Closed can not fight open. It can not find purchase to land a blow. Microsoft has fought a decades-long war against Linux, only to lose the battle conclusively as the world moves to smartphones (Android), and embedded devices (such as the Light) running Linux. Windows may remain dominant on the desktop for another decade, but… Continue reading
Debating the Partner State (5): Civic Accountability for the Commons
Excerpted from Denis Postle: “What follows derives from my experience of participation in the UK’s Independent Practitioners Network (IPN). Founded in 1995, IPN is based on an open network of autonomous small groups functioning as a commons producing civic accountability. For detailed background see i-p-n.org or Therapy Futures – Obstacles and Opportunities PCCS Books, forthcoming,… Continue reading
Project of the Day: PyBossa, an open-source crowd-sourcing and micro-tasking platform
The website explains: “PyBossa is a free, open-source crowd-sourcing and micro-tasking platform. It enables people to create and run projects that utilise online assistance in performing tasks that require human cognition such as image classification, transcription, geocoding and more. PyBossa is there to help researchers, civic hackers and developers to create projects where anyone around… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Relational Reality
* Book: Spretnak, C. Relational Reality: New discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World Topsham: Green Horizon Books, 2011 What is the book about? 1. “Ms. Spretnak’s eighth book, Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World was published in 2011. Noting that our hypermodern societies, currently possess only… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Tiberius Brastaviceanu and Steve Bosserman on Open Value Networks
Discover the innovative experiment of the Canadian Sensorica network. The video presentation is well worth wachtching. “SENSORICA is an open, decentralized, and self-organizing value network. SENSORICA thrives on open innovation. We design, produce, and distribute open hardware. SENSORICA is open, why compete with us when you can join us? SENSORICA is a commons-based peer production… Continue reading
P2P and the Commons as a Dual Boot strategy (1): David de Ugarte
via David de Ugarte and lasindias: “The metaphor is simple: society now runs on operating system that is frail and inadequate to the demands of those who live in it. Different groups and tendencies, in parallel, are trying to develop new economic models. To the extent that they do — and it’s true that they/we… Continue reading
Internet traffic exchange: 2 billion users and it’s done on a handshake
The transport of data over the internet is not tightly regulated, nor is it an expensive affair. Most of it is done by direct peering arrangements between participants, and there aren’t even any formal contracts or agreements. The cost: it’s about a hundred thousand times cheaper than the equivalent of voice minutes the mobile providers… Continue reading
Ask Michel Bauwens Anything Part 2
This is the second part of the video answering your questions to the P2P Foundation Reddit page: redd.it/11d4m7 based on the Synthetic overview of the collaborative economy report by the P2P Foundation and Orange Labs. James Burke gathered together the questions and recorded a conversation with Michel Bauwens to provide more valuable insight into the themes… Continue reading
Debating the Partner State (4): Mariana Mazzucato on the risk/reward balance between the private and the collective
There is indeed lots of talk of partnership between the government and private sector, yet while the efforts are collective, the returns remain private. Is it right that the National Science Foundation did not reap any financial return from funding the grant that produced the algorithm that led to Google’s search engine? (Battelle, 2005). Can… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Solar Flower, a DIY open source solar energy collector for heating fluids
The website explains that “The Solarflower is an open source solar energy collector which can be made very easily from common recycled and salvaged materials, using basic tools and skills. It tracks the sun automatically through a simple non-electrical mechanism, can be made almost anywhere, is portable, has no running costs or emissions, and can… Continue reading