Ryan Lanham has been continuing his work on establishing the Core P2P Collaboration Principles, which takes a more ethical approach to P2P. I’ve asked him to elaborate on his point of view for our blog. Ryan Lanham: “A peer-to-peer (P2P) project is not suitably classified under any mainstream economic system. That’s because the motivations behind… Continue reading
Feedback loops of attention in peer production
Via Ryan Lanham: “Article: Feedback loops of attention in peer production, Fang Wu, Dennis, M. Wilkinson and Bernardo A. Huberman, 2009/05/12, Abstract: “A significant percentage of online content is now published and consumed via the mechanism of crowdsourcing. While any user can contribute to these forums, a disproportionately large percentage of the content is submitted… Continue reading
Debating Parecon (4): Final Response to Parecon’s challenge to P2P Theory
We continue our coverage of the P2P/Parecon debate featured at ZNet. Michael Albert has the right to the final response in this debate on P2P Theory, so this is my last response to his challenges before he concludes the debate. The separate thread, where we start debating Parecon from a P2P point of view, will… Continue reading
The end of the proprietary era in Voice Over IP
Telephony is finally, and forever free. So writes Dana Blankenhorn (excerpt): “News that Skype will go into a new open source FreeSwitch should mark the end of the proprietary era in Voice Over IP, and of telephony in general. The idea of VOIP was to bypass the old network and move calls to the new… Continue reading
How parasitic investments lead to a contraction cycle
This could be seen as an update to our contribution on “The new long wave“. The following excerpts (see the wiki links) are from a must read article by Thornton Parker, “Reforming Global Finance: From Wall Street Bird Nests to Main Street Growth Cycles”, which appeared in Hazel Henderson’s EthicalMarkets.com. Parker’s argument can be summarized… Continue reading
Why your world will get a whole lot smaller
Via Bill St. Arnaud, who cites a more extensive article in the Globe and Mail, on a new book by Jerry Rubin, former chief strategist at CICB World Markets. Book title is: Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller. Excerpt: “Mr. Rubin has taken his long-standing forecast that inevitably declining production… Continue reading
Debating Parecon (3): Michael Albert’s Second Challenge
We continue our coverage of the P2P/Parecon debate featured at ZNet. The following is Michael Albert’s second set of questions and challenges to our interpretation of the P2P paradigm, written from his own point of view i.e. “Parecon”. Michael Albert: “I continue to mainly wonder what you see as the deep benefits of peer production… Continue reading
Cory Doctorow against metered billing
There is more in this great editorial by Cory Doctorow in The Guardian, i.e. he warns against many new rules being voted and proposed, that give extra power to telecoms and ISP’s to control our access and experience of the internet. Here is an excerpt on the particular issue of metered billing, which ISP’s argue… Continue reading
Debating Parecon (2): First response to Michael Albert’s Challenge
We continue our coverage of the P2P/Parecon debate featured at ZNet. Below is my response to Michael’s questions and (counter)arguments. It does perhaps not adequately address the recurring question about p2p values, a subject to which I may return. 1. Michael Albert writes: “You say peer to peer is “bottom-up” processes whereby “agents in a… Continue reading
Peer to peer self-help strategies by the very poor
With all the debates over debt forgiveness and all the pleas for aid, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how the poor already help each other, and what can be done to improve the systems that they already use. This is the introduction to a very interesting interview with Daryl Collins in the Boston… Continue reading
How to protect common property?
Book: The Rule of Property. By Karen Coulter. Apex Press, 2008 Thanks to Ryan Lanham for alerting us to this important book. From the publisher: “In The Rule of Property, Karen Coulter offers a groundbreaking new perspective on the rise of private property over the public domain by linking two popular streams of thought: the… Continue reading
Debating Parecon: Michael Albert’s challenges P2P
I’ve recently been invited to debate on the ZNet site with the founder of the Parecon (i.e. participatory economics) movement, which is an approach to economic governance proposed by Michael Albert, whom I had met in Helsinki in April, where both of us gave a keynote to the PixelArts festival. The whole debate is available… Continue reading
Obama, Ptolemy and the end of the bank-centric universe
From a really brilliant intervention by Arianna Huffington at the Huffington Post, which I received via SolidarityEconomy.net: Arianna Huffington: “A series of recent meetings with members of Barack Obama’s economic team (including running into Larry Summers on my way to an appointment in the West Wing, leading to a spirited back-and-forth that made me feel… Continue reading
Martien van Steenbergen on Flow Money
“Peer money” approaches are proven to be a very controversial topic in our p2presearch list. Here is a contribution by Martien van Steenbergen explaining why compound interest should be replaced by ‘flow money’. Martien: “Compound positive interest is a system wide exponential pump that increasingly flushes money from the poor to the rich. It compells… Continue reading
Buddhist Geeks, Virtual Sanghas, and Cyborg Buddhas
Buddhist Geeks looks like an excellent podcast program on tech-savvy Buddhist practice, paying close attention to the relation between technology and subjectivity/spirituality. Here are 3 remarkable podcasts, closed to the themes we follow in our wiki section on the topic: Podcast 1: Jundo Cohen on the Virtual Zen Sangha “Jundo Cohen, student of Gudo Wafu… Continue reading
Open CourseWare: the second generation
From David Wiley, see also the video below: “The first generation of OpenCourseWare projects (”OCW 1.0?) had essentially no sustainability plan. These first generation projects were funded by grants and had no means of supporting themselves once the grants ran out – except asking other people and other organizations to donate money. Consequently, in tough… Continue reading