This video presents the key ideas of Raj Patel’s new book, The Value of Nothing, and says, ‘the opposite of consumption is not thrift, but generosity’:
The Democratising of Science: Research in the p2p age & Why the climate email hack may turn out to be a good thing
How the climate change email hack is driving a more open and peer based approach to science.
Creative Eco-Technologies need your help!
(by email from Vicky Sinclair) Hi everyone – wondering if you can help At ArcSpace Manchester we have just been awarded a bit of funding to do a pilot project – a creative eco technologies course for the community, funded by the Manchester carbon innovation fund which is the green part of Manchester City Council we… Continue reading
15 reasons why the commons are becoming the new paradigm
Excerpted from Silke Helfrich in the German CommonsBlog: “1. The commons are everywhere. They determine our quality of life in great many ways. They are present (even though often invisible) in the social, natural, cultural and digital sphere. Think about the things we use to learn (read and write), the things we use to move… Continue reading
Re Purpose: neat Canadian documentary about hardware hackers
Via: A documentary film by Jack Oatmon, given a profile of the “Foulab” hardware hacking community in Montreal:
Progress and stalemate of the new paradigm
An essay by my friend and colleague Richard Hames (of the Asian Foresight Institute) is making the rounds of the internet, and getting some rave reviews from world changers. It’s a diagnosis of our ills, of the spiritual disease underlying it, and points to the possible way forward. Impossible to summarize, so just an excerpt… Continue reading
Is the very logic of exchange unjust?
Via Keimform: “In a recent post Oekonux participant Raoul Victor from France deals with the question, if it is possible to have »no commercial injustice”. Here is the main part of the post (full length here in RTF). The problem is that the main source of “injustice” is commerce, trade itself. For two fundamental reasons:… Continue reading
The community-focused approach of Architecture for Humanity in Haiti
Eric Hunting reacts to this article in Shareable about architectural reconstruction efforts in Haiti: “Cameron Sinclair is well known as one of the chief proponents of the new socially responsible architecture movement that has been sweeping across the design community over the past decade. It is no surprise to find he and Architecture for Humanity… Continue reading
When states become hollow, they become brands
Excerpt from an analysis of the Obama approach by Naomi Klein: “Obama has gone much further, turning the White House into a kind of never-ending reality show starring the lovable Obama clan. This too can be traced to the mid-90s branding craze, when marketers grew tired of the limitations of traditional advertising and began creating… Continue reading
An extraordinary bibliography on participation
Bibliography of one of the three main paradigms constituting the P2P ethos: open and free input, participatory processes of value creation, and commons oriented output. See: * Bibliography: Understanding participation: A literature review. Pathways through Participation explains: “Our project looks at participation in a very broad way, and covers a wide range of participatory activities… Continue reading
Panarchical governance: towards a state that isn’t a state
We have opened the door on the notion 1) that the state could participate in the new networks as a legitimate actor, or 2) that the state could decentralize to the point of being a network itself. Certainly states participate in networks already, but for many global networks the impetus to their formation is the… Continue reading
Will the P2P revolution harm workers?
A very interesting take on the crisis of value by Rob Horning, focusing on its dark side of also weakening worker’s bargaining power and well-being. The original article has links and ends with a more extensive analysis of Apple and the iPad as example of netarchical strategies. Rob Horning: “What Anderson seems to miss in… Continue reading
The Tea Party as an open source insurgency
Excerpted from John Robb: “The Tea Party movement in the US is an open source political protest. It emerged due to a substantial loss of government legitimacy (primarily from the mishandling of the global financial crisis) and continues to percolate as legitimacy continues to drain away from the government (health care, banking reform, unemployment, foreclosures,… Continue reading
There is no alternative but the alternatives: replacing anti-capitalism by post-capitalism
Capitalist Realism itself, is basically the cultural condition in which, with Marx, we stare with clear eyes at “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (4) but yet…keep calm and carry on. We are not unmoved exactly; but yet still we do nothing. The details of why and how, and the ramifications in various domains, are the… Continue reading
Book of the Week: a book sprint on collaborative futures
“In this book we attempt to articulate what constitutes a collaboration. We argue that rules for participation, established guidelines for attribution, organizational structure and leadership, and clear goals are necessary for collaboration. In most cases, when we think of these attributes, we think of manifestos of artist and activist groups, attempts to govern attribution by… Continue reading
The case for scarcity and a critique of the Transition Towns movement
“In my view few green people or transitioners recognise the huge distinction here between trying to reform consumer-capitalist society and trying to replace its major structures and systems. The Simpler Way contradicts the core systems of the present society and cannot be built unless we replace them. Consumer-capitalist society cannot be fixed; it cannot be… Continue reading