Excerpted from John Kampfner: “In December in Dubai, a body that has existed for 150 years but few outside narrow industry circles have heard of, is seeking to take control of the internet. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN organisation that counts 193 countries as its members, aims to add the internet to its… Continue reading
Brutal Debt, or the return to feudalism
David Graeber in Conversation with Rebecca Solnit. This excerpted conversation, worth reading in full, took place on January 26th, 2012, at City Lights Books in San Francisco. I strongly recommend listening to the conversation that David Graeber had with Charlie Rose, on the origins of money, markets, and the state! See the video at the… Continue reading
The Relational Shift – Part 2: Relational Dynamics between Humans and their Built Environment
Source: PRN.FM The Lived World of Place and Urban Design — a talk with David Seamon, editor of the journal Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, about relational dynamics between humans and their built environment; also featuring Mindy Fullilove, author of Root Shock and Urban Alchemy about the destructive effects of post-war urban renewal projects on African-American… Continue reading
Stepping into the gift economy as ‘the’ strategy for change
Excerpted from an interview of Charles Eistenstein conducted by Transition Culture: “When you create something then you have to step aside, because something other than yourself becomes paramount, it’s this thing you want to create. When you let go of that ego self then real connection is possible. Like if you’ve been in a band… Continue reading
From biosubstitution (= bad), to biomimicry (= good)!
Excerpted from Hazel Henderson: “Cynics and media editors delight in ridiculing the UN and all humanity’s painful efforts at learning how Earth’s systems actually function. The past 50 years of official global conferences, and hundreds of thousands more meetings by NGOs, concerned business and investor groups, environmentalists and social justice networks of the World Social… Continue reading
The End of the Age of Scalable Efficiency?
Interestesting analysis excerpted from a review by John Hagel of the book, ‘Race Against the Machine’. John Hagel: 1. The Problem ‘Ronald Coase won the Nobel Prize in economics for an essay on The Nature of the Firm he wrote in 1937 that provided a simple and compelling answer to the question of why we… Continue reading
Is the green economy just about cheating nature while making profit out of it?
“We cannot command nature except by obeying her”” – Francis Bacon Excerpted from Pablo Solon: “In the period from 1970 to 2008, the Earth System has lost 30% of its biodiversity. In tropical areas, the loss has even been as high as 60%. This is not happening by accident. This is the result of an… Continue reading
No, Automation does NOT lead to Liberation
Futurologists really must come to terms with the extent to which they have functioned as relentless defenders of the interests of corporate elites and the status quo all the while pretending to be champions of “accelerating change” and “techno-emancipation” in “The Future.” Excerpted from Dale Carrico: “It is a commonplace of futurological corporate propaganda since… Continue reading
Four stages in the history of individual empowerment through technology
Excerpted from Doc Searls: “The move toward individual empowerment is a long, gradual revolution. It began with the first personal computers, which caught on in the early 1980s. With PCs, people got the power to do what big business called “data processing”—but in many more ways than any company could ever do. The next stage… Continue reading
Welcome to the hyper-exploitative app economy
1. ” The pattern of fostering a community of people to essentially do your work for you — to assume the risk of trying new ideas, without any guarantee of safety — leads to these types of moments happening on a near-weekly basis to people who’ve developed apps for Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and others. In… Continue reading