Nice Prezi by mind-master Howard Rheingold … spot the gorilla! See: Copy of Attention on Prezi
DRM-free books in a bundle
The success of DRM-free bundles has been a powerful counterargument to the claim that Digital Restrictions Management is necessary for sustainable digital publishing. These bundles are forming around music and literature, and really showcase being DRM-free as a major selling point. Now, the Big Bang Bundle by StoryBundle has launched, and the Humble Music Bundle… Continue reading
How Bitcoin will enable a low-overhead p2p economy
Bitcoin’s importance can’t be exaggerated. Encrypted currency has been at the Altair stage of development. If Bitcoin isn’t actually the Apple II – and it may not be – we’re very close to it. If Bitcoin isn’t the Messiah of the darknet economy, at the very least it’s John the Baptist preaching its immanent arrival…. Continue reading
Why tweeting your lunch may have more meaning than you think
Short but interesting conversation with Amber Case, a “cyborg anthropologist” studying how technology is affecting us, and how we in turn affect one another. She ends the conversation with the thesis: “Tweeting your lunch can have meaning.” Find out why in this video:
Desert manufacturing with 3D printers that runs on sun and sand
Brian Nitz: “Markus Kayser .. designed and build a machine called a Solar Sinter. This machine uses photovoltaic panels to power a computer and the electromechanical workings of a 3D printer. The print head holds a lens which concentrates sunlight from a larger Fresnel lens onto a tray of sand. This focused beam reaches temperatures… Continue reading
Desktop Regulatory State, Chapter Three: Individual Superempowerment
[This is the fifth installment in my serialization of the first three chapters of my book-in-progress, tentatively titled Desktop Regulatory State] II. Individual Superempowerment According to Tom Coates, as quoted in the previous chapter, the desktop revolution has had an enormous effect in blurring the distinction in quality between work done within large organizations and… Continue reading
Organic Certification – Do it yourself
The system of organic certification is too onerous, too complicated and at times the rules are stupid. A revolution of sorts is in the wings, with organic producers refusing to submit to rules that favor large scale agriculture but are way too onerous for small producers. Who wants to spend their days fulfilling bureaucratic requirements… Continue reading
Rethinking Common vs. Private Property (1): Introduction
A very important essay to rethink property forms, away from the public vs. private (or socialized vs. private), and towards a recognition of common, ‘distributed’, but above all, ‘responsible’ property. In today’s first excerpt, we publish the introduction and the conclusion to this important essay, which we will be serializing. * Article: Rethinking Common vs…. Continue reading
The emergence of pocket factories for microsolar production
These guys shrank an important, factory-sized piece of the microsolar supply chain down to something that can fit on your desktop. Think of it as an early step in a globally decentralized, relocalized economy. “ John Robb writes, in his newsletter on resilient communities: Microsolar is “used to power appliances that are either remote or… Continue reading
Self-interest and altruism, P2P vs. Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. – Gore Vidal Michel Bauwens: It is my view that that traditional pre-modern societies were mostly determined by a social morality (I’m aware… Continue reading
Devising p2p business models as an open game
An article and exploration by Tiberius Brastaviceanu of the Sensorica Open Value Network: “More and more value comes in the form of open products. We have grown accustomed with open communities creating open soft-and hardware. Most of these communities are based on gift economies, i.e. the creators of these open products are not rewarded in… Continue reading
The arguments for a free knowledge commons
Peugeot argues that information and knowledge should be regarded as commons, which fits into the concept of a collaborative economy and opposes traditional principles of scarcity and rivalry. This new approach to intellectual goods and the economy will in the end strongly stimulate innovation, creativity, participation and social cohesion. By Valerie Peugeot, President of the… Continue reading
Project of the Day: FarmHack
Via Shareable magazine: “FarmHack is a network for sharing open source know-how amongst the distributed fringe of DIY agricultural tech aficionados and innovators. In the same vein as Appropedia or Open Source Ecology, a collaborative digital knowledge-base facilitates the harvest of crowd wisdom to address challenges and inefficiencies in modern ecological (and economical) farm operation…. Continue reading
IMF research paper backs away from private creation of money supply
privately controlled money creation has much more problematic consequences than government money creation The following is not trivial as it may signal the beginning of a shift in the heart of the key institutions supporting the neoliberal model. As reported by Positive Money: “We’ve been in a state of mild shock since Saturday, after discovering… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Organic Internet and emancipatory social movements
This is not a new book, but as we haven’t seen many books taking this particular perspective, we think it’s important to know about it. * Book: The Organic Internet. May First / People Link. The May First group writes: “What exactly is the Internet and what role does it play in our movement for… Continue reading
From open hardware to open manufacturing: do open guns show the way?
I have to wonder if conditions are right for a Maker-minded, open-design hardware community to stake a claim in the consumer manufacturing landscape. Excerpted from Eric Larkin who looks at the conditions which make this transition more realistic: * 1. Software has laid the philosophical foundation for open-source design “The success of Linux and other… Continue reading