Long Live the Protocoletariat is a thought provoking talk given by Smári McCarthy and Eleanor Saitta at 29c3 (29th Chaos Communication Congress) exploring the evolving relationship between networks and institutions and the challenges facing activists engaged in network politics. They discuss some of the limitations of digital democracy, particularly in relation to Liquid Feedback, the… Continue reading
Tom Atlee on the relation between peer governance and Wise Democracy processes
Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute has reacted to my previous article “Evolving Towards a Partner State in an Ethical Economy“. His reaction sheds further light on the broader culture of democracy in which the shift to peer to peer community-based value creation is embedded. Tom Atlee writes: “There is a seeming contradiction between p2p… Continue reading
Tiberius Brastaviceanu: A status update on the Open Value Accounting project in Sensorica
Excerpted from Tiberius Brastaviceanu: “Our (sensoricans) idea about how value, of different types, flows within value networks is getting a little more concrete, after two years of living the value network an observing these flows establishing themselves. The new infrastructure version for value networks that we’re implementing now, as we speak, takes into consideration our… Continue reading
CfP: Social Classes 2.0?
We are pleased to announce the release of a new bilingual (French/English) scientific online journal, RESET. The journal’s first issue is devoted to the relevance of social class in new media studies. Below, please find the table of contents and the URL of the journal website. Vol. 1, No 1 (2012) Social Classes 2.0? Special… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Community Finance Canvas
The community finance canvas helps you produce a financial plan to bring your design for a resilient community into being. This approach has been developed by a group within Transition Sweden Reconomy: “The purpose of the canvas is to help you bring your design for a resilient community closer to a stage where you can… Continue reading
The aims of the P2P Foundation
“There seem to be at least four degrees of cultural development, rooted in degrees of moral insight: (1) autocratic cultures which define rights in a limited and oppressive way and there are no rights of political participation; (2) narrow democratic cultures which practice political participation through representation, but have no or very limited participation of… Continue reading
Tom Atlee on the transition from economies of scale to economies of scope
Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute has reacted to my previous article “Evolving Towards a Partner State in an Ethical Economy“. His reaction sheds further light on the broader cultures of human production and happiness in which the shift to “economics of scope” models is embedded. First as a reminder, my own definition: “My short… Continue reading
Three Things We Need to Succeed in P2P Politics
Michel Bauwens: “The way I see it, we need three elements to succeed. First, we need to construct the alternatives. I want to insist that this is not a reactionary struggle for say, pure relocalization, or small utopian communities, like the utopian socialists of the 19th century, what Marx called ‘dwarfish forms’. Rather we are… Continue reading
State of Power 2013 report: 0.001% control a third of world GDP
These infographics are produced as part of TNI’s State of Power 2013 report, a visual insight into who is dominating the planet at a time of systemic economic and ecological crisis. > See and share gallery on Facebook Just 11 million people, or 0.15%, control $42 trillion dollars or two thirds of world GDP. An even… Continue reading
A report from the Vienna Solidarity Economy Congress 2013
By Franz Nahrada: “The Vienna Solidarity Economy Congress 2013 had almost 1000 visitors, and was very significant in bringing various streams of people together — people from different movements and backgrounds, gathering around the idea of cooperation and commons as the main pillars of any future economy. This was not a real mass event, but… Continue reading
How the power-curve dynamic works (2)
Excerpts from David Bollier‘s report for the Aspen Institute: * Report: Power-Curve Society: The Future of Innovation, Opportunity and Social Equity in the Emerging Networked Economy. By David Bollier. Aspen Institute (Communications and Society Program), 2013 Introduction David Bollier: “It is now nearly twenty years since the World Wide Web exploded, helping to insinuate the… Continue reading
#P2PWikisprint: Southern Europe and Latin America, united by the P2P
By: Bernardo Gutiérrez An indigenous collective of Chiapas, tangled with a co-working space of Quito. A crowd funding platform of Barcelona, ??working with open data movement of Montevideo. A Greek cooperative, inspiring artistic groups of Caracas (and vice versa). A hacktivist group of Madrid, feeding of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas permaculture. A community of free… Continue reading
Reflections from the European Deep Dive on the Commons
This is David Bollier‘s report on the European preparatory workshop for the Commons Economics Conference that will be held in Berlin on May 22-24. David Bollier: “”At a small workshop outside of Paris, France, twenty-two of us – mostly Europeans except for two of us – got together to discuss the economics of the commons… Continue reading
The Structural Communality of the Commons
Thus, commons structurally generate responsibility on the part of their participants for preserving the resource and the collective relationships, while markets generally do not. Commoners are in charge of shaping the social relationships involved; therefore, they can take responsibility for their actions. However, this also entails their responsibility to do so. In the commons, it… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Four Phases of Team Collaboration Success From Thomas Edison’s Lab
Book: Midnight Lunch: The 4 Phases of Team Collaboration Success from Thomas Edison’s Lab. Sarah Miller Caldicott. ISBN: 978-1-1184-0786-8. 284 pages. December 2012 Principles The four-step process outlined: Step 1: Capacity “Build diverse teams of two to eight people. What worked for Edison: To create the lightbulb, Edison’s team had to include chemists, mathematicians, and… Continue reading
Do networks create a winner-take-all “Power-Curve Society” (1)
In this emerging technologically accelerated economy, wealth increasingly concentrates in the hands of a few rather than spreading itself out across the larger population (i.e., the traditional ??bell curve of normal distributions). The Report explores the mechanisms of this phenomenon and its suspected role in ??hollowing out? the American middle class. It also questions contemporary… Continue reading