“Occupy the Comms is very primitive. For the moment it even lacks an accessible, intuitive interface. But appearance is beside the point. Contrary to any institution, OtC doesn’t aim to last. People will create better technology to take its place in the years to come. What counts is that collaborative efforts can cover reality in… Continue reading
Abolishing the debt through the Rolling Jubilee initiative
On Nov 6 US elections were held, but unfortunately, there was no place to vote for a ‘People’s Bailout’ like the ones the banks bought from their cronies in government. Fortunately, we have a bailout by the people, for the people, coming up November 15th called the Rolling Jubilee. This is a project of the… Continue reading
What is Sensorica’s Open Value Accounting system really about?
Tiberius Brastaviceanu explains: “We need to make the distinction between co-creation of value and value exchange. These are two important processes but very distinct ones. Sensoricans are working hard to solve the value accounting problem, which is meant to support large scale co-creation of value. The value accounting is a way to capture individual contributions… Continue reading
UPDATED: Top 40 Platforms for Crowdfunding Social Change
Crowdfunding is a new word for an old idea. The Oxford English dictionary defines it as: “the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet” Crowdfunding’s poster child, Kickstarter, launched in April 2009. It wasn’t the first online crowdfunding… Continue reading
A review of the Art of Resilience festival in Riga, Latvia
I attended this conference by RIXC in Riga, Latvia late October. Here’s a review, republished from Anna Veilande Kustikova: “Roughly saying: a clock working on dirty water, thinking of p2p future perspectives in social structures, listening to beetles penis vibrations in a concert and looking at MacGilly costume as an aid to become anonymous. Sounds… Continue reading
Keith Hart: What is to be done?
Three things count in our societies — people, machines and money, in that order. But money buys the machines that control the people. Our political task – and I believe it was Marx’s too – is to reverse that order of priority, not to help people escape from machines and money, but to encourage them… Continue reading
Social, Subjective and Neurological Effects of Tool Use
Excerpted from a longer essay in New Left Review, which focuses on the work by Nicholas Carr, such as “The Shallows”. Rob Lucas: “Tool use, too, has strong neurological effects, with tools actually mapped by our neurons as if they were extensions of the body; thus violinists develop a demonstrably different brain structure to others…. Continue reading
Discussing Global Unionism II: The Social Network Model
Below we are re-posting the second paper of the very timely discussion on how to form truly global unions -instead of international federation of national unions. The discussion has been recently launched by the New Unionism Network and you can read other papers here. The network is the vanguard. Dan Gallin, Chair of the Global Labour Institute The union movement… Continue reading
Towards the Formation of Relevant Domains of Inquiry
Source: Suresh Fernando Have you ever wondered why physics works and financial theory and economics do not? One might remember the story of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that ‘blew up’ and that required a $3.6 billion bailout. This, in itself, is not that startling given the number and scale of bailouts that… Continue reading
Video: Four scenarios for a globa-local p2p future
Recording of my keynote talk at the Art of Resilience conference and exhibition, in Riga, Latvia, for the RIXC cultural center which specializes in the interconnection between art, the internet and renewable energy. Thanks again to Rasa Smite and husband and team for inviting me. Watch the video here: Keynote lecture by Michel Bauwens from… Continue reading