There is a dense but very high quality essay on Mute, by Simon Yuill, that delves into the history of open/free and collaborative art practices of the last decennia, showing how the musicians and other examples of art communitues pioneered much of what was later also expressed in the free software community, and based on… Continue reading
UnMoney Convergence: landmark meeting between open money and digital identity advocates
The ‘unMoney Convergence – a conference on money, liberation and systems change’ has just been announced. It takes place April 14-16 in Seattle and will be mostly organised using Open Space Technology methods. You can view the pre-conference wiki here: URL = http://unmoney.wik.is/ For background, here is Michael Linton, predicting everyone will be using open… Continue reading
Ecomm 2008 conference will report on wireless revolution in the making
The readers of this blog will probably know that I’m not a geek in any sense of the world, and that technology is a tool, albeit important, for something else, which is human emancipation. So I do not regularly report on technical conferences. However, here is one that, despite its technical nature, I would like… Continue reading
Raoul Victor on peer to peer and extensive global development
Last year, I wrote an editorial on P2P and the feudal transition. It’s main thesis was that if we want to understand the transition from the current system to one that is dominated by the peer to peer logic, it is best not to look at the feudal to capitalist transition, characterized by many political… Continue reading
Video: Inconvenient Stories, an interview with Human Rights Watch at DLD
Good review on the human rights perspective on many countries over 2007, in regard to censorship and abuse. Discussion of how the use of inconvenient stories can shame governments into change. Libya is an especially poignant example and success story.
Umair Hacque: when data is valueless, open beats closed, and good beats evil
This is a crucial issue is the new economy which I have touched upon a number of times before, and I’m not sure I’m totally understanding the mechanics of it yet. The key point I have been making is: openness creates value, but enclosure captures it. The crucial issue therefore is,thinking as an entrepreneur or… Continue reading
Mark Pesce on the impact of hyper-empowered politics
Here is another major essay by Mark Pesce, on hyper-empowered politics. He introduces his inquiry in the following manner: “I have focused my research toward an understanding of how technologies change the people who use them, and how people change the technologies they use. This emergent, or “autopoeic,†relationship between technology and society is now… Continue reading
Wikipedia Governance: the power of admins
Continuing our inquiry into the dysfunctionalities of “peer governance”, we ask the question: Where is the power in Wikipedia? A large part is distibuted in the editor class of ‘admins’, and according to many, the process is not going well. The first item is from a discussion forum in the Wikipedia Review, post 18: “Cory… Continue reading
On the trustworthiness of Amazon book reviews
We continue our lookout for critiques of the dark side of “peer governance” and user-generated content”. After Digg and Wikipedia, here is Amazon. The excerpt is from an interesting article in Slate, where author Garth Risk Hallberg discovers that the glowing review he got was actually commissioned by his publishing agent. See here for the… Continue reading
Announcement: The Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference
First International Conference, July 15-17, 2008, Barcelona, Spain, http://fkft.eu The Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference (FKFT) is the first international event which will centre on the production and sharing of educational and training materials in the field of Free Software and Open Standards. The FKFT 2008 Conference will bring together around 500 people from different… Continue reading
Mark Pesce on the death of mass media
I can’t possibly summarize this more than excellent essay (keynote speech) by Mark Pesce, but it is a must read. What is describes is how the new hyber-distribution models for music and film, have created a new psychology, which make mass media a secondary reality, and friend-forwarding the primary reality. Mark uses the hypothetical example… Continue reading
Eben Moglen on business and the commons
Interesting article in LinuxWorld about the future of free software by Eben Moglen. I’m excerpting a passage which clearly explains the reciprocal relationship between an open commons and the businesses that profit/benefit from it. Eben Moglen: “One of the things that everybody now understands is that you can treat software as a renewable natural resource… Continue reading
Kevin Kelly on business models in a world of free copy-ability
Openness creates wealth, enclosure captures it. That enclosure can be willfull, i.e. using proprietary licenses to protect part of the value you want to bring to the market (think of the dual licensing schemes in open source software), or, more fundamentally, you can create added value that is by nature difficult to copy, even in… Continue reading
Henrik Ingo on good and evil in the Web 2.0
Another contribution to Re-public that engages with the theses in our article, Some notes on social antagonism in netarchical capitalism. Henrik Ingo: “The great achievement of the Web 2.0 phenomenon lies in that it has significantly grown the mass of users who are at least instinctively coming to appreciate the joys of sharing (Youtube), communication… Continue reading
Christian Siefkes on Distributing Effort Through Weighting Labor
A continuation of the post on the material peer economy by Christian Siefkes, which yesterday described hint-based stigmergic systems. The full original contribution appeared in keimform.de. That full article also contains references. Christian Siefkes: “There are several ways of tying the contributions people are expected to make to the benefits they want from a project…. Continue reading
Axel Bruns: Going beyond’s Facebook’s Anti-social Web
A very interesting and important contribution by Axel Bruns in Re-public, that excellent Greek-based political journal that really engages in co-creating a understanding of the political and policy implications of commons-oriented policies. What Axel Bruns does in this piece is directly engaging with the issue of the “ownership of the means of peer production”, which… Continue reading