Douglas Rushkoff (Author, “Life Inc.”), “Radical Abundance: How We Get Past “Free” and Learn to Exchange Value Again” English and Dutch captions by Martien van Steenbergen:
Book of the Day: Too Big To Know
“Too Big To Know” is a book about how the Internet is changing knowledge, and, in turn, how it is changing us. Here is an excerpt from an interview of the author conducted by Rebecca J. Rosen: “In your book, you argue that we are in a new age of “networked knowledge,” meaning that knowledge… Continue reading
Discussing the P2P-driven Crisis of Value (2): Open Source Abundance Destroys the Scarcity Basis of Capitalism
Excerpted from JD Moyer, the owner of a netlabel: “The music industry still consists of proprietary players (including my company, Loöq Records), but music culture has been open-sourced, and this spirit now pervades the more enlightened aspects of the music industry. Music is radically less expensive to produce (a laptop with good software in capable… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Insurgent Citizenship and the Production of Enclosure vs. the Commons
* Article: Rethinking Enclosure: Space, Subjectivity and the Commons. Alex Jeffrey, Colin McFarlane, et al. (to be published by Antipode) In the abstract, the authors propose: “While concepts of “enclosure” and the “commons” are becoming increasingly popular in critical geography, there have been few attempts to think them together. This paper sets out a dialectic… Continue reading
Discussing OWS (7): The state of #OccupyWallStreet and its lack of reliable allies
An assessment of the state of the movement, excerpted from Michael Greenberg: “Lately, the contest has entered a new phase, with police pushing reporters aside, and sometimes arresting them before a crackdown, in order to avoid a repetition of the kind of scenes of brutality that propelled the movement’s rise when they appeared on YouTube…. Continue reading
Movement of the Day: the European Charter of the Commons Campaign
A European Citizen’s Initiative for a European Charter of the Commons was initiated by the municipality of Naples, with the the first high level technical meeting of jurists taking place recently (in December) at the International University College of Turin. Introduction: “The dichotomy of private property and the state, on which the current constitutional tradition… Continue reading
Discussing the P2P-driven Crisis of Value (1): The Deflationary Effects of the Web Economy
Excerpted from Byrne Hobart: “Most popular web-based businesses are deflationary. They substitute expensive forms of content consumption for cheap ones, they make it logistically easier to deliver discounts to people who will respond to them, and they create numerous financially cheap forms of social status. As more activity moves on to the web, the main… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: P2P Sensor Commons vs Top-down Smart Cities
AJ fisher defines the sensor commons as “A future state whereby we have data available to us, in real time, from a multitude of sensors that are relatively similar in design and method of data acquisition and that data is freely available.” As a population we are deciding that governments and civic planners no longer… Continue reading
Discussing OWS (5): Slavoj Zizek on interpreting #OccupyWallStreet as a Movement of the Salaried Bourgeoisie
Michel Bauwens: I very often appreciate Zizek’s radical thought and insights, including in the excerpts reproduced below. However, notions like workers and bourgeoisie, used here below in the context of a ‘salaried bourgeoisie’, in a non-structural way, strikes me as particularly unproductive. Equating precarious knowledge workers with the notion of being part of the ruling… Continue reading
The power of empathy: Peer groups help veterans, police and moms of kids with special need
Source: MaryLynn Schiavi For NJ Press Media What do police officers, military veterans and mothers have in common? They all fall into the category of those who help and support others — but often, do not get the help and support that they need, according to Cherie Castellano, the driving force behind the creation of… Continue reading
Making Worlds: the convergence of #OccupyWallStreet and the Commons
* Making Worlds: An OWS Forum on the Commons, to be organized February 16-18, 2012. organized by members of the Empowerment & Education Committee of OWS “The Occupy movement is entering a new phase, one in which many of us feel the need of combining a renewed engagement with direct actions and mobilizations with a… Continue reading
Discussing OWS (4): From the Ideology-Led Organizing of the left to the Behavioural-Led Organizing of #OccupyWallStreet
Excerpted from a reflection on the logic behind the organizing of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, from Jake Stanning: “The splitting tendency within the left is partly down to what we might call ideology-led organising. Politically-minded people have often been suspicious of those with different ideologies, even suspecting that somehow those with different beliefs will… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: The Feudal Aspects of the Social Capital Market
Excerpted from a discussion by Marc Dangeard: ‘My experience of Social Capital market is that it is a very skewed market today, which reminds me of feudalism: – on one side you have foundations, with a few managers in charge money from people who live from their investments and have assigned some of that money… Continue reading
Book of the Day: From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg
This book comes recommended by Boing Boing: * Book: From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg. by John Naughton. Quercus Books. 2012 “Our society has gone through a weird, unremarked transition: we’ve gone from regarding the Net as something exotic to something that we take for granted as a utilitarian necessity, like mains electricity or running water. In… Continue reading
P2P Movement of the Day: The Manifesto for European Common Goods
A commons movement is growing in Europe, this is one of its expressions: “The crisis affecting the global economy and consequently the Euro during these months requires a radically different response from those actually envisaged and carried out. The way Europe and European governments and electors will handle the Greek crisis will set an important… Continue reading
It’s time for the Internet to interfere with traditional politics
A call to aim at the big targets by Smári McCarthy Mosquitoes with Cannons Last week, we won. The Internet, long seen as a mostly harmless collection of kitten aficionados and porn fiends, fought epic battle of self preservation against a substantially better organized enemy, one with much greater experience of that field of… Continue reading