“Here’s another take on ‘the media revolution’. Prometeus reminds me of a more uptopian view of the fantastical EPIC2014’s Googlezon dystopia of a few years ago. In Prometeus, Google buys Microsoft instead of Amazon while Amazon buys Yahoo. Possibly even more interesting than the future thinking ideas contained in these viral narrowcasts is their increasing… Continue reading
Defining the technical characteristics of human emancipation
One of the key ways to promote peer to peer social dynamics is simply the ‘distribution of everything’, i.e. slicing up the resources needed for human life and production so that they are under the control of the individual, who can then freely act and engage with others. Today, despite the emergence and spreading of… Continue reading
Distributed Power Generation making headway
I have asked our sustainability expert Franz Nahrada for more comprehensive reporting on this, but I would like to point our readers to a site I have just discovered, New Rules, which reports on advances and obstacles to electricity users and local communities generating their own power (and hence also sharing or selling it). I… Continue reading
From the North South lens to the commonalities lens
I’m a big fan of Drumbeat, an important communication initiative for worldchanging organizations. In the latest issue, Jon Tinker, founder of Earthscan (now the Panos network), and current Executive Director of Panos Canada, puts a spotlight on the “North-South” paradigm for viewing development. He considers its origins and explores some ways it may no longer… Continue reading
GPL Version 3 is out
We are forwarding this announcement by Hempal Shrestha of Asia Commons, announcing the launch of GNU GPL Version 3: “Great news, after Creative Commons 3.0, now we have GNU GPL Version 3 and GNU LGPL Version 3. As Richard Stallman, founder and president of the FSF said “GNU GPL is to guarantee every user the… Continue reading
On the Contradiction between Openness and Profits
The following quote helps in understanding one of the contradictions of proprietary Web 2.0 platforms, and why they all use a mixture of open and closed elements. The citation is from an article by Joel West in First Monday, “Seeking Open Infrastructures” “Simcoe (2006) observes that in standardization, firms face an inherent conflict between value… Continue reading
Can Open Science licenses work in the hierarchical scientific culture?
Excellent essay in First Monday, by Dan Burke, who investigates whether an open licence regime can work in the scientific world, where such usage might not only be hampered because science relies more on patents than copyright, but also because of the hierarchical structuring of much of the scientific institutions. Read the full essay here,… Continue reading
French company offers 20 years of free solar energy
The emergence of the peer to peer relational dynamic depends on either an abundance of resources (immaterial production), or a distribution of limited means of production so that they are under control of the individual. So a good summary of this positioning is that we favor the ‘distribution of everything’. Including the distribution of energy…. Continue reading
Criteria for the design and implementation of the next generation of post-Enlightenment institutions
John Clippinger has a landmark book out, A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity, which examines what kind of institutions would be appropriate for the new era of cooperative individuals. As he himself explains the rationale for his book: “In contrast to well-entrenched economic and organizational models that operate on the assumption that… Continue reading
Peer to peer organizational forms as form of power
In our own writings on peer to peer, we are aware of the following polarity. There is the emergence of bottom up processes by communities of sharing of desiring to produce value in common. And there is the desire by existing institutions to incorporate participative processes in their own value chain. And of course, there… Continue reading
New & Noteworthy: The Art of Free Cooperation
Of special note this week is this recent release from Autonomedia / Institute for Distributed Creativity. Contributors Howard Rheingold, Christoph Spehr, Brian Holmes, Geert Lovink and Trbor Scholz link the debates about web-based, cooperation-enhancing technologies to the broader world of political activism. Note: Support the P2P Foundation not only by buying books in our Bookstore,… Continue reading
Reforming Asian economies: peer to peer, threefolding, and associative economics
I participated in a very stimulating exchange between the tradition of thought and practice of Assotiative Economics, linked to Anthroposophy, and the ideas around peer to peer networks. Hans van Willenswaard, who together with his wife Willapa operates an indepedent publishing house in Bangkok, recently sent me the following report, which captures very well the… Continue reading
Power and control in peer production (Response to Adam Arvidsson, conclusion)
Here is the last part of the response to Adam Arvidsson’s essay on the Crisis of Value. The Ethical Economy, Power, and Common Norms I may disagree with Adam Arvidsson that this emerging ethical economy, a concept that I consider analogous to what I call the emerging sphere of peer production, is not ‘necessarily better’… Continue reading
The Crisis of Value: P2P Essay of the Year
I read a fair amount of essays during the year, and none struck me as important as Adam Arvidsson’s analysis of the emerging crisis of value in our society and economy. More and more social value is created, but less and less of it is being monetized. It creates a situation whereby our current model… Continue reading
The Real Wealth of Nations acknowledges unacknowledged wealth
While we eagerly await Russ Volckman’s review of the book in the Integral Leadership Review, here is already a summary of what promises to be a landmark book by Riane Eisler: “An economy is more than the market, the government, and the military, says Eisler, eventually citing chapter and verse from a long list of… Continue reading
The coming crisis of capital accumulation, and its solution (Response to Adam Arvidsson, 2)
We are restating Adam Arvidsson’s analysis of the Crisis of Value, in our own words, also thinking on how it may be eventually solved. 1. The Crisis of Value It is now possible to create all kinds of use value without, or with only a minimal, intervention of capital. We are dealing with post-monetary, post-capitalist… Continue reading