You can help us develop this project by donating here: http://rockethub.com/projects/1349-understanding-today-s-economic-transformation we have a limited time to raise these funds, thank you for your consideration. Do you want to understand what is driving our evolving economy in a way that you can use today? It is no longer news that the old economy is collapsing… Continue reading
The Pirate Party’s solution for the global job crisis: valuing the swarm economy
The job market is never going back to lifetime employments. Industry-critical work such as free software or Wikipedia is not counted as value at all. Today’s economic model has failed at reflecting real value and at promoting industry-critical fundamentals. Job policy and economic policy is based on this faulty model. Excerpted from Rick Falkvinge :… Continue reading
How to distinguish civic society from the private sector?
We have to remember that historically, civil society actually meant the private sector, but this was a private sector consisting of propertied individuals and some powerful institutions such as the Church; most people, slaves, women, non-propertied workers and farmers, where not part of civil society. This only changed when, through many decades of popular struggles,… Continue reading
New report by David Bollier: The Future of Work
* Report: The Future of Work. What It Means for Individuals, Businesses, Markets and Government. David Bollier. Aspen Institute, 2010. Excerpted from David Bollier: “This familiar model (of Taylorism) is now being radically revamped in the networked environment, at least for jobs that require some levels of independent human judgment. The Taylorite schemes of top-down… Continue reading
Four years of Open Source Ecology at the Factor E Farm: a 4-year status report
See the 4-minute video with a summary progress report on the project and their ‘Global Village Construction Set’ (GVCS): 4 Years of Factor e Farm in 4 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. The ‘Crash Course‘ summarizes developments for newcomers and laypeople interested in supporting the project. Founder Marcin Jakubowski adds: “We’re now moving… Continue reading
The Decline of the Commons? Not Really.
Michel alerted me to this post provocatively entitled ‘The Decline of the Commons, 1760 to 2000, as Plotted by Google‘. It looks as an interesting search engine Google have developed that looks though millions of books for words and gives you a graph of their use over time. So the post author put in the… Continue reading
Book of the Week: The Divine Right of Capital
* Book: The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy. By Marjorie Kelly. Berrett-Koehler, 2001. The key thesis of this classic is: the corporation is a feudal structure ; Gideon Rosenblatt, who provides summaries for each chapter here, calls it “one of those mind-opening books that deserves to be read by a large audience”… Continue reading
Documentary on DIY, Do-It-Together Britain
This documentary on people who are rebuilding their lives in autonomous ways, do it yourself and do it together, was previously not available on YouTube, and is well worth watching. From the Guardian’s intro: “As our jobs become more specialised fewer of us possess the practical skills to look after basic human needs like shelter,… Continue reading
Critical Studies in Peer Production: an update before the launch
Last year, a project was started to build a scientific and theoretical journal to publish studies on peer production and P2P Theory. The Journal has adopted an innovative open peer review process. The very first interesting item, already published before the launch, t is a very interesting debate on Actor-Network-Theory, see here. Editor Mathieu O’Neill… Continue reading
New publication: Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube.
The Institute of Network Cultures has announce the publication of Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube. You can find more info at http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/vv-reader. You can order a copy of this free publication by emailing: books@networkcultures.org and download the book from their main page. One of the chapters is by our good friend Andrew… Continue reading
Symposium “Watching the Media”
Censorship, Limits and Control in Creative Practice’, which is joint-organised by Edge Hill University and the MeCCSA practice session. The symposium investigates the impact and role of censorship for media and creative practice. The symposium will take place at Edge Hill University (Ormskirk, outside of Liverpool) on the 15th April 2011.
Why the four forms of intersubjectivity need each other
Each way of life undermines itself. Individualism would mean chaos without hierarchical authority to enforce contracts and repel enemies. To get work done and settle disputes the egalitarian order needs hierarchy, too. Hierarchies, in turn, would be stagnant without the creative energy of individualism, uncohesive without the binding force of equality, unstable without the passivity… Continue reading
The Protocol Wars of 4chan, Anonymous, and Wikileaks
This is where the war stands to be won: in the building of autonomous structures of all sorts (structures that bypass and outcompete existing ones) on top of other new structures until the entire old world is unnecessary. The above conclusion on the validity of p2p-based change strategies is from an interesting analysis which appeared… Continue reading
Homebrew Industrial Revolution: Chapter Six (Second Excerpt)
[Michel Bauwens has kindly invited me to serialize excerpts from my recently published book The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto (you can check it out for free online here). Over the next few weeks, I will conclude with the last series of two excerpts each from Chapters Six and Seven.] Chapter Six: Resilient Communities… Continue reading
Open Government: Open Data, Open Source and Open Standards
Announcing a workshop on *Open Government: Open Data, Open Source and Open Standards* organized jointly by Dr Hanif. Rahemtulla, Horizon Digital Economy Research and Puneet Kishor, Science Fellow, Creative Commons, in conjunction with the annual Open Source GIS Conference, June 21, 2011, Nottingham, United Kingdom. The workshop will be held at the School of Geography/Centre… Continue reading
A message from Einstein in 1949
Via: (republished from Monthly Review) Just as food for thought: ” * Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organisation which predominate in society. It is on this that those who… Continue reading