Max Keiser’s show on Russian Television, and his justified rants against ‘financial terrorism’, are always quite entertaining. In these two episodes, he interviews free speech activist, digital rights advocate, and p2p-oriented science-fiction author Cory Doctorow. Well worth spending your time on. In part one, the interview starts at 25 minutes in the video and discusses… Continue reading
Is “Blue Labour” sufficiently inoculated from Blairite neoliberalism?
In everything I have ever written or done I have criticised the domination of capital and argued for the democratic renewal of the Labour movement to resist its power. That is all I stand for really. Resistance to commodification through democratic organisation. That’s the position. Labour as a radical tradition that pursues the common good…. Continue reading
A business model for peer learning based on complementary currencies
A proposal by Mark Frazier: How ” to promote resilience in his community, especially relating to education? … Some ideas for a sustainable, self-organize learning initiatives. … The approach involves mixing established ingredients – including alternative currencies – in new ways. The key elements are: 1) (Re-)Introduce the founding idea of European universities ( http://j.mp/ijB7Wa… Continue reading
Making is Connecting
In Making is Connecting, David Gauntlett argues that, through making things, people engage with the world and create connections with each other. Both online and offline, we see that people want to make their mark on the world, and to make connections. During the previous century, the production of culture became dominated by professional elite… Continue reading
“Go Open Access” film series
To promote understanding of Open Access, the information platform open-access.net initiated a series of short films. In a charming and humorous manner, the value chain of academic publishing and the principles of Open Access are explained. The films (sponsored by the German Research Foundation, DFG) are in German and in English and will be gradually… Continue reading
A critique of the 1,000 true fans business model for creativity
The On the Spiral blog discusses an important article and argument by Venkatesh Rao: “Venkat attacks the notion that the average “long-tail” content creator should aim to attract 1000 raving fans. This basic model of creative capital is just not believable for two reasons. First, it reduces a prosumer/co-creation economic-cultural environment to a godawful unthinking… Continue reading
Via Campesina opposes International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources as legitimizing seed theft
Via: “We must situate the Treaty in its historical context of constant attempts to steal our seeds. The industry and most governments are using the Treaty to legitimate the industry’s access to those peasant seeds that are stored in collections around the world. The Treaty recognizes and legitimizes industrial property over seeds, thus creating the… Continue reading
Bolivia set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans
Truly an epochal move, if it is voted on and put into practice: (reported by the Guardian) “Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as “blessings” and… Continue reading
World brain and global game – or the ‘save the world game’
Much is said in email discussions that never makes its mark beyond the sometimes very restricted circle of those who are active or closely following the discussion. This morning I read a string of emails from Venessa Miemis’ list at building-a-distributed-decentralized-internet@googlegroups.com and I thought how could I forward this to my busy friend who’s interested… Continue reading
Save our Sydney Ferries: “Privatisation is Theft”
Award winning journalist, author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger gives a candid account of the success of the community based anti-privatisation campaign, “Save Our Sydney Ferries”.
Thresholds and abrupt social change
Post by Lee Worden How does large-scale social change sometimes happen abruptly without a clear cause? One day thousands of people take over the streets and refuse to leave until their demands are met. 20th century leadership-based models for social movements appear to be inadequate to explain how people are doing it this year. One… Continue reading
ContactCon: a counter-conference for building a P2P counter-infrastructure
Here is an important announcement from Douglas Ruskoff, on what we believe will be one of the most important p2p conferences this year, in NYC on October 20. There is also extra documentation in our own wiki. Douglas Rushkoff: “Social media offer us an opportunity more spectacular than purchasing video greetings from American Idol contestants… Continue reading
The two rules of commonwealth economies
“The shift that we need now to accomplish politically, not only theoretically, is to change the dominant wisdom from the absolute domination of the subject (as owner or State) over the object (territory or more generally the environment) to a focus on the relationship of the two (subject-nature). We need a new common sense recognizing,… Continue reading
A conference on the Open Commons Region Linz experience
Laurent Straskraba reports on the introduction event “Open Commons Region Linz”, 11 April 2011 at the “Knowledge Tower Linz”: “The event was opened by Councilwoman Eva Schobesberger (Green Party), who is also head of the VHS Knowledge Tower, where the event took place. They called for a democratization of the media and will have free… Continue reading
We’re breaking the Central Covenants of Successful Economies
I’m excerpting an important argument from a blog entry by Arthur Brock, who also outlines the underlying Rules of the Commons, which we will treat separate. Arthur Brock: “Our commercial economy is headed for destruction. There are many contributing factors, but in the end it all boils down to the fact that we’ve broken the… Continue reading
The arguments for internet-induced openness
Excerpted from David Brin, who starts by summarizing the two key arguments: (the original contains extra material and has links to the quoted material) 1 open information flows, especially a secular trend toward more transparency worldwide, will be inherently lethal to their (authoritarian) mode of rule 2. increases in light flowing over fully engaged enlightenment… Continue reading