“Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics.” Wheeler called this subjective self-creation, “the participatory universe. From an extensive meditation by Kevin Kelly, inspired by the theses of philosopher Bruce Mazlish. Kevin Kelly on the first four discontinuities: “Philosopher Bruce Mazlish claims that the eyes of science have… Continue reading
What is co-housing?
Excerpt from a recent report in the New York Times, by CHRIS COLIN: “The Cohousing Association of the United States has been answering that question quite frequently as more people sign up for its tours: The communities consist of individual houses whose residents share some common space, a few communal dinners a week and a… Continue reading
Barcamp Transparency
BarCamp Transparency, Oxford UK Wiki Twitter Open discussion for a more open world. Increasingly, the UK has become a surveillance society: one in which we aren’t allowed to see the workings of government, nor governmental information relating to our towns and cities, yet are captured on camera more often than citizens of any other country… Continue reading
Facebook and your data
A short video to make you think:
Strategies for enhancing the evolution of cooperation
John Stewart is the author of Evolution’s Arrow, a book that argued that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover the best adaptations. And it has discovered new and better mechanisms. The book looked at the evolution of pre-genetic, genetic, cultural, and supra-individual evolutionary mechanisms. In an… Continue reading
Can we re-size civilisation?
To survive, the institutions of these massively oversized systems have waged a continuous and brutal war against communities, the natural human structures that we instinctively seek to belong to. Aboriginal communities all over the world have been systematically exterminated, their members slaughtered or moved into institutional structures and forced to adopt the civilization monoculture constructs…. Continue reading
The Solidarity Economy and the Commons: report from the Graz “Solcom” workshop
A report by Andreas Exner: “On 2.-3. July, a workshop on Solidarity Economy was held in Graz, Austria. Organized by Andreas Exner (www.social-innovation.org) and Bernhard Mark- Ungericht (Univ. Graz, Dep. of International Management), it was kindly supported by the Arbeiterkammer Steiermark (Labor Chamber, Styria) and the Dep. of International Management. This enabled us to invite… Continue reading
Technological determinism vs. human choice
Where is the source for the wisdom to discern the difference between the inevitable stages of technological development and the volitional forms that are up to us? What we would really like is a technique which makes the inevitable obvious. Kevin Kelly has an interesting and extended meditation on technological evolution and determinism, in which… Continue reading
The disaster in waiting of the non-commons approach to climate change
With the Senate debate over climate now beginning, there is still time to turn back from cap-and-trade and toward fee-and-dividend. We need to start now. Without political leadership creating a truly viable policy like a carbon fee, not only won’t we get meaningful climate legislation through the Senate, we won’t be able to create the… Continue reading
A rundown and typology on Citizen Science projects
This is a good time to have a look at our special tag on the topic, available here, as we just added two dozen new projejts. To make sense of the many different projects we uncovered, we found this typology to be particularly useful: “While there are dozens of Web sites and projects dedicated to… Continue reading
Dominicans and their Banks of Piety
This interesting piece of history has been unearthed by Smygo: Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson: “There was private money long before there was government money. The first revolutionary (or reformist) use of this idea, as a check against galloping usury and high interest rates, was the foundation of “Banks of Piety” by the Dominican… Continue reading
The status of open government efforts in the U.S.
How well is data-driven democracy doing? In the Washington Monthly, Charles Homans has an extensive investigation into the early efforts, both in Washington D.C. as a city, and on the government level after the high profile nomination (by Obama) of open government advocate Vivek Kundera. Here are the conclusions only: “Something unprecedented has happened in… Continue reading
Three scenarios for post Peak-Oil societies
The following is an excerpt from MuseLetter #186, published in October 2007, by Richard Heinberg. However, the content, 3 scenarios for the future, is still timely. If anything, the Obama’s choice of mostly proppring the pre-meltdown system has diminished the chances for scenario 2, i.e. an ordered adaptation by strong and progressive central governments. Text:… Continue reading
How proprietary software could kill Obama’s health reform
IT-driven efficiencies will be a crucial ingredient of cost-savings that will be used to broaden access to healthcare under Obama’s healthcare reform. Here is a cautionary case study, showing the relative success of open source, vs. the failure of proprietary software, in obtaining such effects. Phillip Longman: “Consider this tale of two hospitals that have… Continue reading
Anti-social production? Misanthropy and egotism are the fuel of online social production
I’m publishing this whole piece by Nicholas Carr because it is such a clear challenge to any rosy thinking about the positive role of social media and a hypothetical sharing culture. At the same time, we should note that commentators on peer production such as Yochai Benkler have always insisted that motivations are varied and… Continue reading
The gift in the circle, and the market around it
The following echoes a basic intuition that I formuled 2-3 years ago in my manuscript, P2P and Human Evolution, i.e. envisaging a form of society, where the gifting/peer production is at the center, and the market at the margins. In this report by Guillaume LeBleu, on the Beyond Money meeting in San Francisco, Matthew Edwards… Continue reading