Book: Monkeys with Typewriters: Myths and realities of social media at work’ by Jemima Gibbons. Triarchy Press, 2009 Interesting book on how social media affects management practice, based on 50 interviews. Here is a general presentation, followed by an excerpt from the fourth chapter on Openness. “The internet is a creative destroyer which, positively or… Continue reading
Eye Writer – A Creative Solution for People suffering from ALS
“Art is a tool of empowerment and social change, and I consider myself blessed to be able to create and use my work to promote health reform, bring awareness about ALS and help others.” – Tony Quan, aka Tempt One The Eye Writer is a really smart application of artist\hacker creative talents in providing solutions… Continue reading
The grassroots economy of 2018 in 3:15 minutes
What our economy could look like over the next decade, a change from economies of scale to economies of groups. It values collaboration more than negotiation, and bottom-up rather than top-down processes. This ‘p2p agitprop’ video brings it all together, in a rather uncritical fashion, but nevertheless worth seeing for its total vision:
Jorge Ferrer on avoiding comparison and choosing for Equipotentiality
A republication from January 2006, by Jorge Ferrer, and still the best formulation of the basic metaphysical principle informing peer to peer relationships, i.e. Equipotentiality: “An integrative and embodied spirituality would effectively undermine the current model of human relations based on comparison, which easily leads to competition, rivalry, envy, jealousy, conflict, and hatred. When individuals… Continue reading
Open Source Mobility: Riversimple’s Network Hydrogen-Car
UK company Riversimple has been working for eight years on a car with a difference. It is a small car that can run on a 6 kw hydrogen fuel cell, assisted in acceleration by recovered brake energy stored in a bank of ultracapacitors. The cars will not be sold but leased. They will be manufactured… Continue reading
Why you never see people complaining about “knowledge overload”…
This post is not just about “quantity does not equal quality”. This is about volume of information and how it can affect decision quality. It’s also about a more scaleable and sustainable ecology and economy for your activities online. The technology of the weblog (and more recently the microblog) have led to the emergence of… Continue reading
John Heron on the concept and history of relational spirituality
A republication from January 31, 2006: Relational spirituality defines itself in contrast to the vertical spirituality that focuses on inner transformation alone, in abstraction from the relational basis of human life; and in contrast to the authoritarian aspects of many traditional and contemporary spiritual paths. The following can serve as a good introduction to the… Continue reading
Some Insights on Peer Governance
Peer projects do not operate in strict hierarchies of command and control, but rather in heterarchies; they operate “in a much looser [environment] which…allows for the existence of multiple teams of participants working simultaneously in a variety of possibly opposing directions” (Bruns, 2008, p. 26). According to Bruns (2008) peer projects’ heterarchies are not simply… Continue reading
In dialogue with David Bollier: the commons and the market
I’m republishing a dialogue I had with David Bollier in January 2006, responding to a set of his questions: David Bollier: How will P2P culture “wash over” and transform existing market-based identities? Michel Bauwens: My belief is the following: that before a system collapses, it will exhibit the worst of its features. Thus, just as… Continue reading
Gerard Fairtlough’s triararchical typology of corporate power systems
This is a republication from January 22, 2006: In my presentations on the emergence of the peer to peer mode of production, governance, and property, I always insist on the difference between decentralized and distributed systems, with P2P applying to the latter. This differentiation is echoed in the theory of Triarchy, which makes the interesting… Continue reading
Trends in distributed science and biology
Two of the predicted trends by Stephen H. Friend on the near future of science have a true ‘p2p’ flavor: (the trends in bold will disappear and be replaced by their more distributed counterparts) “4. Indications for drugs will be determined by clinical trials performed by the biotech/pharma company developing the therapy. Most drugs today… Continue reading
How open manufacturing is related to the end of neoliberal globalization
Though there is often a focus in the open manufacturing community on technologically enabling individual self-sufficiency as a means to achieving post-scarcity, that comprehensive production capability is a long-way off. Interesting thoughtpiece by Eric Hunting, from the open manufacturing mailing list: (this is a must read, a very plausible interpretation of our present and future)… Continue reading
Transforming humanity towards emphatic consciousness
If we can harness our empathic sensibility to establish a new global ethic that recognizes and acts to harmonize the many relationships that make up the life-sustaining forces of the planet, we will have moved beyond the detached, self-interested and utilitarian philosophical assumptions that accompanied national markets and nation state governance and into a new… Continue reading
The next internet: will it trade privacy for security?
Network World examines ongoing efforts to change the basic architecture of the internet in an article titled 2020 Vision: Why you won’t recognize the ‘Net in 10 years The US National Science Foundation is funding some fairly intensive research to re-invent and secure the internet, or perhaps to better control the net which today, despite… Continue reading
Tom Atlee: Strategic synergy between individual and collective
An editorial, republished from Tom Atlee: “I just got off a conference call workshop in which the facilitator repeatedly maintained that “it all starts with the individual”, in the sense that an individual has to do their own developmental and “get your life together” work in order to be in a state of awareness, health,… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Planned Obsolescence
Book: Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, forthcoming from NYU Press. New York University, 2009 Presentation by the author Kathleen Fitzpatrick: “The last few years have seen a significant uptick in discussion of the crisis in academic publishing, particularly in the humanities. This discussion has played out on… Continue reading