But the commons is showing that you don’t need markets or government to create something that has great value. The commons is, in fact, a very different value proposition, one that is dedicated to generating indivisible, socially embedded common wealth. The commons are not “tragic,” but highly generative – it’s just that the common wealth… Continue reading
How to avoid openwashing?
“Openwashing” is a term derived from ” greenwashing” to refer to dubious vendor claims about openness. Openwashing brings the old “open vs. proprietary” debate back into play – not as “which one is better” but as “which one is which?” Excerpted from Klint Finley: Klint asks: What does it mean to be open? And how… Continue reading
Spain is Ground Zero for the P2P Revolution
Within Spain, the organization of these camps is striking: they work like small kibbutzim where everybody shares what they have and where the decisions are adopted by consensual agreement. Their posters carry slogans as imaginative as those from May ‘68 in Paris: “Our dreams are too big for their polls”, “I think, therefore I disturb”,… Continue reading
The good news of the Hargreaves UK Intellectual Property report
Excerpted from John Naughton in the Guardian, who is very happy with the Hargreaves report on copyright policy: ” The notion that laws framed in an era when copying was difficult, imperfect and expensive could work in an era when copying was effortless, perfect and cheap was a proposition that only imbeciles and industry lobbyists… Continue reading
Dutch Scientists say GSM could be networking tool
Bill St. Arnaud points out that there are unused opportunities for networking in the GSM mobile phone chips we carry around in our phones. In his article New business and research opportunities in building 5G Internet networks – Dutch lead the world he identifies GSM as a networking opportunity that is not being utilized. “Freeing”… Continue reading
High engagement postings on the P2P Foundation blog
According to Postrank, these are the ‘best’ articles which appeared in 2011: – 2021: the tipping point for peer to peer banking and government taxation – Slavoj Zizek on cloud computing as corporate enclosure of the ‘general intellect’ – Franz Hörmann on the End of Money – Open Source Ecology Brochure – From Open Business… Continue reading
John Perry Barlow tells it straight to the G8: Innovation needs to be freed
John Perry Barlow used the eG8 to demolish IP monopolies claims. Other internet advocates backed up the critique of the repressive approach proposed by Sarkozy, see below. Excerpt: “Barlow was a late addition to a panel on intellectual property; his name wasn’t even included on the schedule. But he accepted the invitation even as colleagues… Continue reading
Police Violence Dismantling Barcelona Camp #spanishrevolution #acampadabcn #yeswecamp
Another great round up by Amaia Arcos: [View the story “Police Violence Dismantling Barcelona Camp #spanishrevolution #acampadabcn #yeswecamp” on Storify]
Launch of the School of Commoning in London
Full announcement from Mark Jagdev, one of the co-founders, is here. The website of the school is here. Excerpted from the announcement: “George Por, Anna Betz, myself and others have co-founded the School of Commoning as an online and offline forum for commons education based in London. We have established ourselves as a Community Interest… Continue reading
Smári McCarthy: Traditional free speech rights are obsolete, towards the IMMI approach
The dream team of free speech regulations, as envisaged by the IMMI project:
Book of the Week (3): Towards an interconnected Collaborative Civilization
* Book / Report: Fast Thinking. a Research and Education Network Renaissance. Gordon Cook. Volume XIX, No.s 11-12, XX, No.s 1-5 February – August 2011 (To receive the URL for downloading the entire book,(twenty dollars US via paypal) fill out the request here) Gordon Cook, who is the driver of a network of communications infrastructure… Continue reading
Bringing the political economy back into the city
An interesting short essay by Columbia U., New York U. and LSE professor Saskia Sassen published at openDemocracy on May the 4th: It’s 2030. Governments are poor and in hock to big banks. The urban poor and the impoverished urban middle classes in rich countries have had to scramble to survive . Bit by bit… Continue reading
Twitter’s increasing enclosures
Twitter, which has been a very open system, will increasingly become one where the important interactions are controlled by the company.* For-profit companies owning and developing communication platforms always comes at a price. They need openness to attract users, but need to enclose to capture scarce market value. Ben Brooks describes recent going-ons at Twitter:… Continue reading
Urbanism as hacking: the digital generation’s tactical urbanism
“What if saving a rundown city wasn’t about building expensive new infrastructure — hardware, so to speak — but instead reprogramming the existing infrastructure? …Changing the software of the place? Nimble, flexible approaches to improving the urban environment are emerging all over the United States — the Better Block projects that started in Dallas, the… Continue reading
Media dynamics in TV vs Twitter: “Twitter news curation is the anti-playstation for wars”
I propose that Twitter and social media curated-news distribution is quite different compared with traditional news dissemination through television. Twitter-curated news often puts us at bayonet distance to others –human, immediate and visceral– while television puts us on a jet flying 20,000 feet above the debris –impersonal, distant and unmoved. Interesting meditation excerpted from Zeynep… Continue reading
Can Ripple credit routing develop into an actual currency?
The world of alternative currencies is abuzz right now with discussions of the pros and cons of Bitcoin, a peer-based currency that is being “mined” using the capability of computers to solve a complex mathematical problem. A good summation of the discussions is on Quora, in the different answers to the question: Is the cryptocurrency… Continue reading