Excerpted from MARIYA IVANCHEVA: First, on the general context of the commons revival in Western Europe: “The concept of “the commons” – here defined as goods and services that are managed by and serve the interest of the community that produces them – has suddenly attracted the attention of European left-wing movements. Various theorists and… Continue reading
Every Human is an Interspecies Community! On Hypersex, Frenemies and Symbiogenetics
Excerpted from Dorion Sagan: “Life deals in … mixed cultures. It has been working with crowds for billions of years. Most of the DNA of the estimated 100 quadrillion cells in our bodies is not “ours,” but belongs to cohabiting bacteria. Ten percent of our dry weight is bacteria, but there are ten of “their”… Continue reading
Debating Abundance vs Sustainability in the Anthropocene
Joshua Yates that our entry into the Anthropocene, where the course of nature is determined by human activity, may force us to abandon dreams of material abundancy that has driven post-Enlightenment history. Joshua J. Yates, excerpted from a much longer essay in Hedgehog Review: “Recently, the language of sustainability has found new impetus in the… Continue reading
Occupy, Anthropology, and the 2011 Global Uprisings
Source: InterOccupy.net Cultural Anthropology has just launched its sixth Hot Spot — Occupy, Anthropology, and the 2011 Global Uprisings. The collection is guest edited by Jeffrey S. Juris and Maple Razsa, and includes 20 essays from ethnographers and activists around the world. ***ESSAYS*** Jeffrey S. Juris and Maple Razsa, Introduction: Occupy, Anthropology, and the… Continue reading
The long and inevitable decline of internet advertising
Google has been spending $10 in investor money for every $1 in advertising revenue. Funding for ‘free’ internet infrastructures cannot rely on advertising. Here are some crucial data. Steve Arnold: “TEM: The disturbing decline in Google’s online advertising efficiency. Let’s look at this point because it weaves together a number of soft nudges into a… Continue reading
A Constituent Assembly for a new Europe: bringing civil society politics up to the European level
Occupy Europe: a supranational front of progressive forces is needed to refund the European Union Excerpted from a proposal and argument by MONICA FRASSONI: “We need to orientate some of the energy of the civil society movements and that of some of our best politicians towards the fight for a better EU. We have not… Continue reading
Franz Nahrada on Videobridging for Global Villages
Bringing villages on an equal level with cities in terms of knowledge sharing and development, in a very clear interview for the WSIS Forum 2012 by Franz Nahrada. Watch the interview here:
Punishing greed in 16th cy. Europe
“Stanford University historian Laura Stokes is uncovering how attitudes toward “acceptable greed” have done a turnaround in the past 500 years..” Looking at 16th century court records from Switzerland, she comes at the following conclusion: – “In short, blatantly selfish economic behavior was simply unacceptable. In describing the contradiction between present-day business attitudes and a… Continue reading
Negative Reciprocity in the Sharing Economy
Person to person sharing services may be better than commercially mediated sharing services, suggests Ariel Schwartz in her reading of a recent study regarding the lack of care for sharing goods (‘negative reciprocity). Ariel Schwartz: “A new study warns that participants may not always take the best care of their loaned objects because they don’t… Continue reading
The debt strike is the key weapon to restore popular power
If people really want change, they are going to have to find ways of taking power – and debt strikes are one way. An important argument, previously made by Dmytri Kleiner of the International Debtors Party, that finance is the key energy keeping the current system together, but therefore also its point of vulnerability. Excerpted… Continue reading
Open access revolution not sufficient for scholars in developing world
Excerpted from a longer article by Jorge Contreras, who argues that both ‘green‘ (self-archiving) and ‘gold‘ (author pays publishing) open access publishing models are not sufficient for southern scholars. More needs to be done. He writes: “Given the challenges faced by researchers in the developing world, is open access publishing likely to advance their scientific… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Creating Sustainable Societies, towards the “Principles Societies” model of governance
As envisioned, a Principled Society is a membership organization. Other well-known membership organizations include AARP, the National Organization for Women, and your local Chamber of Commerce. Unlike these, however, a Principled Society is not a nonprofit. Nor is it a profit-maximizing corporation. It is a socially responsible corporation that is a blend of both. Like… Continue reading
Alicia Gibb on the Status of the Open Source Hardware Movement in 2012
Alicia Gibb is the president of OSHWA, the Open Source Hardware Association. The interview from which the following was excerpted was conducted by Simone Cicero for OpenPicus: “Alicia, what are the latest progresses on the OSHWA project? [Alicia Gibb] We have just finished up writing our bylaws and are about to enter into the specifics… Continue reading
Andrew McGettigan and Sean Rillo Racza on the University of Strategic Optimism
Source: Resonance FM Novara’s Aaron Peeters in discussion with the University of Strategic Optimism, Andrew McGettigan and Sean Rillo Racza. ‘THE NEW COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES’. 14th June 2011. A university based on the idea of a free and open education.
Valve: a bossless company with centralized ownership
Distributed capitalism and a commons-oriented economy are the two polarities that the ‘great horizontalisation’ of communicative, cooperative, and productive relationships are bringing us into, along with many hybrid experiments. Here is an example of a private for-profit company using peer-production like ‘self-allocation of labor’, yet owned by a small set of shareholders/owners, as described by… Continue reading
Why it is crucial that peer production companies refuse Venture Capital investments
Joe Justice of why the WikiSpeed car project adamantly refuses VC investments: “”Aptera took Venture Capital, a few million dollars worth, in exchange for the VC firm having the right to cancel the project and retain all rights and IP if they got cold feet. These terms are common from VC. While we were in… Continue reading