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Links for 2010-03-19 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 20th, 2010, 12:00am PDT

Markus F. PESCHL
cognitive science and epistemology, sharing enable workshop in vienna
Knowledge Creation Seminar | M.F. Peschl - Foundations and Practicing Collaborative Knowledge Construction and Design Thinking in Science and Technology
One of the core assumptions of this course is that thinking, learning, teaching, and doing science is not so much about merely solving problems or puzzles as well as answering questions by applying and repeating well-proven patterns (in small variations) from the past. Rather, the purpose of these cognitive activities is to be prepared for the future. In most cases today’s (as well as tomorrow’s) challenges and questions are radically different from the past—they cross disciplinary boundaries, they are dealing with a large set of unknown variables, they involve many constraints (and stakeholders), they are open-ended, sometimes the problems themselves are changing during the process of research, they need a great deal of synthetic rather than analytic capacities, they have to be thought of from the perspective of the future (rather than extrapolated from the past), etc. That is why we are in need of fundamentally different approaches
What we do | Emersense
We combine the idealism for a better world with the pragmatism of making it happen – to offer funky, fresh and unconventional ways of enabling individuals and organizations to bring intentions into action and realize their full potential for a positive contribution to society.

Petroleum Commons and Indigenous Commons: Real and distorted commons in Ecuador’s Amazon region

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 7:35am PDT by Michel Bauwens

Excerpt from a longer piece by Massimo de Angelis, on the occasion of a trip in Ecuador, and the opposition of the Yasuni people against oil drilling, in which he also gives details about the spiritual underpinnings of their struggle:

“I am in Ecuador at the moment, where I arrived with my family 6 days ago for a three months trip in Latin America. I have just came back from a conference on the Yasuni area of the Amazon, where in the last 30 years, petroleum enclosures have been threatening the common land of the Waorani and some of the last indigenous peoples still living in isolation in the Amazon. We learn that there is no clean oil exploration, that the amount of toxic by-product — even in the case of no spillage — is enormous and very difficult to handle, with toxic consequences for sources of fresh water and all forms of life depending on it. Around the wells used to search for oil, the percentage of oil in the land was so high to be 20 or 30 thousands times above the maximum level for safe agricultural production.

The aim of the encuentro was to try to counter the ambiguity of the Ecuador president Correa who in 2007 has offered a plan that Ecuador will not allow extraction of the ITT oil fields in Yasuní, if the “world community” can create a compensation trust to leave the oil permanently in the ground and fund Ecuador’s “sustainable development” into the future. I leave aside here the fact that in the recent versions of the proposal this “compensation trust” was substituted with a marketisation of the Yasuni in terms of carbon credit bonds, a mechanism highly criticizable not only because carbon credit markets have been found ineffective to meet the need of carbon reduction and because they tie the resources destined for social and ecological ends to speculation, but also because they threaten the autonomy of the indigenous people over their territory, since carbon bonds requires the local indigenous to act in the interest of the “monetary value” of the Yasuni carbon bond in competition to all carbon bonds issued around the world.

However, a part from the carbon market replacing the trust, Correa seems to want to master an incredible juggling exercise. On one hand, declared that no further oil exploration will be undertaken in the Yasuni area, while on the other hand and at the same time, he is signing permits for further exploration. I asked people around, and the reasons given to me for this contradiction are various, ranging from the fact that he is a very whimsical man, passing through the effect of the oil lobby, and arriving to the fact that the plan was never his in the first place, but of economist Alberto Acosta, who originally proposed the plan and since then he left the government. (Acosta was at the encuentro, and a very critical voice, calling for a moratoria of all oil exploration, invoking the new constitution, claiming the movement project as a life project not only for the indigenous or the Ecuador people, but for the entire planet, since Amazonia is the source of water for the rest of Ecuador and Yasuni has the greatest biodiversity in the world). But maybe this juggling is really the manifestation of the fact that to coopt the commons one needs to leave the options open, so as to navigate the contradictions and jump in the moment when opportunity arises.

The project of commons-cooptation seems to me quite evident walking around the city of the encuentro — Orellana — and the nearby city of Coca — a dusty oil town, the gateway of the Yasuni park. They are both covered in posters that invite citizens to think of their city, their country and their resources as theirs. Posters like “your resources, we handle them well”, or “the country is yours, you have the power” seem to show that wanting to instil a sense of “common ownership” is clearly important from the state/oil companies propaganda’s side. A different sense of “common ownership” instead came up in the Yasuni encuentro, where I have been hearing several indigenous voices speaking, all demanding for an uncompromising end of oil exploration and an end of oil activities in the Yasuni.”

Peer to Peer energy production and the social conflicts in the era of “green development”

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 3:01am PDT by Michel Bauwens

This article by George Papanikolaou appeared in a special issue of the Greek bi-lingual Re-Public magazine, Issue on P2P Energy, 2009

The same issue has articles by Erik Hunting and myself, as well as many others, and they are consistenly interesting.

Abstract

“Since the direct production process is the one that defines distribution, the single most important innate advantage of P2P production is that it ensures, on a long term and on a stable basis, a fairer and more equal distribution of wealth. In distributed production, argues George Papanikolaou, the largest part of the energy produced is intended for individual consumption, limiting the field of the market to exchanges of energy. A network that allows, without the mandatory intervention of a third party, the reversal of energy flows between peers, delimitates even more the sphere of the market and the official monetary circulation.”

P2P production and energy production

“In the heart of developed capitalist economies, in the sphere of production of immaterial commodities, we are becoming witnesses of a very deep transformation characterized by the emergence of a new form of production. P2P production (or just peer production) overthrows the established notion of economic thinking that humans tackle their production processes either as employees, following the orders of their superiors, or as individual producers in markets. In P2P production, the production procedures are organized usually from the bottom up, and are based on the free choice of individuals-agents of production, to cooperate -without financial reward being their basic motive- for the accomplishment of common goals or projects and with the aid of distributed networks. Since the product of their labor does not have an exchange value, but a use value for a community of users, it is characterized by the production and distribution of the product of labor outside the market sphere (a post-capitalist form of the organization of production).

If the detachment of the means of production and their accumulation by a class of owners was the necessary condition for the creation of the labour market and the development of relations of capitalist exploitation, the reunion of the means of production with individual producers is the most fundamental condition for the genesis of P2P production. Besides the access to distributed capital, the creation of a directly accessible infrastructure that allows for the voluntary and autonomous (without the need to extort the license of a commissioner) cooperation of the producers. In the sphere of immaterial production, this transformation took place mainly through the reduction of the costs of computers and the development of the internet.

The nature of the current technological infrastructure, which makes the production and distribution of energy possible, does not permit us to talk about P2P production in the same way as in the sphere of immaterial production. Technological restrictions, such as limited diminution in relation to performance, the relatively high costs for the acquisition of energy producing equipment, as well as the presence of a hierarchical distribution network of one–way energy flows from big producers to small or bigger consumers, create barriers. Although the horizon for the transgression of these barriers is starting to become visible, it is not imminent: today, it is necessary to plan and effectuate transitional and applicable solutions. Thus, with contemporary limitations, P2P energy production can be described as the organization of distributed production systems that are interconnected with a network:

- that permits energy flows from many to many, - that is based on the voluntary participation of independent individual producers, households or communities, - who ideally use renewable sources safeguarding this way a long term sustainability and ecological balance.

Distributed energy production is characterized by multiple advantages. From a strategic point of view, it ensures security (the destruction or malfunction of centralised infrastructures paralyses economical activity) but is also more effective in facing the strategic dangers posed by climate change. First, because it creates a geographically distributed backbone of production activity that deters the depopulation of the countryside, and then because it is friendlier to the environment. The distributed architecture creates multiple and geographically dispersed positions of dependent work and self–employment in comparison with the concentrative one. Individual producers and communities of producers adopt a more responsible attitude towards the environment in respect to energy consumption and saving, when they are self-producers and partner managers of their energy sources; it is to their own interest to adopt softer technologies environmentally wise, since they suffer directly by the environmental impacts of their choices.

P2P production can overcome the problem of the absence of social approval for energy investments by local societies, a result of the justified distrust with which the plans of the would-be “green energy squires” are treated. In distributed production the main bulk of energy flows is achieved in the interior of local networks by saving the energy that is lost during transmission and by reducing the needs for investments on upgrading the networks’ capacity. The interconnection of the electrical network with the internet permits the formation of smart local networks, where energy demands can be adapted to production, minimizing thus the needs for storing that ultimately reduce energy performance.

The defenders of the current architecture invoke techno-economic arguments such as the high (today) financial performance of concentrative system of electricity production. In these estimates the real cost is obscured, while the negative impacts on society, on the environment, and on future generations are not counted in and remain “external” to the capital performance. We, therefore, have to invent new indexes that will incorporate the real costs for the society and the environment. For the next years the production of energy will remain an important field of economic activity in the context of the market, so that cost issues will continue to have an incumbent influence on the transition strategies. In the medium term, the two architectures will develop coinstantaneously, repudiating and, at the same time, complementing each other.

The conditions of transition

Although the genesis of relations of P2P production in the spheres of free software and cultural production was a bottom up process and was established through legal forms embracing universal property as the Creative Commons, for example), this was made possible because the fundamental prerequisite of the existence of distributed stable capital was already accomplished, via the use of distributed computational power and of a medium (internet) through which, at a low cost, producers could self-organize. On the contrary, the current cost of technological equipment, technical skills, and the existence, in most cases, of small private properties, make P2P energy production today mainly a business for the middle class. In addition, the current architecture of the electricity network deters a similar “from the bottom up” emergence of P2P energy production. Although the slow, from the bottom up development, cannot be ruled out, it is most likely that it will be a parallel “bottom-up” and “top-down” process.

The principal technologies that will prevail in the transitional era (without exhausting the whole picture) are photovoltaic energy production, wind power, and combined heat and power (CHP). The first two use renewable sources, whereas the latter requires raw material that can be differentiated (oil, natural gas, biomass, etc.). The performance of these technologies is greatly dependent on geo-spacial conditions. Since, the access to renewable sources as well as the spatial distribution of human activity is subject to geographical differentiations, we will have to keep an open mind to any technology or mixtures of technologies that can efficiently utilise local wealth and local social conditions. For example, the cogeneration is more suited to dense urban areas where the installation of wind turbines is practically impossible and the use of photovoltaics impinges on the complexity of administrative barriers, especially when it involves the presence of multiple small properties.

The use of photovoltaics is favoured by appropriate architectural design of isolated houses in areas of long sunshine duration, whereas the wind potential is richer in island areas of the country. It may sound trivial, but it actually isn’t: policies have to allow for the biggest possible freedom of choice to the producers as to what modes of production will be used and what types of institutional form the cooperation will take, whereas central planning might be proven catastrophic. In reality, central planning will have to be limited to the formation of a loose regulatory framework of participation that will mainly aim at safeguarding ecological sustainability. The production potential of individuals and local societies will have to be set free in order to organize -using the inventiveness that characterizes collective participation- local networks of energy production and distribution.

Policy measures like subsidizing the Kwh generation/consumption are simple to implement and might be quite effective in a transition period, helping the quick return on investments; enhancing thus the necessary distribution of stable capital. We ought to be cautious, however, because these types of policies can disproportionally burden the economically weaker, disrupting in this way the necessary political and economical alliances that constitute the middle class. In the cases of medium sized installations that primarily serve the needs of a geographic community, various patterns of cooperation amongst producers can be developed. The creation of stock companies with transferable shares should not be subsidized and the property rights, which will be strictly confined to the inhabitants of the local society, must be universal and non transferable.

The ownership, the management, in a few words the architecture of the relations that the distribution network defines, form the meeting and conflict point of different social interests. It becomes, thus, the central focal point of policy making. Its public (and not necessarily state) character will have to be secured, its absolute independence from governmental and large corporations, as well as the priority of its use by small producers against big ones. Local societies must have the right to install and manage their own networks. The technological equipment of the devices interconnecting producers-consumers should have an open design and operate via open protocol standards communication. This way, the establishment of strategic monopoly control in the operations of the network by the state and by large corporations (similar to the current established standard that controls telecommunication infrastructures) will be prevented and innovation will be able to develop. At the same time, an opportunity for development will be offered to many medium–small businesses of intensive knowledges having small needs for venture capital. The collective participation of the users (producers–consumers) through the open architectures will accelerate the maturation of its services.

Open planning can be supported by the research partnerships of universities, research institutes and private companies. Their research results, at least to the extent that tax payers’ money is used, must necessarily and directly fall under the public sphere in the shape of licenses of non exclusive property. In this way, research results could be diffused directly and little businesses that lack the potential to finance research and development can also utilise them.

The current organization of the network tends towards the establishment of an obligatory intermediary, who will intermediate in all exchanges. As favourable as this deal may seam (mainly due to the temporarily high and guaranteed benefits for Renewable Sources of Energy) the intervention of an obligatory intermediary in energy flows introduces a hierarchical element that poses arbitration risks. The sale prices for small producers will finally have to shaped freely and the consumers themselves should be the direct buyers in a smart, emancipated and P2P informed energy market. Such a network must permit the direct interconnection and negotiation of many among many, a fact that requires a different topology and technology of interconnection than the one imposed today.

P2P production and the political conflicts in the era of “green development”

Technological choices are not socially neutral. The dominant public discourse tends to underestimate this aspect and displaces public dialogue in ostensibly technocratic controversies. Behind energy choices and the arguments their defenders evoke, we must detect the interweaving net of corporation interests, social classes, social groups and expressions of political power. We find ourselves in the middle of a crossroads of renegotiation of almost all of the up to date “constants” of our social and political system, under the weight of a systemic crisis and the unprecedented threat of an ecological disaster. The political powers that aspire to rule in this historical period must prove that they can face and manage, in the name of society as a whole, the problem of sustainable development. In this way, the so-called “green development” will be a common appeal of the entire political spectrum. Its focal point is the architecture of the energy–electricity production process. This is where social and class interests meet and clash and the different strategies unfold.

The first strategy is already being implemented, articulated in a clear manner in president Obama’s neo-Keynesian plan. Corporations supported by state expenditure (taxpayers money that is), will assume the task of restructuring the energy mix towards a more sustainable direction, opening a new market of enormous size, capable, as they hope, of driving the capitalist economy to an orbit of development. It is extremely interesting to observe how the, until recently, free market supporters “make a virtue of necessity”. The main bulk of liquidity will be absorbed by huge business interests that will build “green” infrastructures of energy production, whereas with the introduction of new regulatory frameworks consumers will be required to renew their domestic equipment with smart and environmentally friendly appliances. The poorer citizens will subsidize the restructuring and profitability of business groups, and then they will then obligingly consume their products. The reasonable extension of the project leads to a society divided between monopoly producers who will be accumulating economic and political power and energy serfs–consumers of energy. The USA believes that its superiority in know-how will ensure the continuation of their economic leadership. This ambitious plan attempts to salvage the existing system, conserving, at the same time, the social inequalities it reproduces. Regardless of its final outcome, one cannot write off the positive effects, on an international level: the reinforcement of productive capital against parasitic financial capital, the emergence of sustainable development on the top of international political priorities and the boost to develop new, environmentally friendly technologies. A part of these innovations will enhance the potential for low-scale production, unavoidably promoting the development of distributed production.

Since the direct production process is the one that defines distribution, the single most important innate advantage of P2P production is that it ensures, on a long term and on a stable basis, a fairer and more equal distribution of wealth. In distributed production the largest part of the energy produced is intended for individual consumption, limiting the field of the market to exchanges of energy. A network that allows, without the mandatory intervention of a third party, the reversal of energy flows between peers, delimitates even more the sphere of the market and the official monetary circulation. The quality features of the architecture of P2P production build a new economy of autonomy and solidarity that is developed within the capitalist mode of production. P2P energy production launches a triple redistribution: redistribution from the few and large to the small and many; from the city to the countryside; and from the older to the younger generations. The latter not only because younger people as natural carriers of new technologies will secure more jobs and business opportunities, but also because it raises their environmental shares.

In an unstable historical period, submerged in economic insecurity, the middle class senses the opportunity offered by p2p energy production. By investing in it, the energy safety of households in secured, jobs are created, a steady income is generated, while it is also beneficial to the environment. In any case, it is an attractive refuge for the financial reserve, at least against the alternative of a parasitic financial system, which is under the threat of collapse. Under conditions of economic crunch, the tax payers face with hostility the idea to subsidize -in the name of the environment- the creation of private investments the products of which they will have the obligation to buy afterwards. More so, when they can become producers of this commodity. This condition brings political claims for distributed access to stable capital (means of energy production) much closer than we imagine today.

These tendencies are, for the moment, organized in a fragmentary manner through civil society organizations, and civic movements that are often manifested by their resistance to the political and financial choices of organized corporate interests and of a state that operates under their influence. The inevitable progressive awareness will sharpen the political struggles giving them an increasingly positive object of contention. The success of a fast p2p transformation in energy production would require a “partner state”, as Michel Bauwens calls it, i.e. a transformed state that will move from being a patron of corporate interests to being a supporter and organizer of the networks’ productive activities.

The Greek choice

In the core of tacit transformations and political imbalance, that characterizes the contemporary historical period, lies the sharpening of the basic contrast of the capitalist structure between the social character of production and the individual ownership of the product of labour. The emergence of p2p production sharpens this contrast because it points out a positive, feasible direction of struggle that subjugates both of the traditional poles of industrial society, the Left and the Right. As long as this process remains in the sphere of the political unconscious, the powers of progress will be distributed in the whole of the political spectrum – not in a uniform manner. That is the main reason why political parties are torn by internal conflicts and maintain a fluid ideological identity, creating the impression of being a part of an era of ideological confusion. Accordingly, their policy on energy production is characterized by contradictions. For example, the Right-wing implementation of the bill on photovoltaics that foresaw the possibility of subsidies for medium and large scale investments with a secure –-guaranteed by the state— electricity market for decades, led to the known fiasco that trapped investors in the gears of the party’s corrupt administration. On the other hand, expressing the contradictions of polylectic representation, just before its political demise the Right launched favourable regulations for small scale production.

The new government invoked during the election campaign the notion of “green development”, without clarifying its concrete socio-economic content. Its practical choices will inevitably clarify soon the real character of this proclamation. If they adopt, as a strategic choice, the reinforcement of p2p production and the abatement of large entrenched interests mainly in investments of domestic production of the necessary technological equipment, it will have made an important step that will, in the medium term, bear richer and fairly distributed financial fruit. If it delivers public land and money of the state to big business groups that are preparing for the gold- bearing business of electricity production, its policy will face the risk of being crushed by the emergence of a double movement of the sinking middle class, that will, on one hand, resist these investment plans, and on the other, organise towards a positive political direction.

Whatever policy or policy mix is chosen today, p2p production is the inevitable future of energy production and the sooner societies adopt it the more empowered and prosperous they will be.”

Links for 2010-03-18 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 12:00am PDT

Infrastructure Shift: The Long-Term Challenge of Change - eComm2010: Emerging Communications Conference
This talk will share key findings from the Shift Index suggesting that corporations, including those in communications, are under growing pressure. Their performance has deteriorated for decades as a result of growing power by customers and creative talent. Long term trends suggest that business practices are fundamentally broken. Emerging communications ventures can turn challenge into opportunity by recognizing that the source of economic value is shifting from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows.
Social Sharing 2.0: The Rise of Real-Time - eComm2010: Emerging Communications Conference
Social sharing through sites like Facebook and Twitter has seen meteoric rise in the last year. Exciting as that may be, it only scratches the surface of what social sharing can mean on the Web. In this talk, Jonathan Rosenberg will explore the next phase of social sharing - real-time communications using voice and video. Through it, a whole new set of online interaction models open up for Web publishers, going well beyond the mere posting of links on walls and in tweets. Jonathan will detail several potential use cases to see how they can drive increased value for users and content providers alike.
Towards Painless, Free, Open Phone Data - eComm2010: Emerging Communications Conference
We're a decade into loosely-coupled Web service APIs, yet we all mentally translate phone numbers into locations on a daily basis. This doesn't need to happen; our tools should do it for us, and the translation should be as close to effortless as possible. I'll demo a new, open service and API for appending human- and machine-oriented data to phone numbers, then I'll consume the service in a couple novel, immediately useful ways.
European Centre for the Experience Economy » Blog Archive » Open Business models Workshop by Michel Bauwens 22nd of March 14.00-17.30
Open Business models Workshop by Michel Bauwens 22nd of March 14.00-17.30
Machinology
jussi panikka's blog about technology and society
Machinology: "Uncovering the insect logic that informs contemporary media technologies and the network society"
Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, including Jakob von Uexküll and Karl von Frisch, posthumanist philosophers, media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Parikka develops an “insect theory of media,” one that conceptualizes modern media as more than the products of individual human actors, social interests, or technological determinants. They are, rather, profoundly nonhuman phenomena that both draw on and mimic the alien life-worlds of insects.
Machinology: 6 Theses Concerning the Digital Economy and Creative Industries
6 Theses Concerning the Digital Economy and Creative Industries
Machinology: Does Software have Affects, or, What Can a Digital Body of Code Do?
Machinology: Operational Management of Life
Management of life -- in terms of processes, decisions and consequences -- is probably an emblematic part of life in post-industrial societies. Increasingly, such management does not take place only on the level individuality, but dividuality -- i.e. managing the data clouds, traces, and avataric transpositions of subjectivity in online environments. This is the context in which J. Nathan Matias' talk on operational media design made sense (among other contexts of course), and provided an apt, and exciting, example of how through media design we are able to understand wider social processes.
Satish Kumar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Satish Kumar is an Indian, currently living in England, who has been a Jain monk and a nuclear disarmament advocate, and is the current editor of Resurgence, founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies and of The Small School. His most notable accomplishment is a "peace walk" with a companion to the capitals of four of the nuclear-armed countries - Washington, London, Paris and Moscow, a trip of over 8,000 miles.[1] He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.
You are Therefore I am: A Declaration of Dependence: Amazon.co.uk: Satish Kumar: Books
Tracing his own spiritual journey, Satish Kumar - child monk, peace pilgrim, ecological activist and educator - considers the sources of inspiration which formed his understanding of the world as a network of multiple and diverse relationships. The book is in four parts. The first describes Kumar's memories of conversations with his mother, his teacher and his Guru, all of whom were deeply religious. The second part recounts his discussions with the Indian sage Vinoba Bhave, J. Krishnamurti, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King and E.F. Schumacher. These five great activitists and thinkers inspired him to engage with social, ecological and political issues. In the third part Satish narrates his travels in India, which have continued to nourish his mind and reconnect him with his roots. The fourth part brings together his world-view, which is based in relationships and the connections between all things, rather than the philosophy of dualism.
High-Speed Camera Scans Books in Seconds | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
By using a high-speed camera that shoots at 500 frames per second, lab workers Takashi Nakashima and Yoshihiro Watanabe can scan a 200-page book in under a minute. You just hold the book under the camera and flip through the pages as if shuffling a deck of cards. The camera records the images and uses processing power to turn the odd-shaped pictures into flat, rectangular pages on which regular OCR (optical character recognition) can be performed.
In favour of the four-day week | Juliette Jowit | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Most of us make choices with our money. Mine is to get paid less in return for time to walk along the river and enjoy my family
Most beautiful bookstore - Buenos Aires's Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid - Boing Boing

Teacher 2.0: distributed learning and their disruption of the old institutional models

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 6:39am PDT by Michel Bauwens

George Siemens describes how networks disrupt traditional teaching:

The old model, he writes, “works well when we can centralize both the content (curriculum) and the teacher. The model falls apart when we distribute content and extend the activities of the teacher to include multiple educator inputs and peer-driven learning. Simply: social and technological networks subvert the classroom-based role of the teacher. Networks thin classroom walls. Experts are no longer “out there” or “over there”. Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist. Instead, a student can interact directly with researchers through Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and listservs. The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage.

Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on.

What is the impact of conversation/content fragmentation?

Traditional courses provide a coherent view of a subject. This view is shaped by “learning outcomes” (or objectives). These outcomes drive the selection of content and the design of learning activities. Ideally, outcomes and content/curriculum/instruction are then aligned with the assessment. It’s all very logical: we teach what we say we are going to teach, and then we assess what we said we would teach. This cozy comfortable world of outcomes-instruction-assessment alignment exists only in education. In all other areas of life, ambiguity, uncertainty, and unkowns reign.

Fragmentation of content and conversation is about to disrupt this well-ordered view of learning. Educators and universities are beginning to realize that they no longer have the control they once (thought they) did. “

2. So what is the new role of the teacher? Influencing …

George Siemens then describes the alternative emerging role for educators:

“Given that coherence and lucidity are key to understanding our world, how do educators teach in networks? For educators, control is being replaced with influence. Instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.

The following are roles teacher play in networked learning environments:

1. Amplifying
2. Curating
3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking
4. Aggregating
5. Filtering
6. Modelling
7. Persistent presence”

This seven aspects are elaborated in the original article.

Adrian Bowyer’s Open Source 3D Printer: showing the RepRap

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 1:50am PDT by Michel Bauwens

Dr Adrian Bowyer of the RepRap project shows us around his lab at Bath University:

Links for 2010-03-17 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 12:00am PDT

YouTube - Peer To Peer: Michel Bauwens Explains P2P 7/16
explaining peer governance vs. democracy
Ο Michel Bauwens στην Ελλάδα « in_love_with_life
“Καθένας συνεισφέροντας ανάλογα με τις ικανότητες και τις επιθυμίες του, καθένας λαμβάνοντας ανάλογα με τις ανάγκες του”. Αυτός είναι ο πυρήνας της αναδυόμενης “οικονομίας των ίσων” ή αλλιώς οικονομίας p2p. Ο “θεωρητικός” της, Michel Bauwens, επισκέφθηκε τις προηγούμενες ημέρες την Ελλάδα και έδωσε μία δημόσια διάλεξη εκθέτοντας τις ιδέες του. Αυτά που είχαμε την ευκαιρία να συζητήσουμε μαζί του είναι αρκετά ενδιαφέροντα τόσο για τα κινήματά μας όσο και για την κοινωνία μας συνολικά, ιδιαίτερα στους σύγχρονους ταραγμένους καιρούς της οικονομικής κρίσης, όπου κάθε άμεσα εφαρμόσιμη διέξοδος πρέπει να συζητείται διεξοδικά και να εφαρμόζεται στην πράξη.
C L O S E R » Blog Archive » Anthropology of user-generated connections and mobilization
I have been thinking about online mobilization by social movements for quite some time now. It is clear by now that social movements (environmental, women, labor, religious, and so on) try to recruit and mobilize their constituency online by building and disseminating collective action frames and while participation in social movements back in the old days seem to have been limited to activists, today a broader group maybe involved in online mobilization. How to research this?
The Communication in Commons | Earthsharing
The Communication in Commons: Natalie Pang, Visiting Research Fellow, Nanyang Technology Co Uni (Singapore) discusses the evolution of the digital commons and what access issues we must be aware of.
Knowledge Commons - P2P Foundation
Three salient characteristics of the knowledge commons can be highlighted
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » On Bounded Rationality
I was having lunch with a colleague last week when we touched on the topic of bounded rationality. In his research, he explores the theory as it applies to the knowledge management of organisations in times of disasters. Arguing that people only make rational decisions within the boundaries they see/are a part of, knowledge management in organisations should focus on providing specific contexts for people to make decisions. I think the other aspect of bounded rationality, and the more important one to know with regards to the commons, points out that most people are only partly rational, and are in fact emotional or irrational in most of their actions (a point put forward by Herbert Simon, in Models of My life, 1991).
Links | Earthsharing
True Cost Economics | Earthsharing
The Rudd government’s review of climate change policies, chaired by Professor Ross Garnaut, has issued its interim report and will present its final report later this year. Many environmentalists welcomed the interim report because it stressed the magnitude of the climate change problem. The final report looks likely to be more problematic though. The main recommendation will be for the implementation of an emissions trading system. Creating a market for licences to pollute will be our big step forward. It is pertinent to ask what is being sustained here – our environment or free market capitalism?

Ecovillages as intentional communities

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 2:50am PDT by Michel Bauwens

Interview via the always excellent Peak TV of Diana Leafe Christian of Ecovillage News:

The Catholic view on cooperatives

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 12:20am PDT by Michel Bauwens

Part of my ongoing investigation on neotraditional economics, updated regularly here:

Joe Hargrave:

” It is possible to combine regulated markets and even command economies with private property, and social forms of ownership with free markets. It is the latter model that is best aligned with both Catholic social teaching as well as sound economics.

In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II rejected the idea that “private ownership of the means of production” should remain an “untouchable dogma” of economic life. He also rejects a mere conversion of private property into state property and the creation of a command economy. His vision of an alternative is captured in the following lines:

Merely converting the means of production into State property in the collectivist system is by no means equivalent to “socializing” that property. We can speak of socializing only when the subject character of society is ensured, that is to say, when on the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with every one else… the members of each body would be looked upon and treated as persons and encouraged to take an active part in the life of the body.

There is little said here about markets – in fact, the word “market” does not appear even once throughout the entire encyclical. Thus the “socializing” of the economy is evidently a task that can take place without excessive and ultimately harmful interference in the market. Instead, it can come about through the proliferation of organizations wherein the “subject character of society is ensured,” where “each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner” of his place of work, and where the members are “encouraged to take an active part in the life of the body.” These are the underlying principles of workers’ cooperatives.

