Presentation by the Project for Public Spaces: “For those of us who are passionate about the public spaces in our communities, this is an extraordinary time. The general awareness of the importance of a strong sense of place—to the economy, to our social fabric, to human health—is growing stronger every day. Placemaking is, at this… Continue reading
The Parody of the Commons
Sixth of a 10-posts-series on P2P Lab’s 2013 publications. Full reference: Kostakis, V. & Stavroulakis, S. (2013). The parody of the Commons. TripleC: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation, 11 (2): 412-424. Summary This essay builds on the idea that Commons-based peer production is a social advancement within capitalism but with various post-capitalistic aspects, in need of protection,… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: the Proces Constituent party in Catalonia
Excerpted from STEPHEN BURGEN: “Independence is not the cure because as well as the fiscal deficit there is a social deficit. If we get a majority, we will be calling for a social revolution, because that’s what we want. We don’t shy away from the word revolution,” said Sister Teresa Forcades, a Benedictine nun and… Continue reading
The Decline of Wikipedia Continues
What’s going wrong and what are they trying to do about it? See: * Article: The Decline of Wikipedia. By Tom Simonite. MIT Technology Review, October 22, 2013 Excerpt “Yet Wikipedia and its stated ambition to “compile the sum of all human knowledge” are in trouble. The volunteer workforce that built the project’s flagship, the… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Distributed Research Lab
Distributed Research Lab = international research network where educators and students can connect, share, and collaborate in advancing three specific areas of research: social and technological networks, analytics and adaptive learning, and future learning models George Siemens writes: “The technological and social networks that increasingly define information exchange and knowledge growth have transformed many… Continue reading
How the Death of Patents Unleashed Open Source Innovation for 3D Printing
Excerpted from an interview with Joshua Pearce: (conducted by Michael Molitch-Hou) “It is now well known that imposed intellectual property law hurts progress because it ensures we are retarded by 20 year patent monopolies – a time frame which is laughable when compared to our current rate of innovation. Think about how pathetic a 20-year-old… Continue reading
We need to evolve from single stakeholder to Multi-Stakeholder Co-ops
Excerpted from Pat Conaty: “Most co–operative practice is single stakeholder. Therefore the co-op sector divides between typically consumer co-ops, worker co-ops and farmer co-ops, each generally with their backs to each other and walking away from each other. This one dimensional aspect is impeding in my view an untapped revolutionary economic potential for a new… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Sustaining the Commons
* Book: Sustaining the Commons. By John M. Anderies and Marco A. Janssen. Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, 2013. URL = http://sustainingthecommons.asu.edu/ David Bollier: “For newcomers to the commons wishing to acquaint themselves with Elinor Ostrom’s work, it can be a hard slog. Her scholarly treatises, while often quite insightful, can be quite dense… Continue reading
Android ‘open source’ heritage will soon be but a memory…
The Android mobile operating system, now a major competitor to Apple’s IOS, was ‘given away’ by Google as a piece of open source software some years ago. Google, in this way, mobilized the open source developers community and Android prevailed against Apple iPhone operating system to a point where it now detains 80% of the… Continue reading
Bethany Horne interviews the team behind the FLOK Society project in Ecuador
The interview was conducted by Bethany Horne for Shareable magazine: “I recently had the pleasure of interviewing my colleagues Carlos Prieto del Campo, Xabier Barandiaran, and Daniel Vazquez from the FLOK Society, a project in Ecuador that aims to create a “free, libre, open knowledge” society. Read on to learn about our plan for influencing… Continue reading