* Book: The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. By Scott E. Page. Princeton University Press, 2012. The publishers write that: “In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. The Difference is about how we think in groups–and how… Continue reading
Cooperative Transitions for a Resilient Economy (1): Community Land Trusts
* Book: The Resilience Imperative. Cooperative Transitions to a Steady-state Economy. by Michael Lewis & Pat Conaty The wonderful and important book by Michael Lewis and Pat Conaty describes the important social innovations that will be an indispensable part of the emerging new economy. It’s one of the best guides and we warmly recommend it… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Why We Need Democratic Reason
Democratic Reason thus establishes the superiority of democracy as a way of making decisions for the common good. * Book: Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. By Hélène Landemore. Princeton University Press, 2012 The publishers write that: “Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases…. Continue reading
Disputing the enclosures of digital commons (2): openness as counter-measure
Excerpted from TOM SLEE: “Capital erodes, alienates, and distorts efforts to build value on non-commodified sharing, and openness demands that capital is given unfettered access to the commons. Are digital commons and urban commons doomed to feed the hand that bites them? Perhaps not. Among all the contradictions of the commons, Harvey identifies one that… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Open Cyprus and the Cyprus Bank of the Commons
“This is a call for all people living outside Cyprus. We would love to hear from you your ideas, your own activities, in your own communities, anything that may help in practical ways to implement those ideas in Cyprus… We are united in this struggle against an economic system that has proven not to be… Continue reading
Selected Citations on Open and P2P Currencies
For the source links, go here! To survive and thrive, human systems *need* a not just a network view, but a multi-dimensional, multi-scaled view and definition of systems. this will help us see how many, many people can operate and multiply many forms of wealth within systems that previously seemed easily depletable. Peer networks are… Continue reading
Book of the Day: the Global Auction of Public Assets
* Book: Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market & Public Private Partnerships. by Dexter Whitfield. Spokesman Books, 2010. This book “demonstrates why new public investment priorities are needed with radical changes in global financial markets and the abandonment of the Public Private Partnership model.” The publishers write that: “This… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Biohackers and the Politics of Open Science
a book about Open Source in Genomics, not only the diybio movement but more in general how open science culture and practices interact with today’s innovation and market system. * Book: Biohackers. The Politics of Open Science. Alessandro Delfanti. Pluto Press, 2013. Excerpted from Alessandro Delfanti: “The three cases I present in this book are… Continue reading
Tom Atlee on the struggle between horizontal and vertical solutions
To the extent we fail to develop those (horizontal) capacities and continue to simply rely on the services and controls of dominant and dominating (vertical) politics and economics, we tie ourselves to the painful collapse of those unsustainable systems. Excerpted from Tom Atlee: “The report from the Guardian UK describes accelerating government and military planning… Continue reading
Disputing the enclosures of digital commons (1): gaming commons-based reputation systems
Excerpted from TOM SLEE: “In the digital world, sharing-economy sites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor are built on reputation systems, which are digital commons prone to erosion. The value of these systems is their trustworthiness, so the work of tending them must be non-commercial: payments for ratings automatically tarnish the integrity of the system. But… Continue reading