On Ecosystem Regeneration (a remarkable video on actual studies) John D. Liu, Videographer From the website: “It’s possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems with the use of permaculture design principles and techniques.” Environmental film maker John D. Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous… Continue reading
A contract worker writes to Jeff Bezos on the conditions at Amazon.com
Republished from Steve Barker: “Dear Jeff Bezos, In your position, I imagine that you rarely have an opportunity to receive feedback from one of your temporary-contract employees. I thought you should have some input. I hope you find this useful. Having just completed my maximum of eleven months of contract work Amazon allows, I thought… Continue reading
Citizens’ consultation on the commons in Europe
This consultation on the commons was organised by European Alternatives and brought together representatives of social mobilisations and civil society organisations to debate issues related to the commons in Romania and the EU. Here are the findings, the result of a World Cafe style of process: “Discussions focussed on various examples of commons, such as… Continue reading
Call to fund research on an easy and COMPLETE alternative to Gmail, Facebook etc…
update 2013/09/22: the project described below now has its own home page at per-cloud.com (important: I originally posted this call here. Please also check that page to know what the status is, as I can’t guarantee that this copy will be regularly updated!) I have been using my own email service and self-hosted blogs since… Continue reading
Fighting surveillance through decentralised networks that rely on encryption by default
Hal Hodson describes Hyperboria: “After the extent of the NSA’s clandestine PRISM program was revealed, privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged users to start using relatively simple email encryption programs like Pretty Good Privacy and GNU Privacy Guard. But even those can be daunting to set up. A better idea would be a… Continue reading
Presenting the “Open Venture Movement”
Interesting slideshare presentation, written by Joost Beunderman, on a new form of p2p-driven investment: Open venturning gen-august from thruflo
An update on the interoperability of complementary currency software systems
From Matthew Slater: “There is a lot happening right now, and I sense that for coordination purposes it needs presenting more widely. It is always tempting to plough our own solitary and often unyielding furrows, but I believe we should be looking around more and appreciating supporting and connecting to what works. Complementary currency activists… Continue reading
The history and future of the Indie Web Movement
Packed into a small conference room, this rag-tag band of software developers has an outsized digital pedigree, and they have a mission to match. They hope to jailbreak the internet. They call it the Indie Web movement, an effort to create a web that’s not so dependent on tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and, yes,… Continue reading
An overview of the (older) critiques on the Fora do Eixo model (1)
Fora do Eixo, on which we reported before, is in the spotlight in Brazil and receiving a new wave of critique, on which we hope to report soon. This is an interesting overview of the older wave of critiques, from Shannon Garland: “Bands performing at Fora do Eixo events, however, may forfeit payment in legal… Continue reading
Red Plenty Platforms (2): The ecological problem and contemporary cybernetic planning
We continue our treatment (2nd and last part) of the important essay by Nick Dyer-Witheford: “An abundant communist society of high automation, free software, and in-home replicators might, however, as Fraise (2011) suggests, need planning more than ever – not to overcome scarcity but to address the problems of plenty, which perversely today threaten shortages… Continue reading