The community is subservient to the company, and the company may own the content and can dictate how the site is run. Corporate spaces come with “terms of service” agreements that lay out the rules users must abide by and what control they agree to surrender in exchange for using the product. David Bollier reminds… Continue reading
The decentralisation of Pirate Bay filesharing
Following a suggestion by Rasmus Fleischer, a leading member of the Pirate Bureau, Torrentfreak concludes: “The Pirate Bay will dissolve, but in its place many “new TPBs” will return, just without the familiar domain name and pirate ship logo. This is very similar to a concept Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde had in mind for… Continue reading
Top-down and bottom-up design as complementary
For certain situations, applying either bottom-up design or traditional top-down design is more efficient. Traditional top-down design gives consistent, predictable results, whereas bottom-up design gives unexpected, more novel configurations. The price for novelty and greater freedom is a larger number of steps, and consequently more time invested in the project. An essay on p2p design… Continue reading
Pirate democracies and market dynamics
The following excerpts reflect on a ongoing debate on how much pirate democracies were linked to market dynamics, as Peter Leeson argues, against many left historians. Book: Peter T. Leeson. The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. First, Joanna Weiss in the Boston Globe: “Long before they made their way into the workings of… Continue reading
The digital currencies are here
The weak dollar. A Federal Reserve constantly being second-guessed. It’s times like these when talk inevitably turns to alternative or complementary currencies. While local currencies have come and gone, many involved in social networks are hoping peer-to-peer (or P2P) virtual currencies will, given the momentum to retool the financial system, have more staying power. With… Continue reading
We need Open Scholars
Excerpt from a proposal and thoughtpiece by Gideon Burton: The Open Scholar, as I’m defining this person, is not simply someone who agrees to allow free access and reuse of his or her traditional scholarly articles and books; no, the Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who… Continue reading
Open Process academic publishing: towards the peer production of academic peer review
Open access, which only considers the availability of the final product, is not enough to insure true openness, the process of peer review itself needs to be made open, participative and transparent, argue the authors. Toni Prug (with assistance from Benjamin Geer) (excerpts): “Publishing and peer review processes in academia are currently closed models. In… Continue reading
Against conditional love parenting
The primary message of all types of conditional parenting is that children must earn a parent’s love. Alfie Kohn reviews mounting evidence that withholding love is bad parenting, but also stresses that unconditional love parenting must come with ‘autonomy support’. Alfie Kohn: “In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L…. Continue reading
Franz Nahrada on ten years of Open Everything
Franz´ intro for Paraflows 09, to a showing of a video on the Open Source Ecology, summarizes some of the critiques addressed to the move towards Openness: Franz Nahrada: “There is a discussion that runs pretty exactly since 10 years what the social consequences of Open Everything might be, what are the changes it might… Continue reading
Do NGO´s prepare for Open Everything?
Interesting passages from a self-critique of NGO practices by Primož Šporar, a Slovenian author. Primož Šporar: “We have to face some facts. The managerial skills of people working in the NGO sector are hardly comparable to those evident among their counterparts in the business world. Many NGOs are less democratic then public institutions, sometimes they… Continue reading
A statement on P2P and Post-Scarcity Thinking
!NTRODUCTION We know we don´t speak for everybody, since we are a pluralistic community and we seek commonalities between divergent views, but that does not mean that we don’t have a concern about the efficiency of what we are doing. In this context, we feel the need to distinguish the P2P theory view from post… Continue reading
Crisis and the The Ethical Economy II
With a bit of delay, here is the second instalment of my analysis of the current crisis from the point of view of ‘the ethical economy’ I. First Idea Our crisis is a crisis of transition. The present financial crisis is not the first to hit us. Rather, the period of relative financial calm that… Continue reading
Humans vs. machines:why Terminator got it wrong
A tongue-in-cheek, yet still stimulating thoughtpiece by our Afghan-Icelandic-Irish friend … … Smári McCarthy … : “[Disclaimer: This is a bit of a joke, written last night as I was falling asleep.] I just arrived in London after another one of those mind-numbing long haul flights, this time from Mumbai. And in my eight hours… Continue reading
A proposal for democratic regulation
A proposal for democratic regulation by Rich Rosen: “We need new principles for an approach to democratizing the economy so that it serves the needs of the many and not the few. Foremost among these is the principle that private interests should fundamentally serve the public interest. In keeping with this, regulation should not only… Continue reading
Calling for a New Renaissance
Barbara Marx Hubbard calls for a new Renaissance: (more info about the context here) Find more videos like this on R2 Global Meshwork
Passionate creatives and their long march through the institutions
Instead of pursuing scalable efficiency, institutions must learn how to pursue scalable peer learning. On U.S. Labor Day, John Hagel calls for a unified movement of passionate creatives, in order to change human institutions, from the edge to the core. John Hagel, excerpts: “Why will more and more people evolve into passionate creatives? Because we… Continue reading