The aspiration to superabundance seems an all too familiar eruption of the infantile fantasy of a circumvention of the struggle with necessity, Ananke: in psychoanalytic terms a pining for a return to the plenitude represented by the Pleasure Principle and renunciation of the exactions represented by the Reality Principle. Or, in different terms, it is… Continue reading
Book of the Week: David Graeber’s Ethnography of Direct Action
The standard right-wing line, since at least the 1790s, had always been that revolutionary dreams were dangerous precisely because they were utopian: they ignored the real complexity of social life, tradition, authority, and human nature, and dreamed of reshaping the world according to some abstract ideal. By the 1990s, the places had been completely reversed…. Continue reading
The emergent tradition of participatory research in the social sciences
Participatory Perspectives on Counselling Research. By DAVID HILES: Summary of paper presented at NCCR Conference, Newport, November 22, 2008. The above essay by David Hiles has great introductory material on participatory methods of inquiry. First, David Hiles proposes three types of knowing: Positivist Knowledge: (present-at-hand), i.e. “Getting about in “the world”, measurement, size, weight, shape,… Continue reading
Pat Mooney on Nanotechnology and the Enclosure of the Chemical Elements
This is the rough transcript, still including some typos, of a presentation at the Crottorf Consultations on the Commons, transcribed by Silke Helfrich. Pat Mooney (ETC Group): “I first came across on biotechnologies in the 70th. In that time we saw, that 3 things were coming together. We saw the genetic erosion of crop species… Continue reading
Elisabeth Husserl on Sufficiency vs. Abundance: together we have everything
I met Elisabeth Husserl, a descendent of the famous philosopher and extraordinary coach for personal sustainability, in the Bay Area last year. She has started her own website and reports on a discussion between two very important concepts: sufficiency vs. abundance. Elisabeth: “Last Wednesday evening I had the privilege of attending the opening San Francisco… Continue reading
Peter Bihr on the politics of the German Pirate Party
Interesting commentary which I’m reproducing in full and which transcend the specific German situation. Peter Bihr: “Lots of discussions about the Pirate Party (PP) lately, and their role in German politics. With federal elections coming up in late September and some very salient web issues like data retention and planned legislation to block (supposed) child… Continue reading
Potsdam Institute calls for Global Agricultural Commons
Via Andreas Exner: The reknowned Potsdam Institut for Climate Impact Research has released a remarkable report. It is remarkable concerning 2 messages: 1. Climate Change is occuring much faster than expected. We must reduce global Greenhouse Gas Emissions about 60-80% immediately. Since this is not to be expected, global warming of 2-2,4 degree Celsius is… Continue reading
From Cloud Computing to Freedom-based Utility Computing
Cloud Computing risks undoing the gains of the free software movement in ‘owning and controlling our own code”. Thomas Lord examines the potential for achieving software and user freedom in the world of ‘cloud computing’ (a concept he rejects, preferring ‘utility computing’, see below). Thomas is writing within the context of the ‘free network services’… Continue reading
Re-opening the Commons
Christian Siefkes publishes an appeal for the re-opening of the Commons. We do have a problem with the approach of Christian and the Oekonux group: their approach is a ‘commons-only’ approach. But no mode of production and governance has ever been monolithic in any previous society, and when it was attempted, as say in the… Continue reading
Franz Nahrada on Videobridging for Virtual Village Universities
Concept video with case study of Austrian village:
The case for building free software cooperatives
An appeal and argument for free software cooperatives by Robert Hodges. (here‘s a listing of existing FLOSS Coops) Excerpt: “The fact that it is hard to make money off open source is a symptom of a larger problem: we are losing the wider social benefits that for many people are the real point of open… Continue reading
Imagining a commons-based approach to the development of culture
The very structure of open source development encourages the connection of previously disconnected projects, rather than the new creation of large-scale singular projects. What you end up with is a very functional and complete open source operating system, but one that lacks usability for a large part of the market. And this is due to… Continue reading
Cloud computing, Vendor Lock-In and the Future
From Ralf Schlatterbeck’s Austrian “Runtux” blog: The original article comes with many links. Ralf Schlatterbeck: “Cloud Computing is becoming increasingly popular — and it is a danger to your freedom. But we can do something about it. First, when the term Cloud Computing was introduced, it meant a set of low-level services like virtual machines,… Continue reading
Inaugural Conference of the Internet and P2P Research Group
This is a time of confrontation between older forms of communication and organization and new ways of sharing, collaborating and acting collectively. We seek to explore the conflictual/adaptational tension between hierarchical institutions and p2p and the issues arising by adopting p2p in various movements and organizations. From the organising team: (Athina Karatzogianni, Michel Bauwens, Majid… Continue reading
Peak Oil and the Meltdown (3): the alt.energy transition
My conclusion from a careful survey of energy alternatives, then, is that there is little likelihood that either conventional fossil fuels or alternative energy sources can be counted on to provide the amount and quality of energy that will be needed to sustain economic growth—or even current levels of economic activity—during the remainder of this… Continue reading
Will the Web bankrupt government?
Via Charles Hugh Smith: C. Smith writes: Correspondent Michael S. recommended this story on a parallel line of thinking: Yes, The Web Will Bankrupt The Government: Long-argument-short: The explosion of the web created so many new non-financial transactions, non-financial markets, and opportunities to create and enjoy oneself that don’t cost a penny, that ultimately we’d… Continue reading