Excerpted from Doc Searls: “The move toward individual empowerment is a long, gradual revolution. It began with the first personal computers, which caught on in the early 1980s. With PCs, people got the power to do what big business called “data processing”—but in many more ways than any company could ever do. The next stage… Continue reading
Welcome to the hyper-exploitative app economy
1. ” The pattern of fostering a community of people to essentially do your work for you — to assume the risk of trying new ideas, without any guarantee of safety — leads to these types of moments happening on a near-weekly basis to people who’ve developed apps for Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and others. In… Continue reading
Civic Hacking and Open Government: Progress Report
This video gives a tour of open government projects around the world: Open Government from The Academy on Vimeo.
#CryptoParty is go!
Born out of the attempts by governments worldwide to gain greater powers to monitor communications, the idea of #CryptoParty meetups to share and learn basic cryptographic tools quickly has gained traction on twitter. There are currently 15 meetups planned around the world and requets for far more. The event website sez: CryptoParties are meetups to… Continue reading
The Relational Shift – Part 1: The Relational Shift in Psychology
Source: PRN.FM The Relational Shift in Psychology: a talk with Judith V. Jordan, director of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute (housed at Wellesley College), about the Relational-Cultural Model of the self and human development, which she co-developed beginning in 1978; the relational shift in the field of clinical psychology from a Freudian model (the… Continue reading
Is there a decline of solidarity?
I believe that what pessimistic analysts like Kurt Cobb fail to see is that while the mainstream system is indeed decomposing, and with the counter-mechanisms that provided solidarity with a context of a industrial-labour society, at the same time, new structures are emerging that are creating new compulsions and affordances for sharing, cooperation and expressions… Continue reading
The rapid emergence of a commons-based alternative economy
Excerpted from Derek Wall in STIR: “What is emerging fast is the alternative of a commons based economy. Peer to peer, social sharing, collaborative consumption, commons, economic democracy are all terms that cover economic activity that moves beyond the market and the state, based on cooperation and harnessing human creativity. The economics of sharing is… Continue reading
Dale Carrico’s Open Letter To The Transhumanist Robot Cultists
Republished from Dale Carrico: (from: An Open Letter To The Robot Cultists) “Any child of two can indulge in wish fulfillment fantasizing. It’s not a philosophy. It’s not a movement. And the way you Robot Cultists do it makes you a kind of techno-transcendental New Age cult too hype-notized to notice you are functioning as… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Emerging Ownership Revolution
“ownership design is the most foundational” (David Korten) * Book: Majorie Kelly. Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution. Journeys to a Generative Economy. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012 Here is the summary from the publisher: “As long as businesses are set up to focus exclusively on maximizing financial income for the few, our economy will be… Continue reading
Herman Daly’s proposal for 100% reserve banking
Via Paul Craig Roberts: In the article below, Herman Daly, a University of Maryland and former World Bank economist, makes the case for 100% reserves. This reform, once a principle goal of important economists, would terminate the ability of the banking system to create credit to finance its own speculations and return the power over… Continue reading
P2P Innovation from the Periphery: an interview on Smari McCarthy’s Iceland
Metahaven talks to Smári McCarthy about his agenda, urgencies, and interests. “In October 2008, the Icelandic banking sector collapsed. This momentous event was, relative to country size, the largest banking crisis ever suffered by a single state. Iceland’s recovery has been a case of democratic and ethical reforms. A 25-strong Constitutional Assembly re-wrote the constitution,… Continue reading
The enclosure of innovation and intellectual property by the Singularity University
A word of warning to naive students, by Wired magazine: “As it draws up plans to become a for-profit corporation, Singularity University has significantly tightened the terms under which its students may use the intellectual property they develop in their courses. When it was created four years ago with support from neighboring Google and Google’s… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Energy and the Wealth of Nations
* Book: Energy and the Wealth of Nations. Understanding the Biophysical Economy. By Charles A.S. Hall and Kent Klitgaard. Here is the summary on this important necessary change in our view of economics: “For the past 150 years, economics has been treated as a social science in which economies are modeled as a circular flow… Continue reading
The future of (participatory) religion? Part 2: interspiritual wisdom vs spirituality without religion
We present the second set of two hypotheses presented by Jorge Ferrer in this interesting conversation: * Article/Interview: : Rethinking the Future of World Religion: A Conversation with Jorge N. Ferrer. Integral Review. July 2012, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 22+ . In this interview/conversation with Bahman A.K. Shirazi four possible scenarios for the future… Continue reading
A critique of Lakoff’s moralizing of politics
Excerpted from Dale Carrico: “You may note that this puts me at odds with George Lakoff’s popular “moral politics” thesis. I do not agree that “we” are animals more suited to moral/subcultural framing of political questions as Lakoff repeatedly insists is the case. I think we are animals whose politics are re-constituted in culture, and… Continue reading
Rethinking Common vs. Private Property (4): towards responsible and democratic corporations
Excerpted from: * Article: Rethinking Common vs. Private Property. By David Ellerman This concludes our four part serialization of this important essay, which was started on August 20. David Ellerman writes, , on Re-constituting the corporation from first principles: The responsible corporation “There have been a few — very few — social commentators who have… Continue reading