One example of the cooperative principle in action is the Mondragón, a cluster of cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. It can’t be mere coincidence that this organization, which is the largest and most successful cooperative in the world, was founded by a Catholic priest by the name of José María Arizmendiarrieta. To me it suggests that there is something in the Catholic view of society and justice that is naturally hospitable to the idea of the workers’ cooperative.

While Pope Leo XIII may have been condemning an onerous form of state socialism in Rerum Novarum, he also argued that ownership of property should be diffused as widely as possible for just these reasons.

He wrote,

If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another. A further consequence will result in the great abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them.

What Leo recognizes as true for agriculture is also true for modern industries and services.”

Links for 2010-03-16 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 12:00am PDT

Technocalyps
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Netsukuku and the construction of a p2p cloud
Netsukuku is a p2p based new routing protocol that could - for the purpose of linking users’ computers in a p2p cloud - replace the IP numbers-based addressing and routing that is the system currently in use to link servers to users in the internet.
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Forban - simple local-link opportunistic p2p free software
a kind of p2p application for link-local and local area networks.
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The post-postmodernist era of terminal crisis and phase transition
The current rupture moment has frozen us. We are thoroughly jaded by the dreams of “progress” associated with modernity and capitalism, but unable to venture in another direction. Can we confront our situation? Can we be the ones we have been waiting for?

Financial transparency instead of fair trade certification?

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 12:09am PDT by Michel Bauwens

We are sometimes asked why we do not use fair trade certification. The answer is really simple: Certification takes the place of “consumers” having direct access to information themselves. These organizations vouch for the practices of companies enabling these companies to keep their larger business practices private and away from public scrutiny. We want to ask you to do more than simply trust a third party. Look at what we say we are doing and compare it with the information we have made readily available on our site.

Steve Herrick alerted us to this new approach to fair trade, that focuses on the transparency between peers, rather than third party certification, as practiced by the Just Coffee cooperative.

“One of the most commonly overlooked ethics of fair trade is transparency. We at JC are committed to it and in order to show this we have posted our Profit and Loss statements since 2002– our first year of business. To summarize the P&Ls, we have grown quickly and shown a slight loss or slight profit every year. Our accountant would call us a textbook “break even” company. We have shown small losses for the past two years, this year we are committed to turning that around. Thus far we are running at a slight profit for the year, so we’ll see. The important thing for us– as a worker cooperative– is to provide a decent income stream to all people who work at our co-op as well as to the growers that we work with. In this we have been fairly successful. The purpose of this exercise is to show you exactly what we are doing with our company. This is why we post our contracts with the growers we buy from as well as all of the transaction documentation for getting the coffee from the farmers to us. We will also soon have balance sheets on line as well as salary information for people working at JC.

We are sometimes asked why we do not use fair trade certification. The answer is really simple: Certification takes the place of “consumers” having direct access to information themselves. These organizations vouch for the practices of companies enabling these companies to keep their larger business practices private and away from public scrutiny. We want to ask you to do more than simply trust a third party. Look at what we say we are doing and compare it with the information we have made readily available on our site. Are we paying above FT minimum prices like we say? Are we really buying organic coffee? Are people at JC getting wealthy at the expense of farmers? It is all here for your perusal. In the end certifications can be helpful to separate out a company’s “fair” transactions from their other transactions. However, we do not do “other” types of transactions and we have nothing to hide. We want you to do your own homework. Not just with regard to your coffee, but in all of the things you buy. Look at what we do, think about it, and then judge for yourself whether it meets your standards. Don’t let other people tell you what is fair. In the end it puts another layer between you and the people that make and grow the things that you use in your daily life. And if you like what you see and the premise behind it, ask other companies to show you their books.”

The post-postmodernist era of terminal crisis and phase transition

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 10:43pm PDT by Michel Bauwens

The current rupture moment has frozen us. We are thoroughly jaded by the dreams of “progress” associated with modernity and capitalism, but unable to venture in another direction. Can we confront our situation? Can we be the ones we have been waiting for?

Adbusters, the excellent ‘culture jammers’ magazine, tries to determine the characteristics of the new era we have entered, the Post-Postmodernism Era (which I would call with the ugly term of the proto-p2p era). One of the new terms being banded around for this era is that of the Altermodern.

However, in an analysis of and an appeal to Generation Y, Douglas Haddow prefers the term of “alter-realism”:

This is our decisive moment. Either we wallow in debt as passive observers of history and pray that technology will eventually solve all our problems or we actively seize power and deal with the consequences. The only hope for the West is if we tear our current system apart piece by piece from the inside out, replacing what we destroy with viable alternatives. Starting with the renunciation of the label “Gen Y” – a hollow marketing term thought up by a balding boomer advertising executive. Instead we should refer to ourselves as the “Barbarian Generation,” because that’s what we are: the greatest threat yet to capitalist civilization.

“Now that so many Western economies are trapped in a deepening recession with no end in sight, Gen Y faces the possibility of becoming a lost generation, plagued by un- and underemployment for the whole of their adult life. We were born into Spielbergian dreams and all-you-can-eat promises of prosperity, but now we’ll be lucky if we can scrape together a scrap of the half-eaten capital pop tart.

But gradually we’re waking up to realize that our place in history is uncertain, that our destiny is no longer predetermined by perpetual growth. The greatest generation, which weathered the depression and defeated fascism, is considered exceptional because it was willing to sacrifice itself for the benefit of future generations. By this standard, the boomers are the worst generation because they have sacrificed the economies and environs of the future for their own comfort and security. But what of Gen Y?

Unlike Gen Xers, many of whom found ways to express anticapitalist sentiment through subculture, Gen Y has nowhere to run or hide. All forms of cultural rebellion have long since been appropriated and integrated into the ideology of capital. Marketing firms and advertising agencies now enjoy an unprecedented relationship with the avant-garde, so much so that they’ve become one and the same.

Gen Y only has one choice if it wants to avoid becoming a lost generation: push the boomer way of life onto an ice floe and let it die. Rather than Bourriaud’s altermodernism, we should pursue an alter-realism: dispense with the art gallery altogether and make reality our experimentation lab.

There is a revolutionary current running through the subconscious of this generation that has yet to be realized or defined. We champion piracy, instinctively believing that information should be free and open, that intellectual property law is contra-progress and that capital is not a necessary intermediary for social organization. Postcapital collaboration is our daily bread, and we hold a distinctly global worldview, void of class, race or nation. But we grew up too comfortable, played too much Nintendo, watched too much Saved by the Bell, read too much Chuck Klosterman and not enough Frantz Fanon. We naïvely drank the consumerist-credit card Kool-Aid, and now that the Final Fantasy is upon us, we’re in danger of sliding into a delusional techno-utopianism.

This is our decisive moment. Either we wallow in debt as passive observers of history and pray that technology will eventually solve all our problems or we actively seize power and deal with the consequences. While Gen Y outnumbers the boomers, we won’t hold the balance of power for another ten years, at which point the climate may be all but lost. So democracy is not an option.”

The most important essay in this special issue is probably Chris Hedges‘ essay entitled, The Zero Point of Systemic Collapse:

All resistance must realize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to them. This does not mean the end of resistance … it means very different forms of resistance must emerge.

However, as much as it captures the right tonality, his proposal for lifeboat strategies (self-sufficient communities away from the cities), does not strike me as the right one.

Links for 2010-03-14 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 1:00am PDT

Devcon2010 Synapticweb Ver5 Full
updated us on his efforts at the DevCon 2010 Conference in which he focused on a presentation he calls the Synaptic Web
Joy Tang & Jaromil: 16:34 in The Futurity Long Conversation | transmediale
a critique of futurology
The Futurity Long Conversation | transmediale
The Futurity Long Conversation, a 9-hour relay of one-to-one conversations, brings 21 leading artists, designers, theorists, journalists and media interventionists together to discuss, contextualise and explore a multiplicity of utopias, projects and technologies crucial for the ways in which we conceive the future today. It remains open which turns these dialogues will ultimately take -- just as the future itself always eludes our grasp. The processual character of the event creates a framework which allows to experience future without predicting it.
ICTlogy » ICT4D Blog » ITU, Measuring the Information Society 2010: the digital divide is not narrowing
The International Telecommunication Union has issued their yearly report on the measurement of the Information Society, e-Readiness and/or the Digital Divide: Measuring the Information Society 2010. The report provides new and up-to-date calculations of the ICT Development Index, which are then used to back the statement that "The digital divide is shrinking slightly". The problem is that, in my opinion, the digital divide is widening. How is it so?
ICTlogy » ICT4D Blog » The two divides in digital access: income and refuseniks
Two years ago, in the US (which can probably be extrapolated in most higher income countries) the reasons for not subscribing to the Internet where many, but an important one was refusal to, that is, people that just did not want to connect to the Internet. Three years later we do not speak anymore of Internet access, but of broadband access, as we believe that what increasingly matters is the broadband divide rather a “simple” access to the Internet divide.
ICTlogy » ICT4D Blog » EDem10 – eDemocracy Conference 2010: announcement, CFP and speech
taking place on May 6th and 7th, 2010, in Krems, Austria.
ICTlogy » ICT4D Blog » Bruce Bimber: Collective Action within Organizations in the Age of Digital Media
We find new ways to organize people around causes, like Immigration Reform on Facebook. The question is: under what circumstances do we need these new ways of organization, and under which do we need traditional ways of organization (i.e. around institutions and gathering in brick and mortar buildings). What does it mean to be a traditional organization? What does it mean to be a member of a traditional organization in a digital environment?
ICTlogy » ICT4D Blog » A definition of Politics 2.0
I here provide my own definition of Politics 2.0
ICTlogy » ICT4D Blog » eAsia2009 (V): The Asian telecentre movement: the role of networks and their future
Share Book Recommendations With Your Friends, Join Book Clubs, Answer Trivia
Get great book recommendations from people you know.
YouTube - TOC 2010: Scott Sigler, "Who Needs You, Big Publishing? How Authors..."
strategies for already established authors to ween from publishing companies
Two MIT classes focus on helping Haiti
In response to the earthquake in Haiti, MIT Media Lab students have developed a service that helps communities rebuild after a crisis by indexing the skills of local residents so that NGOs like the American Red Cross and Partners In Health can quickly find and employ them.
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » UrbanLabs OS - a co-created operating system for the city
Conceive, develop, test, implement and distribute components of a new operating system for the city, which improves the processes of communication, participation and consumption under open, efficient and sustainable parameters. It will be necessary to design and/or reutilise different type of interactions and of networks between technologies and people in the urban space, like this like mechanisms of visualization, distribution and improvement of each one of the components of the system. UrbanLabs OS can be composed of different autonomous projects that follow these aims, which at the same time realize the potential of the OS

Tribes, p2p and collective intelligence

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 12:11am PDT by Sepp Hasslberger

After the family unit proper, which is a special kind of group, based on the desire for sexual reproduction and the raising of a “new crop” of humans, tribes are the smallest natural groups in which we humans find safety and comfort.

Tribes were, for a long time, the predominant form of human social organization. They lost importance when, after the advent of agriculture and commerce, larger units of organization such as villages, cities and states gained ascendance.

Globalization

Today, after a long phase of development of forming ever larger groups - nations, groups of nations - we are arriving at a point where globalization, or the forming of a single group that embraces all of mankind, is becoming a real possibility. But there is a backlash, because in such large groups, the voice of individuals and their desires are completely lost. The difference between the group and the individual composing it just becomes unmanageably large.

Democracy, which may have worked well in its infancy in Greece, where assemblies of the people in city squares could discuss issues and come to a conclusion, is now showing its limitations. Even the intermediation of representatives that has led to the formation of parliaments is no longer providing any real way for an individual to be truly represented or to form an important part of the whole with a voice that counts.

The new tribes

So after all, tribes are back in vogue. Seth Godin makes the point that the phenomenon has come back with a vengeance in his book Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us and in this talk at TED:

Seth Godin - The Tribes We Lead

We are forming groups again, but this time with a difference.

In the age of the internet, we are forming tribes across all boundaries imposed by distance. Those groups we form no longer have location as a determining characteristic. Interest and culture perhaps, the ties of an extended family sometimes, whatever the uniting element, it is no longer a certain location.

And those tribes we form today are different in another respect. They are no longer exclusive. We aren’t limited to membership in one particular tribe. As a matter of fact, we routinely take part in more than just one tribe in our social interactions through the net.

Connecting tribes

Some of the members of those tribes we form have a special knack for bridging differences. They link the different tribes they belong to by translating terminology and providing an initial link of affinity that subsequently allows other members of those different tribes to directly interact. Connectors is what they have been called by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point - How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, in recognition of their special role.

Will connected tribes become the drivers for a radical renewal of democracy? Perhaps the proponents of Direct Democracy would do well to leverage the phenomenon of tribes in a wide sense, as potential participants in what the co-intelligence institute calls informed deliberation. Tom Atlee hints at this possibility in his Call to Move Beyond Public Opinion to Public Judgement when he says:

Local groups could even set up citizen deliberative programs, pilot projects or even official institutions in their own communities, and network with other community groups who are doing the same thing, to share experiences. They could lobby together for official citizen deliberative functions at local, state and national levels — and even do global experiments in cross-cultural citizen deliberation…

Above all, at this stage, we need to help issue-oriented activists and advocacy groups understand the need to build a more intelligent, wise democracy that is capable of addressing ALL issues more effectively. Otherwise, if everyone remains narrowly focused on their own issues, they’ll remain frustrated by the obstacles and reversals that are built into our dysfunctional political system.

Certainly the connections across tribes allow us to construct what has been called collective intelligence. Tribes are the neurons, the brain cells of that new intelligence that humanity is forming. It is possible now for anyone who would like to know about something to find the tribe where that knowledge resides and to ask. Bits of information knowledge and wisdom thus become available to the different parts of humanity, forming - in time - one co-intelligent entity that will transcend anything we have known so far.

It’s a p2p world!

Netsukuku and the construction of a p2p cloud

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 12:10am PDT by Sepp Hasslberger

Netsukuku is a p2p based new routing protocol that could - for the purpose of linking users’ computers in a p2p cloud - replace the IP numbers-based addressing and routing that is the system currently in use to link servers to users in the internet.

The Italian language edition of Wired Magazine featured Andrea Lo Pumo and the Sicilian hacker group that gave birth to the idea. A summary translation of the article is posted here:

Netsukuku’s fractal address system for a p2p cloud

The vision of Andrea and his friends at freaknet is a wide band wireless internet, created and controlled directly by users without the need for a telco operator. The only conditions for this to work are that the software must be up and running and the wireless objects have to be sufficiently close to each other to connect. At that point, one of those ‘bubbles’ that Andrea envisions will automatically form. A Netsukuku bubble is therefore a small, wireless and perfectly functional local version of the internet. It is sufficient for one of those nodes that form the bubble to be connected to the internet for everyone to be in communication with the larger net.

In Netsukuku there is no difference between private and public networks, because whenever the software is active, computers are automatically connected with their peers. The bubbles extend and connect with others. In theory, a network of this kind cannot be controlled or destroyed, because it is completely decentralized, anonymous and distributed. Everything is decentralized and works even with devices of moderate computing power and memory.

Stephen Downes, in response to a PEW Institute survey, said something that links in with this. The PEW survey question (actually a choice of two statements) was:

1) The hot gadgets and applications that will capture the imagination of users in 2020 are pretty evident today and will not take many of today’s savvy innovators by surprise.
2) The hot gadgets and applications that will capture the imagination of users in 2020 will often come “out of the blue” and not have been anticipated by many of today’s savviest innovators.

Stephen Downes’ reply:

“I choose to see personal web?server technology (Opera Unite, Firefox POW, etc) as a breakthrough technology, so people can put their own data into the cloud without paying Flickr or whomever. It is this sort of ‘personal technology’ I believe will characterize (what we now call) web 3.0 (and not 3D, or semantic web, etc.). So my dilemma is that, while these technologies are pretty evident today, it is not clear that the people I suspect Pew counts as “the savviest innovators” are looking at them. So I pick “out of the blue” even though (I think) I can see them coming from a mile away.” – Stephen Downes, National Research Council, Canada

Marco Fioretti then commented on this in a related email thread: What Downes says above is the same thing I explained here last year in the whole “p2p email” thread which starts here: [listcultures.org] but you should read it all. Anyway, here’s a summary:

- cloud services as offered today (including Gmail, Google Wave/buzz, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube…) are bad (engineering-wise) and the opposite of P2P/empowerment/democracy… because they (re)introduce and make even look trendy and cool centralized points of technical failure and political/economical control. See gmail outages, Google shutting down musical blogs some days ago, Berlusconi’s Mediaset demanding that YouTube removes all clips of their reality shows, Iran tracking or blocking dissidents via Twitter…

- what Downes calls “personal technology” is already here TODAY. You could either invent futuristic solutions and try to make the huge effort they need to happen asap (which is where I and M. Fawzi diverged in that thread), OR get today 99% of that, ie solve almost completely the problem described in my paragraph above if you have:

1) a few euros per month

2) some ICT skills, OR somebody creating easy interfaces to self-manage all the software pieces that ALREADY exist

3) interest in doing this, that is studying software or alternatively creating enough demand for the interfaces of #2

My take on this (also from the same email discussion):

I agree with Marco that all that’s needed to bring the future closer is to find ways to implement the technologies that are already at our disposal. Some fancy footwork (keyboarding might be required to make everything work together to form the cloud that things will be sitting on, and to connect up all those user-controlled computers to do so. There is a light (fractal-based?) address system in Netsukuku, developed by Sicilian hacker and newly graduated mathematician, Andrea Lo Pumo, that would be useful for the connection part ( [netsukuku.freaknet.org] ).

Wired Magazine’s Italian issue reported on this one, and I might do a summary translation for either the p2p blog or the ning group. (Now on line as Netsukuku’s fractal address system for a p2p cloud)

Some work needs to be done to improve and strengthen the local pipes, the connectivity. An example for this are the - for now - thinly distributed local wifi networks, things like the German freifunk, and the Roman ninux. There are many others, but for now they are separate and very experimental bubbles. Netsukuku provides a possibility of virtually piping the connection through the conventional internet, in case a node isn’t within reach of another’s wifi connection, and presumably also to bridge the long range connections between the single wifi bubbles that may be quite a distance removed from each other, making wifi inoperable for that purpose.

With rudimentary publishing possibilities provided by such programs as Opera Unite and Firefox POW as mentioned by Downes, we have a good beginning, as people can put on the cloud their own content. This may be either their own creations, but it may also be stuff they have collected and wish to re-publish.

What is not quite clear to me yet is what application can make sure that the data stays available in the cloud, i.e. what application will fill in the times the individual computer may be off line. For that purpose, data as published will have to be redundantly stored on other computers. Something similar to bittorrent comes to mind, where anyone who downloads (reads) content will store that content for some time on their own computer, and re-publish it for others. They should also have the choice to make that data part of their own permanent contribution to the cloud. This way, data can propagate and become more available, depending on how popular it is. In the case of data that isn’t very popular, there is always the (probably intermittent) availability through the original publisher.

This is the idea in broad outline.

The real meaning of currencies: flow tv

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 8:40am PDT by Michel Bauwens

Draft excerpts of a new documentary on open money by Alan Rosenblith:

Milk & Honey: Tracks In The Snow from alan rosenblith on Vimeo.

UrbanLabs OS - a co-created operating system for the city

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 3:49am PDT by chris pinchen

UrbanLabs OS - a co-created operating system for the city, based in Citilab-Cornellà

UrbanLabs OS

1 Mission
2 Opportunities
3 Challenges
4 Possible components of UrbanLabs OS
5 Skills needed
6 General process of the project
7 Platforms to use
8 ToDo list

Mission

Conceive, develop, test, implement and distribute components of a new operating system for the city, which improves the processes of communication, participation and consumption under open, efficient and sustainable parameters. It will be necessary to design and/or reutilise different type of interactions and of networks between technologies and people in the urban space, like this like mechanisms of visualization, distribution and improvement of each one of the components of the system. UrbanLabs OS can be composed of different autonomous projects that follow these aims, which at the same time realize the potential of the OS

Opportunities

At the moment thanks to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) as well new models to citizen organisation it is possible to carry out strategies of compilation and access to data of all typse, to help urban mobility, to interact with the administration, to foment the local and responsible consumption, to save energy and work on many other areas wher distributed, participative and autonomous projects are developed and/or used by groups of active citizens.

Challenges

The economic globalization and climate change and the peak of oil, as well as the progressive political disaffection experienced by a large part of the population in the developed countries, creates a scenario where in the short term it seems necessary to organize to develop or boost mechanisms and concrete processes that result in a significant improvement of the life in the cities, on one hand, and on another an anticipation of possible social, ecological and economic problems.

Possible components of UrbanLabs OS

Here you can find some of the projects or ideas presented so far in UrbanLabs, that can potentially be a component of the operating system of city. In addition to these, there is a listing of new proposals which haven’t been classified yet, and other possibilities:

Recycling of computers and related material
Development of DIY & lowcost systems of renewable energy
Creation of OpenHardware
Systems of urban mobility
Collection and visualization of data: consumption, energy, mobility
Cooperatives of consumption
Geolocalization of urban indicators
Systems to foment local consumption
Systems of collaborative decision taking
Mechanisms of co-creation
Experiences of local collective memory and identity
Systems of exchange and bank of time
Shared urban allotments
Design of sustainable infrastructures
Urban displays of community information/opinion
Systems of reaction in cases of health emergency
Development of applications for mobile devices

Skills needed

Software programming
Interaction design
Coordination and energizing of teams
Dialogue with administrations and companies
Ideas for products and processes
Manufacture of prototypes
Testing and documentation of solutions
Translation of contents
Online distribution of advances
Mediation and resolution of conflicts
Identification of sponsors
Content development

General process of the project

Detection of modules of the system (ideas, projects in course, concrete problems)
Case studies (similar initiatives, technology adopted, state of development)
Online/offline with users (dynamics of design or redesign, new targets)
Application in specific contexts (covering the needs that arise)
In parallel: distribution, discussion, experimentation, fusion…

Source: design of process sketched out in the first meeting of UrbanLabsOS

Platforms to use

Wiki & wlog: [urbanlabs.net]
Initial distribution list: [groups.google.es] (maybe migrate to specific lists in MailMan in the future
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=272070321989
Spaces of the Citilab according to needs

ToDo list

Share mission, opportunities and areas
UrbanLabs OS presentation/feedback meeting
Draw up general process of the project
Identify possible components between projects from UrbanLabs 08 and 09
Establish categories for the modules
Redo UrbanLabs homepage
Establish work processes and roles of participation (where/who)
Contact with promoters of ideas and projects in 08 and 09
Create badge for websites, blogs etc. “Component of UrbanLabs OS”
Dossier to locate sponsorship
Crowdsourcing of trends, initiatives, studies, indicators
Fix timeline of ides, development or localisation of pilot (when/which)
Prepare for UrbanLabs’10

[From UrbanLabs OS (English) - UrbanLabs]

The social impact of Playbour

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 3:24am PDT by Michel Bauwens

Pat Kane, author of the marvelous book, The Play Ethic, is interviewed here by by James Wellman of the Future Laboratory:

The interview:

“How will play become much more important in terms of work? For finding leaders? For what we do? Will it help with getting the jobless into work? Will it help the elderly keep working?

To measure the impact of the new mainstream culture of play on the rest of society, we have to be specific about what kinds of play we’re talking about. There’s two essential dimensions to play: it takes reality lightly, and it is something voluntarily entered into. So there are many opportunities for companies and employers to read play cultures wrongly. For example, it may look as if the guild loyalty, commitment to routine and skill-acquisition, and lust for success and awards that are on display in the average synthetic world (eg World of Warcraft) is the return of a new work ethic online - a ‘playbour’ that can be redirected to enterprise efficiency. In my view, that would be a bad judgement: players in these games are freely choosing their worlds, and embracing the labours within these worlds, as an attraction of the overall immersive experience. Make a game out of the day screen-job of selling insurance, and there’s a great risk of extreme alienation. Play is a step towards a semi-utopian alignment of passions and opportunities, or it’s nothing. And a generation of players is much more of a challenge to the very divisions of labour and occupations we currently toil under, than an opportunity to adapt them (via a few avatars and power-up competitions) to the exigencies of Business As Usual.

How will playbour manifest in the 2010s? Have you got any specific examples?

Partly answered above. “Playbour” - incidentally, first coined by the video-game theorist Julian Kucklich, and as a pejorative, not an aspiration - is a critical term that can be applied to any interaction, simulatory or networked experience which uses the techniques of play (absorption, immersion, repetition, recombination) to extract some kind of labour from a user which might contribute to a corporate bottom-line. A paradigm example is our interactions on Facebook through chat and games enriching their database, so that ’sentiment analysis’ can take place to better serve their advertisers. Apple’s various touch interfaces are potential playbour moments. I’m not sure how it’ll specifically develop in the 10’s, other than to become a commercial aesthetic that will smear across most screens and interfaces, but I am vaguely interested in the possibility of ‘civic playbour’. Ie, that users can be appealed to as good citizens, and asked to use their devices to help process information that clearly has social or collective use - the grind of the labour in playbour being mitigated by its ethical outcome. SETIHome or Wikipedia meets the game platform. There are early versions of this is (see The Extraordinaries [www.theextraordinaries.org] And I think public services might get smarter at gameifying their services, under the general constriction of funds over the next few years which are compelling the discourse of ‘co-production’ of services. Games can be ‘co-productions’ in that sense. But the danger is, as ever, that too much coercion and duty presses into the game experience. The voluntarism of play is always key.

Will playbour help solve of the issues of the Turbulent Teens? (Is playbour a strictly western/developed concept?)

To the first part of your question: I think there might be an opportunity for new models of citizenship for the Millenials, based on play-game offers coming from social enterprises and the state. But there is a crucial consequence involved in bringing play cultures into the heart of your infrastructure - they are sprawling, messy, generative, always pushing at bureaucratic or commercial time-money constraints. The New Economic Foundation’s recent report on the 21 hour week can be read as a plea for more ‘play-time’ in our lives - meaning more time beyond strict economic considerations to proliferate lifestyle experimentation, self-determination and processes of conviviality and creativity in our lives. ‘Playbour’ as a ludic dressing-up of the same old produce-to-consume paradigm of Western capitalism will easily be rumbled by the Multitude (see Antonio Negri and Micheal Hardt). ‘Playbour’ as the ideal reconciliation of social duty, and semiotic flexibility, in a steady-state, sustainably-aware post-carbon economy, might be an entirely new social ethic. A true ‘play ethic’, as I would say.”

More here: The incorporation of fun: play, online games and the coming rationality of organizations

Links for 2010-03-13 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 14th, 2010, 12:00am PST

P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The spirituality of networked creativity
Inteteresting commentary by John Hagel, who reviews two important books:
A general view of the conditions of women in Asian countries | Prachatai English
Today the world is looking to women for change in what remains a situation that offends human rights on a daily basis. In its work as a listener and voice to claims of human rights violations, the Asian Human Rights Commission regularly quotes statistics such as in Madhya Pradesh, India, 67% of the people live below the poverty line and 60% of the children are undernourished while 73.9% of tribal women are anaemic. In various statements and Urgent Appeals the AHRC has reported five women were buried alive in Pakistan and a girl was mauled by the dogs, in Thailand, there was impunity for the influential perpetrator of a rape and murder, and even crimes of a medieval nature; in Nepal police fail to charge those who accused a Dalit woman of witchcraft and forced her to eat human excreta. Out of the deluge of cases comes a clear pattern of abuse against society’s most vulnerable and they are kept vulnerable through lack of education, inequality and fair employment opportunities.
Progressive red shirts still betting on Thaksin | Prachatai English
Rhetoric or not, the so-called progressive elements within the red-shirt movement appear to be totally consumed by this idea and have always longed for a "historic" class struggle. Like Surachai Sae Darn, a leader of the red shirts' left-wing group Daeng Siam, said on stage at Sanam Luang late Friday night after the verdict: "They have turned Thaksin the big capitalist into Thaksin the revolutionary."
Another lèse majesté arrest in Thailand | Prachatai English
On February 5 an unidentified man was arrested for comments he posted to a webboard. His house was searched, his computer confiscated as evidence, his family frightened, and friends panicked. These are ordinary people who express opinions that the authorities consider dangerous, and the mainstream media never allows. The Internet is their only outlet.
A close look at Thai E-News: counter-media in a time of conflict. | Prachatai English
‘Thai E-News: News about Thailand that you may not have read in the news’ is the slogan of one of Thailand’s leading political websites. It has only content and no web board. It is unabashedly ‘red’, but red with a strange smell. It posts critical points of view from all circles.

The spirituality of networked creativity

Posted: March 13th, 2010, 2:13am PST by Michel Bauwens

Inteteresting commentary by John Hagel, who reviews two important books:

* Stuart Kauffman: “Reinventing the Sacred”

* Gordon Kaufman: “In the beginning . . . Creativity”

John Hagel on the Big Shift in Spirituality, towards “networked creation“:

“The Big Shift is not just about disruption and profits. It is also about identity, meaning and values that are changing in profound ways. More than ever before, if we just focus narrowly on commercial quests, we will find ourselves blindsided by much broader changes playing out on the global stage.

As we shift our identity from consumers to networked creators, we will find that creativity plays a more and more central role in our lives, especially as our personal and professional identities knit together again. More and more of us will come to realize that creativity is indeed sacred, worthy of respect and reverence. By cultivating a view of creativity as sacred, we reinforce a sense of wonder, curiosity and, most of all, humility that will help us to become even more creative. By honoring creativity and giving it a more central place in our worldview, we will find that it strengthens our perception of possibility, motivating us to create in ways that we previously never thought would be feasible. The focus on agency highlights the potential opportunity we all have to co-create the universe we live in – this is not (just) about watching others, it is us about us working together.

Even more importantly, this reinvention of the sacred represents a move from a static to a dynamic worldview. Rather than the sacred representing perfection already achieved, the sacred emerges as a process of becoming without end. This reinvention of the sacred is profoundly consistent with the broader movement of the Big Shift from a static world of knowledge stocks to a dynamic world continually re-shaped by ever evolving knowledge flows.

Embracing this new notion of the sacred will strengthen us in our quest to harness the forces of the Big Shift to create things never before imagined. Just as the Big Shift is changing our beliefs about ourselves, most certainly it will change our beliefs about the cosmos. Perhaps these new beliefs will provide a common ground where we can all come together – believers in a divine being and believers in a divine becoming – to heal the injuries that have separated us and helping all of us to more effectively achieve our potential.”

I also strongly recommend reading this other blog entry from John Hagel, in which he expertly distinguishes ‘passion’ (as in passionate peer production), from ‘obsession’. Read it here.

Towards Keiretsu publishing coops?

Posted: March 13th, 2010, 1:43am PST by Michel Bauwens

Via William Hutton:

“Cheryll Barron has written a new OII Internet Issue Brief (No. 4), entitled ‘The Keiretsu-Cooperative: a Model for post-Gutenberg Publishing’, which is available online at SSRN: [papers.ssrn.com] It is an imaginative proposal for a new business model to support publishing in the digital age.”

I asked for some reactions on the p2p research list. Below is a reaction from Alex Rollin, and in the comments field, from Sam Rose.

Alex Rollin:

“In this paper the author goes over a number of facts about the decline of what might be called ‘centralized’ publishing. Newspapers, book publishers, and magazine publishers are looking for new ways of building an maintaining audiences while turning their attention to the possibilities the internet has to offer. On the other side, in this paper, are the ‘bloggers’ and ‘twitterers’ who are publishing.

The proposed cooperative publishing effort serves to provide a centralized site where ‘bloggers’ can be published to the largest audience and receive more notoriety as well as a potential income if there is money to be had.

This paper doesn’t go into the ethics of content ownership in any meaningful way, and it also doesn’t really deal with the simple idea that large centralized sites aren’t important because Google search works really well.

The author spends a great deal of words explaining the environment and the challenges to publishers, and uses a lot of bold type to enumerate the potential gains to authors. While those gains are probably enough to invite folks into a publishing cooperative, I believe that the issues she doesn’t deal with, like content ownership, are at the very least a deciding factor for participants in some way.”

Links for 2010-03-12 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 13th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Michel Bauwens over P2P in economie en democratie - Ambtenaar 2.0 netwerk
Michel Bauwens is oprichter van de Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives. Hij schrijft en spreekt regelmatig over nieuwe vormen van organisatie (P2P, open source) en de gevolgen daarvan voor economie en bestuur. Op dinsdag 23 maart is hij in Nederland en komt hij spreken bij het ministerie van LNV. De bijeenkomst is open voor alle geïnteresseerden.
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Dwolla low cost transfer system to take on bank, credit card fees
a peer to peer payment platform which allows any user to exchange money with another user quickly, safely, at a lower cost. For now, the system is operational in the US only, and so far it covers, I believe, Iowa and California.
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Lecture by Michel Bauwens in Athens
The European Research project MIG@NET and the p2p foundation invite you to a lecture by Michel Bauwens on “P2p Networks and the Production of the Commons» on Saturday 13 March at 18.00.

The event will be held at Bios, Peiraios 84 (map)

Lecture by Michel Bauwens in Athens

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 1:53pm PST by chris pinchen

The European Research project MIG@NET and the p2p foundation invite you to a lecture by Michel Bauwens on “P2p Networks and the Production of the Commons» on Saturday 13 March at 18.00.

The event will be held at Bios, Peiraios 84 (map)

Michel Bauwens is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He is the author of a number of on-line essays, including the seminal thesis Peer to Peer and Human Evolution, and The Political Economy of Peer Production. Bauwens currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand.

The lecture will be held in English.

[From Lecture by Michel Bauwens in Athens | Re-public: re-imagining democracy – english version]

Dwolla low cost transfer system to take on bank, credit card fees

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 3:01am PST by Sepp Hasslberger

DWOLLA ( [https:]] ) bills itself as a peer to peer payment platform which allows any user to exchange money with another user quickly, safely, at a lower cost. For now, the system is operational in the US only, and so far it covers, I believe, Iowa and California.

On the system’s blog, users are encouraged to vote to extend the service to their state.

The start-up payment company is rigorously linked to US dollars, no complementary currencies and no foreign currencies. It aims at tackling what they call the $48 billion elephant in the room: the swipe fee attached to all credit cards.

The interesting feature is that transfer fees on the Dwolla system are kept to an absolute minimum: a flat 25 cents per transfer, no matter how small or large it is.

Dwolla links to your bank account in a similar way as PayPal. It is primarily a money transfer tool. There is no need to keep a positive balance in a Dwolla account and it is possible to set the account to automatically transfer all incoming money into your standard bank account.

A video explaining the basic idea of the Dwolla system is on this page.

A series of videos on the Dwolla site explains the features of the system.

Dwolla’s relatively very simple user interface is explained in this video.

It will be interesting to see how fast they manage to grow and whether web based transfers will be able to make a dent in the billion-dollar credit card business.

Banks should have made such a system long ago, but it seems complexity is their preferred method of maintaining user dependence, in addition to making money on slow transfers.

Links for 2010-03-11 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Tο ελληνικό ιστολόγιο της P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Ομιλίες του Michel Bauwens στην Αθήνα
Καθώς τα πολιτικά, οικονομικά και κοινωνικά συστήματα μεταμορφώνονται σε κατανεμημένα δίκτυα, μια νέα ανθρώπινη δυναμική αναδύεται που βασίζεται στις σχέσεις ομότιμων (peer to peer (P2P)). Πρόκειται για ένα νεό τρόπο παραγωγής, μία νεά μορφή διακυβέρνησης και μια νέα μορφή κοινής ιδιοκτησίας, διαφορετική από την ατομική ή την κρατική. Τα ομότιμα δίκτυα παράγουν αξία χρήσης μέσω της ελεύθερης συνεργασίας και διευθύνονται από την ίδια την κοινότητα των συμμετεχόντων - παραγωγών και όχι από κάποια εταιρική ιεραρχία. Την εποχή κατά την οποία ο καπιταλιστικός τρόπος παραγωγής βάζει σε κίνδυνο τη βιόσφαιρα, η εμφάνιση μιας τέτοιας εναλλακτικής προοπτικής είναι ιδιαίτερα ελκυστική και ανταποκρίνεται στις πολιτιστικές ανάγκες μεγάλων τμημάτων του πληθυσμού. Η επέκταση των P2P συνοδεύεται από μια νέα ηθική εργασίας (ηθική των “χάκερ”),

Smartmobbing a beat frequency

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 11:18pm PST by Sepp Hasslberger

Here’s an idea for a smart-mob phone app.

It occurs to me that - with the help of a simple p2p application that may run on networked hand-held devices - it would be possible to produce, in the manner of a smart mob, any desired frequency in almost limitless strength. Here’s how:

The frequency could be produced by any desired means. It could be a song, achant, a clapping of hands, a beating of sticks on some object or something more technical like claxons or machines that produce a loud clap, the possibilities here are limitless, but they do not necessarily require any other technical means than linked-up smart devices in each participant’s hands. Even thoughts or directed intentions could be smartmobbed.

The size of the mob so linked would be limited only by the technical feasibility of co-ordinating an increasingly widely dispersed group of people. There would be no difficulty making a whole city, a nation or a continent part of such an action.

At the level of each individual participant, the application would only have to show two signals for each beat: a preparatory signal and - after a small interval that remains constant - the signal for the agreed action. This would make sure that the actual action forms an exactly co-ordinated beat and produces the desired frequency effectively.

If the frequency were chosen to produce a certain effect and it were desirable that the effect should only be produced at a target group, but not at the individuals participating in the frequency-producing smart mob, the networked application could smartly choose to let individuals participate in “the beat” at a safe, lower frequency by for instance only requiring each individual to produce every second or third beat, or it could randomize the frequency for the participants without affecting the output frequency.

It would even be possible, in this way, to produce a higher frequency - say a frequency in the brain wave range that produces healing - which any single individual could not efficiently produce by themselves, but which could be produced by the co-ordinated smart mob. The application would do the co-ordinating to achieve the higher desired frequency.

The applications for something like this seem almost endless and I would think that a whole range of effects - from damaging to highly beneficial - is possible. Since the smartmobbing of frequencies requires the participation of a large number of individuals, it is hoped that the technology would be used predominantly for positive ends. In any case, better for this to be public knowledge than restricted to military and covert intelligence applications.

I am putting this in the public domain.

Developers and smart mobs may do with it as they wish.

Special issue on the microbial commons

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 6:22am PST by Alessandro Delfanti

The latest issue of the International Journal of the Commons contains a special collection of articles on the microbial commons, edited by Tom Dedeurwaerdere of the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

From the introduction: “vast amounts of plant and animal genetic material are collected and microorganisms isolated throughout the world from various habitats and sources, and exchanged in collaborative research networks for the improvement of global food security, public health and climate change mitigation” but “the relatively frictionless exchange of biological materials within a global commons, which prevailed during the early days of modern life sciences, now seems to be reversed. More and more biological materials are enclosed behind national and privatized fences, or only accessible under very restrictive license conditions”.

On the other hand, “due to the dual nature of genetic resources (as a biophysical resource used in current applications and as a living and evolving informational resource which provides basic input for the development of future applications and uses) the line between the market and non-market value of genetic resources is very difficult to draw.”

The special issue is devoted to investigating a new or stronger role of governance to design principles for building the microbial commons. The main argument of this collection of articles mainly coming from international law scholars is that commons governance is based on a variety of governance modes. Namely, “self-governance in global science communities, participatory modes of governance in international non-profit organizations, and conventional intergovernmental negotiation forums.”

In fact, specific governance problems are the biophysical characteristics of the resources: “goods that are more efficiently provided through non-market means (such as open-source collaborations and public provision). Genetic resources are complex goods with both a biophysical and an informational component.” But apart from the long tradition of international cooperation amongst culture collections, the impact of free riding is threat for the long-term sustainability of the commons. That is why the global community of scientits working on microbes needs formal intergovernmental arrangements.

But another important point is the role of self-governance and “the need to go beyond the dissociation between users and producers of knowledge within the commons.” The need to involve the user communities has led to a set of interesting institutional innovations, such as “public genome databases, open source bioinformatics software, and viral licensing by culture collections through so-called legitimate exchange.” And these institutional innovations were not established through governmental or intergovernmental legal or policy arrangements. They were the result of self-governance by the science and microbial culture-collection communities.” We need a legal infrastructure for the commons, as well as a culture rooted in sharing and openess practices.

Dedeurwaerdere concludes that “a mutually supportive relationship between various governance activities is an important feature of a successful genetic resource commons. This can be thought of as an organization with multiple layers of nested enterprises, which has been recognized as an important characteristic of large-scale and robust common pool resource systems”.

Links for 2010-03-10 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Tim Berners-Lee on mashups with open data — keimform.de
The inventor of WWW and HTML, Tim Berners-Lee, shows mashups using open data, e.g. OpenStreetMap after the earth quake in Haiti.
Coordinated Cooperation vs Subordinated Cooperation - P2P Foundation
P.R. Sarkar was a twentieth-century philosopher and spiritual teacher who was as concerned with social justice as he was with spiritual liberation. Sarkar, like others who espouse the perennial philosophy, believed that the B-cognition, or intuitional mode of knowing, is inherently synthetic. In contrast to reductionism and the rationalist approach to knowledge, which is analytical in nature, intuitional faculty of mind tends toward wholeness--its ultimate reach being a state of unitary consciousness in which individuals directly identify with the cosmic whole, rather than with a limited ego state.

Peer to peer cinema at Clip Kino

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 8:41pm PST by Michel Bauwens

“‘Clip Kino’ events are self-organised screening events of short video clips & documentaries found online. It aims to drag aspects of normalised ‘private’ activity - of viewing downloaded content on one’s own computer - into public space for screening, appreciation and debate. ‘Media-environmental awareness’ applies to include the social ecology of one’s interests, desires, and attentions in one’s peer-group and community”

Our friend Andrew Paterson has written an extensive report on a important cultural experiment involving video-sharing practices, see the full article published on SQUIDproject here and downloadable as PDF.

“The roll-down screen, the fold-up chairs, the sound-system, laptop, projector and popcorn were all prepared in the public underground passageway to coax people out of their pathway, to sit down and watch video clips they might have or never seen before. The billboard proclaiming ‘Jii Hutikka’s Clip Karavaani!’ was the beginning of ‘Clip Kino’ in Helsinki and beyond: a self-organised social event platform consisting of screening events in public spaces, featuring not full, or even short, film screenings but video clips and documentaries found online.

Since this event in late 2007, I have initiated and facilitated similar events. This activity was and is motivated by my interest in participatory and social processes as an artist-organiser, and as a pedagogue in online and digital media culture. Over the years, I maintain a belief that such a platform can explore in corporeal public space what you, I, them and we are watching or find interesting online; opening up discussions related to online media, copy and remix culture; but also in the process, create space for different groups to meet, reflect and encounter each other.

The text elaborates the development of the Clip Kino platform as it emerged from that roll-down screen onwards, including reference to the surrounding contexts which the process and events have been situated within.”
…

“My desire was also to explore the peer-to-peer theme in collaboration with young people, using metaphors from BitTorrent protocol. The slang terms for key roles in P2P file sharing—seeder and leecher—refer to the original uploader who provides the original file to ’seed’, and the downloader who ‘leeches’ the content from the network. The BitTorrent protocol is also a form of encoded cooperation: When you start downloading the file you wish for, you are also, by default in the protocol, helping others, by making the file more available for them. I hoped the workshop, exploring and sharing of video-clips between us as a group, would give us the roles of being ’seeders’ and ‘leechers’ of content—face-to-face—sharing content in presence of each other, gradually helping each other understand one another’s interests.”

Hillary Wainwright: profile of a commoner

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 9:15am PST by Michel Bauwens

Hillary Wainwright is one of the finest people I have met over the last few years, so I’m happy to share this profile, written by my friend David Bollier:

“If you want to learn the nitty-gritty about social transformation in our times — What works and what doesn’t? How exactly does market culture subvert change? What are the promising new models of democratic participation? — one of your first stops should be the London office of Hillary Wainwright, the British feminist, sometime-academic, magazine editor and activist.

Wainwright is that rare bird who combines personal reportage with political theorizing, and movement journalism with a fierce independence and insight — all in highly readable style.

Wainwright was born to a politically active family in the 1940s (her father, Richard Wainwright, was a Liberal Member of Parliament), and attended Oxford University in the late 1960s, graduating in 1970. She came of age with the women’s movement, worked with trade unionists and socialists, founded the influential independent left magazine, Red Pepper, and has written a number of acclaimed books that probe the deep dynamics of democratic change.

Wainwright has effectively been a commoner for decades, mostly in the guise of an academic sociologist and activist-journalist. But she is no ideologue or policy wonk; Wainwright prefers to nose around the messy frontiers of movement politics to learn what is animating new democratic possibilities. Theory has its place in her world, but only if firmly grounded on closely observed, empirical realities.

A classic in Wainwright’s oeuvre of political journalism and commentary is her account of the “participatory budgeting” process pioneered by the City of Porto Alegre, Brazil. In a lengthy chapter her 2004 book Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (updated and re-issued in paperback this month), Wainwright describes in great detail how Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT), under the leadership of the city’s mayor, Olivio Dutra, opened up the budgetary process to all citizens. At one point, some 40,000 people in Porto Alegre participated in plenary sessions to help decide how municipal revenues would be spent.

While Wainwright clearly applauds the participatory-budgeting experiment, she is also willing to ask the hard questions, like, Why did the participatory budgeting process decline in the years since 2004, when the Workers’ Party in Porto Alegre lost the mayorship? Why did he lose the mayorship and what does this experience tell us about the relation of political parties to particpatory democracy? How can a “non-state public sphere” such as citizen assemblies continue to be taken seriously and share power with the state?

She offers a variety of complex and subtle explanations, but aptly compares the challenge of participatory budgeting to “riding a bike over difficult terrain — you have to keep pedaling simply to stay upright and maintain your sense of direction.”

Wainwright is no armchair pundit. She expends a lot of shoe leather in studying innovations in social change. She has ventured to the smaller towns of Britain, for example, to learn how ex-squatters joined with local vicars and residents to gain control of public resources. She went to Italy and Spain to explore modest experiments in popular democracy there. She has studied how trade unionists in Norway and the city of Newcastle in the North of England successfully fought privatization and put forward their own innovative models for social services.

Although primarily an activist, Wainwright keeps a foothold in academic institutions, recognizing their potential importance in building the commons. For example, the International Center for Participatory Studies at Peace Studies and Department at Bradford University, in West Yorkshire, provided an important sounding board as Wainwright updated Reclaim the State. She also has a pantheon of academic heroes, including the sociologist C. Wright Mills, and Ralph Miliband, a Marxist political theorist and sociologist who was once her mentor.

Unlike many academics, Wainwright is not shy about plunging into the rough-and-tumble of politics and government. In 1982, she headed up the ‘popular planning unit’ part of the Economic Policy Department of the Greater London Council, a government body that managed a number of critical London-wide services, from roads, housing and public transportation to fire-fighting, emergency planning and waste disposal.

When left-wingers in the Labor Party took control of the GLC in 1982, propelling Ken Livingstone into its leadership, the GLC initiated a series of policies to push power outward to localities as much as possible. For the next five years, the GLC also made its documents and budgets highly transparent, and invited citizens to participate in the GLC through local and citywide public assemblies and other more direct forms of participation. The Council was a robust experiment in re-inventing the delivery of public services.

To Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was then pushing her savage laissez-faire agenda of privatization and deregulation, however, the GLC’s popularity was a threat.. Its new and attractive democratic model of local government and its institutional transparency and openness stood for everything she was against and showed that marketization was not the only route to reform. Ken Livingstone went out of his way to be a magnet for the idea that there was an alternatives to the Tories, by highlighting the unemployment and social strife they were causing. Prime Minister Thatcher responded by abruptly abolishing the GLC in 1985.

Thus began a new chapter for Wainwright, who returned to academia and wrote first about the Labor Party. Then after a visit to Czechoslovakia in 1989 she worked on a stirring rebuttal to the free-market right published in 1993 as the book Arguments for a New Left. Following the collapse of a political newspaper called Socialist, which had brought together environmentalists, socialists and trade unionists, Wainwright and others decided that the left-of-center needed a new publication that would be independent of any party and aligned with an eclectic array of progressive political factions — feminists, environmentalists, socialists, trade unionists, consumer advocates, and others.

The result was Red Pepper, a feisty political monthly magazine launched in 1995. Wainwright once told a reporter that she had discovered an archival copy of an Estonian magazine with the tagline, “We will throw pepper at bureaucrats and capitalists the world over!” — which inspired her to suggest the name Red Pepper. The magazine’s original tagline, “Spicing Up the Left,” has morphed to “Raising the Political Temperature” and now “Spicing Up Politics.”

Red Pepper’s editorial charter declares its commitment to “internationalism; sustainable, socially useful production; welfare not warfare; and self-determination and democracy.” It holds itself forth as “a resource for all those who imagine and work to create another world ? a world based on equality, solidarity and democracy.”

“We want to stimulate new forms of political agency,” Wainwright once told a reporter, “—first by providing a forum or cauldron of debate. But a forum with a purpose. We campaign as well as debate..”

Red Pepper has always been a volunteer-based effort with a precarious budget. But it has also attracted many big-name political and cultural figures, such as Billy Bragg, Harold Pinter, Tony Benn and David Hare and leading academics, which, at times, has given it an outsized influence in mainstream political circles.

A recent issue of the attractive, well-designed magazine, which is also available online, includes articles that take stock of the global justice movement since Seattle; the need for a shift of power and wealth from the global North to the global South in order to avert climate catastrophe; and an account of popular democracy in the barrios of Venezuela. The magazine’s website is a rare, non-aligned political forum for all the progressive voices that may not get a fair hearing in party politics, but which inspire the passions of ordinary citizens.

Wainwright now spends time raising money to try to stabilize the future finances of the magazine and attract a new generation of readers. Her other major commitment is the New Politics Project at the Transnational Institute, based in Amsterdam.

Working with a collaborator, Italian activist-researcher-writer Marco Berlinguer, Wainwright is now doing research responding to “the exhaustion of our existing institutions, including many of those on the Left.” There is ever-more curiosity about collective and social organization, she said, and a political backlash against trickle-down economics and neoliberalism. But, she adds, “There is also insufficient thinking about the principles, forms and problmes of alternative institutions.”

Wainwright and Berlinguer, an expert on networked politics, are now talking to economists, political and cultural theorists and activists in many different spheres of change, hoping to find some new answers.

One avenue that clearly intrigues them is the promise of the commons — a theme that was much in evidence at the Barcelona Free Culture Forum, which Wainwright and Berlinguer attended in November 2009. At the event, activists from diverse digital tribes readily embraced the commons as a way to describe their many collaborative communities — free software, Wikipedia, open-access publishing, music remixes and video mashups, among other forms of shared creativity.

“The commons is a good concept for a foundation of a more systematic sort. But we need to give it greater institutional form so that it’s not just rhetorical and vague. It has to catch the imagination.”

She added, “We also have to distinguish between different kinds of commons that require different kinds of institutions. Some commons involve everyone, such as money, the environment and knowledge, while other commons are more self-defined and self-selected..”

Wainwright is impressed by the “naturalness with which free culture movement treats information as a commons. It is self-evidently the right thing to do, and establishing the commons in practice is infectious and self-reinforcing.” Free culture, she points out, “has revived the aspiration for the socialization or “common-ization” of basic resources” — an aspiration that is under siege in instances of public services, health and education and natural resources like water and energy.

“The commons offers a rich but non-domineering framework of options for institutionalizing forms that are in the interests of everyone,” Wainwright said. The great value of free culture, she said, is that it serves as “a type of social imaginary” for entertaining a broader political vision.

Wainwright is quick to caution, however: “We need to think about the role of government and political institutions as framers of these commons. We have to address material institutions and the political economy of virtual institutions. How can people earn lifelihoods? How do we safeguard virtual commons?”

As we confront the implosion of the free-market fundamentalism and the crisis of legitimacy that it has spawned, and ponder the promise of the commons paradigm, we should be grateful that Wainwright is on the case: a seasoned political analyst, sociologist and frontline activist whose self-assigned role is “to explore experiments in social transformation that can go beyond existing institutions.”

Wainwright’s flinty realism is a tonic: “The institutions that are supposed to reproduce daily life and incapable of acting on behalf of the people any more,” she says, “so we need to produce our own institutional alternatives based on micro-experiments and universal values.” It is fortunate that, as new forms of commons emerge from so many quarters, there will be an astute chronicler and critic with pen in hand.”

John Robb: extending the law of asymmetric competition to the whole economy

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 8:51am PST by Michel Bauwens

Would it be possible for a community of small groups and/or a plethora of individuals within an open source economy to decisively outcompete the dominant global system? I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is an unqualified yes. An open source economy, a place where ideas are free from ownership, would gain a decisive competitive advantage over a traditional economy very quickly.

In my three laws of asymmetric competition, a standard slide in my presentation, I claim that the open source business model outflanks pure for-profit plays for a number of reasons.

John Robb applies the same idea to the whole economy, and explains why the new system of open source economies necessarily outcooperates its rivals:

Open source economies would have a rate of innovation far in excess of traditional economies due to the speed at which innovation percolates through the system. With each successive cycle, innovation upon innovation, the process accelerates until dominance is achieved.

Let’s use an extreme and idealized example of a near term future to demonstrate the point. There are one million people in the open source economy. Each person has a desktop manufacturing device and a high speed connection to everyone else in the community. A couple people develop an idea , or more specifically a design, for a simple set of devices (circuit boards + housing + wireless comms) that intelligently manages a home’s electricity usage for a savings of 25%. In the open source economy, that idea is freely shared. It is then copied, in a growing cascade, by nearly everyone that can use it. They all print the device and deploy it into their home. Within weeks/months of the idea’s release nearly all 1 million homes of the economy’s network are saving 25% off of their electricity bill for only the cost of the smattering of materials required to build it. Within a month or two of that initial release, another innovation on the innovation arrives, that shaves 35% off of the cost of the electricity. The wave continues, on and on. Each step results in full societal benefit, since the full savings for each member that installs it can be applied to other activities (all boats rise).”

Links for 2010-03-09 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Trust is the Only Currency: The Growth of Citizen Co-Ops Is a Positive Development As Corporations Fail Us in Every Way
As economic hardship threatens communities, there is one bright light in the fog -- cooperatives -- which already serve 4 in 10 Americans and are growing strong.
Trust is the Only Currency: The Social Forum and the Solidarity Economy: A Dialogue
Rejecting both the "stand pat" notion of the WSF as an open but unengaged space for dialogue, and Hugo Chavez's call for a "Fifth International" united by a "uniform [i.e., Marxist?] ideology", they offer a third option: that the WSF be used by its constituent social movements [to focus] "on building regional and global solidarity economies". The WSF would thereby avoid rigid ideologies and divisive party building, while moving beyond the stand pat's "comfortable" inaction.
Trust is the Only Currency: Proutist Economics
This chapter presents the basic economic principles required to move from a profit-based to a consumption-based economy. A consumption-based economy is premised on the belief that the opportunity to meet one’s basic needs should be guaranteed to all the members of a society.
Trust is the Only Currency: The Suppressed Ideas of Kropotkin on Evolution
Sarkar insisted that collective efforts should take the form of "coordinated cooperation," not subordinated cooperation. Subordinated cooperation occurs "where people do something individually or collectively, but keep themselves under other peoples' supervision." Coordinated cooperation occurs "between free human beings, each with equal rights and mutual respect for each other, and each working for the welfare of the other." In relation to this ideal form of social relationships, he observed that none of the present socio-economic systems are based on coordinated cooperation, but on subordinated cooperation, and that this "results in the degeneration of society's moral fabric."
The Social Forum and The Solidarity Economy: A Dialogue | Grassroots Economic Organizing
A second, and related, question is how to interpret the "building economic solidarity" strategy. Bob and Betsy explicitly reject acting "in the political sphere"; in their view, "party-building....would be divisive" and taking "state power" is not "a privileged means [of changing] the world". Despite this, they still endorse the Brazilian participatory budget process - whereby civil society groups become active stakeholders in, rather than passive spectators of, governance. And they claim that "Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution" - in which state power is most certainly central - "may be showing the way", i.e., may illustrate how to build a vibrant, oppositional, democratic replacement of capitalism.
Last week's web-censorship proposal shows that supporters of every party need ORG - Boing Boing
In the wake of last week's introduction of a LibDem pro-web-censorship amendment to the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Lords, Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock has a call to action for supporters of all the UK's political parties to join ORG and its nonpartisan effort to promote liberty and openness in the digital realm.
Stuck in Idle: Odd Jobs in the Social Factory « Generation Bubble
The advent of networked sociality offers a new way for capitalism to strike the balance. Enthusiasts for online culture often present it as though it offers a solution to the problems of atomization and the “crisis in leisure” Aronowitz describes: “the effort of people to regain their sense of craft, and liberate themselves from their complete dependence on the wage relation for personal and social meaning.” And in a sense the crisis in leisure has done just that. People no longer have the sense that they live in a world in which “friendship and community-making have become as rare talents as good cabinet-making,” as Aronowitz writes. Instead we are increasingly connected in social networks and may thereby seem to have more community in our lives than in the days of suburban angst and dyadic withdrawal into the claustrophobic nuclear family. It has opened a whole new space in which people can construct identity, replacing what was lost as the workplace became deadening.
Connectivist Learning Theory - Siemens - P2P Foundation
Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories…
Specters of Marx: Immaterial Labor and the Primitive Accumulation of Cool « Generation Bubble
Champions of communication and internet technology predict that a grand era of human emancipation is at hand. But what if all the feel-good rhetoric of creativity and play belies the fact that what awaits humankind is a drab future of unremitting work dressed up as self-indulgent pleasure?

Tribes vs. P2P

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 4:30am PST by Michel Bauwens

David Ronfeldt has a post recalling his recent interventions on tribal governance, and part of it is a recall of a recent debate we had.

David Ronfeldt:

“A set of interesting posts appeared at the P2P Foundation blog — one of my favorite blogs — in August 2009 comparing the histories of Maghrebi and Genovese traders in the Middle Ages. The posts concerned a view, raised at another blog, that the Maghrebis exhibited an early kind of P2P/network approach to organization, the Genoveses a more market-like approach — and that this might explain why the latter proved more durable and successful as traders.

To quote P2P blog author Michel Bauwens: “Ignacio de Castro has written a fine trilogy on medieval p2p-like practices, that is somehow framed as a challenge to our p2p approach. It describes the practices of jewish maghrebi traders in the Middle Ages and their international support network, and wonders why they ultimately lost against their Genovese more ‘capitalist’ competitors. Ignacio asks: could the same defeat happen to contemporary P2P practices and communities?”

Bauwens voiced his doubts, and so did I.

My point was that the Maghrebis were less an expression of the p2p/network form than of the tribal form — and that’s what explained the differing outcomes:

The Maghrebis do exhibit some P2P relationships. But it’s one thing to exhibit some relationships, quite another for those relationships to add up to a full, distinct system of thought and action. The key systems of organization that have developed across the ages so far — tribes, hierarchical institutions (like states), and markets — all contain some P2P relationships in varying respects and degrees. But we have yet to see a full-fledged, distinct P2P /network system emerge to take its place alongside those systems. That still lies ahead.

The Maghrebis appear to correspond far more to an innovative tribal system than to a P2P system. This is particularly so given the exclusionary behavior that accompanied their ethnic orientations. And it’s this tribal nature that ultimately limits them. The Genovese appear to have been less tribal. Thus, perhaps it remains an open question as to whether and how much it’s the tribal, the market, or the P2P orientations that explain the differing outcomes.

Links for 2010-03-08 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Shareable: Is Income Equality the Killer App?
The below video and the study it promotes make the bold claim that there's one thing that increases almost all social problems in developed countries - income inequality. Apparently, they have 30 years worth of research to back it up, here's a summary.
Trust is the Only Currency: Barter and Cashless Trading Summit
The International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA) announces Reaching The Stars: Uniting People & Standards In A Cashless Trading World,” a comprehensive barter and cashless trading conference to be held September 22nd — 25th 2005 at the Wyndham Palace Resort and Spa in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, USA. Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World, will deliver the keynote presentation.
Trust is the Only Currency: Local Currency Council to hold it's First Online Conference
The Local Currency Council, will host their online conference on March 6th, 2010 from 12-3pm (Pacific Standard Time). Participants from around the world are facilitating discussions intended to establish and strengthen the bonds between various community-based currency systems.
Trust is the Only Currency: The Future of Money: It’s Flexible, Frictionless and (Almost) Free
perhaps nobody is as ambitious as PayPal. In November, it further opened up its code, giving anyone with rudimentary programming skills access to the kind of technology and payment-industry experience that Ivey used to build Twitpay. The move could unleash a wave of innovation unlike any we’ve seen since self-publishing came to the Web. Two months after PayPal opened its platform, 15,000 developers had used it to create new payment services, sending $15 million through the company’s pipes. Software developer Big in Japan, whose ShopSavvy program lets people find an item’s cheapest price by scanning its barcode, used PayPal to add a “quick pay” button to its app. LiveOps, a call-center outsourcing firm, built a tool that streamlined payments to its operators, turning what had been a nightmare of invoicing and time-tracking into an automated process.
Trust is the Only Currency: Report: 1st Solidarity Economy Social Forum
The 1st Solidarity Economy Social Forum took place at Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil from 22nd to 24th January 2010, showing achievements in different aspects of this new economy and defining challenges to get over, with hundreds of participants mostly from all over Brazil and neighbouring countries
Sustainable Money | matslats.net
Following a presentation I made on the subject of money and sustainability, I thought it would be useful to note a list of the characteristics of the present dominant monetary system, and why it is unsustainable.
Trust is the Only Currency: 21 hours: Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21st century
This report sets out arguments for a much shorter working week. It proposes a radical change in what is considered ‘normal’ – down from 40 hours or more, to 21 hours. While people can choose to work longer or shorter hours, we propose that 21 hours – or its equivalent spread across the calendar year – should become the standard that is generally expected by government, employers, trade unions, employees, and everyone else.
Trust is the Only Currency: The Great Transition
what we measure ends up driving what we do. The Great Transition proposes a move beyond GDP, to start measuring the things which really produce value, for our communities, our societies and our environment. The report sets out seven main interventions.
Trust is the Only Currency: Co-opted: The Fall Of The Natural Foods Cooperative And What We Can Do About It
Sadly, the once vibrant organic and natural foods movement has been taken over by the very businesses and business models that the founders of food co-ops a generation ago set out to replace. Not helping matters is the food co-op's own desire to survive at any cost and the widespread belief that continual growth is necessary and even beneficial for small businesses. Add to the mix a conservativeness that comes from doing something a certain way for a long time and we end up with...well, go see for yourself.
Trust is the Only Currency: Montpelier, VT is Piloting a Food Currency
On the subject of food - we are in the process of piloting a food currency here in Central Vermont that is designed to help our local farmers cope with low prices and escalating costs. It will be a hybrid, where dollars, food storage units, and food credits will be used for transactions...
Trust is the Only Currency: Other Economies are Possible: Organizing toward an economy of cooperation and solidarity
The idea and practice of "solidarity economics" emerged in Latin America in the mid-1980s and blossomed in the mid to late 1990s as a convergence of at least three social trends.
Rights-based Organizing
The biggest threat posed by corporations is not the illegal stuff of headlines. The real danger is what they are empowered to do legally, every day, in every community across the country. From water withdrawal to polluting refineries, toxic sludge spreading, GMOs and more, the corporate few wield the law against our communities, endangering our health, safety and the environment.
Trust is the Only Currency: Damanhur Economics
The Damanhurian economic system blends free enterprise with solidarity and communal sharing, with the objective of creating the most advantages and wealth possible at an individual and collective level. This “richness” is expressed in houses and land, schools and services, art and gardens, forests and meeting spaces, health and wellness, as well as a sense of belonging and security, and attention for the individual, from an economic and human point of view. This quality of life rivitalizes the Damanhurian territories, and in addition to the citizens of the Federation, everyone can enjoy the services and activities that exist here.
Trust is the Only Currency: We're In This Together: Taxes and the Commons
John Gurda, a history columnist for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, paints a frightening picture of where continuing cuts in public services will lead us: “The day may come when librarians have to leave a key under the doormat at each neighborhood branch, when homicides are reported to a call center in Bangalore, when every household is expected to bury its own garbage and to keep its own fire bucket at the front door.”
Trust is the Only Currency: BRAZIL: Solidarity Economy Thriving
The Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum (FBES) emerged at the
2003 WSF which coincided with the start of the government of
leftwing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who established a
National Secretary of the Solidarity Economy (SENAES) under the
Labour Ministry.

Dominic Muren on the three pillars of Humblefacture

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 5:47pm PST by Michel Bauwens

Clear insight on the necessary preconditions for open and distributed manufacturing to become the next ecosystem for making things.

Dominic Muren:

“We need to identify new methods and research directions which will lower the systemic barriers of entry to making. I believe that three primary directions exist for this exploration.

In order to be free to make what is appropriate for them, people must have appropriate knowledge, agency, and resources. The three pillars of Humblefacture address these needs:

1) Tools for making should be high information, not high energy. By far the most common response to someone who says we need to remake manufacturing is “but we can already make anything we want”. Modern industry may be able to make anything, but only with huge, expensive, proprietary, and specialized machinery. To illustrate what I mean, let’s do a little thought experiment, using Humblefacture’s Robot ally, Makerbot (for those of you not in the know yet, Makerbot is a low cost, open source machine which can fabricate plastic parts using 3d digital files). If we made three objects — one made by Makerbot, one made by injection molding, and one made by hand carving — what would the costs be?

Injection molding is cheap, but high initial cost(giant metal molds and machinery) and relatively inflexible, design-wise. Hand carving is flexible(it takes just as much effort to carve any old shape), but expensive, and requires a high degree of skill not available to most makers. Makerbot is more expensive than molding, but cheaper than carving(because of automation and reduced need for skill), and as flexible as carving.

Most importantly, sharing the descriptions of objects is easier than either molding or hand carving (which bolsters pillar 3). Ideally, a semi-skilled Humblefactory will use high data, flexible machines like Makerbot. However, plastic extrusion is only one type of fabrication we should be exploring, especially given plastic’s dubious compatibility with pillar number 2. We need computer controlled sewing machines, computer controlled composite layup machines, and other machines we haven’t even thought of!! Any making technology can be made more useful through the use of computer numeric control.

2) Language should be a commons, therefore, the vocabulary of making must be a commons. Imagine what it would be like if you had free speech, but only within the narrow confines of a few select words and phrases. You might be allowed to say anything you wanted, but you wouldn’t be able to. Similarly, makers today suffer very few explicit restrictions on what we can or cannot make (some types of firearms and explosives are restricted). This does not mean we are able to make anything. Take the example of Thomas Thwaites, who for his graduate thesis endeavored to make a toaster from scratch. Don’t laugh, it’s not as easy as it looks. Indeed, it’s not as easy as it looks to make nearly anything, because we rely so much on far away, high energy, toxic, dangerous, or rare materials which through the magic of the global market economy become affordable at some hidden expense. Instead, Humblefactories will need to resurrect, discover, and develop materials, processes and tools which can be made we need to use tools, materials, and techniques that are available to local populations without large infrastructure development.

3) Objects should be composed of modular, interoperable components. Forget design for recycling, or disassembly. Think more about design for co-opting, hacking, reintegration, etc. Think about how object oriented programming enabled the open source software movement. Great communities like SourceForge are made possible because participants can share not only knowledge and assistance, but packets of code which can be dropped into new programs. Just as with programming, where libraries for graphics, sound, I/O, or printing allow quick generation of new programs, modular power supplies, drive trains, displays, wheels, and other parts would relieve the need for everyone to design everything. Instead, each designer creates what they are best at, and the group benefits from many exceptional components to combine however they see fit. This is perhaps the most complex of the pillars, because it requires standards to be set across many different disciplines — electronics, software, mechanisms, and power systems. But, ad-hoc groups have created pretty amazing standard-sets before (think of TCP, IP, [HTTP,] FTP, not to mention standardized bolt threads, battery sizes, and others).

By combining Flexible Fabricators, Appropriate Materials, and Shareable Modules, a humblefactory will be able to make an almost infinite variety of objects to respond to whatever new problems arise to confront it. More importantly, because the makers using these techniques are empowered to make more choices and control more material and part fabrication themselves, they will have more input on what social, toxicological, and environmental costs are reasonable for their local situation. Just as in nature when local populations evolve to better use their resources and work within their ecology, so will humblefactory-equipped communities be better able to provide for their needs from their local capacity.

Humblefacture’s mission is to work bring together as much information as possible on the progress toward making these three pillars a reality.”

Al Jazeera on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 1:15am PST by Michel Bauwens

Al Jazeera reports on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a proposed reinforcement of free speech rights based on the best available legislation in the whole world:

[www.youtube.com]

Links for 2010-03-07 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Confucius | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
Ten years ago American journalist T.R. Reid wrote a book called Confucius Lives Next Door, in which he tried to make a compelling argument for the West’s adoption of Asian ways. I read it when it first appeared and thought what many critics wrote: Are you crazy? His itemized lists of Japanese virtues read like a laundry list of American phobias: respect your elders, don’t question authority, do your work obediently, learn to live with adversity, don’t challenge the status quo. But rereading the book now, ten years after its publication, I realize Reid was on to something, however poorly timed his analysis.
Clash of Civilizations | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
Richard Bulliet is a professor of history at Columbia University who specializes in the history of Islamic society. Adbusters contributing editor Micah White talked to him about his book The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.
Philosophy at Zero Point | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
Have we reached systemic collapse and civilizational crisis?
Just Coffee's Mission | Just Coffee Cooperative
Just Coffee Cooperative is a worker-owned coffee roaster dedicated to creating and expanding a model of trade based on transparency, equality, and human dignity. We strive to build long-term relationships with small-scale coffee growers to bring you a truly incredible cup of coffee.
Lifestreams Project Home Page
Welcome to the Lifestreams project homepage. Lifestreams was invented by Eric Freeman and David Gelernter as a network-centric replacement for the desktop metaphor. That original work is detailed in the Lifestreams dissertation:
Edge: TIME TO START TAKING THE INTERNET SERIOUSLY By David Gelernter
The Internet will never create a new economy based on voluntary instead of paid work — but it can help create the best economy in history, where new markets (a free market in education, for example) change the world. Good news! — the Net will destroy the university as we know it (except for a few unusually prestigious or beautiful campuses). The net will never become a mind, but can help us change our ways of thinking and change, for the better, the spirit of the age. This moment is also dangerous: virtual universities are good but virtual nations, for example, are not. Virtual nations — whose members can live anywhere, united by the Internet — threaten to shatter mankind like glass into razor-sharp fragments that draw blood. We know what virtual nations can be like: Al Qaeda is one of the first.
Back to Mono
More likely is that we’ll see a healthy battle for the legacy of FriendFeed between Facebook, Twitter, and Google. First will be the conversational flow, still a pathetic hack in Twitter, possible in Facebook only with a fast (three month) Everyone newstream rollout with 2 way Twitter/Everyone stream sync. Never mind the Web site; this has to come from the API, complete with granular tools for filtering the flow by data type and guaranteed RSS-hubbed delivery. Facebook must invest quickly in stream splicing to make filtering useful, and Twitter Lists give them the room to build it while no such tools exist on the Twitter side.
echovar » Blog Archive » A Little Bit Louder Now…
Moving from Space to Time is another kind of transition. David Gelernter is one of the few who has spent time thinking about organization based on time and stream. Why should we have to give names to digital files or assign them to folders? Can’t things just take the initiative? Once we shift the axis of organization from Space to Time, we begin to think about how we could relate to dynamic flows of information.
Truth to Power: "This or that Hierarchy"
When discussing issues related to our actions within hierarchies, such as voting, working, being subject to laws and workplace rules, propertarian laws, and so on, our opponents inevitably bring up the concepts of “voluntary” and “consent.” In order to properly understand these issues, we must therefore consider the concepts of what is “voluntary” and what is “consent.”
Truth to Power: "Any Hierarchy that Exists"
“equality.” The word evokes two general extremes. One is the total dehumanizing equality that reduces man to a machine, famously parodied in the story Harrison Bergeron, where people are made scrupulously equal in capacities by burdening them with crippling handicapping devices or weights. The other is the absurd capitalist concept of “equality of opportunities,” meaning nothing more than “you can get what you can get” (which leads today’s “socialists,” who are in fact as capitalists as everyone else, to try to make opportunities available to everyone, instead of correcting the more fundamental problems).
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » “Intellect” as a Component of Price
In The Tom Peters Seminar, the business guru who goes by that name celebrated the fact that only some 10% of the price of his new Minolta camera resulted from materials and labor. The rest was “ephemera” and “intellect.” That means, translated from Peters-speak into English, that only a tenth of the hours we work to pay for a piece of consumer electronics go to pay the production cost; the rest go to embedded rents on artificial property rights.
Rad Geek People’s Daily 2009-01-08 – Can anybody ever consent to the State?
In their remarks on Crispin Sartwell’s Against the State, both Christopher Morris and Jan Narveson object to Sartwell’s conclusion that "existing states are conceptually incompatible with the very possibility of consent" (40, emphasis added). Specifically, they object to the strength or the sweep of the incompatibility claim: Morris thinks that this "is an exaggeration and an unnecessary one," and Narveson insists that such a strong claim of incompatibility "cannot be taken literally." Each attempts to refute the incompatibility claim, at least as originally stated, by means of counterexamples. Presumably, if you can point to at least one case where individual consent to be ruled is actually secured by an existing state, then clearly (modal logic and all that) it must not be logically impossible for existing states to secure it.
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Langdon Winner: from cyber-libertarianism to cyber-communautarianism?
One especially foggy area in cyberlibertarian rhetoric is its depiction of matters of power and distribution. Who stands to gain and who will lose in the transformations now underway? Will existing sources of injustice be reduced or amplified? Will the promised democratization benefit the populace as a whole or just those who own the latest equipment? And who gets to decide? About these questions, the cyberlibertarians show little concern.
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published "Speak out against ACTA", stating that the ACTA threatens free software by creating a culture "in which the freedom that is required to produce free software is seen as dangerous and threatening rather than creative, innovative, and exciting."[44] Specifically the FSF argues that ACTA will make it more difficult and expensive to distribute free software via file sharing and P2P technologies like BitTorrent, which are currently used to distribute large amounts of free software. The FSF also argues that ACTA will make it harder for users of free operating systems to play non-free media because DRM protected media would not be legally playable with free software
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Mobile vs. Internet for the Global South: continuing the debate
The Community Informatics mailing list has a continuing debate on whether the diffusion of mobile broadband is sufficient to replace the internet in developing countries. One of the best contributions is from Parminder Jeet Singh of IT for Change:

Bolivia’s position about life forms patentability

Posted: March 7th, 2010, 9:20pm PST by Franco Iacomella

Recently Bolivia have published it’s cmmunication to WTO’s TRIPS Council on the Review of Article 27.3(b). This article allows patenting of life forms and requires provision to be made for the protection of plant varieties

Article 27.3(b) says the following:

“Members may also exclude from patentability:
plants and animals other than micro-organisms, and essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals other than non-biological and microbiological processes. However, Members shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof. The provisions of this subparagraph shall be reviewed four years after the date of entry into force of the WTO Agreement.”

Here you can read the full review. Really interesting reading.

———————————————————————
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
IP/C/W/545

26 February 2010
(10-1102)

Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Original: English

REVIEW OF ARTICLE 27.3(B) OF TRIPS AGREEMENT

Communication from Bolivia

The following communication, dated 24 February 2010, is being circulated at
the request of the delegation of Bolivia.

_______________

I. INTRODUCTION

1. The purpose of this submission is to contribute to the work programme of
the TRIPS Council under the review of Article 27.3(b).

2. Article 27.3(b) allows Members to exclude from patentability plants and
animals, but not micro-organisms, and allows Members to exclude from
patentability essentially biological processes for the production of plants
and animals, but not non-biological or microbiological processes.
Furthermore, it also requires a legal form of protection for plant
varieties, by requiring members to provide plant variety protection either
by patents or by an effective sui generis system of protection or by any
combination thereof. It also requires that Article 27.3(b) be reviewed four
years after the entry into force of the WTO agreement.

3. The review of Article 27.3(b) is an issue within the mandate of the Doha
Work Programme under paragraph 19 of the 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration
(WT/MIN(01)/DEC/1).

4. The review is also an issue within the mandate of the Doha Work Programme
under Implementation-Related Issues and Concerns (paragraph 12 of the Doha
Ministerial Declaration). Paragraph 12 mentions the adoption of the Decision
on Implementation-Related Issues and Concerns (WT/MIN(01)/17) to address a
number of implementation problems faced by Members. It also clearly states
that the “negotiations on outstanding implementation issues shall be an
integral part of the Work Programme”.

5. The “Compilation of Outstanding Implementation Issues Raised by Members”
(JOB(01)152/Rev.1) has several items relating to the review of Article
27.3(b). The relevant tirets and paragraphs are as follows:

“Tiret 91: The period given for implementation of the provisions of Article
27.3(b) shall be five years from the date the review is completed.”

“Tiret 95: …[Article 27.3(b) to be amended (...) The amendments should
clarify and satisfactorily resolve the analytical distinctions between
biological and microbiological organisms and (...) processes that produce
living organisms should not be patentable. The amendments should ensure the
protection of innovations of indigenous and local farming communities; the
continuation of traditional farming processes including the right to use,
exchange and save seeds, and promote food security.]”

“Proposal by Least-Developed Countries 22 October 2001: The General Council
agrees that the review process should clarify that all living organisms,
including plants, animals and parts of plants and animals, including gene
sequences, and biological and other natural processes for the production of
plants, animals and their parts, shall not be granted patents.”

II. PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE OF REVIEW OF ARTICLE 27.3(B)

6. Over the years, various submissions and proposals have been made on the
review of Article 27.3(b). Some important concerns raised by the submissions
and proposals are the need to amend or clarify Article 27.3(b) to prohibit
the patenting of all life forms, the need to protect farmers’ rights,
genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional practices in
developing countries.

7. Meanwhile various developments have taken place at different national,
regional and international levels that highlight the need to conduct
concrete and expedited discussions on the Review of Article 27.3(b). In
brief some of these developments are explained.

8. First, and for us most importantly, in January 2009 the people of Bolivia
adopted a new Constitution, which states:

Article 255 paragraph II: Negotiation, signature and ratification of
treaties will be governed by the following principles:

* Respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and peasants.

* Harmony with nature, protection of biodiversity and prohibition of private
appropriation of plants, animals, micro-organisms and any living matter for
exclusive use and exploitation.

9. Another important development is the adoption of the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. Article 11.1 of the
Declaration recognizes the right of indigenous peoples “to practise and
revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to
maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of
their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts,
designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and
literature”. Article 11.2 of the Declaration requires states to “provide
redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution,
developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their
cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their
free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions
and customs”.

10. Further Article 31 of the Declaration recognises that “indigenous
peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their
cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural
expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies
and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines,
knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions,
literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing
arts” and the “right to maintain, control, protect and develop their
intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge,
and traditional cultural expressions.” Thus States have the duty to “take
effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights”.

11. Furthermore extensive patenting of life forms, misappropriation of
biological resources originating from developing countries, increasing
concentrated corporate control over the agriculture industry due to various
acquisitions, undermining of the rights of indigenous peoples, local
community and farmers including farmers being prosecuted for alleged patent
violations, proliferation of trade agreements and initiatives focused on
enforcement of intellectual property, pressures to adopt a particular model
for plant variety protection, in our view makes a strong case for an
in-depth and accelerated review of Article 27.3(b).

III. ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION

12. This communication is a brief introduction to some of the issues that
need to be addressed under the review of Article 27.3(b).

A. PATENTING OF LIFE FORMS

13. The rationale behind Article 27.3(b) is not clear. This relates to the
artificial distinction made between plants and animals (which may be
excluded) and micro-organisms (which may not be excluded); and also between
“essentially biological” processes for making plants and animals (which may
be excluded) and non-biological and microbiological processes (which may not
be excluded).

14. There is no reason why “micro-organisms”, “micro-biological processes”
and “non-biological” processes for the production of plants and animals
should be singled out for patentability, whereas members are given the
discretion to prohibit patents on plants and animals, and on essentially
biological processes.

15. Moreover, by giving Members the option whether or not to exclude the
patentability of plants and animals, Article 27.3(b) allows life forms to be
patented.

16. Consequently, since the adoption of the TRIPS Agreement, there has been
a proliferation of patents and patent applications involving micro-organisms
and other biological resources. This phenomenon has serious social, economic
and ethical implications, which are adverse especially for developing
countries.

17. Firstly, most of the patent holders and applicants are from developed
countries. Secondly, the granting of patents prevents those not having the
patents from making use of the patented materials, and this is also made up
of persons and institutions in developing countries, including indigenous
peoples. Thirdly, many of the biological resources originate in developing
countries and are obtained without their knowledge and in violation of their
laws, thus resulting in “misappropriation” and biopiracy. Fourthly, genetic
material may be inserted via vectors such as bacteria into plants and
animals, and all these living things (the genetic material, the
genetically-modified bacteria, and the genetically-modified plants and
animals) may then be patented.

18. The resulting effect is concentration of ownership of patents in a few
entities (largely based in developed countries) with detrimental effects on
competition and on social and economic situation (including food sovereignty
and livelihood of farmers) that most affects the vulnerable and poor,
including indigenous peoples in developing countries.

19. Patenting of life forms promotes an imbalance in the current
intellectual property system. The TRIPS Agreement while granting monopoly
rights to private parties does not explicitly recognise the collective
rights of indigenous peoples and local communities over their biological
resources and traditional knowledge, farmers’ rights or the sovereign rights
of States.

20. There is also an ethical dimension to the issue. The patenting of life
forms is unethical as it is against the moral and cultural norms of many
societies and indigenous peoples, of members in the WTO including that of
Bolivia.

B. PROTECTION OF PLANT VARIETIES

21. The issue of protection of plant varieties is also of concern to the
delegation of Bolivia. Prior to the TRIPS Agreement, countries had
flexibility to deal with the issue of plant varieties protection in the
manner they chose. However, TRIPS Article 27.3(b) requires protection of
plant varieties by either a patent, a sui generis system or a combination of
both. In this regard there are a number of concerns.

22. Firstly, in several developed countries, patenting of plants is already
taking place, and in the process, there is misappropriation of biological
resources, as plants and seeds originating in developing countries are being
patented, usually without the knowledge or consent of the countries of
origin. Secondly, the 21st century has seen significant corporate control
over the agriculture industry due to various mergers and acquisitions.
Thirdly, in some countries where there are patents on plants, farmers are
being prosecuted for alleged patent violations.

23. Fourthly, pressures are often placed on countries to accept a certain
definition or model for implementation of Plant Variety Protection although
there is no such requirement in Article 27.3(b). In this regard it is
important to ensure that innovations of indigenous and local farming
communities; the continuation of traditional farming practices including the
right to use, exchange, save seeds and sell their harvest is recognised and
protected. It is also equally important to recognise the right to take
measures to prevent anti-competitive and other practices, which threaten
food sovereignty in developing countries.

24. In this sense, the new Constitution of Bolivia is a step towards
providing protection to its farmers and peasants against actions and
practices, which threaten food sovereignty. Article 16.II establishes that
“the State must guarantee food security through a healthy, adequate and
sufficient alimentation for the entire population”. Consistent with this
provision, the new Constitution also states in its Article 255.I.8 that
“negotiation, signature and ratification of treaties will be governed by the
following principles: security and food sovereignty for all the people;
prohibition of importation, exportation production and marketing of
genetically modified organisms and toxic elements, which damages the health
and environment”.

C. TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

25. The process of review of Article 27.3(b) should take into account the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as noted in
Part II above and the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore.

26. One of the cornerstones of Bolivia’s new Constitution is full respect
for the culture and rights of indigenous peoples. For example Article 100 of
the Constitution recognizes “the cosmovision1, myths, oral history, dances
and cultural practices, traditional knowledge and technologies of indigenous
peoples and peasants as their heritage [and that] this heritage is part of
the expression and identity of the State”. Article 382 states that it “is
the competence and duty of the State to defend, recover and protect
biological material coming from natural resources, ancestral knowledge and
anything else that originate in the territory”

27. The indigenous peoples’ cosmovision has been a structural element in the
design of the National Plan of Development. This philosophy is reflected in
the indigenous concept of “Suma Qamana” (that can be translated as “living
well”) which supports the idea that humans should live in harmony and
equilibrium with nature. The strong connection that Bolivian indigenous
culture has with nature is the heritage of humanity and represents an
alternative to the capitalist model of development, that is in crisis and in
which development is linked to the depredation of natural resources for
short-term profit.

28. In addition, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples was incorporated into the national legislation of Bolivia in
November 2007 through Law 3760, which requires all Bolivians to comply with
the Declaration.

29. Therefore, the Plurinational State of Bolivia shall prevent the
patenting of any form of life and the granting of private monopolistic
intellectual property rights on any traditional-ancestral knowledge.

IV. CONCLUSION

30. Following the above, we conclude on the need to urgently review Article
27.3(b) to:

(a) prohibit the patenting of all life forms, including plants and animals
and parts thereof, gene sequences, micro-organisms as well as all processes
including biological, microbiological and non-biological processes for the
production of life forms and parts thereof;

(b) ensure the protection of the innovations of indigenous and local farming
communities and the continuation of the traditional farming practices
including the right to save, exchange and save seeds, and sell their
harvest;

(c) prevent anti-competitive practices which threaten food sovereignty of
people in developing countries; and

(d) to protect the rights of indigenous communities and prevent any private
monopolistic intellectual property claims over their traditional knowledge.

31. The above-mentioned issues are long outstanding and thus the delegation
of Bolivia hopes that the issues will receive immediate attention. The
delegation of Bolivia will also further elaborate on the issues highlighted
above.

__________

1 “Cosmovision” denotes a set of concepts and beliefs related to the
universe, nature and life. The concept of “Cosmovision” is similar to the
German concept of “Weltanschauung” which is a framework for generating
various dimensions of human perception and experience like knowledge,
politics, economics, religion, culture, science, ethics and the relationship
between nature and human beings. The closest translation of this word may be
the English concept of “worldview” or “comprehensive world view”.

Links for 2010-03-06 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 7th, 2010, 12:00am PST

GridRepublic | Grid Republic | BOINC Volunteer Distributed Grid Computing
GridRepublic members run a screensaver that allows their computers to work on public-interest research projects when the machines are not otherwise in use. This screensaver does not affect performance of the host computer any more than an ordinary screensaver does.
Progress Thru Processors | Facebook
The Pirate's Dilemma
a quick email interview for Dirk Koppes, a journalist at the Dutch newspaper De Pers, on the future of ebooks.
We Tell Stories
Digital fiction from Penguin
Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: Passion Versus Obsession
We are all familiar with cautionary tales of people so consumed by their passions that they lose their social standing, meaningful relationships, and—ultimately—their mind. Their professional and social lives fall apart as obsession grips their every waking hour, crowding everything else out. It’s no wonder people fear passion.
Charles Lamb - Sanity Of True Genius
SO far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius, in our modern way of speaking), has a necessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to he the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to he understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend,
Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: Shifting Identities - From Consumer to Networked Creator
identity in the 20th century increasingly took two different forms – we were company men (and as the century progressed, company women) and consumers. Since the professional identity offered little room for individual expression, we poured much of our energy into expressing individuality through our consumption – perhaps a sportier car or a fancier dress. Our status hinged on our ability to consume. That is all changing now – our identities are shifting in ways that we are only beginning to understand. All around us, we see people engaging in creation of various forms, sharing these creations and deriving satisfaction, meaning and status from these activities.
The Play Ethic: Work, Play and Boredom: abstract of paper for St.Andrews University / Ephemera conference
5-7 May 2010
Ομιλία του Michel Bauwens στην Αθήνα | Re-public : re-imagining democracy
“P2p Networks and the Production of the Commons» [Ομότιμα δίκτυα και η παραγωγή κοινών αγαθών] το Σάββατο 13 Μαρτίου στις 18.00.
Dwolla p2p payment startup aims to cut costs of money transfer - P2P Foundation
bills itself as a peer to peer payment platform
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Financial Crisis—Environmental Crisis: the link with ‘green money’
The Ecopolitics Online Journal 3, Spring/Summer 2009: Green Economics, is dedicated to the following important topic:
* Financial Crisis—Environmental Crisis: What is the Link?
folded-in: O Michel Bauwens στην Αθήνα
Το ερευνητικό πρόγραμμα MIG@NET και το Ίδρυμα p2p σας προσκαλούν στην ομιλία του Michel Bauwens με θέμα “P2p Networks and the Production of the Commons» [Ομότιμα δίκτυα και η παραγωγή κοινών αγαθών] το Σάββατο 13 Μαρτίου στις 18.00.
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The emergence of the radical homemakers movement
Below is an excerpt from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture, Left to Write Press, 2010, which was previously published in Yes magazine (CC license)

When is a commons not a true commons: boundary conditions

Posted: March 6th, 2010, 6:39am PST by Michel Bauwens

Ryan Lanham proposes a set of P2P Commons Boundary Conditions to delineate real commons from weaker versions and even counterfeits:

“I think the key boundaries are as follows:

Primary Boundaries:

1. A P2P Commons attempt to maximize free, voluntary and open sharing of assets that are engaged in the commons.

2. Assets placed in the commons are irrevocably there and cannot be removed for personal gains. Ongoing participation in a commons implies shared responsibility for its sustaining expenses. When a commons cannot be sustained, it is dissolved so as to maximize reuse and sharing of its prior assets without cost or selfish limitations.

3. P2P (though not necessarily a commons) emphasizes reduced hierarchical control and greater autonomy of the individual. The role of parties, states, churches, co-ops, corporations, shareholding owners and other collective action bodies is intentionally minimized in any form of governance of the commons.

Secondary boundaries (many may reject these in individual terms and still claim status as a P2P commons):

a. Commons work to avoid free riding by encouraging valid and useful contributions to the commons as a sustainable process.

b. P2P commons work to minimize governance interventions.

c. Commons work to provide useful and valuable tools, assets and services to participants.

d. Commons reject inputs and uses that are applied for gains that are not sustainable or that adversely impact the environment.

e. Commons apply open, fair and recognizably democratic means to govern themselves.

f. Commons are not owned by a state. They are created out of voluntary participation mechanisms where users and participants continually and freely choose to participate and the right to exit from participation and support clearly exists.

g. Commons are not a part of or party to any form of capitalism, communism, anarchism or socialism as a political ideal and may be compatible with any form of government that allows voluntary and free participation in protected sharing schemes that are self-governing within reasonably constraints (e.g. valid safety or environmental regulations).

h. P2P commons reject the idea of a single controller, a controller or governor for life, or any mode of control or ownership of the commons that positions one person or one group as a vanguard, protector, trustee or governor acting beyond reasonable terms of a few years and freely chosen by participating members. Organizers and social entrepreneurs who start commons with benign intent and who have imbued a commons with their own personal will have greater latitude under this criterion so long as their actions are reasonably consistent with the long-term goals and boundaries of commons.

i. Commons are perpetual and may not be privatized.

j. Commons work toward ideals of general public good even if the public good is at odds with most members of the commons.”

A Flickr commons of shareable p2p graphics

Posted: March 6th, 2010, 3:28am PST by Michel Bauwens

Via Neal Gorenflo of Shareable Magazine:

“I’ve started a Flickr group call Sharing Illustrated to create a pool of Creative Commons images, photos, and videos that anyone can use to talk about sharing, peer-to-peer production, alternative economy, and the commons. The idea is to empower communicators of all stripes with high quality images about sharing.

You’re invited to join the group and share your images. It’s really easy.

First, join the group here:

[www.flickr.com]

Once you’ve joined, then for any image you’d like to share, click on the “Send to Group” tab just above the image to the left. It’s self-explanatory from there.

The group is brand new with no images. I’m reaching out for your help to get the ball rolling. Once the group is seeded with images, I will promote the group through Shareable to gain momentum. And we’ll
continually promote.

There are a number of benefits to contributing: advancing your work by creating the pool for others, gaining access to the pool yourself, and increased traffic to your site from link backs.

I hope you’ll give this a try! And feel free to pass this request on to colleagues, forums, and lists that might be interested.

Thank you,

More Information:

See also the P2P Foundation Graphics section, with 105 graphics and images so far.

“Intellect” as a Component of Price

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 2:53pm PST by Kevin Carson

In The Tom Peters Seminar, the business guru who goes by that name celebrated the fact that only some 10% of the price of his new Minolta camera resulted from materials and labor. The rest was “ephemera” and “intellect.” That means, translated from Peters-speak into English, that only a tenth of the hours we work to pay for a piece of consumer electronics go to pay the production cost; the rest go to embedded rents on artificial property rights.

Now Rob Carlson reports recent information that sheds new light on this contention. He cites Joel Johnson’s inadvertent admission that only 8-10 of the people at Aliph working on Bluetooth headsets are actually necessary to carry out or coordinate the production process. The rest are involved in administration and marketing. And the total cost of manufacturing (outsourced to China) amounts 5% or less of retail price. The proprietary software of the iPhone probably adds around $30 to the price.

On the other hand, the material components of a typical smart phone cost around $170-180. So total production cost is a little over $200, and the rest of the $500-600 price is retail markup and rents on proprietary design.

The remaining unanswered question, to make sense out of all this, is the cost breakdown of the components themselves. How much of the price of the components reflects the actual cost of producing them, as opposed to rents on proprietary design? How much of it is just administrative overhead from conventional corporate modes of organization (Weberian work rules, job descriptions, mission statements, and all the rest of it)? I suspect it’s a lot, if the efficiencies hardware hackers typically achieve in reverse-engineering proprietary designs are any indication (Factor Twenty cost reductions are not unusual).

Carlson himself, in the same post, goes on to describe how Biodesic’s improvements in manufacturing processes and component designs are resulting in radical cost reductions, further blurring the boundaries between physical components and bits.

I’d be interested in any light the readers could shed on how much of the price of iPhone components results from proprietary design, administrative overhead, etc. I’m inclined to believe that conventional manufacturing is riddled with overhead costs in a manner comparable to a human body with congestive heart failure, bloated with edema from head to foot.

Is Our Monetary Structure a Systemic Cause for Financial Instability?

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 2:55am PST by Sepp Hasslberger

Here is a paper by Bernard Lietaer and others which points to some important parallels between the (monetary) economy and natural eco-systems.

The authors come to a rather surprising conclusion: Increased efficiency is not in the interests of a well working economic system. There rather should be a balance between efficiency and resiliency, and one of the characteristics that lead to increased resiliency is greater diversity. An obvious implication is that a proliferation of p2p currencies will lead to a more stable economic system. Abstract
Fundamental laws govern all complex flow systems, including natural ecosystems, economic and financial systems. Natural ecosystems are practical exemplars of sustainability: enduring, vital, adaptive. The sustainability of any complex flow system can be measured with a single metric as an emergent property of its structural diversity and interconnectivity; it requires a balance in emphasis between efficiency and resilience.
The urgent message for economics from nature is that the monoculture of national currencies, justified on the basis of market efficiency, generates structural instability in our global financial system. Economic sustainability therefore requires diversification in types of currencies, specifically through complementary currencies. - - -
Viewing economies as flow systems ties directly into money’s primary function as medium of exchange. In this view, money is to the real economy like biomass in an ecosystem: it is an essential vehicle for catalyzing processes, allocating resources, and generally allowing the exchange system to work as a synergetic whole. The connection to structure is immediately apparent. In economies, as in ecosystems and living organisms, the health of the whole depends heavily on the structure by which the catalyzing medium, in this case, money, circulates among businesses and individuals. Money must continue to circulate in sufficiency to all corners of the whole because poor circulation will strangle either the supply side or the demand side of the economy, or both…

[www.scribd.com]

Links for 2010-03-04 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Complexity Maps » About Complexity Maps
How can the city be made legible and comprehensible, understood as a complex organism and as a web of physical and social networks?
Getting the Most Out of Twitter, No Posting Necessary - NYTimes.com
"The truth is, you don’t have to post a message to get the most out of Twitter. "
Shift to a realtime culture
social media createsde territorialized forms of identification.
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » New working group on open bibliographic data!
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (9780465014910): Diane Ravitch: Books
A New Model for Online Publishing — The Keiretsu-Cooperative: An OII Issue Brief at William H. Dutton
McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models
In the "information and analysis" category, McKinsey firstly lists tracking behavior. An example is insurance companies installing location sensors in customers' cars, allowing them to base the price of policies on "how a car is driven as well as where it travels." Another example is Tesco's use of sensors to capture shoppers' profile data via membership cards. According to McKinsey, this "can help close purchases by providing additional information or offering discounts at the point of sale.""
ISU study proves conclusively that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids | www.news.iastate.edu
analyzing 130 research reports on more than 130,000 subjects worldwide, proves conclusively that exposure to violent video games makes more aggressive, less caring kids
Who needs a prof? : Macleans OnCampus
So what role is left for the teacher? To be effective, Wieman says, they must be “cognitive coaches” rather than conduits of information. Rankin believes that the change in pedagogy will happen soon. “It’s comparable to the introduction of a light switch,” he adds. “It’s just going to take a while for people to figure out what this looks like and how it works.”
Contribute to our open database of educational projects - Creative Commons
Why DRM Doesn’t Work
Or, "how to ensure your customers can't use your product and become 'criminals'". Great illustration of why "technical measures" are ridiculous and counter-productive.
Portal to Asian Internet Resources
Over 100 ideas for using Twitter in the Classroom | Emerging Internet Technologies for Education
I’ve come across a lot of articles containing examples and suggestions for using Twitter in instructional applications. I’ve combed through many of these and tried to boil down the redundancies to create a rich set of idea-laden resources. While there’s still going to be some overlap in the concepts presented in these articles, they clearly meet the goal of providing a thorough set of ideas and examples for leveraging Twitter in the educational process
What Does it Mean to Make 5 Million Maps? Platial's Legacy
Community mapping service Platial announced this week that it is turning off its servers and asking users to move their content onto the servers of other providers. Just short of 5 years old, Platial raised some venture capital, bought other small companies and made a name for itself, but in the end wasn't able to build a business. Co-founder Di Ann Eisnor defiantly says that Platial changed the world anyway. Cartography used to be an elite practice of drawing borders around resources and power. Platial helped transform it into an accessible practice for millions of people to share how they have experienced the world around them."
Zen Digital " Blog Archive " Greenshift Europe: Enabling Smart ...
“Greenshift Europe is a movement promoting ICTs to fight climate change,” says Vin Sumner, CEO of UK-based Clicks & Links, and an expert in applying information and communication technologies to address climate challenges. Sumner and Cheryl Miller, founder of ZenDigital.be, have recently joined forces behind Greenshift Europe to promote ICTs for building “smart,” sustainable communities across Europe.

Links for 2010-03-03 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 12:00am PST

The Total Growth of Open Source
In this paper, we quantitatively analyze the growth of more than 5000 active and popular open source software projects. We show that the total amount of source code as well as the total number of open source projects is growing at an exponential rate. Previous research showed linear and quadratic growth in lines of source code of individual open source projects. Our work shows that open source is expanding into new domains and applications at an exponential rate.
Global Guerrillas: OPEN SOURCE ECONOMIES
open source economies would have a rate of innovation far in excess of traditional economies due to the speed at which innovation percolates through the system. With each successive cycle, innovation upon innovation, the process accelerates until dominance is achieved.
Global Guerrillas: CHARACTERISTICS OF OPEN SOURCE WARFARE
Sean Gourley, one of the authors of "Common Ecology Defines Human Insurgency" (Nature magazine's recent cover story!!), has a very succinct list of characteristics that define open source warfare. I don't disagree with any of them. One caveat though: I would have explicitly listed stigmergy as a factor, particularly since stigmergic communication via the media was a central theme of the paper published in Nature.
Agile_Agriculture_Summit_Report
The Agile Agriculture Summit was conducted June 30 & July 1, 2009 in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The Summit brought together diverse stakeholders to design and launch projects bridging the
gap between market desire for local food products and lack of supplies; attainment of this goal
can have far‐reaching positive benefits to agricultural producers, food distributors and retailers,
and consumers.
Value based food supply chains
Case Studies | Applied Sustainability Center | Sam M. Walton College of Business | University of Arkansas
Dwolla COM
DWOLLA is a peer to peer payment platform which allows any user to exchange money with another user quickly, safely, at a lower cost.
Frequently asked questions | ROBOXchange.com
Our service was founded in 2002 and had been performed some 3 000 000 (three million!!) sussesful transactions. You can find links to our exchanger at website of every payment systems we are working with, that means that we are always in direct connection and parthership with payment systems we service. You should also check forums and simply search Internet for the references. We are member of GDCA from 2004 without single complain, largest Webmoney exchanger (see megastock.ru) and so on.
Still no trust ? Try to exchange small amounts, check speed and usability that are key features of Robox. Then sit, relax and start exchanging through us :)
In Search of Self-Governance - Rasmussen Report
Years of public opinion polls have shown a growing disconnect between the American people and the nation’s political leaders. Rasmussen’s conclusion: Americans don’t want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. They want to govern themselves. The American desire for – and attachment to – self-governance runs deep. It is one of our nation’s cherished core values and an important part of our cultural DNA. And right now, it needs to be saved.
About Tapatio | March Hare Communications Collective
Tapatio is intended to be a communications resource for the radical anti-authoritarian community. We have developed a system that can be used in mass direct action scenarios to gather tactical information, categorize that information based on type and urgency, rate the information for reliability, and then dispatch reliable information to individuals in the streets based on the criteria they request (for example, maybe the user only wants information about legal updates, or maybe they want to hear about police mobilizations and medical information).
Online gaming time volume continues growing | Ecommerce Journal
Online gaming time has been increasing considerably as proves data from The NPD Group. Thus, the average amount of hours spent each week on online gaming has climbed by 10% since the last year, while an average of 20% of all games purchased were digitally downloaded up from 19% in 2009.
Articles, Payment systems | Ecommerce Journal
Articles on Payment systems
Exhange offices | Ecommerce Journal
e-commerce exchange service
OnTheCommons.org » Commons Grow on Main Street
West Marin Commons is working to make Point
Reyes Station and neighboring towns at the edge of
the California’s Golden Gate National Seashore into
a model of commons thinking and practice, and to
foster a social ecology that complements the natural
kind in which the area is so rich. This unique community
effort to strengthen the commons in one
place is coordinated by OTC Fellow Jonathan Rowe
and Elizabeth Barnett.
OnTheCommons.org » "The institutions that are supposed to reproduce daily life are incapable of acting on behalf of the people any more -- so we need to produce our own institutional alternatives."
Wainwright is that rare bird who combines personal reportage with political theorizing, and movement journalism with a fierce independence and insight — all in highly readable style.

The Beta Generation: defaulting to the open design option

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 6:55pm PST by Michel Bauwens

Via:

Well done (8 min.) video with statements about why open design is such a natural option for young designers and creatives. It was created during the Open Design Workshop at the Betahaus as part of Social Media Week Berlin 2010.

Watch “Delivered in Beta”:

Delivered in Beta from KS12 on Vimeo.

Financial Crisis—Environmental Crisis: the link with ‘green money’

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 9:26am PST by Michel Bauwens

The Ecopolitics Online Journal 3, Spring/Summer 2009: Green Economics, is dedicated to the following important topic:

* Financial Crisis—Environmental Crisis: What is the Link?

Co-editor Molly Cato writes:

All economists are looking on in horror as they see the slow motion car crash that is befalling the global economy. But green economists have a particularly disturbing vantage point. For us, the traditional Keynesian solutions of pumping more money into the economy to stimulate further growth can only lead us further into ecological crisis, by forcing economic growth beyond the limits of what the planet can stand. In this special issue of Ecopolitics a group of like-minded economic commentators have provide a critical analysis of how we find ourselves in this mess and make some positive proposals for ways out of it. Two of the articles are drawn from contributors to the original Green New Deal proposal - Colin Hines and Ann Pettifor. The other three address the issue of money creation directly. Rupert Read reassesses money from a philosophical viewpoint, while Mary Mellor draws the links between the nature of money creation and the unsustainability of the global economy.

Her own article proposes a restructuring of the international financial system so that the problem of climate change is made central.

The emergence of the radical homemakers movement

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 8:58am PST by Michel Bauwens

Another sign of the strong cultural shift that is taking place.

Below is an excerpt from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture, Left to Write Press, 2010, which was previously published in Yes magazine (CC license)

Shannon Hayes:

“Many of us born in the mid-seventies learned from our parents and our teachers that women no longer needed to stay home; that there were professional opportunities awaiting us. In my own school experience, homemaking, like farming, gained a reputation as a vocation for the scholastically impaired. Those of us with academic promise learned that we could do whatever we put our minds to, whether it was conquering the world or saving the world. I was personally interested in saving the world. That path eventually led me to conclude that homemaking would play a major role toward achieving that goal.

My own farming background led me to pursue advanced degrees in the field of sustainable agriculture, with a powerful interest in the local food movement. By the time my Ph.D. was conferred, I was married, and I was in a state of confusion. The more I understood about the importance of small farms and the nutritional, ecological and social value of local food, the more I questioned the value of a 9 to 5 job. If my husband and I both worked and had children, it appeared that our family’s ecological impact would be considerable. We’d require two cars, professional wardrobes, convenience foods to make up for lost time in the kitchen…and we’d have to buy, rather than produce, harvest and store our own food. The economics didn’t work out, either. When we crunched the numbers, our gross incomes from two careers would have been high, but the cost of living was also considerable, especially when daycare was figured into the calculation. Abandoning the job market, we re-joined my parents on our small grassfed livestock farm, and became homemakers. For almost ten years now, we’ve been able to eat locally and organically, support local businesses, avoid big box stores, save money, and support a family of four on less than $45,000 per year.

Wondering if my family was a freaky aberration to the conventional American culture, I decided to post a notice on my webpage, looking to connect with other ecologically-minded homemakers. My fingers trembled on the keyboard as I typed the notice. What, exactly, would be the repercussions for taking a pro-homemaker stand and seeking out others? Was encouraging a Radical Homemaking movement going to unravel all the social advancements that have been made in the last forty-plus years? Women, after all, have been the homemakers since the beginning of time. Or so I thought.

Upon further investigation, I learned that the household did not become the “woman’s sphere” until the Industrial Revolution. A search for the origin of the word housewife traces it back to the thirteenth century as the feudal period was coming to an end in Europe, and the first signs of a middle class were popping up. Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan explains that Housewives were wedded to husbands, whose name came from hus, an old spelling of house, and bonded. Husbands were bonded to houses, rather than to lords. Housewives and husbands were free people, who owned their own homes and lived off their land. While there was a division of labor among the sexes in these early households, there was also an equal distribution of domestic work. Once the Industrial Revolution happened, however, things changed. Men left the household to work for wages, which were then used to purchase goods and services that they no longer were home to provide. Indeed, the men were the first to lose their domestic skills as their successive generations forgot how to butcher the family hog, how to sew leather, how to chop firewood.

As the Industrial Revolution forged on and crossed the ocean to America, men and women eventually stopped working together to provide for their household sustenance. They developed their separate spheres – man in the factory, woman in the home. The more a man worked outside the home, the more the household would have to buy in order to have the needs met. Soon the factories were able to fabricate products to supplant the housewives’ duties as well. The housewife’s primary function ultimately became chauffeur and consumer. The household was no longer a unit of production. It was a unit of consumption.

The effect on the American housewife was devastating.

Before long, the second family income was no longer an option. In the minds of many, it was a necessity. Homemaking, like eating organic foods, seemed a luxury to be enjoyed only by those wives whose husbands garnered substantial earnings, enabling them to drive their children to school rather than put them on a bus, enroll them in endless enrichment activities, oversee their educational careers, and prepare them for entry into elite colleges in order to win a leg-up in a competitive workforce. At the other extreme, homemaking was seen as the realm of the ultra-religious, where women accepted the role of Biblical “Help Meets” to their husbands. They cooked, cleaned, toiled, served and remained silent and powerless. My husband and I fell into neither category, and I suspected there were more like us.

I was right. I received hundreds of letters from rural, suburban and city folks alike. Some ascribed to specific religious faiths, others did not. As long as the home showed no signs of domination or oppression, I was interested in learning more about them. I selected twenty households from my pile, plotted them on a map across the United States, and set about visiting each of them to see what homemaking could look like when men and women shared both power and responsibility. Curious to see if Radical Homemaking was a venture suited to more than just women in married couples, I visited with single parents, stay-at-home dads, widows and divorcées. I spent time in families with and without children.

The Radical Homemakers I interviewed had chosen to make family, community, social justice and the health of the planet the governing principles of their lives. They rejected any form of labor or the expenditure of any resource that did not honor these tenets. For about five thousand years, our culture has been hostage to a form of organization by domination that fails to honor our living systems, where “he who holds the gold makes the rules.” By contrast, the Radical Homemakers are using life skills and relationships as replacements for gold, on the premise that he or she who doesn’t need the gold can change the rules. The greater one’s domestic skills, be they to plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, provide one’s own entertainment, cook and preserve a local harvest, or care for children and loved ones, the less dependent one is on the gold.

By virtue of these skills, the Radical Homemakers I interviewed were building a great bridge from our existing extractive economy, where corporate wealth has been regarded as the foundation of economic health, where mining our earth’s resources and exploiting our international neighbors has been an acceptable cost of doing business; to a life serving economy, where the goal is, in the word’s of David Korten, to generate a living for all, rather than a killing for a few; where our resources are sustained, our waters are kept clean, our air pure, and families and can lead meaningful lives. In situations where one person was still required to work out of the home in the conventional extractive economy, homemakers were able to redirect the family’s financial, social and temporal resources toward building the life serving economy. In most cases, however, the homemakers’ skills were so considerable that, while members of the household might hold jobs (more often than not they ran their own businesses), the financial needs of the family were so small that no one in the family was forced to accept any employment that did not honor the four tenets of family, community, social justice and ecological sustainability.

While all the families had some form of income that entered their lives, they were not the privileged set by any means. Most of the families I interviewed were living with a sense of abundance at about 200% of the Federal Poverty Level. That’s a little over $40,000 for a family of four, about 37% below the national median family income, and 45% below the median income for married couple families. Some lived on considerably less, few had appreciably more. Not surprisingly, those with the lowest incomes had mastered the most domestic skills, and had developed the most innovative approaches to living.”

Links for 2010-03-02 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 12:00am PST

Sapere aude! · Free Culture X Conference Workshops notes
FCX/Unconference - FreeCulture.org Wiki
hackerspaces | flux
CRE134 Hackerspaces
Switch conference coimbra portugal may 2010
We want SWiTCH to be way more than a conference. We want it to become a way for you to enlarge you vision of the world, to share your ideas, to discover other's work and to participate creating a global human-wired network of knowledge and ideas. We want SWiTCH to be an authentic two-day discovery experience.
Imaging: Open source hardware 2009
Elphel, Inc. was started in 2001 to provide high performance cameras based on free software and hardware designs.
Elphel, Inc. | Imaging solutions with Free software and open hardware
The map of Elphel cameras in the world is ONLINE now.
Spring of resistance against neoliberal education
On March 11th and 12th, ministers and
diplomatic delegations from 46 countries
will meet at a summit in Vienna and
Budapest to celebrate the 10th anniversary
of the so called BolognaProcess,
which
was used mainly to make European
universities more repressive places with
less freedom for students and more
chances to select them, to build elites with
privileges and masses who may prove
themselves by showing their obedience
first to strict curricula, mass lectures and
multiple choice tests, and then to an
economy that has a need not for free and
autonomously thinking people but for
laborers of knowledge.
the yolk: A Blog Theory: Zizek on post-politics
In post-politics, the conflict of global ideological visions embodied in different parties which compete for power is replaced by the collaboration of enlightened technocrats (economists, public opinion specialists...) and liberal multiculturalists; via the process of negotiation of interests, a compromise is reached in the guise of a more or less universal consensus. Post-politics thus emphasizes the need to leave old ideological divisions behind and confront new issues, armed with the necessary expert knowledge and free deliberation that takes people's concrete needs and demands into account.
Confining the Unbound Society
aims to stimulate interdisciplinary dialogue about restrictions within our ostensibly fluid society. We contend that although neoliberalism, globalization, and postmodernism claim to free persons, capital, and thought, these trends also reposition new boundaries and create novel forms of confinement. In turn, these changes encourage citizens and scholars to invent creative ways to negotiate these new restraints. We are interested in exploring both new forms of confinement as well as new possibilities for resistant practices. This conference seeks to address the tension between the freedoms and restrictions in contemporary society in terms of four key concepts: the body, spaces, social relations, and social research. We invite applied, policy-related, or theoretical papers addressing any of these areas.
Friend2Friend Wiki
This wiki is about the decentralised XML-based networking system known as Friend2Friend. It complements the machine-created F2F documentation at [friend2friend.net] Its main purpose is to help developers who are building the F2F platform, and its secondary purpose is to help coders who are developing software for F2F.
Friend2Friend | Get Friend2Friend at SourceForge.net
F2F is an XSLT scriptable strong-encrypted XML-VM with an F2F communications framework. Installed on a webserver, an F2F servers make up a decentralised network for securely sharing of XML data and requests with friends, friends of friends, foafoaf etc.
I Don't Like The iPad Because... - John Battelle's Searchblog
The web changed all that and promised that economics in the media business would be driven by content and intent: the best content will win, driven by the declared intent of consumers who find it and share it. Search+Social was the biggest wave to hit media since the printing press. And the open technology to make better and better experiences has been on a ten year tear: blogging software, Flash, Ajax, HTML 5, Android, and more and more coming.But the iPad, just like the iPhone, is designed for vertical integration and distribution lock in. Apple is building its own distribution channel, just as it did with iTunes, and media companies are falling over themselves to make an app for that.

Netsukuku: Fractal address system for a p2p cloud

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 6:56am PST by Sepp Hasslberger

The February 2010 issue of Wired Magazine in Italian runs a cover story on Netsukuku, a fractal address system for a cloud of user maintained, linked computers forming a p2p network.

The Netsukuku project is based on the idea of exploiting the potential of WiFi connectivity, linking the PCs of wireless communities to act as routers, forming a network that could become as large or larger than the current Internet.

Netsukuku is an ad-hoc network forming software built around an address system designed to handle massive numbers of nodes while requiring minimal CPU and memory resources. It could be used to build a world-wide distributed, fault-tolerant, anonymous, and censorship-resistant network, fully independent of the Internet. Netsukuku does not rely upon backbones, routers or internet service providers nor any other centralized system, although it may take advantage of existing systems of this nature to augment unity and connectivity of the existing Netsukuku network.

New Netsukuku users need do little more than install an antenna within range of other local nodes and run the Netsukuku software on their computer to link themselves into the network. The number of interconnected nodes can grow almost infinitely. If a node is outside the range of another node’s WiFi signal, a “virtual tunnel” over the normal Internet connection will supplant the missing radio link.

(More in the Netsukuku FAQ)

Here is a summary, freely adapted from the Italian Wired article:

The originator of Netsukuku is Andrea Lo Pumo, 21 years old and just out of Catania University with a degree in mathematics. Andrea is a long time member of freaknet, an association of proud hackers and computer geeks and the name, Netsukuku, is a heavily ‘nipponized’ version of the term ‘network’ - adopted for its uniqueness and because the boys at freaknet are fans of all things Japanese.

“Freaknet is a meeting point for developers and technology enthusiasts like myself,” says Andrea. “We discuss file sharing, peer to peer, digitalization of information and the use of wireless networks. Some years ago we realized that the broad availability of wireless and similar technologies creates millions of miniature wireless broad band networks which could be seen as ‘connectivity bubbles’ that essentially are active all around us. During one of our discussions, an idea was born: Would it be possible, using p2p and wireless technologies, to gain independence from internet providers and make free and open net connectivity for all a reality? Could a local anonymous network be built that would connect all of our wireless devices and that could function even in the absence of a connection with the ‘greater internet’?”

What would be needed, they thought, would be a user-generated p2p network which did not need central servers or routers to direct traffic. The network would be distributed, user controlled and self-configuring but it would support and could be connected to the ‘greater internet’ using the same protocols and services. In that way, every one of those bubbles could be an independent and perfectly functional network. The problem was that current addressing technology did not allow network nodes to be connected to all the others without running into limitations of memory and processing power.

New mathematical tools were needed and so Andrea went on to study mathematics to acquire the knowledge necessary for developing a new protocol. Using chaos theory and fractals, Netsukuku, occupying only kilobytes of memory, will eventually allow every device to function as a network node. The software will run on Linux computers and is to be issued under a Gnu/Gpl license. In theory, the protocol will be able to support up to a billion nodes using a very light mapping algorithm, but it has not been tested on a large scale yet. As a matter of fact, there is no functioning release so far, but a first Python implementation seems to be just around the corner.

Netsukuku’s address system is called Andna (A Netsukuku domain name architecture). Others, perhaps a bit maliciously, re-named it Abnormal Netsukuku Domain Name Anarchy.

“In practice, my algorithm sees the network as a fractal, allowing almost infinite compression,” explains Andrea. “Addressing of data packages follows a hierarchic net topology, which is different from the flat topology the current address system uses. With this architecture, Netsukuku can form a perfectly functioning local version of the internet among a number of wireless nodes. Data packets are efficiently routed using a special method Andrea invented called Qspn or Quantum shortest path Netsukuku.”

The vision of Andrea and his friends at freaknet is a wide band wireless internet, created and controlled directly by users without the need for a telco operator. The only conditions for this to work are that the software must be up and running and the wireless objects have to be sufficiently close to each other to connect. At that point, one of those ‘bubbles’ that Andrea envisions will automatically form. A Netsukuku bubble is therefore a small, wireless and perfectly functional local version of the internet. It is sufficient for one of those nodes that form the bubble to be connected to the internet for everyone to be in communication with the larger net.

In Netsukuku there is no difference between private and public networks, because whenever the software is active, computers are automatically connected with their peers. The bubbles extend and connect with others. In theory, a network of this kind cannot be controlled or destroyed, because it is completely decentralized, anonymous and distributed. Everything is decentralized and works even with devices of moderate computing power and memory. If widely implemented, Netsukuku could help bridge the digital divide, bringing the internet to many who can ill afford expensive broadband connections.

Telecom Italy, asked to finance Netsukuku as a start-up, has declined to do so because the project is still in the prototype stage, but Andrea Lo Pumo has been awarded a scholarship, financed by Telecom, to study Advanced Computer Science at Cambridge University.

Links visited to compile this article:

Netsukuku FAQ [www.netsukuku.org]

Wired article (in Italian) http://www.wired.it/magazine/archivio/2010/02/storie/ntskk—codice-segreto-rivoluzione.aspx

Freaknet [www.freaknet.org]

Andna [www.javvin.com]

Links for 2010-03-01 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 12:00am PST

Illegal Downloads 150x More Profitable Than Legal Sales | TorrentFreak
Unlike most people might think, piracy is not necessarily a bad thing for copyright holders. In fact, German pirate-tracking outfit DigiRights Solutions shows that copyright holders can earn 150 times more money from illicit downloads than from iTunes and other legal stores.
Cyber Warriors - Magazine - The Atlantic
When will China emerge as a military threat to the U.S.? In most respects the answer is: not anytime soon—China doesn’t even contemplate a time it might challenge America directly. But one significant threat already exists: cyberwar. Attacks—not just from China but from Russia and elsewhere—on America’s electronic networks cost millions of dollars and could in the extreme cause the collapse of financial life, the halt of most manufacturing systems, and the evaporation of all the data and knowledge stored on the Internet.
Next Generation Connectivity
an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world and that this project would help inform the FCC's efforts in developing the National Broadband Plan. The Berkman Center's Final Report was submitted to the FCC on February 16, 2010.
Michael Geist - Major ACTA Leak: Internet and Civil Enforcement Chapters With Country Positions
On the heels of the leak of various country positions on ACTA transparency, today an even bigger leak has hit the Internet. A new European Union document prepared several weeks ago canvasses the Internet and Civil Enforcement chapters, disclosing in complete detail the proposals from the U.S., the counter-proposals from the EU, Japan, and other ACTA participants. The 44-page document also highlights specific concerns of individual countries on a wide range of issues including ISP liability, anti-circumvention rules, and the scope of the treaty. This is probably the most significant leak to-date since it goes even beyond the transparency debate by including specific country positions and proposals.
March Issue of OSBR Available
The March issue of the OSBR is now available in PDF and HTML formats. The editorial theme this month is "Mobile" and the authors include:
Flattr: Pirate Bay Gone Legit Or An Attempt To Flattr The Courts?
if a user puts in €5 a month and ‘flattr’s 30 sites in one month, 15 cents goes to each site (after 10% commission). Sure that can add up but niche artists certainly won’t be getting any hefty pay days. Most likely it will conjure up a long-tail syndrome; popular sites that many visit will snowball and get the largest slice of cake (like in the site’s video example) and a few fluke indie/viral hits will make a profit. This hardly means niche bands and sites will get their due, and isn’t that who we’re really rooting for?
Kuhn -free software in the mobile space
Based on this analysis, it appears that the HTC Dream currently gives the most software freedom based on the Android/Linux platform. It is unlikely that Google wants anything besides their applications to be proprietary. While Google has been unresponsive when asked why these hardware interface libraries are proprietary, it is likely that HTC, the hardware maker with whom Google contracted, insisted that these components remain proprietary. While no detailed analysis of the Nexus One is yet available, it's likely similar to the HTC Dream.
Open Collaboration within Corporations Using Software Forges
Over the past 10 years, open source software has become an important cornerstone of the software industry. Commercial users have adopted it in standalone applications, and software vendors are embedding it in products. Surprisingly then, from a commercial perspective, open source software is developed differently from how corporations typically develop software. Research into how open source works has been growing steadily. One driver of such research is the desire to understand how commercial software development could benefit from open source best practices. Do some of these practices also work within corporations? If so, what are they, and how can we transfer them?
OSS Watch - Governance models
A governance model describes the roles that project participants can take on and the process for decision making within the project. In addition, it describes the ground rules for participation in the project and the processes for communicating and sharing within the project team and community. It is the governance model that prevents an open source project from descending into chaos. This document explains why a governance model is necessary, considers some of the challenges associated with adopting a governance model in open source projects, and looks at the key areas such a model needs to cover. It also describes how to encapsulate your governance model in a governance document.
Governance | Ubuntu
The Ubuntu community includes several structures to help it function effectively. Participation in every structure is open to members of the community.
OSS Watch - Benevolent dictator governance model
A benevolent dictatorship is a project controlled by a single leader. Perhaps the most commonly cited example of the benevolent dictator model is the Linux Kernel project, which is run under the direct decision making leadership of Linus Torvalds. Being a benevolent dictator is not an easy job. It requires diplomacy and community building skills, in-depth technical knowledge of all aspects of the project, and exceptional levels of commitment and dedication. However, as the Linux Kernel project illustrates, it can be very effective. At the other end of the 'control' spectrum is the meritocratic governance model, in which participants gain influence over a project in recongnition of their contributions.
Humblefacture: Complexity Through Design, Not Energy
A couple weeks back, I gave a talk at the Dorkbot Seattle chapter meeting about the ecosystem of digital manufacturing.
Peter Linebaugh: Some Principles of the Commons — keimform.de
The activity of commoning is conducted through labor with other resources; it does not make a division between “labor” and “natural resources.” On the contrary, it is labor which creates something as a resource, and it is by resources that the collectivity of labor comes to pass. As an action it is thus best understood as a verb rather than as a “common pool resource.” Both Lovelock’s ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ and the environmentalism of Rachel Carson were attempts to restore this perspective.
Limited Inc.: A Jobless Future and the Narcissist Economy « Generation Bubble
Do the redundancies made necessary by economic recession and technological advancement throw workers into unemployment or simply into a new form of unpaid labor?

Adrian Chan on the new paradigms of streamtime sociality

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 7:14am PST by Michel Bauwens

Interesting meditation on the new peer socialities, in which Adrian Chan recognizes two major shifts.

This is followed by a related meditation from Rob Horning (Generation Bubble blog), who wonders whether the new corporate-funded social networks are not designed to create ‘capital-friendly’ identity formation.

Adrian Chan on the first shift

“The way I see it … social media are currently undergoing a radical if not inevitable transformation. We have come off the page, out of the network, and with that struck forth from territorial identity for nomadic travels and connections. We identify less now by where we are from and more by who we connect to. We maintain this identity less by identity through place and more by identity through sociality.

I’m speaking not just metaphorically, but directly to this realtime culture in which we now spend so much of our time, and to which we commit so much of our attention.

The siloed world of mass media, with its disconnected channels, its fixed real estates, and branded identities, is receding from relevance and by virtue of acceding ground to global nomadism, losing its claim to authority. A new mode of production is in place — one based not on manufactured goods, not on information, but on communication. And social media are its mode of production.

Social media may now be approaching the point of coming off the page entirely, reaching a condensation point (system threshold) at which stage communication may connect to and permit interaction by means of mediated talk anywhere through and on any screen or device.

Our relation to activity in the online social world is shifting from space to time. Attention should always have been measured in terms of time. We do not occupy space in the online world — we relate, in time and for stretches of time, to content and people.

Time is now multiply threaded, it is more often discontinuous than continuous, knitted and connected together out of intersections and connections that weave a social fabric more closely resembling the smooth and non-hierarchical architecture of felt, than the old, striated and linear designs of pre-patterned weave.

Time discontinuous is constituted on interruptions and distractions, our own individual focus of attention being the only synthesizing continuity possible. Separate times and timelines for each of us, in a world that is incapable of mediating truly shared time. A social world of adjacency and contiguity but lacking the higher and moving power of togetherness. We are next to, but not with, each other. And are our increasingly our own movers.

As we use media to stretch our relationships with people and interests across time and space, a bifurcation emerges between our own inner experience of now — attention, focused — and the online world’s capture and persistence of now-for-anytime. We are here now, online, but leave behind a wake of meaning that once digitized is durable without decay. The temporality of online is of connectedness, not continuity, for findability and visibility are the constraints on the “value” of the flotsam and jetsam that drifts in the flow of a realtime streaming world.

The activity streams in which we now live flows unceasingly, a river of news and information, rippling and eddying when currents are sustained for their currency. Trendlines on the surface of flow. The old world of territory, with its stocks of knowledge, its piles of treasure, was a world of allotment. The new world of flow, with its moving trends, its exchange dynamics, is a world of apportionment. The old media capital value of stocks and piles now washing downstream in a flow that values currency.

Currency flows, values dynamically representing present and changing interest and value, an attention economy made productive by means — you guessed it — of communication, threaten to displace old media capital investments. Social capital, valued not for its number, its pile size, but for its currency when put in play, and deeply contingent not on audience size but on its distribution by audience engagement and participation, is the currency of currency — the realtime flow.

A flow that we view not standing on its shores, but while drifting within it. For our perspective and lens on the flow is ours and ours alone — threaded as it were on our own, unique, and personal line of time. We live in our own streamtimes, even as we seek to connect.

This is a world not of information value, but of communication value. An open state of talk in which every statement and reference supplies connectedness to the timeless world of online. A world not of information but of meaning, not of static content but dynamic and relational action. Not of know-ledge but of know-who and know-how. Social, not archival.”

Adrian Chan on the Second Shift

“We are perched now at the threshold of another shift of paradigm. A world of interconnected streams, of intersections in flow and of dramatic escalations in amplitudes, of constructively-interfering ripples and waves, as well as chaos, turbulence, and noise. Meaning in the social cannot thrive on communication alone. It is only with social action and activity, that is, by means of relational connectedness, that it is cemented and validated socially.

This paradigm, of action streams perhaps, requires coupling, reciprocity, mutuality, for the proper binding that glues social connections. Talk not just spoken but heard and listened to. Talk not echoed but replied to. Talk that is not just the murmur of a babbling brook, the language of being, but the doing of becoming: communication that is action.

Streams, intersecting and cross-referential, permitting not just identities but socialities. A social media age in which communication is action, in which messages perform, and in which information is relation.

This is how I see it today. Social networking is rapidly becoming communication. Our profiles serve as resources, distributed identities but serving evergreen interests and referenced when the relevance adds value. The universe of social networks is itself becoming connected and in its connectedness, it matters less to the user where identity resources are kept and more how they are protected, secured, and made visible. And as networks become communication, communication becomes increasingly networked.

The next steps then, if possible in a world of un-coupled messaging, would be to enable interaction by messaging. To lift social activities out of their containers and architectures and embed them where possible in streams of social activity. And to architect, around communication, the meta data and state required for a truly inter-subective web.”

Rob Horning on capital-friendly identity formation:

“There are clear parallels between the transformational space of ads and the interactive spheres opened up by commercial social networks — in which brands intermingle with people on equal terms and data about the sort of connections we make are carefully aggregated. Much of our behavior online consists of this “linking work” — a form of immaterial labor which strengthens the consumerist code of meanings for goods while presenting that work as the strengthening of ties between friends and family. We are recognized as subjects by virtue of performing this sort of work.

It may be that the internet is expanding the kinds of domains that can signal identity, driving the domain hierarchy to ever further reaches of minute refinement. Berger and Heath claim that the product choices that are typically used for identity signaling are “publicly visible and made from a large choice set and take time or effort to make.” Web 2.0 services seemed to make more product choices visible and thus potentially identity-signaling. Social networks also help give shape to the groups that we seek to belong to through consumer goods — the networks produce and disseminate meanings for goods that need not be engineered in advance but that add value to the products. Social networks give us a field to display our identity in and a compendium from which to learn possible meanings that can be displayed. These are becoming more and more refined all the time, so that everything has an identity component, and everything must be “shared” in order for the consumer to realize what identity value is there to be realized in a good.

At this point, identity itself becomes a highly wrought, labor-intensive product. It begins to play as a status good, helping others signal belonging and uniqueness through association with us, with our reified identity, and so on. It has become an object among objects in the field of advertising, of which social networks are merely an extension. This is what Web 2.0 is ultimately all about — making everything part of the code of identity and stripping away the autonomy of any of our choices. Instead, they all mean something that we may or may not intend, we may or may not want to have to worry about. ?

That ties in to what is most disturbing about consumerism: how it appropriates consumption rituals and commercializes them, building in the priorities of capital directly into the social world and its material culture. It promises a paradoxical escape from being labeled by what we consume, by suggesting we can consume in isolation from society. But at the same time, that isolation makes us vulnerable, more prone to turn to advertisements in lieu of communities for a quick infusion of the social meanings none of us can exist without, regardless of what ideology tells us. The social hierarchies reproduced by consumerism are also engineered to suit capital, naturalizing the sorts of ritual consumption that suit its perpetuation: rather than potlatches and festivals, we orient our consumption through such ideas as invidious comparison, competitive conspicuous consumption and self-presentation as branding. Rather than use consumption to stabilize identity and render it secure, we end up using consumerism to chase the impossible dream of unfettered individuality, of identity that is entirely free of contingencies, of finding the goods that represent us and no one else for only those rare soul mates who can interpret them. We search and search for these people, destined never to find them, no matter how many fleeting glimpses of them we catch in the mirror.”

Links for 2010-02-28 [del.icio.us]

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 12:00am PST

Millennial Tension: The Generation-Y Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Using national survey data, she’s found that to an unprecedented degree, people who graduated from high school in the 2000s dislike the idea of work for work’s sake, and expect jobs and career to be tailored to their interests and lifestyle. Yet they also have much higher material expectations than previous generations, and believe financial success is extremely important. “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want,’” Twenge told me. “It’s a generation in which every kid has been told, ‘You can be anything you want. You’re special.’”
Woodworks Library
A unique collection of over 175 complete books on woodworking and related topics of interest to woodworkers. The Library continues to grow, All Free, 24/7 These books are in the public domain in the United States and everybody, including you, may read and distribute them.
Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: A Step Toward Solving The Mobile Router Conundrum
A new mathematical model shows how the changing web of links between mobile phones could one day form an autonomous network.
Giles Bowkett: Raise Your Album Price To $111 By Giving It Away
The study compiles responses from 1384 random fans who opted into the databases of eight artists inside the MCN network. It studies behavior over a two year period. Top level findings show that the average fan email address is worth $111 per year in artist revenue both online and off
Music City Networks :: Blog
Artists and record labels historically have had little or no direct fan relationships. CDs were shipped and placed on store shelves and the identities of purchasers were mostly a mystery. As a result, marketers had to use shotgunsinstead of sniper rifles when creating advertising campaigns. The Internet, email and social networks are rapidly changing that equation as shown by a new study completed by Music City Networks, "The True Value of an Email Address
Panarchy: Governance in the Network Age
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: US Manufacturing Is Not Dead
Over the last few weeks we have been discussing manufacturing in the US – or, more specifically, the argument that the US doesn’t make things anymore largely as a result of free trade agreements. Unfortunately, the US still makes plenty of goods. In addition, free trade is not the boogie-man job killer many purport it to be. As always, please click on all the pictures to get a larger picture.
co-ment - telekommunistmanifesto2010-en-2010.02.28-15.27.41 - 9
Peer dynamics more important than environment for evolution
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have provided the first experimental evidence that shows that evolution is driven most powerfully by co-evolutionary interactions with other species, rather than adaptation to the environment.

Should public services be mutualized?

Posted: February 28th, 2010, 7:48pm PST by Michel Bauwens

Last week, we mentioned how the UK Labour Party is not only planning to embrace mutualism, but is thinking on how to apply the idea to public services.

In the same article’s comments field, we find a challenge to that idea:

“Mutualism and the co-operative movement have always had my respect and support as democratic, humane and sensible ways to run commercial operations.

That is where I draw a firm line. The ‘bright thunk’ of applying mutualism in any shape or form in the public sector is appalling, not appealling. It assumes that what works in one set of conditions can apply it totally different circumstances. Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences!

Part of the appalling legacy of Reagonomics and Thatcherism is this tendency to see every subject through the lens of commercialism.

Public bodies do no, should not, and will not effectively function subject to commercial thinking, mutualism or not. Citizens are NOT redefinable down to mere ‘consumers’ or ‘customers’ The relationships of citizen to public servant, to public representative, to electorate. are not those of customer to shop assistant to manager to shareholder. Confusing two vastly different set of power, control, motivation, situational and operational relationships is crass naivety.

Assume you mutualised/ disguised privatised your local council garbage sector. Motivation prompts the members. to cut costs and boost earnings by changing to shiftwork collections - unintended consequences - roaring trucks outside your house at 3.00am! Hostile voters, conflict all round, Stasis. Death of mutualisation idea.”

Book: Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership

Posted: February 28th, 2010, 6:04am PST by Michel Bauwens

Book: Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership. By Sonia Katyal and Eduardo Penalver. Yale University Press, 2010

Author’s Intro by Sonia Katyal:

“In a nutshell, the book argues that a degree of civil disobedience is essential to the health of both tangible property and intellectual property law. It explores in detail a series of examples — everything from the history of squatting in the American West to HIV drug activism in South Africa to mashups and gay marriage — in which such property disobedience played a crucial role in sparking legal reform or led to needed legal clarification, with as pecial emphasis on technology, innovation, and civil rights.

The book, I think, covers a fresh topic from an unusual perspective — both of us are young, minority law professors who have a strong interest in pop culture, technology and civil rights, so we cover everything from civil disobedience surrounding same sex marriage to native american land rights, to urban squatting, innovation and beyond.”

Publisher’s description

“Property Outlaws puts forth the intriguingly counter-intuitive proposition that,in the case of both tangible and intellectual property law, disobedience can often lead to an improvement in legal regulation. The authors argue that in property law there is a tension between the competing demands of stability and dynamism, but its tendency is to become static and fallout of step with the needs of society.

The authors employ wide-ranging examples of the behaviors of ‘property outlaws’ -the trespasser, squatter, pirate, or file-sharer - to show how specific behaviors have induced legal innovation. They also delineate the similarities between the actions of property outlaws in the spheres of tangible and intellectual property. An important conclusion of the book is that a dynamic between the activities of ‘property outlaws’ and legal innovation should be cultivated in order to maintain this avenue of legal reform.”

Riane Eisler’s Roadmap to a New Economy

Posted: February 27th, 2010, 9:58pm PST by Michel Bauwens

Fernando Ibarra and Elifarley Cruz recommended the following article, by Riane Eisler:

* Roadmap to a New Economics: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism

It’s a call for a Caring Economics.

Just a few excerpts to give you an idea of the scope and tonality of her contribution, we recommend reading the whole article.

See especially the last section setting out her foundational principles.

Introduction:

“When thinking of a new economics, let’s not think of stocks, bonds, derivatives, or other financial instruments. Let’s think of children. Let’s ask what kind of economic policies and practices are good for children. Let’s ask what’s needed so all children are healthy, get a good education, and are prepared to live good lives. More fundamentally, let’s ask what kind of economic system helps, or prevents, children from realizing their great potentials for consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity — the capacities that make us fully human.

Once we address these questions, we can start designing the road map to the economic system we want and need: one that promotes not only human survival but also full human development.

We must design such a system, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the economically sensible thing to do, particularly as we move into the postindustrial knowledge-information era where the most important capital is what some economists call “high-quality human capital.” Indeed, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen concurs that the aim of sound economic policy must be human capacity development.

This I agree with. But I want to add that for a truly new economic system, we need a broader definition of human capacity development than a purely economic one. Which brings us back to the children and to our human capacities for caring, empathy, consciousness, and creativity.

When children are the starting point for a new economic paradigm, the first step is to go beyond the tired debate of capitalism versus socialism and all the other old isms. Both capitalist and socialist theory ignore a fundamental truth: the real wealth of nations — and the world — consists of the contributions of people and nature.

Adam Smith and Karl Marx ignored the vital importance of nature’s life-sustaining activities. For them, nature exists to be exploited, period. As for the life-sustaining activities of caring for people starting in childhood, they considered this merely “reproductive” labor, and not part of their “productive” economic equation.

In other words, their focus was on the market — for Smith to extol it and for Marx to excoriate it. Neither included in his economic model the life-sustaining sectors, without which there would be no market economy: the household economy, the natural economy, and the volunteer economy.

The first step toward building a truly new economics is a full-spectrum economic model that includes these sectors and gives real visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and for our natural environment.

The move to this comprehensive economic model in turn requires understanding something else ignored in conventional economic discussions. This is that economic systems don’t arise in a vacuum: they are influenced by, and in turn influence, the larger cultural system in which they are embedded.”

The need for new measurement tools:

“To effectively address our growing economic, social, and environmental problems, we need a new economics. We need a system that leaves behind the dominator elements of capitalism and socialism, preserves their partnership elements, and is governed by economic structures, policies, and practices that give visibility and real value to caring for ourselves, others, and our Mother Earth.

A first step is recognizing that the exclusion of caring and caregiving from mainstream economic theory and practice has caused enormous, and unnecessary, human suffering. Indeed, the systemic devaluation of the activities that contribute the most to human welfare and development lies behind a kind of economic insanity that is reflected in, and perpetuated by, conventional indicators of productivity such as GDP (gross domestic product) and GNP (gross national product).

These measures of “economic health” actually place activities that harm life (like selling cigarettes) and the profits derived from those activities (like the medical and funeral costs that result from smoking-related illnesses and deaths) on the plus side. Yet they give absolutely no value to the life-sustaining activities of both the household economy and the natural economy. So an old stand of trees is included in GDP only when it’s cut down — whereas the fact that we need trees to breathe is ignored. Similarly, the caring and caregiving work performed in households is given no value whatsoever, and economists speak of parents who do not hold outside jobs as “economically inactive” — even though they often work from dawn to late at night.

Some people will say that this household work — without which there would be no workforce — cannot be quantified. But the reality is that it is already being quantified. Thanks to the activism of women’s organizations worldwide, many nations now have “satellite” accounts that quantify the value of the work of caring for people and keeping healthy home environments that has traditionally been considered “women’s work.” For instance, a Swiss government report shows that if the unpaid “caring” household work were included, it would make up 70 percent of the reported Swiss GDP! Yet none of this information is found in conventional economic treatises — be they capitalist or socialist.

The devaluation of this work is further reflected in the fact that, in the market economy, professions that involve caregiving are paid far less than those that do not.

So in the United States, people think nothing of paying plumbers, the people to whom we entrust our pipes, $50 to $100 per hour. But child care workers, the people to whom we entrust our children, according to the U.S. Department of Labor are paid an average of $10 an hour, with no benefits. And we demand that plumbers have some training, but not that all child care workers have training.

This is not logical. It’s pathological. But to understand, and change, this distorted system of values — and to effectively address seemingly intractable problems such as poverty and hunger — we again have to look at matters that are only visible once we recognize the configurations of the partnership system and the domination system.”

Conclusions:

“The mix of high technology and an ethos of domination is not sustainable. Therein lies the danger. But the upheavals and dislocations of our time also offer an opportunity for a fundamental social and economic shift.

It’s not only that the old economic models — both capitalist and socialist — came out of the industrial era and we’re rapidly moving into the postindustrial era. The current economic meltdown and the meltdown of the ice caps are not isolated events: both are symptoms of the domination system reaching its logical end.

We must build economic structures, rules, policies, and practices that support caring for ourselves, others, and nature in both the market and the nonmarket economic sectors. At the same time, we must accelerate the shift to partnership cultures and structures worldwide so that anything stereotypically considered “soft” or “feminine” — such as caring and caregiving — is no longer devalued.

Market rules — both locally and globally — must be changed to reward caring business practices and penalize uncaring ones. To make these changes we must show that this benefits not only people and nature but also business.

Hundreds of studies show the cost-effectiveness of supporting and rewarding caring in the market economy. To give just one example, companies that regularly appear on the Working Mothers or Fortune 500 lists of the best companies to work for —that is, companies with good health care, child care, flextime, parental leave, and other caring policies — have a higher return to investors.

On the national policy level, we already saw how in Nordic nations, caring policies played a major role in their move from dire poverty to a high quality of life for all. Other examples abound, such as reports of the enormous financial benefits that have come from investing in parenting education and assistance (as shown by the Canadian Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program) and investing in high-quality early childhood education (as shown by follow-up studies of the U.S. Abecedarian Project).

There are many ways of funding this investment in our world’s human infrastructure — which should be amortized over a period of years, as is done for investments in material infrastructure, such as machines and buildings. One way is to shift funding from the heavy investment in weapons and wars characteristic of domination systems. Another is through the savings a society gains when it no longer has to pay the immense costs of not investing in caring and caregiving: the huge expenditures of taxpayer money on crime, courts, prisons, lost human potential, and environmental damage. Taxes on financial speculation and other harmful activities, such as making and selling junk food, can also fund investment in caring for people and our natural habitat.

Good care for children will ensure we have the flexible, innovative, and caring people needed for the postindustrial workforce. Both psychology and neuroscience show that whether these capacities develop largely hinges on the quality of care children receive.

Educating and remunerating people for caregiving will help close the “caring gap” — the worldwide lack of care for children, the elderly, and the sick and infirm. And it will eventually lead to a redefinition of “productivity” that gives visibility and value to what really makes us healthy and happy — and in the bargain leads to economic prosperity and ecological sustainability.

Economic systems are human creations. They can be changed. We must build a political movement to pressure policymakers to make these changes — or change the policymakers. We must see to it that our world’s governments make a massive investment in parenting education, paid parental leave, and innovative measures such as tax credits for caregivers and social security credit for the first years of caring for a child (as is already done in Norway).

We can all be leaders in building a social and economic system that really meets human needs — not only our material ones but also our emotional and spiritual ones. The sidebar next to this article describes the six foundations needed for a truly new economic system. If we join together, we can build these foundations and create a future in which all children can realize their great potentials for consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity — the capacities that make us fully human.”

Foundational Principles for a Caring Economics:

“Progress in building any one of these foundations will set in motion progress in all the others in an interactive dynamic of change.

Foundation 1: A Full-Spectrum Economic Map. This map includes the household economy, the unpaid community economy, the market economy, the illegal economy, the government economy, and the natural economy.

Foundation 2: Cultural Beliefs and Institutions that Value Caring and Caregiving. These beliefs and institutions orient to the Partnership System rather than the Domination System and include a shift from dominator to partnership relations in the formative parent-child and gender relations.

Foundation 3: Caring Economic Rules, Policies, and Practices. These government and business rules, policies, and practices encourage and reward caring and caregiving; meet basic human needs (both material needs and needs for human emotional and spiritual development); direct technological breakthroughs to life-sustaining applications; and consider effects on future generations.

Foundation 4: Inclusive and Accurate Economic Indicators. These indicators include the life-sustaining activities traditionally performed by women in households and other parts of the nonmonetized economy, as well as the life-sustaining processes of nature, and do not include activities that harm us and our natural environment.

Foundation 5: Partnership Economic and Social Structures. These more equitable and participatory structures support relations of mutual benefit, responsibility, and accountability rather than the concentration of economic assets and power at the top.

Foundation 6: An Evolving Economic Theory of Partnerism. This economic theory incorporates the partnership elements of both capitalism and socialism, but goes beyond them to recognize the essential economic value of caring for ourselves, others, and nature.”

Source: The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, by Riane Eisler. Berrett-Koehler, 2007.

Summary theses on the emergence of the peer to peer civilization and a new political economy

Posted: February 27th, 2010, 7:56pm PST by Michel Bauwens

I wrote these summary theses about two years ago, but I believe they are still valid, food for thought, and show the specific approach I’m proposing to politics, state and governance issues:

1. Our current world system is marked by a profoundly counterproductive logic of social organization:

a) it is based on a false concept of abundance in the limited material world; it has created a system based on infinite growth, within the confines of finite resources

b) it is based on a false concept of scarcity in the infinite immaterial world; instead of allowing continuous experimental social innovation, it purposely erects legal and technical barriers to disallow free cooperation through copyright, patents, etc…

2. Therefore, the number one priority for a sustainable civilization is overturning these principles into their opposite:

a) we need to base our physical economy on a recognition of the finitude of natural resources, and achieve a sustainable steady-state economy

b) we need to facilitate free and creative cooperation and lower the barriers to such exchange by reforming the copyright and other restrictive regimes

3. Hierarchy, markets, and even democracy are means to allocate scarce resources through authority, pricing, and negotiation; they are not necessary in the realm of the creation and free exchange of immaterial value, which will be marked by bottom-up forms of peer governance

4. Markets, as means to to manage scarce physical resources, are but one of the means to achieve such allocation, and need to be divorced from the idea of capitalism, which is a system of infinite growth.

5. The creation of immaterial value, which again needs to become dominant in a post-material world which recognized the finiteness of the material world, will be characterized by the further emergence of non-reciprocal peer production.

6. Peer production is a more productive system for producing immaterial value than the for-profit mode, and in cases of the asymmetric competition between for-profit companies and for-benefit institutions and communities, the latter will tend to emerge

7. Peer production produces more social happiness, because

1) it is based on the highest from of individual motivation, nl. intrinsic positive motivation;

2) it is based on the highest form of collective cooperation, nl. synergestic cooperation characterized by four wins (both the participants in the exchange , the community, and the universal system)

8. Peer governance, the bottom-up mode of participative decision-making (only those who participate get to decide) which emerges in peer projects is politically more productive than representative democracy, and will tend to emerge in immaterial production.

However, it can only replace representative modes in the realm of non-scarcity, and will be a complementary mode in the political realm. What we need are political structures that create a convergence between individual and collective interests.

9. Peer property, the legal and institutional means for the social reproduction of peer projects, are inherently more distributive than both public property and private exclusionary property; it will tend to become the dominant form in the world of immaterial production (which includes all design of physical products).

10. Peer to peer as the relational dynamic of free agents in distributed networks will likely become the dominant mode for the production of immaterial value; however, in the realm of scarcity, the peer to peer logic will tend to reinforce peer-informed market modes, such as fair trade; and in the realm of the scarcity based politics of group negotiation, will lead to reinforce the peer-informed state forms such as multistakeholdership forms of governance.

11. The role of the state must evolve from the protector of dominant interests and arbiter between public regulation and privatized corporate modes (an eternal and improductive binary choice), towards being the arbiter between a triarchy of public regulation, private markets, and the direct social production of value. In the latter capacity, it must evolve from the welfare state model, to the partner state model, as involved in enabling and empowering the direct social creation of value.

12. The world of physical production needs to be characterized by:

a) sustainable forms of peer-informed market exchange (fair trade, etc..);

b) reinvigorated forms of reciprocity and the gift economy;

c) a world based on social innovation and open designs, available for physical production anywhere in the world.

13. The best guarantor of the spread of the peer to peer logic to the world of physical production, is the distribution of everything, i.e. of the means of production in the hands of individuals and communities, so that they can engage in social cooperation. While the immaterial world will be characterized by a peer to peer logic on non-reciprocal generalized exchange, the peer informed world of material exchange will be characterized by evolving forms of reciprocity and neutral exchange.

14. We need to move from empty and ineffective anti-capitalist rhetoric, to constructive post-capitalist construction. Peer to peer theory, as the attempt to create a theory to understand peer production, governance and property, and the attendant paradigms and value systems of the open/free, participatory, and commons oriented social movements, is in a unique position to marry the priority values of the right, individual freedom, and the priority values of the left, equality. In the peer to peer logic, one is the condition of the other, and cooperative individualism marries equipotentiality and freedom in a context of non-coercion.

15. We need to become politically sensitive to invisible architectures of power. In distributed systems, where there is no overt hierarchy, power is a function of design. One such system, perhaps the most important of all, is the monetary system, whose interest-bearing design requires the market to be linked to a system of infinite growth, and this link needs to be broken. A global reform of the monetary system, or the spread of new means of direct social production of money, are necessary conditions for such a break.

16. This is the truth of the peer to peer logical of social relationships:

1) together we have everything;

2) together we know everything.

Therefore, the conditions for dignified material and spiritual living are in our hands, bound with our capacity to relate and form community.

The emancipatory peer to peer theory does not offer new solutions for global problems, but most of all new means to tackle them, by relying on the collective intelligence of humankind. We are witnessing the rapid emergence of peer to peer toolboxes for the virtual world, and facilitation techniques of the physical world of face to face encounters, both are needed to assist in the necessary change of consciousness that needs to be midwifed. It is up to us to use them.

17. At present, the world of corporate production is benefiting from the positive externalities of widespread social innovation (innovation as an emerging property of the network itself, not as an internal characteristic of any entity), but there is no return mecachism, leading to the problem of precarity. Now that the productivity of the social is beyond doubt, we need solutions that allow the state and for-profit corporation to create return mechanisms, such as forms of income that are no longer directly related to the private production of wealth, but reward the social production of wealth.

Discussion and background to the summary theses:

(the first 3 sections of the text concern a summary of P2P Theory so I’m not reproducing them here)

4. The conditions for the expansion of peer governance

Peer governance functions because peer production is the macro-scale coordination of a large number of micro-production teams. Within the teams, decision-making is participative and consensual, and the global coordination is voluntarily accepted and today technically feasible. Small tribes, the victims of civilizational hierarchies, are re-enabled in the new format of affinity-based cyber-collectives.

Positively, peer governance expands the sphere of autonomy-in-cooperation to all social fields. It’s promise is that production becomes a non-hierarchical process. But as I said earlier, peer governance is ‘post-democratic’ because it is non-representational.

The negative constraint is the following: peer governance requires a priori consensus on the common object. But society as a whole lacks such consensus by definition: it is a decentralized collection of competing interests and worldviews, rather than a distributed network of free agents. Therefore, for society at large, there is no alternative to a revitalized democratic polity based on representation. However, just as the market can inspire itself and be reformed by P2P or partnership-based principles (as in the fair trade that is subjected to peer arbitrage), so we can have peer-informed formats of multi-stakeholder based global governance. And in any case, the sphere of autonomy, i.e. of pure governance, can substantially expand even within the strictures of democratic government.

5. P2P theory as the emancipatory possibility of the age

Our current political economy is based on a fundamental mistake. It is based on the assumption that natural resources are unlimited, and that it is an endless sink. And it creates artificial scarcity for potentially abundant cultural resources. This combination of quasi-abundance and quasi-scarcity destroys the biosphere and hampers the expansion of social innovation and a free culture.

In a P2P-based society, this situation is reversed: the limits of natural resources are recognized, and the abundance of immaterial resources becomes the core operating principle.

The vision of P2P theory is the following:

1) the core intellectual, cultural and spiritual value will be produced through non-reciprocal peer production;

2) it is surrounded by a reformed, peer-inspired, sphere of material exchange;

3) it is globally managed by a peer-inspired and reformed state and governance system.

Because of these characteristics, peer to peer can be said to be the core logic of the successor civilization, and is a answer and solution to the structural crisis of contemporary capitalism.

Indeed, because an infinite growth system is a logic and physical impossibility with a limited natural environment, the current world system is facing a structural crisis for its extensive growth. Currently consuming ‘two planets’, it would need four planets if China and India would obtain equity with the current Western levels of consumption. Because of the ecological and resource crisis that this causes, the system is ultimately limited in its extensive expansion.

However, its dream for intensive development in the immaterial sphere is equally blocked, since the sphere of abundance and direct social production of value through peer production, creates an exponential growth in use value, but only say a linear growth in the market opportunities in its margins.

The current world system is facing a similar crisis to that of the slave-based Roman Empire, which could no longer grow extensively (at some point the cost of expansion is greater than the benefits of added productivity), but could not grow intensively either, since that would demand autonomy for the slaves. Hence, the feudal system emerged, which refocused on the local, where it could become much more productive and grow ‘intensively’. Serfs, which were tied to the land but now had families, a fixed part of their produce, and a much lighter taxation load, were substantially more productive than slaves. The lords took a substantially lesser part of the surplus. Today, extensive growth is ultimately blocked, but intensive growth in the immaterial sphere requires a substantial reconfiguration which largely transcends the current system logic.

Similarly, the current structural crisis causes a reconfiguration of the two main classes (just as the slave owners had to become feudal lords, and the slaves had to become serfs). At present, we see the emergence of a netarchical class of capital owners, who are renouncing their dependence on the present regime of immaterial accumulation through intellectual property, in favour of a role as enablers of social participation through proprietary platforms, which cleverly combine open and closed elements so as to ensure a measure of control and profit, while knowledge workers are reconfiguring from a class that was dissociated from the means of production, to one that is no longer dissociated from its means of production, as their brains and the networks are now their socialized means of production.
(However, they are still largely dissociated from autonomous means of monetization.) It would be fair to say that currently, peer production communities are collectively sustainable, but not individually, leading to a crisis of value and widespread precarity amongst knowledge workers.

The solution would in my opinion point in the following direction:

1) the private sector recognizes its increasing dependence on the positive externalizations of social cooperation, and together with the public authorities, agrees to a new historical compromise in the form of a basic income; this allows the sphere of cooperation to thrive even more, creating market benefits

2) the sphere of the market is dissociated from infinite-growth capitalism (how this can be done would require a separate article, but the key would be a macro-monetary reform such as those proposed by Bernard Lietaer, associated with a new regime that extends the production of money from private banks to the social field, through open money systems)

3) the sphere of peer production creates appropriate ‘wealth acknowledgement systems’ to recognize those that sustain its existence, and systems exist which can translate that reputational wealth in income

6. Peer governance and democracy

As peer to peer technical and social infrastructures such as sociable media and self-directed teams are emerging to become an important if not dominant format for the changes induced by cognitive capitalism, the peer to peer relational dynamic will increasingly have political effects.

As a reminder, the p2p relational dynamic arises wherever there are distributed networks, i.e. networks where agents are free to undertake actions and relationships, and where there is an absence of overt coercion so that governance modes are emerging from the bottom-up. It creates processes such as peer production, the common production of value; peer governance, i.e. the self-governance of such projects; and peer property, the auto-immune system which prevents the private appropriation of the common.

It is important to distinguish the peer governance of a multitude of small but coordinated global groups, which choose non-representational processes in which participants co-decide on the projects, from representative democracy. The latter is a decentralized form of power-sharing based on elections and representatives. Since society is not a peer group with an a priori consensus, but rather a decentralized structure of competing groups, representative democracy cannot be replaced by peer governance.

However, both modes will influence and accommodate to each other. Peer projects which evolve beyond a certain scale and start facing issues of decisions about scarce resources, will probably adapt some representational mechanisms. Representative and bureaucratic decision-making can and will in some places be replaced by global governance networks which may be self-governed to a large extent, but in any case, it will and should incorporate more and more multistakeholder models, which strives to include as participants in decision-making, all groups that could be affected by such actions. This group-based partnership model is different, but related in spirit, to the individual-based peer governance, because they share an ethos of participation.

7. Towards a Partner State approach

Partner state policy is an approach in which the state enables and empowers user communities to create value themselves, and which also focuses on the elimination of obstacles.
The fundamental change in approach is the following. In the modern view, individuals were seen as atomized. They were believed to be in need of a social contract that delegated authority to a sovereign in order to create society, and in need of socialization by institutions that addressed them as an indifferentiated mass. In the new view however, individuals are always-already connected with their peers, and looking at institutions in such a peer-informed way. Institutions therefore, will have to evolve to become support ecologies, devising ways to create infrastructures of support.

The politicians become interpreters and experts, which can guide the issues emerging out of civil society based networks into the institutional realm.

The state becomes a at least neutral (or better yet: commons-favorable) arbiter, i.e. the meta-regulator of the 3 realms, and retreats from the binary state/privatisation dilemma to the triarchical choice for an optimal mix between government regulation, private market freedom, and autonomous civil society projects.

A partner state recognizes that the law of asymmetric competition dictates that it has to support social innovation to it utmost ability.

An example I recently encountered was the work of the municipality of Brest, in French Brittany. There, the “Local Democracy” section of the city, under the leadership of Michel Briand, makes available online infrastructures, training modules, and physical infrastructure for sharing (cameras, sound equipment, etc…), so that local individuals and groups, can create cultural and social projects on their own. For example, the Territoires Sonores project allows for the creation by the public of audio and video files to enrich custom trails, which is therefore neither produced by a private company, nor by the city itself. In other words, the public authority in this case enables and empowers the direct social production of value.

The peer to peer dynamic, and the thinking and experimentation it inspires, does not just present a third form for the production of social value, it also produces also new forms of institutionalization and regulation, which could be fruitfully explored and/or applied.

Indeed, from civil society emerges a new institutionalization, the commons, which is a distinct new form of regulation and property. Unlike private property, which is exclusionary, and unlike state property, in which the collective ‘expropriates’ the individual; by contrast in the form of the commons, the individual retains his sovereignity, but has voluntarily shared it. Only the commons-based property approach recognizes knowledge’s propensity to flow everywhere, while the proprietary property regime requires a radical fight against that natural propensity. This makes it likely that the commons-format will be adopted as the more competitive solution.

In terms of the institutionalization of these new forms of common property, Peter Barnes, in his important book Capitalism 3.0, explains how national parks and environmental commons (such as a proposed Skytrust), could be run by trusts, who have the obligation to retain all (natural) capital intact, and through a one man/one vote/one they would be in charge of preserving common natural resources. This could become an accepted alternative to both nationalization and deregulation/privatization.

I would surmise that in a successor civilization, where the peer to peer logic is the core logic of value creation, the commons is the central institution that drives the meta-system, and the market is a peer-informed sub-system that deals with the production of rival physical products, along with a pluralist economy that is augmented with a variety of reciprocity-based schemes.

8. A renewed progressive policy centered around the sustenance of the Commons

What does it mean for the emancipatory traditions that emerged from the industrial era?

I believe it could have 2 positive effects:

1) a dissociation of the automatic link with bureaucratic government modalities (which does not mean that it is not appropriate in certain circumstances); proposals can be formulated which directly support the development of the Commons

2) a dissocation from its alternative: deregulation/privatization; support for the Commons and peer production means that there is an alternative from both neoliberal privatization, and the Blairite introduction of private logics in the public sphere.

The progressive movements can thereby become informational rather than a modality of industrial society. Instead of defending the industrial status quo, it becomes again an offensive force (say: striving for an equity-based information society), more closely allied with the open/free, participatory, commons-oriented forces and movements. These three social movements have arisen because of the need for an efficient social reproduction of peer production and the common.

Open and free movements want to insure that there is raw material for free cultural production and appropriation, and fight against the monopoly rents accorded to capital, as it now restricts innovation. They work on the input side of the equation. Participatory movements want to ensure that anybody can use his specific combination of skills to contribute to common projects, and work on lowering the technical, social and political thresholds; finally, the Commons movement works on preserving the common from private appropriation, so that its social reproduction is insured, and the circulation of the common can go on unimpeded, as it is the Commons which in turn creates new layers of open and free raw material.

These various movement come in the usual three flavours:

1) transgressive movements, such as young and old filesharers, which show that the legal regime has to be changed

2) constructive movements, which create a framework for new types of social relationships, such as the Creative Commons movement, the free software movement, etc…

3) reformist or radical attempts to change the institutional regime and adapt it to the new realities

I personally believe that these movements will not create new political parties, but that these networks of networks will indeed look for political liaison. While peer to peer is a regime that combines equality and liberty and therefore potentially combines elements from various sides of the political spectrum, I believe the left is particulary apt to forge an alliance with the new desires and demands of these movements.

There is also a connection with the environmental movement. While the culturally-oriented movements fight against the artificial scarcities induced by the restrictive regimes of copyright law and patent law, the environmental movement fights against the artificial abundance created by unrestricted market logics. The removal of pseudo-abundance and pseudo-scarcity are exactly what needs to happen to make our human civilization sustainable at this stage. As has been stressed by Richard Stallman and others, the copyright and patent regimes are explicitely intended to inhibit the free cooperation and cultural flow between creative humans, and are just as pernicious to the further development of humanity as the biospheric destruction.

There is therefore a huge potential for such a renewed movement for human emancipation to become aligned with the values of a new generation of youth, and achieve the long-term advantage that the Republicans had achieved since the 80s.

8. Conclusion: What needs to be done?

Let’s recall some of our points, and see how the movement against artificial scarcity and for sustainability intersect.

We live in a political economy that has it exactly backwards.

We believe that our natural world is infinite, and therefore that we can have an economic system based on infinite growth. But since the material world is finite, it is based on pseudo-abundance.

And then we believe that we should introduce artificial scarcities in the world of immaterial production, impeding the free flow of culture and social innovation, which is based on free cooperation, by creating the obstacle of permissions and intellectual property rents protected by the state.

What we need instead is a political economy based on a true notion of scarcity in the material realm, and a realization of abundance in the immaterial realm. Complex innovation needs creative and autonomous workers that are not impeded in their ability to share and learn from each other.

In the world of immaterial production, of software, text and design, the costs of reproduction are marginal and therefore we see emerging in it non-reciprocal peer production, where people voluntary engage in the direct creation of use value, profiting from the resulting commons in a general way, but without specific reciprocity.

In the world of material production, where we have scarcity, and costs have to be recouped, such non-reciprocity is not possible, and therefore we need modes of neutral exchange such as the markets, or other modes of reciprocity.

In the sphere of immaterial production, humanity is learning the laws of abundance, because non-rival goods win in value through sharing. In this world, we are evolving towards non-proprietary licences, participatory modes of production, and commons-oriented property forms. Positive forms of affinity based retribalization are emerging.
But in the world of scarce material goods, a series of scarcity crises are brewing, global warming being just one of them, that is creating the emergence of negative forms of competitive tribalizaition.

The logic of abundance has the potential of leading us to a reorganization of our world to a level of higher complexity, moved principally by the peer to peer logic.

The logic of scarcity has the potential of leading us to generalized wars for resources, to a descent to a lower form of complexity, a new dark age as was the case after the disintegration of the Roman Empire.

So the challenge is to use the emergent logic of abundance, and inject it into the world of scarcity.

Is that a realistic possibility?

In the immaterial world of abundance, sharing is non-problematic, and the further emergence and expansion of non-reciprocal modes of production will be very likely. “Together we know everything”, is a rather achievable ideal.

In the material world of scarcity, abundance is translated into three key concepts that can change human consciousness and therefore economic practices. The notion of ‘together we have everything’ seems not quite achievable, we therefore need transitional concepts.
The first concept is the distribution of everything. This means that instead of abundance, we have a slicing up of physical resources and the physical means of production, so that individuals can freely engage and act. This means an economy that moves towards a vision of peer-informed market modes such as fair trade (a market mechanism subjected to peer arbitrage of producers and consumers seen as partners), social entrepreneurship (using profit for conscious social progress). Objective tendencies towards miniaturization of the physical means of production makes this a distinct possibility: desktop manufacturing enables individual designers; rapid manufacturing and tooling are diminishing the advantages of scale of industrial production, and so do personal fabricators. Social lending creates a distribution of financial capital; and the direct social production of money through software is not far away from being realized in various parts of the world (see the work of Bernard Lietaer); If indeed scarcity will create more expensive energy and raw material, a re-localisation of production is likely, and peer-informed modes of production will be enabled to a much greater extent.

The second concept is sustainability. Since an infinite growth system cannot last indefinitely, we need to move to new market concepts as described by the throught schools of natural capitalism (David Korten, Paul Hawken, Hazel Henderson), capitalism 3.0 (Peter Barnes’ proposal to use trust as property forms because they impose the preservation of capital), cradle to cradle design and production processes so that no waste is generated. We need to move to a steady-state economy (Herman Daly), which is not necessarily static, but where greater output from nature, is dependent on our ability to regenerate the same resources.

The third concept is that of sufficiency or ‘plenty’. Abundance has not just an objective side, it has a subjective side as well. In the material economy, infinite growth needs to be replaced by sufficiency, a realization that status and human happiness can no longer be dependent on infinite material accumulation and overconsumption, but will become dependent on immaterial accumulation and growth. Having enough so that we can pursue meaning and status through our identity as creative and collaborative individuals, recognized in our various peer communities.

Only a rich experience economy can avoid a culture of frustration and sacrifice, and the repressions and unhappiness that such could entail. This experience economy however, will not just be created by commercial franchises, but there will also be the direct social production of cultural value. Businesses and peer communities, enabled and empowered by a partner state, will have to create a rich tapestry of immaterial value, and the thicker the surrounding immaterial value of being, the lighter our attachment to mere having will be.

Opting for community-oriented free software business models

Posted: February 27th, 2010, 8:47am PST by Michel Bauwens

Bradley Kuhn starts his opinion piece with a analysis of the Open Core business model, and how it abuses GPL to lock in users to the larger proprietary versions.

He concludes that the FS community should not only look at the license itself, but at the whole community dynamics, and choose the smaller companies that give back to the code commons.

Bradley Kuhn:

“The first move we have to make is simply give up the idea that the best technology companies are created by VC money. This may be true if your goal is to create proprietary companies, but the best Free Software companies are the small ones, 5-10 employees, that do consulting work and license all their improvements back to a shared codebase. From low-level technology like Linux and GCC to higher-level technology like Joomla all show that this project structure yields popular and vibrant codebases. The GPL was created to inspire business and community models like these examples. The VC-controlled proprietary relicensing and “Open Core” models are manipulations of the licensing system.

I realize that it’s challenging for a community to create these sort of codebases. The best way to start, if you’re a small business, is to find a codebase that gets you 40% or so toward your goal and start contributing to the code with your own copyrights, licensed under GPL. Having something that gets you somewhere will make it easier to start your business on a consulting basis without VC, and allow you to be part of one of these communities instead of trying to create an “Open Core” community you can exploit with proprietary licensing. Furthermore, the fact that you hold copyright alongside others will give you a voice that must be heard in decision-making processes.

Finally, if you find an otherwise useful single-corporate-copyright-controlled GPL’d codebase from one of these “Open Core” companies, there is something simple you can do:

Fork! In essence, don’t give into pressure by these companies to assign copyright to them. Get a group of community developers together and maintain a fork of the codebase. Don’t be mean about it, and use git or another DVCS to keep tracking branches of the company’s releases. If enough key users do this and refuse to assign copyright, the good version will eventually become community one rather than the company-controlled one.

My colleague Carlo Piana points out a flaw in this plan, saying “the ant cannot drive the elephant”. While I agree with Carlo generally, I also think that software freedom has historically been a little bit about ants driving elephants. These semi-proprietary business models are thriving on the fundamental principle of a proprietary model: keep users from cooperating to improve the code on which they all depend. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma that makes each customer afraid to cooperate with the other for fear that the other will yield to pressure not to cooperate. As the fictional computer Joshua points out, this is “a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

The software freedom world is more complex than it once was. Ten years ago, we advocates could tell people to “look for the GPL label” and know that the software would automatically be part of a freedom-friendly, software sharing community. Not all GPL’d software is created equal anymore, and while the right to fork remains firmly in tact, the realities of whether such forks will survive, and whether the entity controlling the canonical version can be trusted is another question entirely. The new advice is: judge the freedom of your codebase not only on its license, but also on the diversity of the community that contributes to it.”

Free software in embedded devices: protect your rights

Posted: February 27th, 2010, 8:34am PST by Michel Bauwens

An excerpt from an article by Lysandra Ohrstrom:

“Free software has been embraced by commercial developers and is now powering a much wider range of embedded devices than any single proprietary program. Behind any one of the smartphones, eBook Readers, netbooks and LCD-televisions that debuted last week at CES is almost certainly a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) application or platform.

But it also highlighted the extent to which proprietary software developers have taken advantage of the ability to adapt, improve, and customize free software in embedded devices that deny customers these very same freedoms. This is the paradox of free software’s growing popularity: anyone can view, modify, and distribute source code, whatever their intentions.

Now that free software is inside almost everything, it is time for users to learn about their rights under free software licenses to protect their freedom to share, tinker, and adapt the devices they buy.

These values, ingrained into our consciousness in kindergarten, are the ones that drive free software innovation and that many of the commercial developers at CES have benefited from, yet hope their customers will forget.

Most of the eBook Readers at CES use free software in locked-down devices that restrict customers’ access to certain publications, prevent them from sharing, and violate their privacy. Telecommunications companies have harnessed Android in the battle for a larger share of the smartphone market and collaborated on applications with FOSS programmers while preventing customers the right to chose between carriers. These companies have a vested interest in limiting the functionality of the devices they sell so consumers buy the next model in a couple of years, rather than improve the one they already own.

Individuals can reclaim the rights they take for granted in other commodities by educating themselves and choosing to buy the most free devices whenever possible.

While none of the smartphones or e-readers on the market is perfect, there are options that allow users to retain more choice and control of how a device functions and what content they can access. Choosing a Nokia N900 or a free Android phone over a carrier-subsidized, locked-down model gives customers the option of running any application and making modifications so it is more useful. Readers can chose an open-format e-reader over an alternative that only allows them to download books in proprietary format.

Owners of open-format e-readers can download public-domain content, such as “A Tale of Two Cities,” for free from a variety of sources and be able to read and re-read it whenever they want, on multiple devices, forever. Amazon, on the other hand, charges Kindle-owners a license fee for the privilege of reading the free Dickens’ classic on their e-readers. Amazon also reserves the right to revoke this license at any time and yank the free book from Kindle-customers who already paid to download it.”

Peak Moment TV: guide to resilient communities

Posted: February 27th, 2010, 5:17am PST by Michel Bauwens

Great online series on local resilience initiatives, strongly recommended.

Janaia Donaldson:

“Peak Moment TV: Locally-Reliant Living for Challenging Times is an online video series showcasing stories about local self-reliance and perspectives that make sense of rapidly-changing economic, energy, and climate challenges.

The half-hour biweekly programs feature host Janaia Donaldson’s conversations and tours with grassroots entrepreneurs creating resilient and sustainable communities.

Sample topics include local food production; renewable energy; transportation alternatives; sustainable building and economic, business, and personal responses.

Programs are online at www.peakmoment.tv/conversations and are cablecast on about seventy community access TV stations in the U.S.A. Peak Moment Television is produced by Robyn Mallgren and Janaia Donaldson, Yuba Gals Independent Media of Nevada City, California.”

