This echoes Wikipedia Reviews’s earlier summary of criticisms of the Wikipedia governance process. Here is a similar approach from the blog RevoltNation, a group of users who are leaving Digg. Here is an excerpt where they are summarizing the reasons why: Critique of the Digg Governance Process: “Digg is, in part, a game. It always… Continue reading
Decentralized Co-Creation of Value as a New Paradigm in Commerce and Culture
David Bollier has produced a new report that distills the proceedings of a conference of the Aspen Institute and is entitled, The Rise of Collective Intelligence. Here is a summary of some of the topics covered by the report, from David Bollier: “bottom-up knowledge empowers ordinary individuals to approach market transactions on a more equal… Continue reading
Announcement: An experiment in blog-based peer review
Forwarded by Ben Vershbow: MIT Press has authorized what is probably one of the first blog-based peer reviews for a forthcoming book by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, digital media writer, artist, and professor of coummincations at the University of California, San Diego. Every weekday over the next ten weeks, Wardrip-Fruin will post a section of his new… Continue reading
Marcin Jakubowski’s open farm: the most important social experiment in the world?
Marcin Jakubowski has written a reply to our earlier thoughtpiece linking the peer to peer information economy to the material economy. He writes: “The answer to the p2p link of immaterial and material economy is integration. This is what we’re testing at our lab. The key summary is: 1. Develop open source design for products… Continue reading
Dialogue with Christian Siefkes: Understanding Material Peer Production (1)
Christian Siefkes, author of the landmark book on the Peer Economy , has started an important dialogue on peer production and how to extend it to the physical economy. I’m really enthused to have this conversation starting. His contribution, the first of a series, is here. Christian starts by citing my own view: “In my… Continue reading
Cloverfield as a peer-centric movie
Just went to see Cloverfield, and it was a gripping experience, quite a surprise given a number of negative reviews I had read, such as the one in the New York Times. Luckily,some smart people I admire, such as Jon Lebowski, liked the movie too. Now of course I’m a little obsessed by the p2p… Continue reading
An Open Source Media Definition to judge the openness of Open Movies
We already have the Free Content Definition, the Open Knowledge Definition, and the Definition of Free Cultural Works … and a few more efforts are listed here. Now, because of the wide variety of different modes of participation and user rights that are used in open and collaborative movies, the crew of A Swarm of… Continue reading
Data portability is coming sooner rather than later
DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo. The news that the biggest players are going to support this is really a watershed. They have listened to and agreed with the thoughts of some of the more seasoned thinkers in this space. The bottom line is that people own their own attention… Continue reading
The Dark Side of Free
The always thoughtful ReadWriteWeb blog has an excellent piece about the true price of free. Free as in free beer, not free speech. The main idea is that when companies are giving away services for free, there is always a hidden, shall we say ‘anoptical’, price to pay. For example, the free services of Google… Continue reading
Par cum pari: the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and its support for the priority of civil society
Simply I learned about her, and ungrudgingly do I share — her riches I do not hide away – Old Testament, The Book of Wisdom 7,13 I’m slowly starting to prepare an intervention on how peer to peer dynamics (“par cum pari“) may be related to the principle of subsidiarity as favoured by the social… Continue reading
Announcement: The SELF Open Documentary Contest
The SELF Project is pleased to announce The SELF Open Documentary Contest. Create a documentary about the creation of free knowledge and education in the digital era! Get your friends together, encourage your company to participate, or just let your own creativity flow freely. SELF is an international project financed by the European Commission which… Continue reading
Neighborhood network energy startup looks to peer-out electricity
“Finding sustainable and affordable ways to power the world is clearly a substantial and increasingly urgent challenge. We covered consumer-generated power back in 2006, but Dutch startup Qurrent is taking the notion a step further with technology to enable neighbourhood-wide energy networks. Because of fluctuating patterns of consumption, homes with wind and solar energy generators… Continue reading
Towards Permafacture
Interesting new meme proposed by Vinay in Worldchanging: Vinay: “As permaculture is to agriculture – “permanent agriculture”, so Permafacture is “permanent manufacture” – ways of producing goods which meed the criteria of permaculture – activities which could be done in the same space for 10,000 years. Let me suggest, as a simple example, a large… Continue reading
The intersection between the immaterial and material economies: how can it work?
I’ve been involved in a mailing list debate on the Oekonux list with Dmytri Kleiner, who denies that peer production is non-reciprocal because it cannot sustain itself on its own. This is a very important point that I would like to clarify. Peer production indeed has a problem with this, because peer projects are at… Continue reading
The P2P Revolution: radiating outward from Sweden
A lot has been happening in Sweden recently, especially after an open letter of Moderate Party parliamentarian Karl Sigfrid in favour of decriminalizing filesharing. The P2P Consortium has an interesting interview with the Swedish Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge, of which we are reproducing two questions in full. There’s lot’s of background material on our… Continue reading
Modelling the new business practices based on participation
I’m writing a monthly column for the European Center for the European Economy, including a recent one in which I presented the Bauwens Model of Participatory Business Models, a variation on the ladder of participation. This entry has received a erudite response by Angelique van Engelen, which is a recommended read on the monetization of… Continue reading