…. Continue reading
No more business as usual – Rethinking economic value for a post-Covid world
“No economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.” – Manfred Max-Neef, Chilean economist, 1932 -2019 A national conversation has begun which is alarming, yet also familiar. It talks about costs and trade-offs, losses and accounts. It is a conversation about human lives framed in the language of economics. A recent… Continue reading
Corona and the Commons
Dear Readers, Before the Corona outbreak, and with the help of Jose Ramos, the lead editor of an upcoming book about cosmo-local production, I had been reviewing the literature on historical rhythms and cycles to set the stage for the current ‘chaotic transition’ and ‘what comes next’. In short, I have come to two important conclusions: society moves… Continue reading
The Internet Archive defends the release of the National Emergency Library
The Internet Archive has taken the brave step to release 1.4 million books online, arguing that public libraries are now closed. Unsurprisingly, the reactions from the publishing industry haven’t been too charitable. The following is republished from the Internet Archive. Last Tuesday we launched a National Emergency Library—1.4M digitized books available to users without a waitlist—in… Continue reading
Commoning as a Pandemic Survival Strategy
The pandemic now sweeping the planet is one of those historic events that will change many basic premises of modern life. Let us act swiftly to deal with the emergencies, but let us also seize the opportunity to think about long-term system change. If there is one thing that the pandemic confirms (in tandem with… Continue reading
No New Normal
“May you live in interesting times“. A curse once assigned Chinese origin, now thought to be apocryphal, it’s deceptively mild until you realize you have no resistance to a novel, viral load of interestingness. We feel like we can’t blink, yet our eyelids are getting very heavy. We’re anxious, grateful, bewildered, hopeful, overwhelmed, empathetic, angry,… Continue reading
Make software great again: can open source be ethical and fair?
Is there a way to go beyond open source, and have ethical, fair software in a cloud-first world? This is what some people in the open source community think. In the 20 years since its inception, open source has turned out to be the most successful model for building software. The world today runs on open-source software… Continue reading
Frustrated with “Business as Usual”? Try Common Wealth
About Common Wealth Just like you, there are others frustrated by “business-as-usual”. They are frustrated by the “lip service” provided to stakeholders. Like when a company says “employees are our greatest asset” but means the opposite. By contrast, there are organisations where stakeholders have an actual stake. These include: Companies using equity crowdfunding Co-operatives, where members are owners… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Three Paradigm Shifts Towards a Sustainable World
Towards a sustainable world: 3 Paradigm shifts. By Bernard Lietaer. Edited by Helga Preuss, Marek Hudon, Kristof de Spiegeleer et al. Delta Institute – Dieter Legat, 2019 Description Bernard Lietaer calls for three paradigm shifts – With specific actions by individuals and leaders With unsuitable means we half-heartedly try to repair the complicated clockwork of our… Continue reading
The P2P Festival in Paris: Unite the Peers
A spectre is haunting the world – the spectre of peer-to-peer. All the powers of the old-world have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: liberal States and dictators, banks and FANG, regulators and speculators. Where is the State that hasn’t attempted to muzzle freedom of communication and information, or to expand surveillance… Continue reading
Is Open Design a Viable Economic Practice?
BY ALEX PAZAITIS | JUNIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY CORE MEMBER, P2P LAB It has been roughly a decade after the days that people first discussed Open Design. It has hitherto evolved from a concept, to a movement, to a viable business choice. The RepRap 3D printer has been one of the first and… Continue reading
The Evolving Business Strategy Of A Community In The First Chinese Makerspace
An Interview With Eduardo Alarcon Gallo By Prof Avril Accolla, Tongji University In these almost ten years 创客 chuangke (Chinese for makerspace) have boosted, shrunk, evolved. In 2019 the panorama is capillary diversified throughout the country: the strong policies of incentives actuated by the government starting from 2015 and the great diversity of the cultural… Continue reading
Capitalism is religion
Just check out its core philosophy, with its core terms in bold wording: The invisible hand of the free market governs everything and the hardworking get prosperous while the lazy suffer poverty. Sounds pretty familiar and very rational, doesn’t it… But check it out again with the religious equivalents of the core terms replaced in:… Continue reading