Republished from David de Ugarte from Las Indias: “While the word “people” is in ever-greater danger of sliding, the word “culture” was born in a dangerous place, because, in spite of how it might appear, it’s very much a political term, a concept formed and created in the bosom of German romantic nationalism. It carries… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Seeds and Sparks for Fair Trade in Film-making
Here is a short description of an interesting project recommended to us by Jennifer Sertl: “We’re mostly a group of filmmakers who worked together on a feature film called Like the Water and decided we’d like to make films forever, but we wanted a friendlier environment in which to do it. One where all the… Continue reading
Water crisis – The path to P2P water
This is the 3rd and final part of our series by Silvia Garcia Alonso on P2P responses to the water and energy crisis. Click here for Part 1 and Part 2 Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related illness. Women spend 200 million hours a day collecting water. Three times more people lack… Continue reading
The Wounded Knee memorial site in danger of being sold
Excerpted from Chief Joseph Brings Plenty, a former chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe: “The spiritual power of the place explains why members of the American Indian Movement took it over in 1973 to call the nation’s attention to the economic and cultural injustices against our Native brothers and sisters. Now, our heritage is… Continue reading
David Graeber on the nature of contemporary revolutions (2): what to do right now?
At the moment, the planet might seem poised more for a series of unprecedented catastrophes than for the kind of broad moral and political transformation that would open the way to such a world. But if we are going to have any chance of heading off those catastrophes, we’re going to have to change our… Continue reading
Nikos Salingaros on the relation between energy use and dysfunctional urbanism
P2P urbanist Nikos Salingaros was interviewed by media on Mauritius, where the debate rages on new powerplant. A short extract of the longer interview here: “MS: What measures do you propose to drastically reduce demand for electricity, because a reduction means no need for more power plants? NS: The waste of energy is mainly due… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Present Shock, a critique of contemporary presentism
“Present Shock seeks to describe and explore life and work in a very new temporal landscape – one defined largely by always-on digital technologies. But it’s also about what it means to live in an era when the past and future seem to have collapsed into the present. How do we orient ourselves without the… Continue reading
The “opening up perspective” for ethical for-benefit funds
This opening-up perspective/philosophy can apply to many/most aspects of an organization’s value chain – from the very nature of the business, to research, to product development, to operations, to organizational structure and beyond. Ability Capital in Australia is trying to create a Wealth Commons. Here is an aspect of their work, “opening up”: “Long have… Continue reading
Net metering – Towards a distributed electrical grid
This is the 2nd of a 3 part series by Silvia Garcia Alonso on P2P responses to the water and energy crisis. Click here for Part 1. We have already talked about the energy crisis and the need to achieve energy independence through self-generation and the birth of P2P energy networks. At that point we… Continue reading
David Graeber on the nature of contemporary revolutions (1)
In an essay that also looks at the real legacy of the sixties, David Graeber makes a number of interesting points: “Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be? For me, the person who has asked this most effectively is the great world historian Immanuel Wallerstein. He argues that for the last quarter… Continue reading
Money should be a commons: the proposed Digital-Coin Rule for a Free Society
Excerpted from a text by Jaromil in 2011: “The issue around the nature of money is critical in present economic times. We are in a situation whereby the incapacity to re-define how we deal with money could resolve in an a severe damage to society as we commonly refer to it: contrary to what happens… Continue reading
Research: An ethnography of Fabbing Practices
* Master’s Thesis: FABBING PRACTICES– AN ETHNOGRAPHY IN FAB LAB AMSTERDAM. Aurelie Ghalim. 2013. The summary: “This thesis, based on an ethnographic approach, investigates personal fabrication. Fab Labs or FABrication LABoratories, introduced as facilities where you can make (almost) anything, are small-scale workshops for digital fabrication and rapid-prototyping. Fab Lab that are inscribed in the… Continue reading
A video summary of the first global Ibero-American #P2PWikiSprint
Well done 3-minute video on the hispanic wikisprint, produced by Ricardo Antón of the ColaBoraBora Koop in Bilbao, Spain, but covering other locales as well. Very cool, thanks a lot!! (video in spanish but enjoyable nevertheless)
Graphic: Product Design in the P2P Age
Interesting graphic by Thomas Lommee of infrastructures.net: See here for the commentary by Christian Remon: “Thomas Lommée, owner of the design studio Intrastructures in Brussels, believes the world has changed. The world we now live in is no longer hierarchical, it is a network society. People are not only connected to each other, but also… Continue reading
Energy crisis – The path to P2P energy
This is the 1st of a 3 part series by Silvia Garcia Alonso on P2P responses to the water and energy crisis. The text is also available in Spanish on her website. Energy is the engine of our economy. An economy based on growth that permanently demands larger amounts of energy. During the 20th century,… Continue reading
Gar Alperovitz on the Next Economic Tranformation
Watch the video here. Neelesh Marik summarizes the proposals: Note: Talk starts at 13th minute of video. * On systems thinking in political economics: 1. You know there is a deeper systemic issue if long trends that do not respond to demands, electoral changes and policies: such as no meaningful change in the income of… Continue reading