“The University of the Commons creates opportunities for learning, camaraderie, and critical thinking by and for the diverse San Francisco Bay Area community. Activities include classes, lectures, workshops, seminars, exhibitions, teach-ins, and art and activist interventions. The University of the Commons aims to inspire participants to evolve more equitable and just societies and live more… Continue reading
Project of the Day: WikiHouse, An Open Hardware Building System
The WikiHouse team created a blueprint that would allow everyday people to build their own homes using open sourced designs and locally sourced materials Here is the official description, followed by an analysis by Eric Hunting. “WikiHouse is a contribution to the debate on Open Hardware and Open Design by 00:/, Momentum Engineering, Espians, Beatrice… Continue reading
‘Common-Sense Commons’ as a guiding vision for a Self-Caring System & Thrivable World
Source: Helene Finidori Our World is in crisis. Much of what we care for and depend on in the various dimensions of our lives is being put under critical threat by the excesses generated by the application of reductionist theories and models that have been pushed to their limits, resulting in the explosion of addictions… Continue reading
The Commons is the Human, Inter-cultural & Intellectual ‘Rainforest’
After discussing the Commons with Thomas Leif Olsen, a scholar on democracy, he wrote the following to illustrate his understanding of the commons: “Human (rainforest); because it invites truly diverse, raw and uncensored participation, where only the more durable and/or creative participants prosper over time, while the less durable and/or creative ones remain marginal, and/or… Continue reading
The ‘Res Communes’ initiative – an alternative vision of economics for, by and of the people
Over the next year a group of us will be publishing a draft Res Communes manifesto for post-growth, post-capitalist change. We will be open-sourcing this for anyone who wants to help us produce our final vision and manifesto for change. Watch this space and get involved……… Excerpted from the Flourishing Enterprise blog, by ‘Jules’, from… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Essays about Pirate Politics
Book: No safe harbor: essays about pirate politics. Reykjavik, Iceland: United States Pirate Party; 2012. Summary “An anthology of 20 selections about issues central to the concerns of the U.S. Pirate Party, divided into three categories: (1) government and corporate transparency and accountability; (2) privacy; (3) intellectual property. A good resource for seeing how the… Continue reading
Should the Government Help Grow The Sharing Economy? – or get out of the way?
Excerpted from Ariel Schwartz: “In an article for The Urbanist, a publication of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR, laid out a policy agenda for the burgeoning sharing economy. The most important thing, he says, is for governments to stop hindering progress. “The government needs to… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Shareholder Value Myth
Book: The Shareholder Value Myth. Lynn Stout. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 2012 Ben Schiller[1]: “Stout’s book The Shareholder Value Myth looks at the pervasiveness of the “shareholder value” idea, and finds it has more basis in intellectual fashion than the law. She traces it back to an article by the economist Milton Friedman in 1970, which said… Continue reading
WebRTC: real connectivity at the edges of the internet – browser to browser communication and sharing
Based on HTML5, WebRTC is a new standard that will allow direct browser-to-browser communication and sharing, without the necessity of any central server intervention. It looks like the Internet is about to change significantly. The center of activity in the future will no longer be a server-based commercial service but real connectivity around the edges…. Continue reading
No Straight Lines presentation
Source: No Straight Lines