Excerpted from a report by Alexandra Topping: “Jón Gnarr, the city mayor, is not a typical politician. The self-described anarchic clown came to power after Iceland’s financial crash, promising nothing but to break his promises and procure a polar bear for the local zoo. But three years later, his zeal for direct – and digital… Continue reading
Commotion – Developing a distributed p2p mesh networking infrastructure
Commotion is an open-source communication tool that uses mobile phones, computers, and other wireless devices to create decentralized mesh networks. https://commotionwireless.net/ We’re building a new type of tool for anyone to use: one that uses a distributed mesh infrastructure to provide a communications platform for communities and human rights advocates. A distributed infrastructure eliminates the… Continue reading
Is non-social money possible? Krugman says no.
Paul Krugman has no concept of money as something that can be designed, but his argument on the social aspect of money can’t be ignored: “The similarity to goldbug rhetoric isn’t a coincidence, since goldbugs and bitcoin enthusiasts — bitbugs? — tend to share both libertarian politics and the belief that governments are vastly abusing… Continue reading
Hudson Luce: what if Bitcoin where a pyramid scheme
Hudson Luce writes about an article which analyses bitcoin traffic. The pertinent bit of Shamir’s article is this: “The Bitcoin system is the best known and most widely used alternative payment scheme, but so far it was very difficult to get accurate information about how it is used in practice. In this paper we describe… Continue reading
Kreutzberg, Berlin: the physical Bitcoin neighborhood
In Kreuzberg, Berlin, virtual currency Bitcoin has expanded off the internet to become a favoured medium of exchange in real shops and bars. Joerg Platzer, the owner of bar Room 77 is helping to establish what he believes to be the world’s first Bitcoin local economy. Watch this fascinating video here:
Janelle Orsi on Steps Towards a Resilient Economy Through Cooperatives and Community Enterprise
“Community-supported enterprise + cooperatives + local investing + social enterprise + local currencies + micro-enterprise + sharing ….these all adds up to LOCAL, RESILIENT ECONOMIES.” Watch the video here:
Radical mycology: peering people and mushrooms
Fascinating group, see their video here: Radical Mycology Convergence 2012 Port Townsend from Alex Milan Tracy on Vimeo.
How Lost Dogs in Adelaide found a home through P2P dynamics
Here is a tale of how connecting and communicating through social media to reunite lost dogs and their owners created something unexpected, and how it can apply to developing communities for sustainability. Wonderful story republished from Sharon Ede: My border collie, Maggie – the original ‘face’ of Lost Dogs of Adelaide Here is a tale… Continue reading
We are building an Open Source Factory
Our goal is help build the Open Source Economy, where we all work together to share skills and technology, promote economic development for everyone, and regenerate the Earth’s natural ecosystems. The team of four, who all worked at Open Source Ecology, seeks funding on indiegogo for “A transparent, worker-owned, R&D and manufacturing business that freely… Continue reading
Why we need true p2p technologies and why citizens and geeks will have to do it, not corporations
Selected citations; you can find the sources here. * Keith Curtis: The corporations won’t do it “Given currently available technology, we should all have cars that drive us around in absolute safety, leaving us to lounge in the back and sip champagne. We have all the hardware to do this — the video cameras, motion… Continue reading