Dale Carrico alerted me to this important essay: “Adam Fish helpfully summarizes libertechian, technoprogressive, Great Man, and peer-to-peer narratives of the creation of the internet.” Adam Fish indeed discusses the issue and an ongoing debate in the U.S. about ‘who’ created the internet. The different theories reflect different political ideologies he concludes. In the two… Continue reading
Why Apache defeated the GPL license: developer freedom vs. user freedom
Interesting thesis from Matt Asay in the excellent last issue of TIM Review which is devoted to Open Source Sustainability: Matt Asay: “In 2008, I firmly believed that open source was dangerously veering toward an unsustainable state. After all, enterprise adoption of open-source software was booming as the global economy tanked, but the same companies… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Jamie Drummond on Crowdsourcing the Millenium Goals
‘In 2000, the UN laid out 8 goals to make the world better by reducing poverty and disease — with a deadline of 2015. As that deadline approaches, Jamie Drummond of ONE.org runs down the surprising successes of the 8 Millennium Development Goals, and suggests a crowdsourced reboot for the next 15 years.” Watch the… Continue reading
A Revival of the “Hima”, the Islamic Tradition of the Commons
The prophet of the Islamic world sought to preserve special landscapes for everyone. Today, Muslim environmentalists are trying to reinvigorate this tradition. Excerpted from Jay Walljasper: “There was an ancient Middle Eastern tradition of setting aside certain lands, called hima (“protected place” in Arabic), for the enjoyment of local chieftains. Muhammed “transformed the hima from… Continue reading
Obama’s civil war against the hackers (Danah Boyd on the Aaron Swartz case)
Excerpted from Danah Boyd: “What made me so overwhelmingly angry yesterday was the same thing that has been boiling in my gut for the last two years. When the federal government went after him – and MIT sheepishly played along – they weren’t treating him as a person who may or may not have done… Continue reading
Deep Democracy, Peer-to-Peer Production and Our Common Futures
* Paper: Deep democracy, peer-to-peer production and our common futures. Jose Ramos. Futura, 2012. Jose Ramos presents his new essay on the future of democracy in a p2p context: “Earlier this year Dr. Vuokko Jarva, a futures scholar who works on consumer education to promote future consciousness and planetary responsibility and is developing new narrative… Continue reading
The future of Greece lies in the rise of a new civil society
Excerpted from a longer article by Yannis Theocharis . The full and original article has many links to p2p and civil society initiatives, and a longer discussion on the vital role of trust bonds. Yannis Theocharis: “A light breeze of transformation seems to have started blowing silently in Greece. The younger generation has inspired a… Continue reading
The universal pattern of authoritarian oppression
Via. “Journalist Glenn Greenwald analyses here why people today seem to be so reluctant to challenge authority, or even to engage in any critical discussion about it. Excerpted from his column over at The Guardian.” Glenn Greenwald: “First, there are multiple institutions that are intended to safeguard against this ease of inducing blind trust in… Continue reading
Strategizing the commons (5): Some conclusions about the relations between Commons and Movements
* Article: Massimo de Angelis, Crises, Movements and Commons. Borderlands e-journal, VOLUME 11 NUMBER 2, 2012. Massimo de Angelis has written an interesting essay on how to correlate the growth and re-emergence of the commons, with the rythms of the rise and fall of social and political movements, with a view on the transformation of… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Open Field
“an absorbing collection from many authors exploring issues of the arts, the commons, public space and community co-creation, which is especially about the relationship between commons and museums, and the complications of institutional forays into social practice.” * Book: Open Field: Conversations on the Commons. Edited by Sarah Schultz and Sarah Peters. Contributions by Susannah… Continue reading