The Open Design experiments you will read about in this book — such as the 400 fab labs now in operation — are nodes within an alternative industrial system that is now emerging. These are the “small, open, local and connected” experiments that, for the environmental designer Ezio Manzini, are defining features of a sustainable… Continue reading
Kevin Flanagan on Irish hackerspaces
Good atmospheric piece on the progress on hackerspaces in Ireland:
An interview with Julian Assange
Extensive talk with Julian, on a variety of subject, such as the Middle Eastern revolutions and the role of social media such as Facebook. Assange calls Facebook the most extensive spying machine ever invented: “whenever you add a friend, you’re doing free work for the U.S. intelligence agencies”. The following is a selection of the… Continue reading
Vandana Shiva: Post-Fukushima anti-nuclear resistance in India
Watch this video, where Vandana Shiva is interviewed by Laura Flanders:
Bitcoin in the real world – supply and demand
Bitcoin is an electronic currency based on a piece of software that allows for the collaborative adoption and use of electronic bits of information as money. We have been keeping track of bitcoin since 2009, starting with this post by Michel Bauwens: Bitcoin: new open source P2P e-cash system. In June last year I reported… Continue reading
A study of the eCars Open Source Hardware Community
Our new article on the demographics and motivations of an Open Source Hardware (OSH) community, the Finnish eCars – Now! -community, has now been published in First Monday. The study is based on a survey of the community members (conducted in 2010) and subsequent interviews. The demographics of the members of the OSH community resemble… Continue reading
Can our civilisation really change?
This meditation by Derrick Jensen answers the questions negatlively: our civilisation will never change and become sustainable. So what do we do? I don’t (necessarily) agree with the ideas presented here, but, it definitely forces us to think:
The ephemeralization of value
Timothy Lee explains why classic measurement schemes like GDP fail to register very real increases in value and innovation: “Official economic indicators are a bad way to measure our generation’s low-hanging fruit. To understand what makes software-powered innovation distinctive, it helps to contrast it with the industrial-age innovations that proceeded it. For most of the… Continue reading
Jan Servaes talks to Vandana Shiva: biodiversity, seed commons, eco-agriculture and social justice
“Dr. Vandana Shiva, named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 7 most-influential women in the world, one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, and coordinator of Navdanya, an Indian movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade (more… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens interviewed on “Culture File”
Luke Clancy spoke to Michel Bauwens ahead of the #mindfield event in Dublin, Ireland. Originally posted on Culture File
Authority and Power within Anonymous
Excerpted from a very interesting analysis of Gabriela Coleman: “Who participates in Anonymous? What connects the different faces? Where and how does authority lie, pool, and disperse? Technically, Anonymous is open to all and erects no formal barriers to participation. However there are forms of tacit and explicit knowledge, skills, and sympathies that lead some people… Continue reading
Thinking about corporate internet platforms, their politics, and the commons
This is an interview I had forgotten about, but I believe explains quite well the contradictions at work within corporate platforms. This is a good background for the Platform Politics conference taking place May 11 to 13 in Cambridge.
Michel Bauwens Interviewed by Furtherfield
Excerpted from an interview conducted for Furtherfield, by Lawrence Bird on 17/12/2010 It’s a commonplace now that the peer-to-peer movement opens up new ways of creating relating to others. But you’ve explored the implications of P2P in depth, in particular its social and political dimensions. If I understand right, for you the phenomenon represents a… Continue reading
MondoNet, a global wireless mesh network
According to an article in ITWire A team from Rutgers University is trying to create the next generation version of the Internet, dubbed MondoNet, based on a global mesh of wireless access points that would be resistant to surveillance and state censorship and control. The head of the project, Aram Sinnreich, is an assistant professor… Continue reading
The gradual disappearance of open wireless networks is a tragedy of the commons
Excerpted from a call to arms from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “Stories like the one over the weekend about a bunch of police breaking down an innocent man’s door because he happened to leave his network open, as well as general fears about slow networks and online privacy, are convincing many people to password-lock their… Continue reading
From self-directed to networked-directed learning
Excerpted from George Siemens: “Self-directed learning has a long research and philosophical tradition. Malcolm Knowles figures prominently in discussions, but roots go back to Dewey, and even further, to humanist philosophers. While connectivism begins with the individual, it stresses the growth of connections and connectedness in learning and knowledge. Self-directed learning explains the attributes of… Continue reading