Jon Wilson explains the relational bias of Blue Labour and its conception of the state, which is quite related to our own conception of the Partner State. Excerpted from a Open Democracy debate: “The problem is that left-liberal politics imagines abstract values rather than strong relationships bind us to act together for the common good…. Continue reading
Colombia, chronicle of a Social Controversy Foretold: the story of copyright bill 241
Colombia, chronicle of a Social Controversy Foretold Translated by Carolina Mejía Original in spanish By Carolina Botero Following the trend of other laws currently being enforced by other countries attempting to regulate ISP’s responsibility for copyright infractions made through the internet (known as Hadopi Law, Sinde Law, “Notice and take Down laws”, “Notice and Notice laws”,… Continue reading
Open design comes of age, first of a series by Massimo Menichinelli
Massimo Menichinelli (original source here): With this post (and two following ones) I’m going to explain why I think that Open Design is going mainstream now (here I’m talking about Open Design on broad terms). With these posts I don’t want to say that it is now considered popular and no more controversial, but that… Continue reading
We need public clouds to complement private clouds
Excerpted from Charles Leadbeater: “The cloud capitalists – Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon – present themselves as the next step of the networked world. Cloud computing allows our data to be stored remotely so it is always there to be accessed from any device we like. For consumers juggling a mass of data on an array… Continue reading
The cyberstrike: online aspects of the June 30 anti-austerity mobilization in the UK
One thing is now certain- the zones of operation for political action are polymorphous and integrate into all areas of production and reproduction of capital- including immaterial areas such as the internet and IT networks. Contrary to what the mainstream media might print, the working-class are not dinosaurs but the productive class within society, and,… Continue reading
Towards post-futurism … What do we do after the ‘death of the future’?
Video interview with Franco “Bifo” Berardi on the release of his new book “After the Future”. Directed by Gary Genosko and produced by the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media, Ryerson University. Interesting culture critique … the good news: it’s time to “live” again .. Bifo: After the Future from Preempting Dissent on… Continue reading
Digital Reverse Development: How the South is teaching the West
Reproduced from Dan McQuillan: “The idea of Digital Reverse Development is an observation and a call to action. It describes the way digitally-enabled social innovations from Brazil, Africa and elsewhere will start to tackle problems in the West. The part that’s most visible is the digital: @Ushahidi is moving mainstream, and there’s mobile tools from… Continue reading
Wiki Management at Synaxon
We magazine (issue 5 on leadership) interviews the CEO of Synaxon, which uses a wiki as intranet platform in order to achieve a transparent corporate culture: Interview “Gudrun Porath: How did you get the idea of completely refocusing your company on a wiki as your intranet platform with the switchover to a transparent corporate culture… Continue reading
Bifo on the crisis of European civilization and the cognitarian insurrection
Excerpted from The New Significance: 1. The Problem of Europe “There is no European identity. No ethnic identity, no religious identity, no national identity. This is the strenght and the beauty of the European project. Europe can only be the product of our mind. I would say also: a product of our imagination. And the… Continue reading
Eben Moglen on the four forces that have coalesced to destroy internet freedom
Really great lecture at PDF11. The first part outlines the dangers to net.freedom, the second part what we can do against it. Watch the video:
Hierarchies and networks in a corporate context
Excerpted from John Kotter: ” 20th-century, capital “H” Hierarchy (a sort of hardware) and the managerial processes that run on it (a sort of software) do not handle transformation well. And in a world with an ever-increasing rate of change, it is impossible to thrive without timely transformations. The data, case studies, and personal anecdotes… Continue reading
Some policy characteristics of a commons-based society
A commons-based society refers to a shift in values and policies away from the market-based system that dominates modern society, especially over the past 30 years. The foundation of the market is narrowly focused on private wealth, while the commons is built upon what we all share—air, water, public spaces, public health, public services, the… Continue reading
Adam Arvidsson and Michel Bauwens on Open Source Design
Short webcam interviews, conducted by the OpenSimSim project, part of a whole series of interviews on open design: (most interviewees are young designers, obviously adam and I are not, so we are providing some contextual interpretations on the reasons of its emergence) Video 1: Adam Arvidsson Video 2: Michel Bauwens
Van Jones on the politics of outrage and love
Very stirring speech by Van Jones, affirming the positive values of social justice movements:
Catalysing the p2p revolution? Discovering the change potential of 200m cultural creatives
According to this documentary, based on further developments of the original thesis of Paul Ray nearly 30 years ago, one third of the western population has made a shift to environmental and post-material values: (I interpret the cc-thesis as the cultural revolution of the 60s now firmly settled in human consciousness, but I’m not sure… Continue reading
Peer to Peer Urbanism, Fractal Hierarchy, and Future Permatecture
By now the permaculture movement has focused upon patterns (pattern languages), and that’s good, but now it’s time to focus more upon forms (form languages). With this new toolbox from Nikos we have the tools needed to truly reunite man with nature both through innate biophilic patterns and geometry. To respect and care for nature… Continue reading