According to MIT Technology Review (Nathan Myhrvold’s Cunning Plan to Prevent 3-D Printer Piracy) something akin to copyright may be in the future of 3-D printing. Nathan Myhrvold is the former CTO of Microsoft and a great lover of patents. He adores their ability to bring in financial gains by going after other people’s patent… Continue reading
A Report from the Agora 99 meeting: Post-Occupy Housing Rights Activism and Beyond
Agora 99 was a meeting of European social movements preparing for the November 14 general strike call. Excerpted from Ter Garcia: “Participants detailed their experiences and goals in their efforts relating to public education, health care, direct democracy, housing rights and more. Gonzalo Mosqueira, of the Italian organization Cantiere, explained in a session on housing… Continue reading
Video: How the Park Slope Food Coop works
The Future of Retail: Park Slope Food Coop from Maaike Holvast on Vimeo. A short portrait of the Park Slope Food Coop made by fim-maker Maaike Holvast as part of a research project on The Future of Retail. The video was commissioned by Out of Office who in their turn were asked to do this… Continue reading
KEEP CALM AND #LOTE2!
Source: Edgeryders KEEP CALM AND #LOTE2! DECEMBER 6-9, BRUSSELS. SEE YOU THERE! Friends, old and new. There has never been a better time to come together, support one another and get things done! Edgeryders 1 is complete. It’s generating a set of recommendations that you can read (and poke holes into) here and a Handbook… Continue reading
The role of money in a human economy
Money has a role in a post-capitalist society. Excerpted from Keith Hart: “To call the economy ‘human’ is to insist on putting people first, making their thoughts, actions and lives our main concern. Such a focus should also be pragmatic: making economy personally meaningful to students or readers, relating it to ordinary people’s practical purposes…. Continue reading
Beyond Philosophy
Source: Suresh Fernando What is philosophy? If it is anything it is the domain that aims to answer the most substantial questions in a foundational way. It attempts, for example, to provide an account of Truth or Knowledge in a manner that answers these questions in a way that can be understood as ‘scientific’. The… Continue reading
The Henry Ford moment of physical peer production: Wikispeed’s Xtreme Manufacturing Methodology
WikiSpeed does not have the ambition to become the 21st century General Motors and produce tens of thousands of cars, even locally. As a matter of fact, at first Joe Justice tried to make Wikispeed an NGO, but the application was rejected in the U.S. under the argument that designing and producing highly efficient cars… Continue reading
Report by the Green Europe Foundation: Comanaging Community Owned Resources
* Report: The commons : (co)managing commonly owned resources. PROCEEDINGS OF THE SYMPOSIUM OF 9 MARCH 2012 IN BRUSSELSÉTOPIA | OIKOS | GREEN EUROPEAN FOUNDATION, 2012. By DAVID BOLLIER, ISABELLE CASSIERS et al. “The publication (of the Green Europe Foundation) brings together a number of contributions that were made at a day-long seminar held in… Continue reading
Debating the Partner State (6): Hilary Wainwright on emerging participatory approaches
ANDREW HETRICK reviews Hilary Wainwright’s book, ‘Reclaim the State‘: ““My argument is that the views of knowledge developed in practice, if not in theory, by the democratic social movements of the late 1960s onwards have an unrealised relevance today. They provide some otherwise neglected tools to provide an alternative to the social-engineering state other than… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Don Tapscott on the Taxonomy of Networks
Don Tapscott offers a nine-fold taxonomy of multi-stakeholder networks: