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P2P Foundation

• 

  Links for 2008-05-07 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: May 7th, 2008, 10:00pm PDT

  • WorldChanging: Resilience TV
    an excellent conference in Stockholm on Resilience, Adaptation, and Turbulent Times. To a certain extent, this conference marks a new stage in resilience science—the study of dynamic social-ecological systems—as it expands from academics into policy.
  • WorldChanging: Highlights from the 7th EcoCity World Summit
    An incredible assemblage of the world’s brightest minds that are working to build greener cities and towns gathered for three and a half days of presentations
  • WorldChanging: Measuring Genuine Progress
    GDP is peculiarly still the measurement system of choice for economic performance, measuring crime, environmental destruction and catastrophes at the same value as activity that leads to genuine growth.
  • WorldChanging: How the West was warmed
    researchers produced a carbon emissions map of the US. Using direct CO2 emissions
  • WorldChanging: The City is the Solution: The EcoCity World Summit
    "urban acupuncture" – creating focal points like parks, street markets, cultural facilities, and other great urban spaces, that produce immediate and tangible results.
  • WorldChanging: Cities of the Future, Today
    if we want to really push the environmental performance of urban areas down to zero-impact levels, we need to think in terms of districts; we need to look at settings where a number of buildings can be built afresh or creatively re-used,
  • WorldChanging: MicroEnergy Credits Corporation: Greening the Base of the Pyramid
    BoP consumers "cannot afford to pay extra for environmental or even social benefits, and therefore adopt traditional energy."
  • WorldChanging: International Agricultural Assessment: We Need a Paradigm Shift
    A commission of international agriculture experts unveiled a series of reports on Wednesday calling for an end to "business-as-usual" farming practices to avoid widespread environmental degradation and increasing food scarcity.
  • WorldChanging: James Hansen on Peak CO2 and Big Carbon
    peak CO2 can be kept to about 425 ppm, with large estimates for oil and gas reserves, if coal use is phased out by 2030 (except where CO2 is captured and sequestered) and unconventional fossil fuels are not tapped substantially.
  • A Global View of Peopled Nature
    anthropogenic biomes, or anthromes for short. Anthromes are a play on biomes, the large-scale vegetation patterns ecologists use to map the planet.
  • YouTube - Twitter in Plain English
  • WorldChanging: Microfinance: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
    round table organized by the Council on Foreign Relations entitled The Commercialization of Microfinance: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
  • WorldChanging: The Worldchanging Interview: Clay Shirky
    There is not recipe for the successful use of social tools. Instead, every working system is a mix of social and technological factors.
  • WorldChanging: Vehicle-to-Grid Plug-In Hybrids, for Free
    analysis of the potential impacts of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles projected for 2020 and 2030
  • The State of the Facebook Platform | 20bits
    Something is wrong in the Facebook developer community. Starting in March I began noticing that the level of activity in the Facebook developers forum was dropping sharply.
  • The Future Of Online Advertising: Entertainment vs. Information - Publishing 2.0
    advertising as entertainment on the web.
  • WorldChanging: Smart grid, meet the product-service model
    cities could act as distributed power plants, channeling energy from hundreds of thousands, even millions of individual rooftops
  • Keynote Roundtable: The Art of Conversation - Building Great Brands in the Digital Age
  • How I tried (and failed at) legally buying music in Germany
    So let me try to briefly describe my journey - trying to buy a normal, major-label pop album.
  • louisgray.com: Should Fractured Feed Reader Comments Raise Blog Owners' Ire?
    AssetBar, Social|Median and Shyftr have been among the first to add comments in their site. Fav.or.it, via Disqus, offers the ability to post comments to the originating blogs. FriendFeed, RSSMeme and many, many others offer links to the content but conte
  • Yochai Benkler: Open-Source Economics — keimform.de
    how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization.
  • Overjustification effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    The overjustification effect (also called the undermining effect or Oversufficient Justification) is the effect whereby giving someone an incentive (monetary or otherwise) to do something that they already enjoy doing decreases their intrinsic motivation
  • Steven Clift’s Notes - Democracies Online » Blog Archive » Event - Connecting Neighbors, Strengthening Neighborhoods Online - Washington DC 7 May 2008
    to discuss ways to strengthen neighborhoods using the Internet when I am in Washington DC on Wednesday, May 7 from 9-11 a.m.
  • WorldChanging: Boulder: The U.S.'s First Smart Grid?
    Xcel Energy has announced that it's going to turn Boulder, Colorado, into the United States' first smart grid community:
  • EDemocracy Conferenz 2008 (EDem2008) - Centre for E-Government - Danube University Krems
    There are a number of E-Democracy applications, ranging from providing information to discussion, deliberation, decision-making and voting, thus encompassing the entire democratic process.
  • Shyftr
    Shyftr stands for Share Your Feeds Together.
  • Economy of communion
    progressive catholic economics by L. Bruni
  • Bruni_Sugden_Fraternity
    why the market need not be a morally free zone: comparing market and other forms of sociality
  • Bruni_Charismatic_economics
    the history of civil and economic life can be interpreted as a dynamics between charism and institution.
  • bruni: the economy of communion
    the experience so far
  • The governance of communion
    what kinds of governance are emerging in economy of communion enterprises?

  

Tο ελληνικό blog της P2P Foundation

• 

  Tο P2P σ’ ένα καρυδότσουφλο

  Posted: May 7th, 2008, 4:08am PDT by Βασίλης Κωστάκης

  Tο P2P σ’ ένα καρυδότσουφλο (από τον Mauro Bieg) είναι ένας εξαιρετικά γρήγορος και εύκολος τρόπος να ανακαλύψετε τις βασικές ιδέες της ομότιμης θεωρίας στο λεπτό. Δείτε το στην κεντρική wiki σελίδα.

• 

  Προς μια εναλλακτική οικονομία;

  Posted: May 6th, 2008, 11:07am PDT by Βασίλης Κωστάκης

  Το παρακάτω κείμενο αποτελεί απόσπασμα από το περιεχόμενο της υπό κατασκευής πλατφόρμας set it free για την απελευθέρωση του οπτικοακουστικού αρχείου της ΕΡΤ.

  ——————

  Τον Ιούνιο του 2004, το έγκριτο περιοδικό Economist δημοσίευσε ένα άρθρο με τίτλο “Πέρα από τον Καπιταλισμό” επισημαίνοντας την οικονομική δυναμική του μοντέλου παραγωγής ελεύθερου λογισμικού και την δυνατότητά του να επεκταθεί και σε άλλους κλάδους ακόμα και της υλικής παραγωγής.

  Το μοντέλο παραγωγής του ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ έχει γίνει αντικείμενο εντατικής επιστημονικής ανάλυσης τα τελευταία χρόνια, και μαζί η κοινωνική τυπολογία των πρωτοπόρων δημιουργών του των “χάκερ”. Πολλοί ακαδημαϊκοί όπως ο Yochai Benkler διακρίνουν σ’ αυτό την ανάδυση ενός νέου τρόπου παραγωγής με πολύ διαφορετικά χαρακτηριστικά από την οικονομία της αγοράς.

  Τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά του είναι ότι:

  - παράγεί αξία χρήσης μέσω της ελεύθερης συνεργασίας παραγωγών που έχουν πρόσβαση σε κατανεμημένο κεφάλαιο (”ομότιμη παραγωγή”), ένας «τρίτος τρόπος παραγωγής» διαφορετικός από την παραγωγή με σκοπό το κέρδος, ή τη δημόσια παραγωγή από τις επιχειρήσεις κρατικής ιδιοκτησίας. Το προϊόν του δεν έχει ανταλλακτική αξία για την αγορά, αλλά αξία χρήσης για μια κοινότητα χρηστών.

  - διευθύνεται από την ίδια την κοινότητα των παραγωγών και όχι από την αγορά ή την εταιρική ιεραρχία (ομότιμη διακυβέρνηση), μια «τρίτη μορφή διακυβέρνησης».

  - κατασκευάζει αξία χρήσης, ελεύθερα προσπελάσιμη σε παγκόσμια κλίμακα, μέσω νέων καθεστώτων κοινής ιδιοκτησίας. Αυτός είναι ο τρόπος διανομής τους ή «ομότιμη μορφή ιδιοκτησίας»: μια «τρίτη μορφή ιδιοκτησίας», διαφορετική από την ατομική ή τη δημόσια (κρατική) μορφή ιδιοκτησίας.

  Στον καπιταλισμό τα υλικά αγαθά παράγονται τυπικά: 1) από ανθρώπους που εργάζονται για ένα μισθό 2) για άλλους που κατέχουν τα μέσα παραγωγής 3) με σκοπό την δημιουργία κέρδους 4) μέσω της πώλησης του προϊόντος. Ο συντονισμός μεταξύ παραγωγών είναι έμμεσος, μέσω της αγοράς, με τη χρήση του χρήματος σαν μηχανισμό προειδοποίησης

  Αντίθετα στην παραγωγή ελεύθερου λογισμικού και άλλων ελεύθερων αγαθών μη υλικά αγαθά μπορούν να παραχθούν από ανθρώπους: 1) που δουλεύουν επειδή το επιλέγουν 2) χρησιμοποιώντας τα δικά τους μέσα παραγωγής 3) με σκοπό να δημιουργήσουν κάτι χρήσιμο και ευχάριστο 4) που μπορεί να χρησιμοποιήσει ο καθένας.

  “Η ομότιμη παραγωγή εξαρτάται σε σημαντικό βαθμό από την αγορά γιατί η ομότιμη παραγωγή παράγει αξία χρήσης κυρίως δια της άϋλης παραγωγής, χωρίς να προσφέρει άμεσα εισόδημα στους παραγωγούς. Οι συμμετέχοντες δεν μπορούν να επιβιώσουν με την ομότιμη παραγωγή, παρά το ότι αποκομίζουν από αυτή νόημα και αξία και παρά το ότι μπορεί να υπερέχει ανταγωνιστικά με όρους αποτελεσματικότητας και παραγωγικότητας, σε σχέση με τις βασισμένες στην αγορά και με σκοπό το κέρδος εναλλακτικές. Έτσι, η ομότιμη παραγωγή καλύπτει μόνο ένα τομέα της παραγωγής, ενώ η αγορά σχεδόν όλους τους τομείς … Μόνο η ανεξαρτησία από την εργασία και την δομή της μισθωτής εργασίας μπορεί να εγγυηθεί ότι οι ομότιμοι παραγωγοί μπορούν να συνεχίσουν να δημιουργούν αυτή την σφαίρα υψηλής παραγωγικότητας αξίας χρήσης…”. 

  Σήμερα, η ομότιμη παραγωγή στηρίζεται οικονομικά εν μέρει σε μια πρωτοποριακή επιχειρηματική οικολογία που αξιοποιεί τα προϊόντα που παράγουν οι συνεργαζόμενοι παραγωγοί. Ένας τρόπος ανάμεσα στους άλλους, για την ευρεία και μαζική διεύρυνση στην κοινωνία της σφαίρας αυτής της νέας μορφής παραγωγής, μπορεί να είναι η θέσπιση του καθολικού βασικού εισοδήματος.

  Τα επόμενα χρόνια, οι δύο οικονομίες θα συνυπάρχουν γεννώντας αντιθέσεις και συγκρούσεις αλλά και συμπληρώνοντας η μία την άλλη. Οι νέες συγκρούσεις είναι ορατές τόσο στον κόσμο του επιχειρείν όσο και στον κόσμο της πολιτικής, μια και τα Ελληνικά πολιτικά κόμματα λαμβάνουν de facto θέση με τις πολιτικές τους αποφάσεις και τα μοντέλα ανάπτυξης της οικονομίας που υιοθετούν.

  To 2001 η Microsoft, μέσω του CEO της Steve Ballmer χαρακτήρισε το Linux “καρκίνωμα”, σηματοδοτώντας τις πολιτικές και οικονομικές αντιθέσεις που αναπτύσσονται στην εποχή της κοινωνίας της πληροφορίας. Σήμερα προσπαθεί να ανταγωνιστεί το πρόγραμμα “ένα laptop για κάθε παιδί” αναπτύσσοντας ένα ανταγωνιστικό, ακριβότερο προϊόν, που χρησιμοποιεί τον “μυστικό” και ιδιόκτητο κώδικα του λειτουργικού συστήματος της εταιρείας. Πρόσφατα, ο υπουργός οικονομίας κ. Αλογοσκούφης κύρωσε στη Βουλή συμφωνία συνεργασίας του Ελληνικού δημοσίου με την Microsoft, παρά την σύσσωμη αντίθεση της αντιπολίτευσης. Ακόμα, εδώ και λίγο καιρό, υπαναχωρεί από την προμήθεια του μαθητικού υπολογιστή OLPC που χρησιμοποιεί Linux και ανοίγει τον δρόμο για την αγορά του μαθητικού υπολογιστή της Microsoft.

  Αναφορές

  1. Michel Bauwens: “Η πολιτική οικονομία της ομότιμης παραγωγής”
  2. Graham Seaman: “Οι δύο οικονομίες”

P2P Foundation

• 

  Links for 2008-05-05 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: May 5th, 2008, 10:00pm PDT

  • Le Monde.fr : Les autorités belges soupçonnent la Chine d'espionner leurs réseaux informatiques - Europe
    services belges de renseignement civils et militaires enquêtent sur des attaques dirigées depuis quelques semaines contre les réseaux informatiques des autorités fédérales. Ces tentatives de piratage sont apparemment conduites depuis la Chine.
  • Autopromozione Sociale - P2P Foundation
    It has created a permanent space in the suburbs of Rome where 750 companies work in social and environmental areas such as fair trade, biodynamic agriculture, ethical finance, recycling, energy savings, responsible tourism and free software.
  • Philanthropy’s business benefit | openDemocracy
    several serious questions about mixing business principles with philanthropic objectives and elevates the debate about the utility of a market-oriented approach to philanthropy.
  • Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Nokia Open Studios
    “open studio.” The design approach is quite intriguing as it involves participation from on-the-ground “locals” given a particular question and allowed the freedom to explore possibilities — however preposterous it might be considered from a rat
  • Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?
    As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive er
  • “Attribution Only” as Default Policy—Otago Polytechnic on the How and Why of CC BY - Creative Commons
    Otago Polytechnic staff must explain why they don’t want material published openly under CC BY, should they desire standard (restrictive) copyright or another license. Not only does this eliminate all the red tape before getting your work out in the ope
  • Fedora Commons - Home
    provides sustainable technologies to create, manage, publish, share and preserve digital content as a basis for intellectual, organizational, scientific and cultural heritage by bringing two communities together.
  • The Rise of Alter Egos In Everybody's Space - washingtonpost.com
    until his boss showed up on the sites and saw the embarrassing party pictures a friend posted. He deleted his profiles on both social networks and started a new one on Facebook under a different name
  • Video Blogging in Rural Cambodian Province
  • PR 2.0: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Conversation Has Left The Building
    After publishing my last several posts, I’ve noticed that a majority of feedback poured in at Twitter and Facebook, which complemented the blog, but also distributed the conversation nonetheless.
  • Wiley::Buy Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth
    a practical and immediately useful guide for nonprofits, political campaigns, organizers, and individuals who want to better understand how to use Web 2.0 technologies.
  • Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » The New Yahoo would be one big social network-driven site
    Yahoo wants to turn itself into one big social network-driven site, and simultaneously open many of its core services to get users and developers thinking of Yahoo as their Internet hub.
  • Report: 'Mobile Activism' on the Rise - ReadWriteWeb
    uses 11 case studies to detail how relief, advocacy, and development organizations are utilizing mobile technology to accomplish goals in areas where "wired" infrastructure is sparse.
  • 2.4. The fantasy of cultural control, and the crisis of distribution | The Next Layer
    Active and deliberate connectors are still needed, especially since one of these primary connecting practices is the one linking the online with the offline, a gap which should not be seen as a barrier but which becomes exacerbated by the purely online ve
  • FUTURESONIC
    The theme Social Futures - Online, Mobile and Unplugged is explored by leading figures developing the next generation of social media alongside artists, researchers, opinion formers, futurologists, technologists and scientists from the digital culture, mu
  • Service Innovation Rising
    new survey, conducted with the University of Cambridge, charting the evolution of service innovation and laying out recommendations for businesses and universities seeking to innovate
  • Research Journal of Armin Medosch | The Next Layer
    blog
  • Bicycle Exchange | Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition
    helps needy families and individuals by repairing and donating used bicycles to our partner community service organizations. A warehouse and workshop is fully outfitted with storage, repair stands and tools for year round operation.
  • Social Citizens Blog: Read the Paper
    Allison Fine reports on the activist leanings and ways of the Millenial generation
  • How journalists can master Twitter (blogger's cut) " Online Journalism Blog
    The following is a guide to getting started on Twitter as a journalist, and some of the things that can be done with it.
  • "Teen Socialization Practices in Networked Publics"
    My talk tonite concerns friendship-driven practices and networked publics. In other words, I want to talk about why most American teenagers are hanging out with their friends on MySpace and Facebook.
  • Bloggers offer glimpse of uncensored Cuba - Yahoo! News
  • Brightkite - a location based social network
    Brightkite is a location-based social network... Users can see where their friends are and what they're up to all while maintaining comprehensive degrees of privacy to non-friends
  • [Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring
    You do not have any means of grabbing the reins of power from the Board, and you don't have any entitlement to anything except your ability to participate in a project,You don't have a "right" to vote on anything,
  • Community petition - Meta
    We, volunteers, ask the Board to give the volunteer community a fair voice in Foundation governance. During its most recent meeting, the Board of Trustees not only rejected a proposal to improve community input in Foundation matters, but implemented an un
  • Infothought: Wikimedia Foundation Community Petition about "governance" and "community"
    Don't ever risk anything for Wikipedia, since it won't risk anything for you. You're fed a line about "community" and "knowledge", but you're utterly powerless. And when it comes down to a crunch, you're merely unpaid labor with no rights, who can be disc

  

Panarchy.com - many.2.many :: peer.2.peer :: d.i.y.

• 

  Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents

  Posted: May 5th, 2008, 11:14am PDT by paulbhartzog

  Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents

  by
  Adam Greenfield
  Mark Shepard

  The Situated Technologies Pamphlet series explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: How is our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics, and other “situated” technologies? How will the ability to design increasingly responsive environments alter the way architects conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing and what do technologists need to know about cities? Situated Technologies Pamphlets will be published in nine issues and will be edited by a rotating list of leading researchers and practitioners from architecture, art, philosophy of technology, comparative media study, performance studies, and engineering.

  free download @ http://www.lulu.com/content/1554599

  read more

P2P Foundation

• 

  Does internet distribution favour superficial culture production?

  Posted: May 5th, 2008, 10:38am PDT by Michel Bauwens

  Jonas Andersson poses the serious problem that a demonitezing cultural production dissuades ambitious projects:

  - the problem:

  “The problem with distribution on the Internet is that it is granular, and dispersed in a way that is in fact antithetical to panopticon-like overview. Instead, it favours an accessibility that primarily operates through a search function.

  The online topology thus overlays the offline topology of naturally segmented producers, or occasional acts of cultural production.

  In local, creative environments like the London hotspots of Deptford, Hackney, Brixton etc. the problem has become one of improving the connections in-between such acts of production – essentially, making them aware of one another, so that they can start feeding off each others’ creativity, and generate those collective sums that exceed the individual parts – but also to improve the visibility, communicability and relevance of these acts to the wider world, in an economically viable way. (Hence the pressure on urban redevelopment that Ben Gidley presents in chapter 1.3.: a lot of societal benefits, and a lot of pure profit can be found in effective interlinking of such creative hotspots.)

  This economic viability is precisely what also Armin Medosch’s article comes down to: once the damaging expectancy has taken root that culture is to be produced with very little economic gains or incentives to these producers, the table does turn towards a mode of production which is more sanctioned the more transient it is. Effectively, what is favoured are amateur forms which do not require much involvement in terms of personnel, time, capital investments etc.

  This favouring of transient, agile, mobile, lean modes of production is not exclusive to the corporate sponsors, but is found across the board among new media sympathisers – this book included! Hence the common fascination among us all for anything “grassroots,” and hence the active support among copyleftists and activists for typically minute, D.I.Y. musical forms such as grime, dubstep, laptoptronica and punk rock over more traditional, multi-vocalist, multi-intrumentalist, studio-intensive, dare I say ambitious ones. One might say that these latter forms are dismissed for being too “polished” – not “polished” as a formal property, since a purely stylistic surface thanks to Logic, ProTools, Ableton etc. is increasingly accessible to all – but rather because they embody a mode or ethos of production that is accomplished, the opposite of minute, and comparatively investment-heavy.

  What is presented to the poor struggling artist or musician who is bloody-minded enough to pursue these latter, more unweildy, more ambitious forms of expression is a double burden: a climate favouring opportunist media creation above anything else, on top of the crisis of distribution that I have already outlined. The key is to become known, to find avenues to get one’s productions recognised by the wider public in the white noise of millions of competing cultural messages. The easy route is of course to put on a funny hat and perform a YouTube mime to any given pop song, but if your aspirations are somewhat more labourious than this, what is the right outlet?

  Further, even if finding an initial outlet, one can expect to be copied, appropriated, pirated to degrees that are simply beyond one’s own control. Is the luxury of public discovery something which can no longer be afforded without accepting vast degrees of free use and consumption of one’s work? Perhaps so, but in order to become pirated to begin with, one needs to have a name which is recognised and – ultimately – respected.”

  Jonas concludes:

  “Cultural production and consumption takes place everywhere all the time; the problem is when these instances remain discrete, muted, and soon-forgotten. The digital ameliorates this, it helps making known that which is unknown, but only to a degree:

  Any Internet-mediated cultural production, no matter how banal, becomes textually instantiated and searchable. As Clay Shirky recently, rather provocatively stated, most user-generated material is actually personal communication in a public forum, and hence not actually “content” at all, since it is not designed for an audience in the first place (Shirky 2008). All this conversational material drowns out the potentially audience-orientated, adds to the noise.

  So the common word that digitisation makes it easier to access stuff is in fact only superficially true. Once again, on the raw, jungle-like networks this accessibility is directly determined by the search function. Mesh-like spheres like p2p and Web 2.0 networks might help to heighten the visibility of individual acts of consumption/production, but only in a way which is temporary, never fully overseeable, and ultimately statistical, where a panoptic view can only be attained by means of a search. And searches, as we all know, require prior knowledge.

  Precisely because of this, well-maintained and comprehensive metadata is not enough. Active and deliberate connectors are still needed, especially since one of these primary connecting practices is the one linking the online with the offline, a gap which should not be seen as a barrier but which becomes exacerbated by the purely online ventures of social networks and torrent archives. Here Piratbyrån, Deptford.TV and burntprogress share similarities, despite the decidedly different practices of these three examples. They re-territorialise and by doing so, compel everyone into opinion or at least awareness. They shed light. They editorialise. They redistribute, or at least help users organise themselves to privately re-distribute in more orchestrated and thus more meaningful, potentially profitable ways. That can only be a good thing.”

  
• 

  Video: WELL Party, 1989: Early virtual community meetup

  Posted: May 5th, 2008, 1:10am PDT by James Burke

  “A slice of cyberculture history: Over twenty years ago, people who met online began to meet in person at the WELL office in Sausalito. These interviews are from a WELL party,”

  via Howard Rheingold

  

  
• 

  Links for 2008-05-03 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: May 3rd, 2008, 10:00pm PDT

  • New software allows ISPs and P2P users to get along without getting too cozy
    Ono, a unique software solution that allows users to efficiently identify nearby P2P clients. The software, which is freely available and has been downloaded by more than 150,000 users, benefits ISPs by reducing costly cross-network traffic without sacrif
  • learningfromeachother : Learning From Each Other
    "Learning From Each Other" is a working group lead by Pamela McLean. She is studying various interrelated issues around teaching and learning and ICT. She is the designer, director and presenter of an in-service training programme for teachers in rural Af
  • xdiscipline / recent projects / Interaction Design
    ActiviXML is a dialect of XML that abstracts the information flow particularly between large scale / small scale social activist communities and individual activists
  • Facebook Application Analytics, Demographics & User Interests Monitoring | refresh partners
    Refresh Analytics has been designed to help applications develelopers learn more about their users and how they interact with their application.
  • User Labor – A framework for sustaining user labor across the web
    an open data structure, User Labor Markup Language (ULML), to outline the metrics of user participation in social web services. Our aim is to construct criteria and context for determining the value of user labor for distribution.
  • Should human-powered search abandon the Long Tail?
    "Every abundance creates a new scarcity"
  • Crowdsourcing: Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall of the Firm, Cont.
    By one measure at least, YouTube is a very small company. Before being acquired by Google its 67 employees fit into two floors of an unremarkable San Bruno, California office building. That’s exactly one fewer employee than works at the average American
  • 43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero | 43 Folders
    These are posts from a special 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way.
  • Instapaper
    You find something you want to read, but you don't have time now.
  • Who do people trust? (It ain’t bloggers)
    So who do people trust? Three research studies indicate it’s peers, or people they know. And social clout from bloggers, or those with a lot of online friends ain’t it.
  • Consumers Using Social Media to ‘Vent’ about, Research Customer Service
    When making purchase decisions, affluent online consumers are using social media channels to share their own customer-service experiences and learn about those of others
  • The Internet Goes Green (comScore Voices)
    As buzz continues to grow around the green movement, the Internet has become a place for the growing environmentally-conscious population to congregate as well as a place for newcomers to find information on the barrage of green products
  • Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Putting People in the Wiki
    Socialtext launched Socialtext People and Socialtext Dashboard, significant enhancements that make people a first class object in the wiki platform and give them greater control over their internal and external information.
  • Beginner's Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter
  • iterating toward openness » Blog Archive » Clay Shirky on Where People Find the Time
    Fabulous talk by Clay Shirky about where people find the time to work on things like Wikipedia; highly recommended.
  • J.K. Rowling, criticized by Orson Scott Card (ender's game author)
    Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling's hugely successful novel series, is just a "rearrangement" of her own material.
  • iterating toward openness » Blog Archive » The FWK Licensing Model
    some words on the FWK licensing model seem appropriate.
  • That Book Costs How Much? - New York Times
    College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s
  • Relationship Building From a Postmodern Perspective
    new business models founded on participation and self'organization
  • Le Monde.fr : La spéculation sur les matières premières affole le monde agricole - Economie
    "Les matières premières agricoles se banalisent en tant qu'objets de marché"-"Aujourd'hui, on crée des bulles spéculatives partout."
  • Internet Traffic Statistics
    You can gain an appreciation of the scale of the Internet network by looking at real-time Internet traffic statistics. Millions of packets of information circulate on the Internet every second of every day. The following sites provide Internet traffic st
  • Valuing the Ethical Economy - P2P Foundation
    Originally published as 'notes on value' at IDC.
  • Breaking the Galilean spell (Stuart A. Kauffman)
    My aim is to reinvent the sacred. I present a new view of a fully natural God and of the sacred, based on a new, emerging scientific worldview. This new worldview reaches further than science itself and invites a new view of God, the sacred, and ourselve
  • The power of play on the internet
    Game design and social networks are merging into one of the most persuasive forces on the net.
  • nanoHUB - Toward Anticipatory Governance
    "By anticipatory governance, we mean the ability of a variety of stakeholders and the lay-public to prepare for the issues that NSE may present before those issues are manifest or reified in particular technologies."

  
• 

  Fábricas Recuperadas: crowd-storming your own just and equitable economy in Argentina

  Posted: May 3rd, 2008, 1:58am PDT by James Burke

  “Factory workers in Argentina show us that just and equitable economies not only can, but do, exist. How have these workers struggled for ownership of their factories? And how does this struggle contribute to our collective vision for the future of our economy?

  

  
  “We used to work for money. Now we work for dignity.”

  I try not to gawk at Christina Pina, a matchstick-thin housekeeper in a weary yellow uniform whose top button has been replaced by a safety pin. She and a half-dozen colleagues, bed-changers and bathtub-cleaners all, are sitting in the housekeepers’ lounge, a small room filled to capacity with one desk and two small vinyl sofas where most of them squish together. I think of friends of mine who have cleaned hotel rooms around the U.S. whose jobs afforded neither real money nor real chance for dignity. Am I hearing her properly?

  I am. And I hear the same theme, with variation, throughout Argentina.

  After an economic crisis left thousands of factories and other businesses shuttered, workers suddenly found themselves unemployed and desperately poor. As many as 10,000 of them from roughly 200 enterprises eventually said to heck with loss of income, loss of occupation, loss of dignity. Through trial, error, commitment, and organizing, they retook their former places of employment… except this time not as peons, but as owners. Today, they continue producing on an industrial, competitive scale, manufacturing everything from sewer parts to balloons, tractors to ice cream under conditions of democracy, equity, and autonomy.

  Seventy percent of factories were retaken after fierce campaigns, either physical takeover or long occupations in front of the factory gates. The sit-ins lasted an average of five months - weary, often hungry, sometimes violence-filled ones.

  With so many not having been paid in months, their survival choices came down, as analyst Modesto Guerroro put it, to the following: “Either they tried to occupy and work the business or they would have to go beg in the streets, prostrate themselves, steal, or wait for their luck.”

  Getting themselves physically back into the factories involved either cutting the locks or getting permission from the courts. What workers found once they did reenter was devastating. The places had often been ransacked by the former owners, right down to the light bulbs and business records. Machines had been stripped of every valuable part. Many of the factories were without electricity, water, or gas.

  The workers usually spent many months hauling away debris. They cannibalized equipment and improvised with scrap to make at least one of each necessary machine. Neighbors donated what they could, be it their welding masks or their labor on a spare Sunday. As for what they faced in restarting production: They had no capital or credit lines with which to make over their former places of employment. For starters, they manufactured and sold infinitesimal amounts of whatever items they could produce with scrounged primary materials.

  But get back on their feet many of them did, and slowly profits began to trickle in, challenging the workers to decide how to deal with the surplus. These fábricas recuperadas, or recovered businesses have explored different forms of self-management, from coordinators rotating every few months so that all have a turn to everything being decided by the collective. Each recuperada hold assemblies through which everyone votes on internal policies and the way production will take place. In regular meetings workers discuss everything from proposed changes in hours to personal issues. One worker notes: “As strange as it may seem, the time dedicated to equal debate improves the level of production per hour, something that goes against the current of the hegemonic business model… Hours no longer mean what they used to. Back then, I worked 12 hours and returned home feeling exploited and destroyed. Now, if I return home tired, it is a different kind of tiredness. Because inside you is passing a caravan of satisfaction that is sometimes difficult to explain.”

  Many workers told us that democracy will thrive so long as transparency exists and egalitarian mechanisms are maintained. As production and income increases, workers will be challenged not to return to simple production-for-profit and not to become new bosses to new subordinates. As soon as workers lose their ideals, power struggles will emerge, access to information will become privileged, and collective power will be denied.

  “To me the idea is not only to protect a source of work, but to support a new society toward a new construction of power,” says a woman in red sneakers as she lays type at Chilavert printing press. In addition to creating and sustaining jobs, production, and services, factories are very explicitly values-based. Far more than production or the financing of their craft, workers talk to us about solidarity, respect, commitment, the importance of shared participation, and community.

  The challenges to this survival are many: they control the means of production within their factories but not the laws that govern market capitalism and production. Nor do they control the politics of Argentina, nor the asymmetrical relationship between Latin America and the U.S., all of which shape the factories’ future. Marcelo Rualde, president of the Hotel Buaen Coop, says, “I am not a dreamer. The capitalist market is very savage. We are an island of the marginalized and the excluded. We could create an alternative market, but we aren’t going to change the schema of capitalism.”

  Survival strategies – and even potential for growth - certianly exist, however. Strong political solidarity to build the might of the sector within the political economy is one route. As Gabriela Bazan of the vinyl factory Viniplanst puts it: “That blessed phrase, ‘In unity there is strength,’ is exactly our situation.” Another is the supply chain between different factories. The brass and copper tubing factory could supply parts to the refrigerator manufacturing factory, the data processing operation could offer record-keeping services to the paper bag company, and so on. The president of one unemployed worker association stubs out her cigarette and says, “We were taught not to give up. History is not finished. The story isn’t over. We won’t die silent.

  Regardless of the future, the experiment proves that just and equitable economies not only can, but do, exist. It is yet one more seed sprouting in a garden where, as one activist-writer says, “future generations can reverse the logic of capitalism by producing for communities, not for profits and empowering workers, not exploiting them.” People the world over have been inspired by the Argentine worker experience, which is exactly how alternatives multiply.

  To learn more, visit [www.otherworldsarepossible.org] . To lend your direct support to help the recuperadas survive, see [www.theworkingworld.org] . To spread the vision and the hope, work for democracy in your own workplace.”

  via Movement Vision Lab

  
• 

  Links for 2008-05-02 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 10:00pm PDT

  • commons-law Info Page
    A discussion list on law, culture and technology
  • For the Next 7 Generations
    tells the story of thirteen indigenous Grandmothers who came together in 2004 to speak in one united voice so that they could awaken us to the catastrophic consequences we face if we don't change the way we relate to each other and to our Mother Earth.
  • Reality Sandwich | Money: A New Beginning (Part 2)
    Our present monetary system generates a necessity for endless growth, embodies linear thinking, defies the cyclical patterns of nature, and drives the relentless conversion of all forms of wealth into currency.
  • Reality Sandwich | The New Urban Forager
    Jenny and Cristóbal are true urban foragers who also know their way around the soup kitchens of this down on its luck neighborhood.
  • YouTube - Steve McIntosh: Evolution of Consciousness

  
• 

  Christian Siefkes on Hint-based Systems

  Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 1:02am PDT by Michel Bauwens

  From a discussion on the Oekonux mailing list (list-en), Christian Siefkes refers to an important aspect of peer production projects, i.e. their stigmergic aspects, which allow to coordinate work through impersonal messaging of what needs to be done.

  Christian Siefkes:

  “A hinting system also serves as an informal mechanism for prioritizing tasks: the more people care for a task, the more likely it is to be picked up by somebody (since the corresponding hints tend to become more visible and explicit, and since people are more likely to pick up a task they wish to be done).

  Hints are impersonal, they give people a chance to look around what is there to do and then to decide for themselves. In peer projects there are no “overseers” that can tell people what to do—people decide for themselves.

  Francis Heylighen doesn’t use “hint” in the narrow sense. Every missing feature of a program that you notice is a hint indicating how/where this software could be enhanced; every bug is a hint indicating where it needs to be improved. Whenever you discover and report abug, or whenever you discover it and submit a patch for it (which I have done quite often), you have followed a hint which the developers of the program left (though they didn’t leave it intentionally).”

  Example:

  “I’m on the mailing list of a medium-size free software project [1] and there are regularly (not frequently, but from time to time) mails from people asking “I like the software and I would like to contribute, what can I do?” (or “I’m using the software and would like to give something back, what can I do?”) Then somebody points them to the task list [2], and, if they have the energy to follow this up, they self-select themselves for a task. Of course, there are also people who come up with their own ideas (with about the same frequency, I would guess), but even they typically refer to the agenda or the goals of the project.”

  

  
• 

  Links for 2008-05-01 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: May 1st, 2008, 10:00pm PDT

  • BBC NEWS | Technology | Web in still in infancy after 15 years, says Berners-Lee
    If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now. "We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened
  • James Cascio on WorldChanging Nanotechnology
    The possible impact of molecular fabrication helps to make the next two decades highly uncertain, but also ranks as one of the chief reasons why a bright green future could remain possible even despite major setbacks.
  • WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: The Kind of Future Fabbing Suggests
    We explored the implications of fab labs, of mobile fabrication factories, for helping people in the developing world solve local problems. Bruce held forth on mobjects before
  • Des nanofabriques de bureau pour tous | InternetActu.net
    ces petites machines convertissent des matériaux bruts (l’”encre”) en objets manufacturés.
  • Welcome - ilm works
    a media company that promotes peaceful conflict resolution and cross-cultural understanding by engendering respect, compassion and dialogue between American citizens and citizens throughout the world of all faiths and beliefs.
  • Integral Community Organizers
    or integral community organizers. Here's where you can let other integral organizers
  • Maybe it is Time to Panic | American Journalism Review
    With all the stresses and cutbacks, will they be able to continue doing the job right? "The hardest question," as one puts it, "is how to maintain accuracy with less time."
  • The Digital Library of the Commons: Network Governance of the Commons
    Carlsson, Lars, and Annica Charlotte Sandstrom. 2008. "Network Governance of the Commons." International Journal of the Commons 2(1).
  • The State of the Commons in Europe
    During the IASCP Europe Regional Meeting in Brescia, Italy 23-25 March, the Commons of Europe received a thorough coverage by scholars from a large number of European countries.
  • "Central and Eastern European Commons."
    Sikor, Thomas. 2006. The Common Property Resource Digest 77.
  • "Indigenous Rights, Traditional Knowledge and Identity."
    Smith, Peggy. 2004. The Common Property Resource Digest 71.
  • The Digital Library of the Commons: Knowledge for Commons Management:
    Wilson, Doug. 2005. "Knowledge for Commons Management: A Commons for the Commons." The Common Property Resource Digest 75.
  • Crowdsourcing: Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall of the Firm: Turning Community Into Commerce
    If the means of production and distribution are now within the grasp of the individual, if the line between producers and consumers is blurring, where does that leave the “firm,” the organizational structure that has governed how people make and deliv

  
• 

  Pursuing the Common Good: 1) the aims of this Vatican Conference

  Posted: May 1st, 2008, 6:06am PDT by Michel Bauwens

  Report of the conference at the Vatican: Pursuing the Common Good: How Solidarity and Subsidiarity Can Work Together.

  The above conference, which aims to update the social doctrine of the Catholic Church in light of current social developments, will take place May 2 to 6, 2008, and I will be presenting a case study on electronic giving and sharing there tomorrow.

  I have almost never done any live reporting/blogging from conferences, because I feel it difficult to be fully present at such conferences, and to think about reporting at the same time. What I’m attempting to do here is different, it is a report of the different readings I have been doing to prepare for it, and I’m assuming that the papers will broadly reflect what the speaker-authors will be saying during their oral presentations.

  First, some general info. The event was organized by the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, with amongst the key scholar-organizers Margaret Archer and Pierpaolo Donati. In all likelihood, I owe my presence here, as a total outsider, to Margaret, who had been listening at a presentation I had given in Tromse, Norway, about 2 years ago, for the Association of Critical Realism. Margaret Archer, I learned there, was one of the foremost contemporary sociologist, and I have a lot of sympathy for Critical Realism and its pretty common sense approach to reality which is a good antidote to any postmodernism that goes over the top.

  Some personal details to give context to how I will approach this have been posted at our Ning community blog. (registration needed for access)

  The aims of the conference:

  The conference is about updating the social doctrine in light of more recent developments in human society. In particular, it looks at the interrelationship of two of the four principles of this doctrine, Solidarity and Subsidiarity.

  The Social Doctrine has indeed four guiding principles:

  1) The dignity of the human person (every human being has equal worth through dignity)

  2) The common good (we are here to make the world a better place for all)

  3) Subsidiarity: civil society and its organizations are the primary and prioritary actors of our society, to which both market and the state should be subsumed

  4) Solidarity: we have a social duty to take care of the less unfortunate, and those that have temporary difficulties

  According to the introductory material, which I’m paraphrasing as of now, the 2008 Plenary Meeting aims to:

  1) Examine the current uses of these concepts in order to clarify their correct meaning

  2) Are these exemplars in reality the correct use of such principles, showing us in particular how subsidiarity and solidarity can work together?

  3) Can we imagine a new configuration of society, which can transcend both the Hobbesian and the Hegelian heritage.

  Note that I can readily imagine what is meant by Hobbesian, nl. that only a strong state can guarantee civil peace but at the price of having the full power to itself; and I’m supposing that Hegelian is related to the change theories that eventually led to the development of a material Marxism and concepts of class struggle, which the Church sees as antithetic to the Christian worldview?

  4) One of the priorities will be to examine the interdependence of the four principles, since the social doctrine should be seen as a systematic account, in which gaps would be inacceptable.

  5) Today, the relationship between solidarity and subsidiarity is “badly out of alignment”, for two reasons:

  a. There is no symmetry in their relations, one can be high and the other can be low. This was the case in early modernity which combined high solidarity of workers with the low subsidiarity of market dominance

  b. Subsidiarity can also thwart solidarity. Example: university autonomy under neoliberal conditions

  c. Their conjunction is therefore problematic

  d. There is a diminished supply of community-based solidarity, which is not being restored by elective virtual communities

  e. The invasion of market forces and bureaucratic regulations in everyday life is increasing

  6) These cycles could be broken by reciprocity, whose workings amplify both together.

  Such reciprocity is however always in danger of being subsumed to either market or power relations, and is not ‘by itself’, a guarantee of justice. It mus therefore be associated with ‘free giving’, and the internet has shown us the strong social basis for this. Understood in this way, reciprocity can lead to an upward spiral which reinforces solidarity, for the full human person. It augments mutual support, friendship, and the creation of social identity.

  7) Subsidiarity requires legal protection (through sector-appropriate justice) and allocation.

  8 : The Plenary Meeting will cover:

  a. New forms of solidary and subsidiary economy

  b. Educational initiatives in developing countries

  c. State family relationships

  d. Access to information goods (internet), and

  e. Microcredit and the third sector

  
• 

  Using Vested Commons as the core structure of the macro and micro economy

  Posted: May 1st, 2008, 1:24am PDT by Michel Bauwens

  There’s a lot of hidden discussion going on through various list such as list-en, our p2presearch list, and others, which often are not seen by too many people.

  Here is such a contribution by Stan Rhodes, the context being a dialogue with Christian Siefkes Peerconomy proposals, and whether his effort sharing scheme are a market. But beyond the specifics of this technical debate, this contribution helps in understanding the important concept of Vested Commons, which Stan proposes as the main structure of the coming p2p society (or as he calls it, Utilicontributism).

  Stan Rhodes:

  “I maintain that he does not understand that his weighted labor system has a market in the distribution pool. To paraphrase what I’ve said before, the market in the peerconomy system, as in all economic systems with a market, enables the exchange of product ownership and services, which are evaluated and priced. The money in the system, as in all systems, is just a unit of value that exists as debit and credit (value owed and value given). Contributions are tied to benefits with the distribution pool. So, market and money are the distribution pool, but Christian does not see it. At this point, I can only offer my analysis, and let people dig in and judge for themselves.

  I see money much as E.C. Riegel did. Money is a cooperative agreement. It’s relative. To quote Riegel, “Money is a receipt for value, expressed in terms of a value unit, and is a transferable claim for an equivalent value, to be determined by competitive exchange, in which the issuer is an active vendor, whose issue conforms to the customs of a convention of participants in the monetary system.” The “customs of a convention” in Christian’s case is the structure of the distribution pool and associated voting.

  I do not think Christian’s characterization of systems is accurate, either. First, the free market and capitalism are not synonymous. Without getting into a large discussion of the semantics, we must tease out principle and practice. The “capitalism” of today, in practice, has hardly any free market aspects to it, so I’m not going to use it as a term at all. Further, as I have said above, Christian is creating a free market (supply and demand in a weighted labor system is still supply and demand). Effort sharing occurs in any cooperative business that is meeting demand.

  The claim that market exchange is “how to turn money into more money” is simply bogus. I’m going to assume he means a free market for the sake of discussion. A free market has buyers and sellers in cooperative agreements–mutual consent–on the values of their goods and services. Inherent in this concept is that there is no coercion or misinformation. That’s basically it, the free market in a nutshell.

  One of the big problems, of course, is that there IS coercion and misinformation, meaning the free market is not a perfect market, and doesn’t achieve pareto efficiency (basically, the maximum social benefit possible for the allocation of resources across that population of participants). Joseph Stiglitz and others identified, for example, the problems of information asymmetry. Along with that is the problem of externalities.

  However, the free market is a principle, and the practice is how we design a socioeconomic system that is pareto efficient, or at least, evolves in that direction.

  I put forth the claim that the only way to work toward this free market is by creating rival and nonrival commons. (A rival good is anything that’s use prevents others’ use. A nonrival good does not have this rivalry.)

  If we were to create a fantasy system that is democratic, equitable, and sustainable, we’d need to start with the concept that all human beings on Earth, in principle, are equal stakeholders. They should each have equal “share,” or %, of all material assets: 6.6 billion equal shares (although obviously, that number needs to begin shrinking). When a shareholder uses rival resources–material assets–beyond their “share,” they should compensate all other shareholders equally for their “resource trespass.” The concept, simply, is the more you use, the more you pay. It’s the responsible thing to do!

  With nonrival commons–information–use must be open for all. This is another discussion in itself, so I’m going to continue under the big assumption that nonrival goods are open to all. As Patrick Anderson would point out, use of information does carry a rival cost (energy and matter), and that falls in the domain of the rival commons. However, the information itself is not scarce, and must be open to all to create a free market. After all, how can we maximize social benefit by creating scarcity where there is none? A person’s “share” of everything nonrival IS everything nonrival! Now, “use” from here on out will only apply to the use of rival goods.

  A system of rival and nonrival “vested” commons, with everyone as equal stakeholders (that’s the “vested” part), captures all externalities of the current system. The governance of these commons must be democratic, and must be build to evolve toward “democratic efficiency.”

  So, there’s the pie-in-the-sky ideal, in my view.

  When it comes to work, I’m all for effort sharing. However, I think this is a “business” problem. The problem with businesses currently is that most are designed structurally and legally to maximize profit, rather than being social-purpose based. Add in our sham of a money system and you have the economic crisis we have today. Increasing awareness of the conflict between profit and social benefit, and the systemic pressure to choose profit, has led a lot of people to question the corporate model. Particularly the megacorporation. They question it for good reason!

  A number of people have identified this problem independently. For example, In Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Muhammad Yunus writes of the problem of the “profit-maximizing business (PMB)” versus the “social business.” Unfortunately we’ve legally empowered the profit-maximizing business into quite a formidable beast.

  It is with Chris Cook, Muhammad Yunus, and others (and me) that we begin to hit the practical implementation of a new socioeconomic system. And actually, I think Kleiner is approaching this too, but I would argue that Marxist analysis does not recognize how relative the relationships are. Perhaps that is my misunderstanding of Marxist theory, but I will save that discussion with Kleiner for another time.

  The purpose-driven business / social business / open corporate / businesstrust / whatever-you-want-to-call-it aligns all parties toward the social function of the business. You do that by having the assets held in a sort of trust structure, where an agreement/charter defines some scope of allowable use. The business can then use the assets–essentially, renting them–and that rent goes to the investors/owners of the assets proportionate to their shares. Anyone involved in the business can invest money or labor or “money’s worth” (as Cook calls it) for some share, and investors can sell their shares. Basically, price paid beyond rent cost is investment. Investors make a reasonable return, although not very high (and the various limits can be define in the charter). The asset is protected, and the business is accountable to the scope of use. This is particularly interesting when it comes to assets like land, because it’s a potential “answer” to the problem we’re having here in the States (property bubble + food + environmental issues). You can create a propertytrust LLC, or as Cook calls them, a Community Land Partnership. I’m currently working on linking these interests together because of this real–but not realized–alignment.

  If that was hard to follow, I apologize. I need to make a series of graphics to explain it (I’ve made some, but they suck, and I don’t like Chris Cook’s either). You can read more about what he proposes on www.opencapital.net, although he needs to put out some updated information. I should have given him more guff at the conference for not having better figures, but we were having too good a time.

  If you network all asset “trusts” together within a democratic republic (no central, established governance; my preference) or federation (central, established governance) model that agrees upon the scope of use of those assets (defined by something like a “rights and responsibilities” constitution), you essentially have a vested commons. That commons “rents” use of assets to businesses, and the cost of use is paid evenly to the stakeholders, i.e. the global population is compensated fairly for the use of their equity. To use the community land partnership as an example, a republic composed of those constituent organizations can make the “one Earthling, one equal share of land” a reality.

  If everyone is renting from everyone equally, then those who use the most pay the most. They are compensating others for their overuse (use beyond their entitlement or “fair share”) of resources. This models equity and sustainability properly in the socioeconomic system, although obviously there must be at least some layers of governance holding it together.

  To return to effort sharing, in a proper free market, credit is used as an expression of need or desire. Those who need the most–those who use the least rival goods, the poor–are paid the most. The system’s feedback loops ensure the worse off are the most empowered to improve their “lot.” The demand of those needs and desires is met by the supply created by purpose-driven businesses, very likely consisting of those with the needs (again, the poor). Here, we will see the continuing emergence of peer production–I’m going to define this as “voluntary, purpose-driven participation in production”–because people are no longer coerced (or coercing others, or both) into their current socioeconomic “roles” in the system. They solve the problems they want to, and they rank them both by credit created for a purpose, and by their own time investment. Efforts in such a system are usually shared (there still may be 1-person efforts and disagreements on how to do something), and competition is emulsified in cooperation because rival goods are held in a state of equity. I call this socioeconomic model “utilicontributism,” because use is balanced with contribution: it’s only fair!

  Granted, if you earn a lot by working hard, or by having special skills that are in high demand, you could use more resources than the average person. “Work hard, play hard,” right? However, playing hard doesn’t necessarily mean resource use, and I think a lot of us could argue that truly, resource use doesn’t have much to do with playing hard–and having fun–at all. Thus, I don’t think this “problem” is much of a problem. The issue is balanced: they can only play as hard as they’ve earned.

  To revisit the peerconomy one last time, I think aspects of it are the present or future (the aspects that touch or cover peer production), but I also think it takes the constituent parts of the free market, and shuffles them a little while renaming them. There are egalitarian communities that use effort sharing as explicitly valued in time and, I think to some extent, a primitive form of weighing labor, even if it’s unwritten. As a matter of scale, this sort of mental auctioning and bookkeeping makes the most sense with small groups. These groups have created a local free market! The “money” is mental: it’s value owed and value paid, as accounted for by the members in their brains. The problem of trying to scale weighted labor beyond a small group of people is that an accounting system is needed, which Christian has created. Without even looking at the efficiency and cheat-ability problems of the peerconomy proposal that I have brought up before, my point is this: pull back the curtain, and the same free market mechanics are there. I think most economists would agree, they have to be. Money is a relationship, and the free market is an egalitarian / equitable / democratic ideal.

  The question is, how do we get to an ideal free market from here? The answer to that is emerging, but the implementation is not inevitable. The whole of human history shows that the collapse of a power structure does not guarantee the creation of a better one in its stead. What’s crystal clear is that, if we as a society or species were aiming for the free market ideal, we’ve surely failed. And I think if we weren’t aiming for it, we should be.”

  

  
• 

  Links for 2008-04-30 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: April 30th, 2008, 10:00pm PDT

  • Venture money going to companies taking on Web advertising - The Boston Globe
    Nationwide, investments in Internet companies have exceeded $1 billion in six of the past seven quarters, hitting $1.3 billion in the three months ended March 31, according to the new MoneyTree report
  • Web Firm Finds Its Footing Through Big Ideas - washingtonpost.com
    Intridea, a Washington area Web company with 15 employees, has no office. It hasn't received any venture capital. It's happy to work in the background. And in just a year in existence, it's launched four products. Intridea may be the model for the modern
  • Defenseless on the Net
    With all the cyber spies and state-sponsored hackers on the Internet, is there any way to defend ourselves? Critics say not completely
  • A Tidal Wave of Participation « Chief Outhouse Correspondent
    the size of the cognitive surplus we’re talking about. It’s so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications
  • The American Left: a tale of 2 conferences
    compares the Left Forum with Take Back America, and sees the latter as exemplary of renewal

  
• 

  Links for 2008-04-29 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: April 29th, 2008, 10:00pm PDT

  • Transition Hankbook | united diversity
    The Transition Handbook will come to be seen as one of the seminal books which emerged at the end of the Oil Age
  • Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody
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  • Twitter: Friends for Sale
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  • Civil society and capitalism: a new landscape | openDemocracy
    Michael Edwards's critique of philanthocapitalism underplays how far a world of interdependency creates opportunity for civil society to force business into embracing social and legal progress, says Simon Zadek of AccountAbility.
  • Fair Labor Association
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    We've recently written about the Netflix model being applied to toys and textbooks, and now a few new contenders are applying it to popular books.
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• 

  Experiencing the Experience Economy: Lego’s participative army marches on ..

  Posted: April 29th, 2008, 3:19pm PDT by Michel Bauwens

  As a frequent speaker on peer to peer issues, there is always a temptation to settle into routines, and if you do so many lectures, there is always a danger that your memory turns originally distinct experiences into a single blur.

  There is one event in the year where I think this will not happen, and these are the memorable experiences of the annual gathering of the Center for the Experience Economy.

  I attended last year’s event more intensively than my shorter stay this year, and I still remember it as one of the most convivial learning experiences that I have been able to attend. The setting, the beautiful Castell d’Empordo in the Spanish/Catalan countryside around Girona, certainly plays a role, perched as it is above a splendid valley. Albert Boswijk each year assembles the most interesting combination of pioneers in the field, and the limited number of attendees guarantees that the exchanges are continuous and intensive. Last year I remember especially a Dutch restaurant owner preparing dinner in a balloon, and one of the highlights was Mark Hansen, director of Business Development at Lego, who has been focusing his life’s work on spurring co-creation processes between Lego as a corporate community and the legions of fans that are normally operating independently of the company. This year Mark Hansen gave us an equally fascinating account of his progress. I have no longer any doubt that Lego is simply, at least if Mark’s projects can be further carried out, the paradigmatic example of the mutual adaptation of a business with its surrounding communities. Rather than prohibiting user involvement, Mark’s instinct go into the opposite direction of learning to tap further and further into it, and to develop mutually beneficial relationships.

  I would like to recall my own Three Laws of Co-Creation.

  Law 1 states that any for-profit company that uses closed proprietary content, and excludes participation, will tend to loose from competing for-benefit institutions that can count on a community of voluntary contributors and uses open proprietary formats.

  Law 2 states that, when two for-profit companies are competing, the one opting for open and participatory strategies will outcompete those who do not adopt such practices.

  Law 3 states that communities of peer producers which successfully can ally themselves with an ecology of business practicing benefit-sharing with the commons they are deriving value from, will be more successful that those that remain isolated.

  In his presentation, Mark Hansen first highlighted the 3 communities that play a role for Lego: the young kids, the mature community of almost exclusively male enthusiasts, and parents/mothers as gift givers. Lego’s first experience with co-creation was when it decided not to fight Lego Mindstorm hackers, but to honour their innovation; Lego has now instituted a formal Mindstorms NXT Developers Panel which selected 100 of 9600 candidates, but Mark is now convinced that this process has probably been too selective and that the company should have a even more inclusive process to tap into the co-creative processes.

  Lego is also surrounded by an enormously active constellation of Lego User Groups (for example LUGNet), which operate totally independently of the company, and exchange and show designs amongst themselves. This is of course a prototypical example of peer producing commons-oriented fan communities at work.

  Mark was then instrumental in developing the Lego Factory model, which is a crowdsourcing model, whereby the creativity of users is integrated within Lego’s own value chain. Fans can design new kits, post them on the site, where they can be ordered. Lego produces and distributes the kits, but giving the fan-designers a stake in the sale (5%).

  Mark has a vision of the evolution of user involvement which is very congruent with my own ladder of participation modeling of open business models.

  He distinguishes the following phases:

  - LEGO developed + LEGO Published, the classic consumption model

  - Co-developed + LEGO Published, co-design

  - User-developed + LEGO Published, Lego is here only a platform for user-design (Lego Factory)

  - User-developed + User published

  - User enterprise + LEGO supported

  We could argue about the logic of the last two phases, and it would be legitimate to consider that user-development/publishing is the more logical endpoint, but the logic of temporality is correct. Indeed, peer communities are not waiting for the corporations permission to do their own thing, but businesses can then subsequently adapt, and become a platform of support and development which users can use to develop their own enterprises.

  LEGO has not undertaken the last step, but Mark then showed an advanced prototyping of the very ambitious virtual world system that LEGO will be launching soon, i.e. Lego Universe. It will offer a combination of already prepared worlds, but also allow for new universes to be created by users; and there will be ultimately a full integration with production capabilities which could be user-initiated. In other words,it will be possible to physically produce successful virtual user-led creations.

  If LEGO pulls this off, it will really have established itself as the paradigmatic example of business adaptation to the challenges and opportunities presented by the emergence of peer production.
  Because LEGO is very much a physical product, it gives us an early indication of the interplay between design by open communities, and the physical production processes undertaken by companies.

  These were not the only interesting presentations at this year’s gathering, but because of my shorter stay, I only witnessed only two other highlights. ID & T and Q-Dance showed how a dance event which can attract up to 60,000 participants (Sensation White) can become an instant success (tickets are sold out almost as soon as the date is posted), can achieve such a traction with internet only communication amongst targeted micro-communities, while Olaf Boswijk showed a beautiful example of benefit-sharing by a corporation. The Red Bull Music Academy is an annual gathering of young deejays and older legendary musicians which is meant to repay the dance communities that established the success of the brand, which does not stress any public brand advantages but rather a general support for cultural and creative development, that creates a strong network amongst the participants and creates long-lasting cooperative and creative projects.

  
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  “Philanthrocapitalism”: An oxymoron with promise?

  Posted: April 29th, 2008, 7:25am PDT by Sam Rose

  Writer Micheal Edwards’ recent book [www.justanotheremperor.org] takes a critical look at the hype surrounded the emerging phenomenon that some are calling “philanthrocapitalism”: using business and market systems to affect social change. The main criticism from Edwards can be summed up in his opendemocracy.net article:

  “My worry is that the hype surrounding philanthrocapitalism will divert attention from the deeper changes that are required to transform society, reduce decisions to an inappropriate bottom line, and lead us to ignore the costs and trade-offs involved in extending business principles into the world of civil society and social change. I’m concerned that these questions, and the evidence that underpins them, are not being given a fair hearing. And I want to provoke a conversation in which different positions can be aired and listened to. The only way that philanthrocapitalism will be able to fulfill its considerable potential is by moving beyond the hype.”

  Mohammed Yunus has also recently written a book that looks at how Social Enterprise can affect change. Yunus argues:

  “The social business dollar is much more powerful than the charity dollar [..] Whereas the charity dollar can be used only once, the social-business dollar recycles itself again and again, ad infinitum, to deliver benefits to more and more people.”

  Although, I’ll also point out that Social Entrepreneurship is different than “Philanthrocapitalism”. Social Entrepreneurship as discussed by Yunus covers many scales, from small to large business. While, “Philanthrocaptialism” is defined by Edwards as:

  • “Resources: very large sums of money being committed to philanthropy, mainly the result of the remarkable profits earned by a small number of individuals in the IT and finance sectors during the 1990s and 2000s.
  • Methods: a claim that methods drawn from business can solve social problems, and are superior to the other approaches used in the public sector and in civil society.
  • Achievements: a claim that these methods can achieve the transformation of society, rather than increased access to socially-beneficial goods and services - a noble goal for sure, but insufficient to lever deeper changes in the distribution of power and resources across the world.”

  Both Edwards and Yunus appear to be right, in my estimation. Yunus is right that there is much power in entrepreneurship, in the freedom to create wealth for yourself and others. Yet, Edwards is right that (in my words) there is also a huge machine, which is a combination of broadcast media corporations, and a plethora of big businesses and wealthy people around the world, that seek to co-opt social emergences, so as to funnel money, human energy, and control over domains towards their market corrals.

  This is nothing new. With every social movement, from the early 1960’s, to the “creative class” of the early 2000’s, there have been people trying to capitalize on, and co-opt the symbols and energy of emergent social movements. (see [www.press.uchicago.edu] for a look at the origins of the phenomenon). Social entrepreneurship, or “philanthrocapitalism” is really no different. When a social phenomenon starts out in a “democratized” way (as they often actually do), meaning that most, or all of the building blocks are already present for individuals to participate in self-sustaining ways, that would let people bypass or obsolete their need for mass pre-produced solutions, the big companies must act to keep people buying something, or risk being obsoleted from their lives. This basically means that corporate spending of public money is sold to the public as a project to make it easier for them to be more “creative”, more socially or environmentally responsible, or more philanthropic. This, I believe is the danger that Edwards is warning us about. That we’ll just leave it up to “business” to take the lead in social enterprise.

  The problem is that when we leave social transformation to business, we end up with a society that is structured by the principles of business management. Edwards’s book contends that there is evidence that the mission “drifts” away from social change, and towards profit, efficiency, and sometimes corruption. What is lacking in these situations is a social basis for social change.

  The market, and while being a powerful force, is no basis for sustainable social change. The atomization of business infrastructure to an individual level is but one building block towards real social change that is enabled in part by social enterprise. The next step is the atomization of social infrastructure. People must learn to cooperate and collaborate together in equitable ways. People must learn to co-manage common infrastructure, and common resources in a democratic and transparent way. Accessing and employing the efficient production and distribution systems of business and the market is not enough. Those who rely on those systems must also have co-control of them.

  This means that everyone in the “chain” gets a say, from grower/builder/laborer, to the person that buys a finished product. This means that a person’s “job” is not just to specialize in being a lawyer, baking bread, or hauling garbage, but also in direct civic participation and oversight of the systems that feed, clothe, and house you. How can you know that the companies your are buying from, or are employed by, are working equitably? You are involved in making sure that they are. Adam Arvidsson’s Valuing the Ethical Economy offers some deep insights into how this is plausible. Adam writes:

  ” What creates these ethical values? They are not the direct results of investments in labor time. You can work as much as you want on your music and style, that, in itself will not make you a rock star. Rather, suddenly something happens and then, you’ve made it. What determines your value are the quality and quantity of affect (attention) that you have been able to accumulate. The relation between the productive time invested in a project and the mass affect that it is able to attract is non-linear, or viral, to use a popular marketing term.[2] Models could be found in contemporary mathematical theories of network dynamics, and perhaps in Gabriel Tarde’s theories of the role of public sentiment.[3] Indeed, the logical relation between value and labor is rather the reverse of that usually associated with the capitalist economy. Once you have a sufficiently attractive brand, you will attract an abundance of free labor as well as other resources. Linux has no problems recruiting new programmers: people want to work for them for free; people pay to use brands in their everyday life and thus freely co-produce their ethical value through their constructive consumer practices. On financial markets, capital flows to the most attractive brands. More means more in this case, if you have accumulated a significant stock of ethical capital, people will freely give you their time and further attention, or, on financial markets, their capital.”

  To sum it up, in order for markets to really help change society, we first need to create social infrastructure that allows us to value the ethical capital of the companies that we are doing business with. We need to democratize and equitably control these infrastructures on the level/scale of voluntarily cooperating and collaborating individuals. This will then create a conduit of ethics, and social focus, through which we all can pursue market exchanges. Markets measured against our real social interests, not just made to appeal to our base needs, or fool us into thinking they will solve our social problems.

  See also:

  • http://p2pfoundation.net/Civil_Corporation
  • http://p2pfoundation.net/Civil_Regulation
  • http://p2pfoundation.net/Collaborative_Standards_Initiatives

  

  
• 

  Video: Matt Mason on the ‘pirate’s dilemna’

  Posted: