Via Simona Conservas of EXGAE: “A huge international coalition has come together to campaign for respect for the civil rights of citizens and artists in the digital era. Today they will be launching internationally the “Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge”. This initiative constitutes the beginning of an unprecedented offensive of civil society… Continue reading
The great internet/p2p deflation
I believe that this efficiency will make the economic markets they affect “shrink” in terms of economy and capital. It doesn’t mean that the number of variation of the products available will shrink, just the capital involved. Innovative deflation lets $100 Million at Craigslist undercut $100 Billion dollars that used to service the same thing… Continue reading
Brian Holmes: the next phase of capital
The following contribution appeared in the IDC mailing list, and was a reaction against applying the labor theory of value to Facebook and other social networks. Apart from stressing that we need to go ‘beyond Marx’, Brian gives an interesting overview of recent analyses of post-meltdown capital structures, as well as a pessimistic prediction of… Continue reading
Robin Wood on Shifts in Value Exchange as related to phases in Human Development
A contribution by Robin Wood, applying the Spiral Dynamics theory of human developmental phases to value exchange. Robin Wood: “I believe it is helpful to context how value is created, appropriated and exchanged at different levels of development. We need to answer the first question posed by this group: What are all the different types… Continue reading
If you like us, fund us
We are already at 339 euro, so help us get to 1,000! Click on the Paypal donate button on the top right of this blog >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dear friends, I hope we can count on you to defray some of the legal costs of the P2P Foundation, which one of our team has been funding so… Continue reading
Building Torrent Family Trees (Beta)
We are used to seeing family trees in biology. But how about for software? I think it is possible for us to look at family tree of digital media too: this post outlines how.
Proprietary software is a black hole of knowledge universe: Why all knowledge should be free
Excerpt from a longer text (introducing free software to an Indian audience) by Nagarjuna. Why all knowledge should be free? Let us take a blank CD and take its mass on a balance. Now, having recorded its mass, let us copy about 700MB of software or any digital documents into it. Record its mass after… Continue reading
How real is green capitalism, and what does it mean for the precarious?
Below is a large extract from an interesting political thoughtpiece from Alex Foti: “The issue of the distribution of productivity is crucial. The structural cause of the Great Recession lies in the failure of neoliberalism to distribute the productivity growth afforded by the digital revolution to large strata of society, who then had to take… Continue reading
Every abundance creates its own scarcity: from blockbusters to snowballs
A Gerd Leonhard slide illustrating the above: So, if the above p2p law is true, what does this say about ‘business models’? I think the following meditation by Neil Perkin, turning towards a service model that adds value to the original artistic content, points in the right direction. “If old media was about ‘blockbusters’, then… Continue reading
The role of promoters in open innovation
Article: Innovation communities: the role of networks of promotors in Open Innovation. Klaus Fichter. R&D Management 39, 4, 2009. The above is from the special issue of the academic journal R&D Management, dedicated to open innovation, which we mentioned before. Here’s another study that focuses on innovation leadership in open communities: Klaus Fichter: “Promotor theory… Continue reading
David Bollier: towards a digital republic
These remarks were given by David Bollier at the Free Culture Forum in Barcelona, Spain, on October 30. It was a well written and rousing speech which is well worth rereading. David Bollier: “This conference takes place at a time of great promise and great peril. Great promise, because we have the opportunity to secure… Continue reading
Deglobalization as an opportunity
From an article by Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South: Walden Bello: “Deglobalization,” a term that the Economist attributes to me, is a development that the magazine, the world’s prime avatar of free market ideology, views as negative. I believe, however, that deglobalization is an opportunity. Indeed, my colleagues and I at Focus on… Continue reading
Michael Goldhaber’s thesis on the ‘post-capitalist’, Attention-Centered Economy
Good summary of the argument that we have entered a post-capitalist ‘attention economy’, by Michael Goldhaber at the IDC mailing list: Michael Goldhaber: “What follows then is a rough and incomplete primer on how I see what I shall refer to as “the attention (centered) economy,” — a new, post-capitalist class system, differing in its… Continue reading
The travails of the sharing generation in the hierarchical workplace
The article in Shareable magazine starts with a real-life anecdote about a creative female intern’s experience with a ‘hierarchical son of a bitch’, and how this moved her to quit an otherwise interesting potential career. This incident is not exceptional, but increasingly a common experience amongst the sharing generation, and the article then proceeds to… Continue reading
The Problem of Growth as Related to Hierarchy
This text by Jeff Vail, from March 2008, is still very much worth reading and pondering. The non-excerpted part of this text deals with the positive construction of a rhizome-based world, but in this excerpt, he convincingly links hierarchical social forms to the problem of infinite growth. Thanks to Ryan Lanham for the suggestion. Jeff… Continue reading
How the internet reshapes healthcare and e-patients
Via e-Patient, a 6-minute recommended video on the impact of the internet on healtcare, which opened the Reshape 09 conference in the Netherlands: Healthcare and internet in the Netherlands from lucien engelen on Vimeo. This video has been made to inform and inspire about the possibilities and challenges the internet and social media are offering… Continue reading