When I was with Robin Good in Rome last week, one of the items we discussed was Data Portability, and his certainty that it was inevitable. It made me think that one of the key principles of the peer to peer economy will be that value will not be derived from proprietary intellectual property, but… Continue reading
Ethan Zuckerman on Homophily, Serendipity, and Xenophilia
From an extensive blog discussion by Ethan Zuckerman, this touches a key problematic of the internet, how to avoid that “like seeks like” and therefore shows no interest in the other, even though he is more present on the internet than he/she was ever before. Finding out alternative voices has turned from a problem of… Continue reading
Your email belongs to Facebook
From an interesting thoughtpiece from Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0, where he compares strengths and weaknesses of Google vs. Facebook, the latter interpreted as a closed environment. Here’s a review (direct quote) of the main arguments, with the scary part being what you sign away using Facebook: Scott Karp: * Google is a gateway to… Continue reading
B.J. Fogg on Mass Interpersonal Persuasion and the end of marketing
Those of you who have attented my p2p lectures, will have heard one of my key arguments about the political/social importance of the internet as an enabling technology, which allows the global scaling of small group dynamics. This notion is akin to the concept used by Stanford professor BJ Fogg, recently featured in Fast Company,… Continue reading
A P2P Object Infrastructure in our own hands? The QR code
Via Weblogky. Sounds important for its potential. John Lebkowsky: “The QR Code is a the next-generation bar code, already popping up here and there. Says Rob Walker in his NY Times Consumed column, The traditional bar code is most familiar as the Universal Product Code on practically every packaged good we buy. The series of… Continue reading
The future of the web: semantic, or just structured?
Michael K. Bergmann has written a very useful technological history of the web, which also presents a thoroughly argued vision of the future. If you are like me and think the vision of a fully semantic web is premature, then this vision of an intermediary state called the Structured Web will resonate. It’s a more… Continue reading
Doc Searls: hacking local internet infrastructure from the edge inwards
Via Weblogsky. When Doc Searls went to the last Consumer Electronics show, he saw the tide turning, a kind of P2P Tipping Point if you like: “I saw some subtle but sure signs that Linux was the new CE standard, and that lock-in with proprietary tech was a business strategy of increasingly marginal use. Open… Continue reading
Gilberto Gil on Brazil’s Peeracy Policy
Gilberto Gil: We have brought digital multimedia studios and access to the internet (peer to peer culture) to about 700 hundred grassroots communities all over Brazil. Via Joi Ito: Speech of Gilberto Gil, Brazilian Minister of Culture, for Google Zeitgeist: “Since 2003, when I took office as Minister of Culture of Brazil, we have been… Continue reading
Adam Lindemann on the Harmonious Age
Beautifully said. Via Yihong Ding and from Adam Lindemann. What do you think? Text: “Before the 1800s there was a feudal society where wealth was stored in land and real estate. After the 1800s and the industrial revolution wealth began to be created on a massive industrial scale. In this industrial capitalistic society, wealth was… Continue reading
Building a post-scarcity society in a patent-and-copyright-encumbered intellectual climate
Smary McCarthy of the Icelandic Fablabs has a recap of some of our mailing list debates about the possibilities for open hardware, and which licenses are optimal, in a long contribution on his blog. He starts the entry by asking himself: How should one go about building a post-scarcity society in a patent-and-copyright-encumbered intellectual climate?… Continue reading
Virtue in peer production (3): P2P and the social doctrine of the Catholic Church
We continue our exploration of ethics and peer production, with further and concluding excerpts from our contribution to the conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The full essay was entitled: Par cum pari: Notes on the horizontality of peer to peer relationships in the context of the verticality of a hierarchy of values….. Continue reading
Virtue in peer production (2): overview
After presenting the approaches of Yochai Benkler/Helen Nissenbauw and of Julian Fox yesterday, I’m taking the opportunity to publish excerpts of my essay for the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which was entitled Par cum pari: Notes on the horizontality of peer to peer relationships in the context of the verticality of a hierarchy of… Continue reading
Consumer owned enterprise – Do we really need entrepreneurs?
In Can Consumers Collectively Own ‘Producers’? the argument is made that if consumers could own the means of production for what they consume, they could buy what they need “at cost” and would be much better off for that. Profit, argues AGNUcius, should be considered an investment on the part of consumers, who would then… Continue reading
Julian Fox on peer production, the digital commons, and virtue
I have been very late in discovering an important essay by Yochai Benkler and Helen Nissenbaum, Commons-based Peer production and Virtue. I have asked a Salesian brother, Julian Fox, whom I met virtually in preparing my intervention for the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and who is himself the author of a book on Digital… Continue reading
How political is hacking?
This is a reponse to Jonathan Zittrain‘s critique, related to his latest book on the Future of the Internet, which claims that hackers are too unpolitical and unreactive to the threats to the internet. Biella of the Interprete blog wants to set the record straight, claiming that hackers are indeed political and have proven to… Continue reading
How open can proprietary platforms be?
Gigaom presents a comparative overview on the portability initiatives recently taken or promised by MySpace, Facebook, and Google. Neither truly open nor entirely closed, they fall somewhere in between control and ultimate user freedom, and Gigaom gives us some criteria to judge the degree of openness. Stacy writes: “There’s open source (really open in that… Continue reading