“In 1946, a group of employees of some oil company (mostly workers) started a summer camp in one of the areas of Attica, where forest was not quite eradicated (for firewood, mostly – and deforestation is still a major problem in Greece). Over next ten or so years, the summer camp evolved into permanent dwelling,… Continue reading
KMO: On Digital Disconnect, Epochalism and Critical Junctures
As host of the weekly C-Realm podcast, KMO holds a singular position, acting as facilitator for a wide range of perspectives on economics, consciousness, resource depletion, techno-utopianism, climate change, etc. KMO’s own evolving worldview combines all of the above into a very unique and nuanced analysis that informs the underlying, and not always evident, C-Realm… Continue reading
Information Technology is Good for the Environment and for the Climate!
By Dr. Jonathan Koomey, a project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: “For some reason, the power used by computers is a source of endless fascination to the public. Most folks think that the power used by computers is a lot more than it actually is, and that it’s growing at incredible rates. Neither one… Continue reading
Bill McKibben on the recent leaderless rebellions (1): on being a catalyst, not a leader
Via TomDispatch: “Bill McKibben implies that the later twentieth and early twenty-first century may be noteworthy for two intertwined phenomena: computers and digital technology, which have decentralized power in some ways, while concentrating it in others, and the next phase in the development of nonviolent, direct-action, people-powered movements, the recent leaderless rebellions. The 1960s now… Continue reading
On Entrepreneurs, Entredonneurs, and Benepreneurs
The etymology of words is important as it reveals unconscious understandings. Prince means the ‘the one who takes first’, enterpreneurs are ‘those who take in between’. Does the concept of ‘social enterpreneurship’ then mean: one that takes in between for the social, or ‘one that takes in between from the social’? Changing the language we… Continue reading
Rick Falkvinge on the Swarm Economy
the basis for our convictions are not the industrial-era “free market” nor the socialism-era “safety net”: it is the free-software ideal “decentralization of decisions” combined with the open-source ideal “promote risk-taking and optimize for competitiveness”. They just happen to land in similar policies, but from entirely different convictions that are based in the swarm economy… Continue reading
Proposal for a Global Natural Energy Grid based on least carbon cost instead of least $ cost
“The key point which shines through is the need for a globally linked but decentralised Natural Grid as an outcome of least energy cost policies, rather than the centralised and wasteful (and pretty toxic) National Grids which result from least $ cost policies. In a nutshell we need to keep score in energy not $,… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Teatro Valle Occupato
“After the occupations of Cinema Palazzo and the Teatro Valle, the occupy culture movement increased and became contagious, il Teatro Marinoni, the Coppola Theatre of Catania, the Garibaldi Theatre, the collective of the Balena of Naples with the Asilo della creatività e della conoscenza. Macao in Milan and the already existing S.A.L.E. Docks in Venice,… Continue reading
Municipal food sovereignty declared in Sedgwick, Maine
Excerpted from Nature News: “According to the website FoodRenegade.com, Sedgwick is the first city in the U.S. to free itself from the constraints of federal and state food regulation. Published reports say the town has passed an ordinance that gives its citizens the right “to produce, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing,”… Continue reading
The internet as a energy hog: what if it isn’t true?
Excerpted from the City of the Future blog. This excerpt focuses on the dematerialization effect: “We’ve heard the statistics — the rapid growth of the Internet, the cloud, data centers and computing in general is taking a huge and growing toll on our energy reserves and the climate, by sucking up an ever-increasing amount of… Continue reading