Here below is an account from the Open Rights Group, by Jim Kollock. Jon Worth explains that the problem is largely technical, i.e. the organisations being unware that associations cannot represent themselves as individual people, i.e. using ‘profiles’ instead of ‘pages’. Jim Kollock: “News has broken today that a number of activist groups pages and… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens at Re-rooting digital culture – media art ecologies 13/05/11
Michel Bauwens will be taking part in a panel discussion at Re-rooting digital culture – media art ecologies unconference at the University of Westminster, London on Friday 13th May. There are only 60 places, so booking is essential. Info from the event website: Introduction Over the last decade the awareness of anthropogenic climate change has emerged… Continue reading
The role of state in social transitions
We are thus entering a world that is very different from the one in which Poulantzas lived – together with us. Thus, many of his/our former analyses do not apply to new historical realities. But this is not a major flaw for social theories. Only metaphysics pretends eternal validity. Social theories are not supposed to… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens talking at #minefield
This is a taped version of the intervention by Michel Bauwens on a panel at the Mindfield festival in Dublin on Remix Culture and the role of the Free Culture Forum. For a more comprehensive interview on the p2p paradigm, see the interview by Luke Clancy for RTE radio, here. Thanks to Kevin Flanagan for… Continue reading
The solar engineering school for women in Tilonia, India
Reportage about African women attending the Barefoot College in Tilonia, becoming accomplished solar engineers in 6 months time:
Jay Rosen’s Eight Theses on Horizontal Journalism
There is much to be said about them, critically speaking, but they do make us think. Jay Rosen: 1. The Great Horizontal: when people are connected across to other people as effectively as they are connected “up” to Big Media. 2. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and today almost anyone… Continue reading
Markets without Capitalism as part of P2P economics (2): Kevin Carson’s transition proposals
This is a follow up on yesterday’s post, arguing that the idea and practice of markets, should be divorced from their present embeddedness in an unsustainable infinite growth system such as capitalism. Today, we look at the ideas of mutualist Kevin Carson. I will follow this up in a next installment by some of my… Continue reading
Introducing the … Klerotarians: reviving democracy the Athenian way
Athenian democracy, whose material techniques are so brilliantly described by Julian Dibbell, was largely based on the random selection of citizens to play certain roles. The Kleroterians are an informal group which aims to reinvigorate this tradition of deliberate use of randomness (lottery) in human affairs. In the world of governance, politics and elections, this… Continue reading
Paul Treanor on the defects and anti-innovation effects of open societies
These provocative theses of 1997 by Paul Treanor are still worth thinking about: The text, The defects of an open society, was originally part of a response to the1997 Wired cover article ‘The Long Boom’. “1. An open society is not neutral to innovation. Innovation must be argued for, but existing structures continue even if… Continue reading
The place of heteregeneous and egalitarian markets in a hybrid and plurarist P2P Polity
It is important to understand that while the P2P approach is opposed to the infinite growth mechanism that is capitalism, and to its exclusion of the majority of the people of the ownership of their means of production, it is in no way against markets as such. This is both because people need the freedom… Continue reading
The Recombinant Ladder of the Pirate Party’s Policy Making
We’ve been talking about Privacy, Culture and Knowledge for a while. But as it turns out, it’s more than that. It’s also Transparency, it’s Process of Law (summarized below as Humanity), and as we saw the other day, Swarm Economy. All in all, it seems to fall into eight headers. These eight, together with observations,… Continue reading
Managing City Domain Names as Neighborhood Commons
There are an estimated 248 to 305 distinct neighborhoods in New York City. Imagine if neighborhoods could form their own governance systems for acting as stewards of “harlem.nyc” or “westvillage.nyc.” The city could stipulate that any neighborhood steward of a dotNeighborhood domain name would have to provide, at a minimum, a website with a neighborhood… Continue reading
Neal Gorenflo on the sharing economy as complementary to the market economy
Symbionics continues its interview series. Here is Neal Gorenflo who closely monitors sharing culture and sharing economies through his remarkable Shareable Magazine: Neal Gorenflo: Symbionomics Interview from alan rosenblith on Vimeo.
Student-led teaching in 12th Century Italy: the case of the University of Bologna
Excerpted from Roderick Long: “In the 12th century, Bologna was a center of intellectual and cultural life. Students came to Bologna from all over Europe to study with prominent scholars. These individual professors were not originally organized into a university; each one operated freelance, offering courses on his own and charging whatever fees students were… Continue reading
Is the P2P Foundation a level 3 actor? Meta-level strategies for social change.
What does the P2P Foundation do (or rather: aims to do)? Read the excerpt from Tom McCabe’s below in order to understand our approach better. – we collect Level 1 direct actions, try to connect with other actors involved in Level 2 indirect actions, while also attempting to achieve Level 3 (or 4, see below)… Continue reading
Contesting Abundance: Shared for the Common Good or Monopolized for Private Profit?
By Roberto Verzola Full post with footnotes here It is hardly news by now that digital technologies have made available an abundance of information and knowledge on the Internet and the Web. New technologies have created a global digital infrastructure, which, in turn, has become the basis for a new information economy, whose most obvious feature… Continue reading