when you look at the trends of earlier civilizations whose archaeology we study now. More often that not, food shortages were responsible for their decline and eventual demise. For a long time, I had rejected the idea that food shortages could be the weak link in our modern 21st-century economy. But in fact, I think… Continue reading
Open Access Policy Kit
The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is pleased to announce the availability of the Open Access Policy Kit. The kit was produced by RCAAP (Portugal Open Access Science Repository) and contains valuable information and resources for the development and implementation of Open Access policies at funding agencies and universities. A growing number of organizations… Continue reading
P2P Distribution Model Working for Yes Men
This is an interesting article. The activist-pranksters, the Yes Men’s recent film The Yes Men Fix the World only obtained a limited cinema release and because they had attracted the threat of a lawsuit from one of the groups they had pranked (the US Chamber of Commerce) the overall attraction for distributors was impacted. But… Continue reading
Why Self-Organized Networks Will Destroy Hierarchies — A Credo by Kevin Carson
As originally posted: Center for a Stateless Society on October 6, 2010. Kevin Carson: “Hierarchies are systematically stupid and inefficient, for the following reasons. 1. Hayekian information problems: The people in authority who make the rules interfere with the people who know how to do the job and are in direct contact with the situation…. Continue reading
Iceland insures better recovery through refusal of financial diktats
Aditya Chakrabortty argues that the Icelandic voters’ refusal to bear the risk of the financial speculators is an example for those countries (like Ireland) where elites are destroying the local economy for the sake of the rescuing bankers: (excerpt) “Remember Iceland? In the autumn of 2008, it became the first national casualty of the financial… Continue reading
News about Intellectual Property in the TPP
Countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have combined several proposals for an intellectual property rights (IPR) chapter into one single document, but participants are far from agreeing on fundamental IPR issues and this will clearly be one of the toughest areas in the negotiations to conclude, sources said. TPP countries now have a single, consolidated… Continue reading
Take Action contact your MEP to stop Copyright Term Extension
Copyright Term extension is again on the agenda in the European parliament please contact your MEP to prevent this from happening. A wide range of European cultural heritage is due to fall into the public domain including sound recordings from the 1960’s this would hugely enrich the cultural commons giving people the right to freely… Continue reading
An update from Tunisia and its ongoing revolution
The first excerpt is from a a report by Matt Swagler. The second is excerpted from another report of a group of Italian precarity activists visting a Tunisian youth meeting. 1. Matt Swagler: “Since December, Tunisian society has fundamentally changed in a way that cannot be measured solely by observing official political reforms and appointments…. Continue reading
The love economy (3): Lisa Gansky on the ecological potential of p2p object sharing
what struck me is the truly radical economic notion enmeshed in the Mesh: The more we share our stuff, the less we need to buy all that new stuff that inevitably leads to ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions, environmental degradation, and the pursuit of unsustainable consumption Excerpted from a report by Todd Woody on a lecture… Continue reading
The love economy (2): The political appropriation of happiness in the UK
Excerpted from a report by Pat Kane, on how various UK forces are trying to use ‘happiness’ politics: (the original article has many links) Pat Kane, reporting from anti-austerity Scotland: “I’m fascinated to observe the battle raging between the major UK parties for ownership of the new sciences of the “social animal” or “social brain”…. Continue reading
How Companies Participate in a Company-led Open Source Project
Excerpted from OSBR April 2011, dedicated to ‘Collectives’: * Article: Control and Diversity in Company-led Open Source Projects, Michael Weiss. OSBR, April 2011 Michael Weiss: “Company-led open source projects differ in significant ways in terms of who controls the project, and the diversity of applications derived from the project. Control refers to decision making, and… Continue reading
Alternative Exchange Systems in Contemporary Greece (review)
Recently, Michel brought to my attention Irene Sotiropoulou’s paper titled “Alternative Exchange Systems in Contemporary Greece” published at IJCCR (freely available). This report distinguishes several grassroots initiatives in parallel currencies, which are not supported by any authority; exchange/barter networks; free bazaars; and free networks that have been emerging in Greece during the last five years…. Continue reading
Designing Products to be Shared
Mary Fallon at Sharable.net: …the answer to lower costs may be to source cars that are actually designed for sharing rather than for the private ownership model where carmakers’ profits depend on selling as many expensive and disposable cars as possible. Zipcar’s predicament suggests that designing products for sharing may be key to making certain… Continue reading
The love economy (1): Hazel Henderson on compound interest as a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics
if systems are too large and interconnected to manage and banks are “too big to fail,” then they need to be carefully dismantled and decentralized to restore diversity and resilience following nature’s design principles. Monetary monocultures now on a global scale have demonstrably failed. Healthy, homegrown, local economies need protection from global bankers and their… Continue reading
Sage Commons: open source genomics
Over the next few days the Sage Bionetworks Commons Congress will bring to San Francisco biologists, informatics, and patient advocates to discuss about the Sage Commons project. Started two years ago by Stephne Friend, who quit his job at Merck to found it, Sage is a non-profit based in Seattle and devoted to the building… Continue reading
The Users are the Suppliers
Very clear argument, reproduced in full, from Israel internet activist Hanan Cohen : “I want to suggest that for Facebook, Google, Twitter and companies like them, the users are the suppliers. In a production and a commercial process, several bodies and elements are involved: * Producers that utilize means of production * Suppliers of inputs… Continue reading