Andre Ling’s reacts to our review of Charlene Spretnak’s book on Relational Reality, published yesterday: Objects Are Real!, By Andre Ling: ‘I must admit I get a bit frustrated by statements like ‘everything is interconnected’ or, more specifically this: ” the realization that all entities in this world, including humans, are thoroughly relational beings of… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Understanding the New Global Revolutions
* Book: Paul Mason. Why it’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. Verso, 2012 The following is excerpted from a review by Kate Webb in Red Pepper (UK): “In the January round-ups few critics will fail to register 2011’s historic nature, but Mason, I’d wager, will be the only mainstream figure who’ll go so… Continue reading
Eight Points of Reference for Commoning
The context is introduced by David Bollier: “One of the great achievements of the late Professor Elinor Ostrom was the identification of key design principles for successful commons. She set forth eight of them in her landmark 1990 book, Governing the Commons. The wording of those principles is aimed at social scientists who study the… Continue reading
How the UK Conservatives are using ‘community rights’ to extend neoliberal and corporate privatisation
‘Community rights’ amount to the latest corrosive mutation of privatisation. The rhetoric of ‘rights’ and ‘localism’ is only cover for the accelerated transfer of power from the state to capital, from employees to employers and from service users to commercial contractors. We must rigorously scrutinise how these rights are implemented as part of industrial, civil… Continue reading
The Paradigm Wars: Open vs. Piracy
research on piracy as a paradigm of domination, in conflict with the open paradigm “The Piracy Paradigm project is K. Matthew Dames‘ historical critique of U.S. copyright law and policy. Using framing and copyright theory, methodologies such as policy analysis, historical analysis, and narrative; and the foundation of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,… Continue reading
The future of (participatory) religion? Part 1: Global Religion hypothesis vs. the Mutual Transformations of Religion
We present the two first 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+ . Fron the Introduction by Bahman A.K. Shirazi: “When it comes to religious consciousness, the turn… Continue reading
Rethinking Common vs. Private Property (3): common myths about private property
Excerpted from: * Article: Rethinking Common vs. Private Property. By David Ellerman David Ellerman writes, , on The fundamental brain-washing myth about private property: * The medieval origins of the fundamental myth The fundamental myth, accepted by both the Right and Left, is that the current economic system is founded on the “private ownership of… Continue reading
Charlene Spretnak’s book on our Relational Reality
* Book: Spretnak, C. Relational Reality: New discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World Topsham: Green Horizon Books, 2011 Here is the publisher’s summary: “Ms. Spretnak’s eighth book, Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World was published in 2011. Noting that our hypermodern societies, currently possess only a… Continue reading
David Harvey and Richard Wolff on the Contemporary Crisis
Interesting conversation with host Charlie Rose. It’s rare to see critics of this caliber on mainstream television:
Ten Years of Las Indias
The pioneering p2p group will reach 10 years this October. Excerpted from David de Ugarte: “October second of this year will be the tenth anniversary of the Sociedad de las Indias Electrónicas, the founding business of the Grupo Cooperativo de las Indias. Even though it only had three members back then — Natalia Fernández, Juan… Continue reading
The escalation of the piracy wars when sharing culture moves to the cloud
In the arcade version of Whac-A-Mole, the game eventually ends — often when the player loses. In the piracy arms-race version, there doesn’t seem to be a conclusion. Sooner or later, the people who still believe they can hit the moles with their slow mallets might realize that their time would be better spent playing… Continue reading
The Forbidden Education: documentary on alternatives
Our P2P Foundation partner in Argentina, Franco Iacomella, has collaborated to this important documentary which reviews the whole field of alternative education. The YouTube version rapidly gained half a million viewers and is still climbing. Watch the trailer here: Here’s the summary: “The Forbidden Education (original title “La Educación Prohibida”) is an independent documentary released… Continue reading
John Robb Interview by Kevin Carson
[This is an interview I originally did with John Robb of Global Guerrillas blog in September of last year for another publication, which was never published] I’ve long been an avid reader of your work, and consider you the most provocative analyst out there when it comes to the ongoing war between networks and hierarchies… Continue reading
Is the reputation economy maturing into real economic value?
Rachel Botsman has written an excellent overview for the September issue of Wired UK. It’s worth reading in full. The P2P Foundation wiki keeps extensive documentation on the emerging field of P2P Metrics and Accounting, here. Excerpted from Rachel Botsman: “”Welcome to the reputation economy, where your online history becomes more powerful than your credit… Continue reading
A response to the arguments against open source innovation
Excerpted from Thomas Bjelkeman: (the arguments he’s responding to are in blockquotes) ‘Open-source doesn’t offer constant innovation, lowered costs and collaboration? “The biggest open-source projects of them all is the internet itself. (The internet is without doubt also the most complex interconnected “machine” humans have ever created.) It runs on open standards and protocols and… Continue reading
Rethinking Common vs. Private Property (2): Market Responsibility vs. Corporate Irresponsibility
Excerpted from: * Article: Rethinking Common vs. Private Property. By David Ellerman. David Ellerman writes, on Wall Street capitalism as institutionalized irresponsibility The market principle of responsibility “In the 20th century capitalism-socialism debate, it was always emphasized that markets embody a certain feedback loop between beneficial actions and rewards as well as between damaging actions… Continue reading