there is another dimension to it that concerns the revolutionary, democratic left the world over: the use of the media. When the official media told a lie, within the next half hour it was disproved by civil society on the Internet: a thousand people, ten thousand, a hundred thousand saw the real images, the state’s… Continue reading
Analyzing mixed socio-economic systems
This is a response to “Should we worry about capitalist commons?” by Michel Bauwens . What follows won’t make as much sense if you don’t read that article first. Avoiding the language trap As Michel Bauwens acknowledged in an article about theories of property rights subtitled “The Ubiquity of Mixed Systems”, when we try to… Continue reading
Time-Lapse Video of Global Protests
This is an interesting use of mapping – its shows the location and information about the protest, as the creator notes: The? colors are Red: resulting in death, Orange: major injuries, damage, arrests, Yellow: minor injuries, etc. Green: Peaceful…the number of pickets is the size, 1: Under 100, 2: 100-1000 3: 1000-10000 4. 10K –… Continue reading
Ervin Laszlo on Leadership for Social Change
In a democracy, the real leaders are the people; good leaders enable those around them to be leaders themselves … Great presentation at Davos 2011 by Professor Ervin Laszlo at the European Leadership Academy. Davos 2011: Professor Ervin Laszlo from ELA European Leadership Academy on Vimeo.
From degrowth to altergrowth
A contribution from Audun Myhra Bergwitz: “I was thinking a bit about degrowth and what it implies. This might have been discussed to death other places, or on this list before I joined it, but I’ll post it anyway. This isn’t a deep analysis, it’s just some random thougths I got after reading this list… Continue reading
A strategic framework for demonetization
A contribution by Franz Nahrada in the context of the Demonetization mailing list: “We all have been attracted by a mission statement that is claiming that demonetization is both necessary and feasible. But what does this “feasibility” mean to each of us? Certainly quite different things. The idea to call for “demonetization” and the call… Continue reading
Ched Myers on Jubilee Economics
Part of my ongoing investigation of neotraditional economics, here is an interesting presentation on justice-based economics based on the Jewish and Christian traditions:
Collective Intelligence Means Smarter Working
One of the major things that networked technologies have done is to lower the cost of communication to almost zero. This means that ideas which at one point may have been impracticle due to the distance and/or time/cost of communication are now not only possible, but quite easy. This ease of communication results in a… Continue reading
David Bollier: Time for a political approach to the commons
Reproduced in full from David Bollier, in the new commons-oriented, and strongly recommended, political magazine called “Stir To Action”: “Why is it that the commons is so often excluded from official policy discussions about how to manage resources and improve people’s lives? This strikes me as a serious void in our public conversations, one that… Continue reading
Is Bitcoin a Rube Goldberg machine?
Bitcoin is an idea developed by Satoshi Nakamoto for an independent, fully de-centralized P2P currency. Technical details of how it is generated are described in a White Paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/bitcoin-p2p-cryptocurrency-now-in-public-beta/2010/06/16/ I have argued (elsewhere) that bitcoin is a deflationary currency. As the user base increases, and the difficulty to… Continue reading
Dmytri Kleiner on the Price and Value of Free Culture
From a recent ‘Transmediale’ panel discussion: “In recent years, the free culture movement has been very much focused on the development of alternative rights and licensing systems. The development of appropriate economic benchmarks outside traditional business models are only now starting to gain traction: crowdsourcing, micro-funding and shared economy – these are the new watchwords… Continue reading
Humanizing the cosmos, a critique and counter-critique
I asked our friend Eric Hunting, who is involved in open source space efforts, to comment on an article in the Monthly Review (by Peter Dickens), which you can find here. As you can read, Eric was not happy with it: “He is not using the term ‘humanization’ in any positive context. He is characterizing… Continue reading
Network Growth and Decay Model
via http://blog.futureforwardinstitute.com/2011/03/28/network-growth-and-decay-model What Is It? This exploratory model is based off of Wilensky, U. (2005). NetLogo Preferential Attachment model. Wilensky’s model produces the initial network. Future Forward Institute added the functionality to decay the network. In some networks, a few “hubs” have lots of connections, while everybody else only has a few. This model shows… Continue reading
New Open Source Ecology custom search engine and widget
The OSE custom search engine is now available at: http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/OSE_custom_search_engine It allows you to search the OSE wiki (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/), discussion forum (http://openfarmtech.org/forum/), blog (http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/), and also includes an option to search related sites, like P2P Foundation’s wiki and blog, the Open Manufacturing group, the RepRap wiki and forum, The Household Cyclopedia, open hardware and permaculture… Continue reading
Bill St. Arnaud’s call for a National Public Internet
Excerpted from Bill St. Arnaud: “As many of you may have seen recently in the press Facebook is making special arrangements with a number of cell phone companies to offer free access to Facebook. Many cell phone companies are also offering special data packages that only include access to Facebook and Twitter. As well once… Continue reading
Cooperation is always political
Collaborations are never outside the political. There is no post-political collaboration. Indeed, when collaborations are working well it is not because everyone is free and there are no rules, norms or pressures, but precisely the opposite. It occurs when these devices are strongest; when there are strong regulatory mechanisms for making decisions between competing alternatives…. Continue reading