I found this April 2003 paper, which details historical examples of shared design in the industrial era: * Essay: Episodes of Collective Invention. Peter Meyer. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Office of Productivity and Technology, 4 August 2003 The author seems to suggest that in the past, such open periods were temporary, and of course… Continue reading
Call for papers: International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE)
The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE) seeks papers from researchers describing best ethical practices in the investigation of online communities. This special issue, edited by Aleks Krotoski, aims to create a compendium of case studies and theoretical frameworks which future scholars will reference when designing their own analyses of populations and practices in… Continue reading
The Net.Art Commons (1)
This is the text from a presentation at Medialab Prado in Madrid, by Juan Martín Prada, for the Inclusiva-net meeting in July 2009. Perhaps the first text to specifically link net.art to p2p and commons oriented themes? Juan Martín Prada: “The space around us increasingly lacks areas that are not private, fenced or restricted. Common… Continue reading
Industrial agriculture and energy consumption
The difference in energy use between industrial and traditional agricultural systems could not be starker. There is much talk of how efficient and productive industrial agriculture is compared with traditional farming in the global South but, if one takes into consideration energy efficiency, nothing could be further from the truth. The FAO calculates that, on… Continue reading
Video: Extrinsic vs Intrinsic motivation
Great TED talk by Daniel Pink. More info at one of our most popular pages in our P2P wiki.
10 Proposals To Achieve a Open and Free World
This is a synthesis of the Barcelona Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge, proposed by the Free Knowledge Institute. You can find the full version here. Challenges Humanity is facing unprecedented challenges in terms of sustainability, on a planetary scale. Global economic, social and environmental issues are affecting each and every one of… Continue reading
Five key steps towards a food system that can address climate change and the food crisis
We are moving into an era of severe disruption of food production. There has never been a more pressing need for a system that can ensure that food is distributed to everyone, according to need. Yet never has the world’s food supply been more tightly controlled by a small group, whose decisions are based solely… Continue reading
Brewster Kneen on questioning the ‘tyranny of rights’
Grain reviews The Tyranny of Rights by Brewster Kneen, a book questioning political strategies that focus on ‘human rights’. Excerpts: ” Kneen’s entry point in talking about rights is food – and for good reason. Over the years the term “rights” has assumed a more and more prominent place on the agricultural landscape. The most… Continue reading
P2P Metaphysics: One, None, and the Many
There are exactly two ways to do things: one, and many Spurred by William Tozier’s meditation above, which is an argument for generalist practice and knowledge as against hyper-specialisation, our friend Paul Hartzog wrote some interesting observations in the comment field. Paul Hartzog writes: “The classical opposition to the One was always the Many. Somewhere… Continue reading
On the convergence of open/p2p movements
In October 2005, Seedling, the magazine of GRAIN, published a series of contributions on the ways in which people are resisting the push for monopoly rights over information in different sectors. They interviewed a ten-person panel includes people working in the fields of free and open software (FOSS), access to medicines, seeds, communications and the… Continue reading
WikiSym 2010: Call for papers
WikiSym 2010, The International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, that will take place is recieving proposals until March 7. Here is the full announcement: WikiSym 2010 website July 7-8-9 in Gda?sk, Poland. Co-located with Wikimania 2010 (Intl. Conference on Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikimania 2010 website). Peer-reviewed and archived in the ACM Digital Library. Important… Continue reading
The Article Processing Charge and the Integrity of Open Access Publishing
Richard Poynder has an interesting interview with the CEO of Open Access publisher Sciyo, Aleksandar Lazinica, where the latter states that “author pay formats” should be abandoned. Here is interesting background to the controversy, read the whole interview here. Richard Poynder: “In their efforts to derail the onward march of Open Access (OA) opponents have… Continue reading
Peer production and venture capital
Excerpted from Charles Hugh Smith: “What I find radically appealing is not so much the technical aspects of desktop/workbench production of parts which were once out of financial reach of small entrepreneurs–though that revolution is the enabling technology–it is the possibility that entrepreneurs can own the means of production without resorting to vulture/bank investors/loans. Anyone… Continue reading
A proposal for a open hardware business model
Excerpted from Jeremy Bennett of Embecosm (open source services, tools and models to facilitate embedded software development with complex systems-on-chip). Jeremy is also an active contributor to the OpenCores project. Dr. Jeremy Bennett: “A modern silicon chip is typically built from silicon “intellectual property” (IP), written in a hardware description language such as Verilog or… Continue reading
A critique of the self-organization ideology
I think that it is worthwhile to challenge our almost reflexive belief, today, in the power of emergence or self-organization. It’s all too easy for “spontaneous emergence” or “self-organization” to be put into play as a catch-all explanation for things that cannot be explained any other way. From a very interesting and provocative post by… Continue reading
Iceland could become a internet and press freedom haven
A communication by Smári McCarthy of the Icelandic Digital Freedoms Society on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative: This really important project, endorsed by the P2P Foundation, was also reported on BBC News: “In recent months a group of local and international people has been working on an initiative here in Iceland to propose reforms in… Continue reading