A short documentary via Al Jazeera:
Social Movements Cannot Prevail Through Secrecy
Excerpted from Dmytri Kleiner: “Social struggles are not won by clandestinity and intrigue, but by mass struggle. The major social victories of history, the civil rights movement, the labour movement, the feminist movement, and many others, had the effect they had because of mass support and the mass mobilization of supporters, not because of heroic… Continue reading
Three Challenges for the Sharing Economy and Collaborative Consumption initiatives
Excerpted from Craig Shapiro (founder of the Collaborative Fund): Jobs: “It’s clear we’re living in a job-anxious landscape with high unemployment and frustrating under-employment. As startups like Skillshare or RelayRides gain traction, peer marketplaces are coming under the microscope. Economists and journalists question whether the technology boom of Silicon Valley actually creates jobs. The Kauffman… Continue reading
Sharing knowledge and culture is the natural state of humanity and never needs to be ‘justified’!
Sharing knowledge and culture is the natural state. Therefore, any restrictions on sharing require very careful and strict justification. Excerpted from Rick Falkvinge: “Humankind and civilization have advanced due to and because of people sharing knowledge and culture, and humankind has never advanced when culture and knowledge have been locked up and contained. Sharing knowledge,… Continue reading
A key feature of peer production: How a Stigmergy of Actions Replaces Representation of Persons
“A new system of governance or collaboration that does not follow a competitive hierarchical model will need to employ stigmergy in most of its action based systems. It is neither reasonable nor desirable for individual thought and action to be subjugated to group consensus in matters which do not affect the group, and it is… Continue reading
Working for the commons after the end of the labor market
Maybe a lot of those kids who come out of university or professional training don’t need a job, or a labor contract. They need to start to think, from the perspective of the commons, about building their own project. And, of course, above all, they need to know they are capable of doing it and… Continue reading
Wikipedia in Brazil: a critical adoption
Bia Martins is one of the students of the Peer Production class that was held in Rio de Janeiro in November 2012, for ECO-URCA, the School of Communications of the Rio de Janeiro Federal University. She is also a journalist specialized in internet reporting. Though a few years old, this work gives an interesting flavour… Continue reading
Howard T. Odum on Energy Equality
Odum was able to demonstrate concretely that while the United States received more than twice as much embodied energy from trade as it exported, Ecuador was exporting five times the embodied energy that it received. Trade between the two was thus enormously disadvantageous to Ecuador in real wealth terms, while providing a massive ecological benefit… Continue reading
The repression of the street handicraft movement in Brazil
PLEASE, support the making of this beautiful documentray in Brazil, Malucos de Estrada – The english version is at http://www.gofundme.com/malucosenglish
Telcos actively prevent Internet development
Rick Falkvinge, in some recents posts on his site, points to a very important issue that is practically unknown to many of us. We can thank the telcos, the ones that power our phones, for the fact that internet connectivity generally sucks. They have every interest to prevent and retard improvements in connectivity of the… Continue reading