The is the first part of a speech transcript from David Bollier: * The Commons as a New/Old Paradigm for Governance, Economics and Policy. Remarks by David Bollier, Commons Strategies Group for the American Academy in Berlin on December 4, 2012. David Bollier: “It is a great honor to be able to share my thoughts… Continue reading
Video: Paul Cienfuegos on the Community Rights Movement
“The national Community Rghts movement represents a local level cultural and legal strategy for communities, both conservative and progressive, it’s not about ideology, to rein in corporate power.” Listen to Paul Cienfuegos here:
The Rise of the Micro-Multinationals
An interesting report on the evolution of labor under ‘digital capitalism’: * Report: The Rise of the Micro-Multinational: How Freelancers and Technology-Savvy Start-Ups Are Driving Growth, Jobs and Innovation. By Ann Mettler and Anthony D. Williams. Lisbon Council Policy Brief, 2013. Here is the summary: “This policy brief is divided into four parts. Part one… Continue reading
Project of the Day: The MakerPlane
“We want more people to safely and quickly build and fly their own airplanes.” From the MakerPlane Project Overview: “MakerPlane is an open source aviation project which will enable people to build and fly their own safe, high quality, reasonable cost plane using advanced personal manufacturing equipment such as CNC mills and 3D printers. The… Continue reading
From Collaborative Consumption to Collaborative Making
anyone fluent in collaborative consumption already has many of the skills needed to thrive in the maker world. After all, they’re just two sides of the same movement. Excerpted from David Lang: “I still think collaborative consumption is overrated compared to the other side of the sharing economy coin: collaborative creation. The true potential of… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Uprising
Book: The Uprising. On Poetry and Finance. By Franco “Bifo” Berardi. Semiotexte, 2012 Description The Uprising is an Autonomist manifesto for today’s precarious times, and a rallying cry in the face of the catastrophic and irreversible crisis that neoliberalism and the financial sphere have established over the globe. In his newest book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi… Continue reading
A crash course in digital capitalism
Exceptionally republished in full (but without the many links), from John Naughton: “Need a crash course in digital capitalism? Easy: you just need to understand four concepts – margins, volume, inequality and employment. And if you need more detail, just add the following adjectives: thin, vast, huge and poor. First, margins. Once upon a time,… Continue reading
For a new transnational civil-constitutional regime on common goods
The common goods approach – the reasonable madness of common goods – challenges both foundations of modernity, i.e. ownership and sovereignty. Once these two reference categories are questioned, a new categorization is mandatory as based exactly on the primacy of common goods – which are freely accessible, but free from any exclusionary bias. Their protection… Continue reading
Trend of the Day: Community Choice Energy Aggregation
John Robb writes: “In a small number of US states (Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and California), it’s legal to create a community power company that negotiates for power from suppliers on the community’s behalf. This power company doesn’t run the grid, which remains in the hands of the existing utility. See: The Cape… Continue reading
After Free. Will the Ethical Economy save Facebook?
We call this new wave of social innovation and ethical economy, not because it is necessarily better or nicer than the corporate model that we are familiar with, but because is it is based collaborative forms of socialized production and motivated by a wide variety of values beyond that of material accumulation: programmers want to… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Richard Logie on Mutual Credit Systems and TBEx
An excellent presentation by Richard Logie on The Business Exchange(TBEx) a B2B(Business to Business) mutual credit system. Highly recommended for anyone interested in alternative/complimentary currency systems.
Book of the Day: Celebrating the Commons
Book: CELEBRATING THE COMMONS. People, Ideas, and Stories for a New Year. On The Commons 2012. Description It matters more than ever in the age of the Internet and a global economy Although it is a centuries-old way of life, the commons remains essential to our survival and happiness—even in the advanced industrial world. The… Continue reading
Project of the Day: The Eudea Wikitown Technecovillage
Eudea is a wikitown that aspires to help form an open source appropriate technology ecovillage: a technecovillage. They explain: ‘A testing ground for biomimetic design and fabrication, unified by pursuits of social and biological benefit, developing decentralization, automation and accessibility. Educational, innovational and land-tending cooperatives can generate vital solutions and inspirations in this time of… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Ann Pendleton Jullian on Power and Ecosystems of Change
In her talk at TEDxGeorgetown ‘Power and Ecosystems of Change’, Ann Pendleton Jullian discusses changes in the distribution of power as societies move into a more networked era. She uses David Ronfelt’s TIMN(Tribes,Institutions,Markets,Networks) framework to discuss the challenges of transitioning from a Triformist Era to a networked Quadriformist Era. In the Triformist era the guiding… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Marcin Jakubowski – The Open Source Economy
An inspiring talk by Marcin Jakubowski from http://opensourceecology.org “MARCIN JAKUBOWSKI – “Growing up in Poland, and having a grandparent in the concentration camps, I was aware even at an early age what happens when materials are scarce, and people ?ght over opportunity.” “It’s what drove me to identify the 50 machines that are necessary to… Continue reading
Trend of the Day: Peer-to-Peer Bikesharing
“While fleet share systems operate per-hour, peer-to-peer systems lend themselves to daily, or longer, rentals. That’s ideal for tourists and renters more interested in casual exploration than point-to-point commuting.” Excerpted from Thibault Worth: “Liquid owns neither bikes, nor racks, but instead cultivates a network of private bike owners and borrowers to create a system of… Continue reading