Links for 2010-02-26 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 27th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Echoes of 'Avatar': Is a Tribe in India the Real-Life Na'vi? - TIME
An isolated tribe of nature-worshipping forest dwellers threatened by a mine — yes, the Dongria bear no small resemblance to the Na'vi of James Cameron's Avatar. That point has not been lost on the international network of activists who have taken up the Dongria's cause. On Feb. 8, they ran an advertisement in the Hollywood trade publication Variety urging Cameron to support them. "Avatar is fantasy ... and real," the ad said. "The Dongria Kondh tribe in India are struggling to defend their land against a mining company hell-bent on destroying their sacred mountain. Please help the Dongria."
Learning from Haiti: Seven Ways to Respond to Crises - Tom-Atlee's posterous
The devastating earthquake in Haiti is not the last crisis we will need to respond to. Many of us have the sense that more crises are brewing. The drama and size of the Haitian crisis have placed it -- and our collective spectrum of responses -- in the spotlight. This presents an opportunity to publicly reflect on how we deal with these dramatic interruptions of business-as-usual. Perhaps we can learn something that will help us prepare for -- and respond more creatively to -- subsequent crises. We may even be able to catalyze positive transformation that averts future catastrophes and helps call forth the world we've always dreamed of.
Ushahidi & The Unprecedented Role of SMS in Disaster Response « iRevolution
What if we could communicate with disaster affected communities in real-time just days after a major disaster like the quake in Haiti? That is exactly what happened thanks to a partnership between the Emergency Information Service (EIS), InSTEDD, Ushahidi, Haitian Telcos and the US State Department. Just 4 days after the earthquake, Haitians could text their location and urgent needs to “4636” for free.
Location Based Mobile Alerts for Disaster Response in Haiti « iRevolution
The 4636 SMS system was set up in Haiti by the Emergency Information Service or EIS (video) with InSTEDD (video), Ushahidi (video) and the US State Department. The system allows for both demand-side and supply-side disaster response. Anyone in the country can text 4636 with their location and needs, i.e., demand-side. The system is also being used to supply some mobile phone users with important information updates, i.e., supply-side.
Mawkish, maybe. But Avatar is a profound, insightful, important film | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
Avatar, James Cameron's blockbusting 3D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It's profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It's profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a remnant population flees in terror as it is hunted to extinction.
Backing up the internet in a P2P 'cloud' - P2P Foundation
I believe we might profit from developing a way to "back up the internet" so that, even if there are major disruptions, we still have a workable means of communication, data storage and exchange of ideas. My dream is a p2p application that uses some of the free hard disk storage space on our personal computers to redundantly back up the net and allow work to continue more or less seamlessly in the event of a major catastrophe.
American Taliban | The American Prospect
Anyone who has followed Max Blumenthal's investigative writings on the far right's takeover of the Republican Party should not have been surprised when John McCain added Sarah Palin to the 2008 ticket. His running mate had to appeal to the Republican base, and the Grand Old Party has now become entirely captive to its fundamentalist wing. Next time, it is inconceivable that a figure even as moderate as John McCain will get the Republican nomination.
Having A Child Makes Moms More Social | Penn Olson
According to “21st Century Mom,” a 2009 study published by BabyCenter, moms changed their media usage pattern after having a child. Many used more mom-centric and mainstream social media while cutting down on traditional media usage.
The End of the Tea Party | The American Prospect
the idea that there is a "conservatism" that is measured, responsible, decent, and worthy of the word is a bit of a myth. As the historian Kevin Mattson showed in his 2008 book, Rebels All!, modern conservatism even in the era when William F. Buckley was founding National Review drew much of its energy from anger, mockery, and misinformation. This year the "tea party" movement has stirred up the old conservatives of CPAC (now in its 38th year) and given them a new confidence and passion.
International Research Associates for Happy Societies (IRAH) : towords happy society and peaceful world
The QualityCommons: A workshop on collective quality representations
As these few examples illustrate, shared representations of quality may be only vaguely related to objective features of what is being evaluated: these representations are often in continuous flux and the process behind their production is intrinsically social. Competing evaluations of the quality of the same artefacts may coexist and evolve as a function of the different communities that sustain them.
Greece leads Europe's winter of discontent - Europe, World - The Independent
A wave of industrial and social unrest is building across Europe as workers resist attempts by governments and private companies to impose austerity policies, drive down wages and rescue some nations from near-bankruptcy.
Girls Gone Anti-Feminist -- In These Times
the top five jobs for women did not include attorney, surgeon or CEO. They were, in order, secretaries, retail and personal sales workers (including cashiers), managers and administrators, elementary school teachers and registered nurses. Farther down among the top 20 were bookkeepers, receptionists, cooks and waitresses. In 2007, when presumably some of the privileged, pampered girls whose advantages over boys Sommers had kvetched about had entered the workforce, the top five jobs for women were, still, secretaries in first place, followed by registered nurses, elementary and middle school teachers, cashiers and retail salespersons.Farther down the line? Maids, child care workers, office clerks and hairdressers. And, in the end, no president or vice president in 2008. But what about all those career-driven girls going to college and leaving the guys in the dust? A year out of college, they earn 80 percent of what men make. And 10 years out? A staggering 69 percent.

Toward a New Multilateralism of the Global Commons

Posted: February 26th, 2010, 7:46am PST by Michel Bauwens

David Bollier has summarized James Quilligan’s visionary essay, People Sharing Resources: Toward a New Multilateralism of the Global Commons.

David Bollier:

“Quilligan starts with a critique of the problem:

We have begun to see that the benefits of perpetual economic growth are not compensating for the vast damages and risks they create — from energy insecurity, global warming, ecological degradation and species loss to hunger, poverty, debt and financial meltdown. We’re also realizing that neither the private sphere of property and trade nor the public sphere of government provision and distribution — which created these problems to begin with — are capable of solving them.

The structures of nation-states and multilateral institutions have made it difficult for governments even to recognize the reality of global common goods, Quilligan writes. That’s because societies have a “pervasive commitment to free markets in driving global economic integration and sovereign reciprocity in making global decisions.”

As a result, all sorts of global commons — things that are neither private goods nor public goods — are not managed responsibly, fairly or sustainably. Fisheries, forests, ecosystems, genetic life forms and species, seeds, climate and atmosphere, not to mention the airwaves, Internet, cultural traditions, ethnobotanical knowledge, and much else — all of these resources have little standing in public policy because they are neither private property nor public goods. They are common goods, which are either gifts of nature or the creations of social communities.

Quilligan proposes new forms of property management for these commons through what he calls “co-governance” and “co-production.” Co-governance means that commoners at the lowest possible level of authority take over decision-making activities that historically have been performed by the state. Co-production brings together resource users and resource producers and providers through open social networks — not as “sellers” and “buyers,” but as co-producers. By establishing self-governing communities of co-production, the commons “formalizes the process of just governance and democratic oversight by closing the gap between resource users and resource managers, producers and providers.”

The process is highly appealing, and works well, because it is all about people “finding new identity and significance through sharing information, seeking consensus-based solutions, keeping value in their communities and distributing the benefits that arise form the use of commons resources.” Many of the dysfunctions of traditional government bureaucracies and governance can be avoided.

Quilligan sees commons-based governance, now occurring throughout the world in countless circumstances, as the basis for a new form of multilateralism: “The co-production of global common goods can now be facilitated through direct collaboration between local resource users and multilateral institutions.”

To facilitate this new order, governments must recognize commons rights for commoners. “Commons rights differ from human rights and civil rights,” writes Quilligan, “because they arise, not through the legislation of a state, but through a customary or emerging identification with an ecology, a cultural resource area, a social need or a form of collective labor.”

He also calls for the creation of social charters, or “commons trusts,” that establish specific legal authority for people to help each other manage and produce what each of them needs. By having legal control of commons resources, trust managers can “keep the value created through the commons within the commons,” and so check the harmful effects of state-supported capitalism that we now suffer from.

A system of commons trusts would benefit multiple parties, Quilligan writes: “Private industry flourishes from the surplus resources which are rented from commons trusts, the socially marginalized and vulnerable receive a subsistence income from the state, and the primary assets of the commons are preserved and regenerated.”

Under commons trusts, value would not be based on the financial value of common assets in the marketplace, but on the “preservation of commons resources and the resilience of the system that manages and produces them…..Hence long-term wealth arises, not through consumer demand, investment or capital accumulation, but in the enhancement of the carrying capacity of the global commons to support life and life systems, expressed through sustainable choice.”

Perhaps the most bracing idea that Quilligan proposes is a new sort of “commons reserve currency.”

Modern societies are locked into a permanent growth imperative — with disastrous consequences for the Earth — Quilligan argues, because of the current system of privatized credit. Banks and financial institutions are constantly pushing individuals and businesses to borrow money. But this debt and the interest on it cannot possibly be repaid except through relentless and perpetual economic growth. This is one reason that markets are constantly seeking to monetize (“extract value from”) non-market realms such as ecosystems, genes, nano-scale matter, social relationships, time, etc. New market enclosures are driven by the need to repay debt and increase returns to capital.

This structural imperative of modern economies can no longer be physically sustained, however The Earth is finite, and the approach of Peak Oil and the limited capacity of the atmosphere to absorb carbon, require us to find new approaches.

One way out of this quandary, Quilligan suggests, is to treat the money system and individual purchasing power as a social commons instead of a private profit center. He envisions the creation of a new international currency whose value is pegged to a “basket of global common goods as resource reserves.” These reserves for the currency would include natural resources such as air and water quality, ecosystem health and biological diversity, as well as cultural resources such as indigenous wisdom, household work and the arts. It would also include social resources such as economic output and income distribution.

This new currency would help stabilize and democratize the control of money. Instead of our current system of privately administered debt, which requires infinite, Earth-destroying growth, we could convert to an equity-backed system of currency that benefits all sectors of society and nature itself.

A new international currency based on global common assets as reserves “would generate a broad measure of common wealth and well-being that is not based on productivity, profit or interest, but on the perpetual vitality and continuous adaptation of local resources to support a good quality of life for all human beings….It would mean using our commons-based capital — cultural, social, intellectual, nature, genetic and material — as collateral for an equity-based global reserve system that issues credit underpinned by these resources.”

An ambitious scheme, obviously. But Quilligan helps us envision structural solutions that can work over the long term, rather than resorting to Band-Aids. Quilligan’s scenario has the unique virtue of being comprehensive in scope, analytically rigorous and conceptually coherent — with the commons as a philosophical centerpiece.

There is not only virtue, but necessity, in pursuing a holistic vision.

Quilligan sets forth the inexorable logic:

We cannot end the financial crisis without a new monetary system.

We cannot create a new monetary system without creating long-term incentives for solving the ecological and energy crises.

We cannot create long-term incentives to solve the ecological and energy crises without a low-carbon system of production and trade.

We cannot create a low-carbon system of production and trade without a new multilateral system of governance.

We cannot create a new multilateralism without a total redefinition of wealth.

Links for 2010-02-25 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 26th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Asia sustainable investments could jump from $20bn to $4 trillion by 2015: Vontobel report
"Sustainable investments in Asia (ex Japan) could make a huge jump from approximately $20bn today to $4 trillion by 2015 according to research by Vontobel, the Swiss fund manager. Vontobel says it believes sustainability themes are being ‘seriously undervalued’ in a region undergoing a tremendous pace of change in environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards
Meters and More Looks to Create Global Standards
Italian utility Enel has partnered with Spain’s Endesa to create Meters and More Looks to Create Global Standards, a non-profit association formed to promote the deployment of Smart Meters and achieve standard pan-European Smart Metering solutions. Later this year Endesa will begin installing new meters for all its 13 million customers using the Meters and More protocol, which allows for bidirectional data transfer between smart meters and central billing systems in an advanced SmartMeter environment. "
Seriously. Where Does Our Food Come From?
Thanks to leaders like Michelle Obama and Michael Pollan, the U.S. public is beginning to realize that a large number of today’s social, environmental and health problems exist because of the modern system we like to call the food industry. And what people are learning to ask is: Where exactly does my food come from?
Petition to create the Robin Hood tax
It’s time for international bankers to pay something back to society. After the financial crisis and hundreds of billions in bailouts, bonuses and profits are rising out of measure again. A new proposal – a tiny “Robin Hood tax” on bank speculation – has gathered support from top economists and regulators, and could raise huge sums to stop public service cuts, fight poverty and protect the environment. But this idea faces heavy opposition from a powerful City lobby. It’ll take a massive public outcry to get our leaders to support Robin Hood and make the banks pay their fair share -- sign below now, then invite everyone to join the merry band:
Media monitoring online: The art of monitoring social media
Brief case studies, including reviews of leading monitoring solutions
OpenKollab - About Us
OpenKollab is a community of independent practitioners of open collaboration – engineers, organizers, entrepreneurs and researchers – who gather here to pool our resources and align our efforts around high-impact projects.
Netsukuku Community
The Netsukuku project is based on the very simple idea of exploiting the great potentiality of the wifi connectivity, making the PCs of wireless communities act as routers and handle together an ad-hoc network even bigger than the Internet. Netsukuku is an ad-hoc network system designed to handle massive numbers of nodes with minimal consumption of CPU and memory resources.
New Statesman - No fit for open source in IBM's Smarter Planet tech
IBM is unlikely to open source any of its Smarter Planet technology, despite the potential innovations the open source community can offer, Al Zollar, general manager of IBM Tivoli Software, told CBR.
New Statesman - Facebook, Twitter usage surges
The average social networking site user across the globe spent over five-and-a-half hours on sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, according to data released by Nielsen.
New Statesman - New York Times to brace metered paywall model
The New York Times (NYT) newspaper plans to adopt the metered paywall model to charge readers for content, its executives revealed at the paidContent conference last Friday.
New Statesman - UK’s young men surf the net even in the bed, with partner
The internet is often the first thing young men in UK think about when they wake up, according to a research conducted by brand consultancy and research firm, Sparkler.

Links for 2010-02-24 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 25th, 2010, 12:00am PST

amor mundi: Futurological Brickbats
Here I am anthologizing, in roughly chronological order, my occasional "Futurological Brickbats." You will notice that these theses tended to become far more epigrammatic roughly after the first ten. I will continue to update as the brickbats keep coming. For further elaboration of the ideas alluded to in these more aphoristic assertions I recommend the pieces in The Superlative Summary.
Free Software, Private Property
The main thrust of the article is that Open Source companies could exclude people from using Free Software. The specific hypothetical being Red Hat increasing the inconvenience of downloading an .iso – technically they are meeting the obligation of providing the source, but they are adding “hurdles” to make it not worth the effort.
amor mundi: The Peer
A peer is not an equal -- for there are no equals -- the peer is the one who appears in the public square, and by virtue of the public square, be it the polis of the streets or of the nets, and who appears as one who contributes, contests, collaborates, has a stake in the shared and made world precisely in her difference from others who also appear and associate in company. The ethos of politics, peer-to-peer, which is one and the same as the ethos of democratization, is always the interminable dynamic of equity-in-diversity.
amor mundi: The Adequacy of Socialist Vocabularies and Revolutionary Strategies to Our Present Distress
The fact is that there are a wide array of positions that can be and have been called "socialist" and I'm just trying to be sensitive to the history through which "socialist" means what it seems to mean in the context of the contemporary US. There are many views that can be rightly described as "socialist" that don't really seem to fit my own politics as well as other labels do. Given that, I fail to understand what is the benefit of shoe-horning myself into a label that may be ill-fitting to a number of the people with whom I would want actually to be communicating my aspirations and collaborating in my work, especially when there are other vocabularies on offer which do the job better? It makes perfect sense to me that, say, Erik Olin Wright might call me a socialist in his terms because of my advocacy of basic income (which I don't really think is anything like a near-term realizable goal in the context of the US in any case
amor mundi: p2p Is Not Anarchy
I think of as peer-to-peer democratization [as] encompassing the analysis of Netroots organizing, copyfight struggles, basic income advocacy (what I call "pay-to-peer"), and also connections between p2p formations and the history of nonviolent activism, what I think of as p2p peacework or peace in pieces.
People Capital Launches Peer Lending Platform for Qualified Education Loans
Last month, SocialFunds.com spoke with Tom Shelton, CEO and founder of People Capital, about the company’s beta launch of a peer lending student loan platform. Peer-to-peer lending can be viewed as a form of microfinance, an equation from which the intermediary of a traditional financial institution is removed. By providing direct loans in such socially beneficial areas as higher education, social investors can realize their community investing mission.
Caltech scientists find first physiological evidence of brain's response to inequality
The human brain is a big believer in equality—and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it.
Materiales de divulgación « Fundación Vía Libre
Blog de RedPanal
They are musicians working not only with free licenses and remixes but also with free hardware.
no tocar » Pd patch para controlar loops usando fiduciales…
They are musicians working not only with free licenses and remixes but also with free hardware.
compartiendo capital
Iconoclasistas
Articultores : Taller de huerta y software libre
ZCommunications | What Is To Be Done? by Robin Hahnel | ZNet Article
The Bolivarian revolution has now arrived at the shores of the Rubicon our forebears never crossed successfully. The time has come to turn the different elements of the "social economy" and the growing public sector into a truly socialist economy: An economy capable of achieving the historic goals of socialism. An economy that distributes the burdens and benefits of economic cooperation fairly. An economy where workers and consumers have control over the economic decisions that affect them. An economy that will finally protect the natural environment that capitalism has been raping for over 300 years. You Bolivarian revolutionaries may be better prepared for a successful crossing than others before you.
ZCommunications | A Future for Socialism by Robin Hahnel | ZNet Article
According to Samuel Bowles, A Future for Socialism by John Roemer is “measured, highly accessible, and most of all compelling.” Spurred by this enthusiastic recommendation from my former teacher and esteemed colleague, I tore into the text anticipating penetrating insights about why, in Roemer’s words, “socialism is not dead.” Unfortunately I found Roemer’s book uninformed rather than measured, pedantic rather than accessible, and completely uncompelling. Worse still, if Roemer’s model of what he sometimes calls “managerial mar

Links for 2010-02-23 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 24th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Google Lit Trips | Open Culture
For three years, English teacher Jerome Burg has been using Google Earth to teach literature. Each “Lit Trip” involves mapping the movements of characters over a plot’s timeline and providing excerpts, pictures, and links at each location. I found a lit trip for one of my favorite novels, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, which involves a lot of movement across the old West.
Peer 2 Peer University Launches Second Pilot - Creative Commons
Some of the courses were offered in the first phase of the pilot which launched last September, but seven are brand new, including “Urban Disaster Risk Management,” “Mashing Up the Open Web,” and “Solve Anything! Building Ideas through Design.” P2PU is also excited to announce its first Portuguese language courses organized by Brasil’s Casa de Cultura Digital, one of which is an introduction to the thinking of Paulo Freire (educational theorist who is author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed). The P2PU community has grown and is excited to have these new courses and their organizers on board.”
Author, 17, Says It’s ‘Mixing,’ Not Plagiarism - NYTimes.com
For the obviously gifted Ms. Hegemann, who already had a play (written and staged) and a movie (written, directed and released in theaters) to her credit, it was an early ascension to the ranks of artistic stardom. That is, until a blogger last week uncovered material in the novel taken from the less-well-known novel “Strobo,” by an author writing under the nom de plume Airen. In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes.
Why You Share | Open Culture
A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania spent a good six months studying The New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, hoping to figure out what articles get shared, and why. And here’s what they essentially found:
Lessig in The New Republic: Google, copyright and our future
it takes some documentary projects 10 years to get clearance for clips of older movies ... it's a nightmare
Sustainability: The Five Core Principles | The Sustainability Laboratory
The essential quality of the spiritual domain, recognized, as it is, by all known wisdom traditions, is not easy to pin down. In the English language, the term spiritual carries opposing connotations: sacred, exalted, virtuous, divine, but also, insubstantial and occult. It is meant here to evoke a sense of a deep, underlying essence -- a combination of inspiration, meaning, purpose, and a motivating, all encompassing value. The fundamental imprecision which is involved is manifest in the more elaborate way in which the fifth principle is expressed.
What takes the place of the nation-state?
The nation-state as a primary locus of power in the world is a paradigm that dates back only a few hundred years. Could that model be replaced in our lifetimes by something different?
Research Summary & Author Interview on Saharasia, Origins of Violence
The scientific validity of Wilhelm Reich's Sex-Economic Theory of human behavior, through clear and concise cross-cultural testing and verification. Cultures which engage in child abuse and sex-repression predictably develop violent, superstitious and warlike characteristics. Cultures which preserve Mother-Love for children, do not beat or coerce their children and do not suppress the sexuality of their unmarried adolescents or females predictably remain peaceful and egalitarian.

Pirates and Piracy: special issue of darkmatter journal

Posted: February 23rd, 2010, 6:17am PST by Michel Bauwens

“Debates about piracy have long featured certain telling contradictions. At different times, pirates have been seen as both violent monsters and colourful folk heroes. They have been cast by historians and cultural critics as both capitalist marauders and militant workers fighting for a restoration of the commons. The pirate has become a compelling symbol of freedom: freedom from oppressive work routines; freedom from polite behaviour; freedom from institutional controls; freedom from restrictive property laws; freedom from unjust social conventions surrounding race and gender roles. We now apply the pirate label to an assortment of activities from the formation of transgressive sexual identities to the technology-assisted defiance of copyright law. This special issue of darkmatter sets out to examine the complicated and often incongruous cultural meanings assigned to pirates and piracy in the twenty-first century.”

Find the special issue here.

RepRap — Manufacturing for the Masses

Posted: February 23rd, 2010, 2:38am PST by Michel Bauwens

Via Keimform:

“Adrian Bowyer gave a talk at FOSDEM 2010 in Brussels about RepRap, the cool GPL licenced 3D-printer which could (partly) replicate itself. Watch the talk and learn, why personal fabrication will succeed over old industrial mass production, even in its decentralized form, and why personal fabrication will succeed in the run for creativity.”

A collaborative approach to funding early stage social ventures

Posted: February 23rd, 2010, 12:07am PST by Michel Bauwens

Our mission is, in part, to solve the systemic problem that impedes the flow of capital into social ventures because we believe that the development of an infrastructure that supports social ventures would be beneficial to humanity.

Suresh Fernando presents his OpenKollab Ecosystem Pooled Fund:

(it’s written as a letter to funders)

OpenKollab’s is developing infrastructure and processes to support its larger mission of Connecting Projects To Solve Massive Social Problems. In service of this larger end, we are developing the Ecosystem Pooled Fund initiative, the objective of which is to develop a model to provide financing to early stage social entrepreneurs (those that are developing projects that delivery both social value and financial return). As you likely know, there is a gap in the funding landscape that makes it very hard for social entrepreneurs to raise seed funds. The gap exists due to the fact that social ventures typically carry high risk but don’t necessarily carry high enough financial return to offset this risk since they are not solely focused on financial return.

I am wondering if it would be possible to arrange a time to chat to introduce you to OpenKollab and the following model.

The strategy of the Ecosystem Pooled Fund is, therefore, to offset risk by bringing groups of early stage social ventures together collaboratively.

This has the following benefits:

1. Reducing Investment Risk By Developing Collaborative Process Amongst Early Stage Social Ventures

* Scale: In grouping projects together, we create scale (more people, ideas, resources etc.).

* Modularity: In viewing ones enterprise as a part of a system of relations, one can direct ones activities in a way that is aligned with ones ecosystem partners.

* Social cohesion: we hope that some of what works in the Grameen Peer Lending model, works in this context as well. In support of this idea, we will be developing non-binding collaboration agreements that formalize the commitments between groups.

* Offsets technology risk: A constant challenge for investors is to be able to assess the value of technology and processes that have not already garnered market acceptance. In getting peers to use your technology, processes etc., (as ecosystem collaborators) the functional utility of the technology is validated by people that understand the technology.

* Increased Product Validation: in fitting your technology or process into a value chain of collaborators, you will solve problems and enhance the product thereby making it more market worthy.

* Increased Network/Channel Capacity: In working collaboratively with others, you will build networks and contacts that will open up other market opportunities.

More details on the model can be found in this paper.

2. Collaborative Projects That OpenKollab is Preparing Investment Cases For

OpenKollab organizes all its activity around the notion of an ecosystem; groups of projects that might be able to collaborate. We are currently developing a collaborative funding strategy for four projects in the Open Manufacturing Ecosystem and are in discussion with several projects in the Open Government Ecosystem. This process is being formalized through the creation of Collaboration Agreements that define the collaboration process and the commitments that the various groups are making to each other.

3. Information Modeling

Central to the OpenKollab strategy is the development of information models which are designed to collect specific data on projects within ecosystems that support driving collaborative activity between projects.

The information we are currently collecting is:

* Mission and Goals: the objective is to see if collaboration possibilities arise if projects have aligned missions

* Collaborative Relationships: projects self identify other projects they believe they can collaborate with

* Project Summaries; specific information about business models, market strategies, unique differentiators etc.

Examples of the specific information being collected can be found in the various tabs in, for example, the Open Manufacturing Ecosystem spreadsheet.

4. Technology Infrastructure Strategy

An associated strategy that will, in time, be developed on top of the information models is a technology layer that supports the matching of projects.

Details of the vision that underlies the technology strategy can be found in the following presentations:

* Open System Mobilization Platform: This describes a vision for a platform that matches projects to support mobilization of projects around large scale social problems.

* Ecosystem Mobilization Platform: This offers some thoughts on what the user interface paradigm for such a platform might look like.

* Project Matching: This describes how meta-data such as that being currently collected via our information models can be used to match projects and drive collaboration.

Our mission is, in part, to solve the systemic problem that impedes the flow of capital into social ventures because we believe that the development of an infrastructure that supports social ventures would be beneficial to humanity.

Links for 2010-02-22 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 23rd, 2010, 12:00am PST

New Statesman - Tariq Ramadan
Rather than a religion that merely adapts to western society, Ramadan seeks to create a "transformational reform", whereby Muslim professionals, scientists and religious scholars will contribute to the modernity of which they are a part.
New Statesman - Ten most influential modern Islamic intellectuals
Modern Muslim intellectualism in ten simple steps.
New Statesman - Google Buzz to take on social networking sites
Google has launched a social networking tool for Gmail, called Buzz, to get a foothold in social networking and compete with Facebook and Twitter.
WSF: Another Kind of Economics Is Possible - JASecon
The field of “the gratis economy” or “freeconomics” is “expanding dramatically” with the rising importance of knowledge as a major component in goods and services, economist Ladislau Dowbor, a professor at the Catholic University of São Paulo, said in his presentation.
Cooperation and Human Nature - JASecon
both 25-month olds and school-age children in a very similar paradigm select the equitable option more often than the selfish option
Fair Trade Fair - JASecon
The "fair trade" movement is a global grassroots effort to re-align economic relationships between manufacturers and growers (usually in developing countries) and consumers (usually in the developed West) in terms of social justice rather than monetary profit alone. This month, fair-trade groups in more than 200 countries have been convening "fair-trade fairs" to raise awareness and promote dialog.
Avatar and making all the difference in the world.... - Tom-Atlee's posterous
a co-creative initiative between Western activists and Ecuadorean rainforest peoples -- bussed a hundred Indigenous folks from the jungles and highlands down to a theater Quito to see Avatar in 3D, an event covered here:
The Influencers 2010 | The Influencers
The Influencers is a three day think-tank that tackles the potential of non conventional communication in contemporary society. We are interested in exploring the hybrid zones wherein autonomous experiments and mainstream culture blend and collapse into one another. Projects that stem out of a deeply rooted do-it-yourself attitude, even when they develop into complex, large scale projects.
In the next decade, I hope to become more radical | Costas Douzinas | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
The left is the main hope against xenophobic, securitised, apocalyptic barbarism. We should expect radical change
VideoChronic: Video Activism and Distribution in Indonesia « ArTiViSm:3
EngageMedia and Kunci Cultural Studies Center are pleased to announce the launch of Videochronic. This publication is the result of a collaborative research project charting how activists are engaging with video technologies in Indonesia, addressing some of the issues of technology-mediated social movements, and exploring the potential and limitations of online video distribution.
Cohousing in Maryland, Virginia, DC, Pennsylvania
A one-day conference for people passionate about community
Is Our Monetary Structure a Systemic Cause for Financial Instability (Bernard Lietaer)
The Dark Side of Advertising: Is Neuromarketing Ethical? | Online Media Gazette
This is a new field undertaken by marketers and advertisers that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive and affective response to marketing stimuli. Researchers plugged in willing human guinea pigs to measure activity in specific regional of their brain response and sensors are attached to them to measure changes in their physiological state. Purpose of this experiment is to learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and discover what part of the brain is telling them so.
9 Best Free Tools To Analyze And Compare Your Website Popularity | GoosPoos
everybody wants to know how their website is doing; compared to the big players of his/her niche. Here I’ve listed 9 best of the analysis and comparison tools available on the web to check, compare and optimize your website. These tools include services which provides traffic statistics, SEO information about your site, social popularity like on Twitter, digg etc, feed statistics comparison and other details like how much your website is worth. Have a look and use these tools to optimize your website.

Report from the Washington DC Free Culture X Conference

Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 1:24pm PST by Michel Bauwens

A report by Israel Saeta Pérez (CC-BY), on the recent free culture conference in Washington DC:

(the original article has many more links)

“The Free Culture X Conference and Unconference took place the past 13th and 14th of February at the George Washington University, in Washington, DC. I had the privilege to attend thanks to a travel grant from the generosity of Google, Mozilla and Shareable.

As they define it, its vision is to bring together student activists and free culture luminaries to discuss free software and open standards, open access scholarship, open educational resources, network neutrality, and university patent policy, especially in the context of higher education.

Below there is a summary of the notes I took during the conference. It doesn’t aim to be complete nor precise, but I hope it will provide an idea of what did we discuss about.

During the different keynotes and panels, we used, apart from the classical hand-up, the backchan.nl tool for audience intervention during conferences. Better than a massive Twitter, IMO.

After a short introduction, we started discussing about the politics of open networks. It was pointed out that we need to come up with a clear definition of net neutrality and push the ISPs to implement the policies we want. The politics-related meetings about net neutrality often include a lot of industry representation, but seldom people from other sectors of the population, which are also affected, as university campuses or consumers’ groups.

The three-strikes law to cut the access to the Internet can become extremely harmful in contexts where it’s being used as a platform for services like VoIP or TV, disconnecting the affected user completely, unable to make even emergency calls.

In general, the existence of a competitive market of ISPs, like the one in England, contributes to the natural enforcement of the net neutrality.

Controversely, one of the panelists, Timothy B. Lee, exposed his ideas about how to preserve the net neutrality without law regulations. You can read more about his ideas, and a quite long and in-deep paper, in his blog.

I’ve recently read bad news about net neutrality in Spain. Some of the major ISPs operating in the country, like Telefónica or Vodafone, claim a monetary compensation from companies that use their infrastructures for their business, like search engines, mobile apps distributors, or VoIP companies. I personally oppose the Internet to become another TV.

Next, Pat Aufderheide directed a keynote about the concept of fair use to reuse and remix existing culture. Fair use is perfectly legal in the US and should be encouraged, even enlarging or modifying non-copying policies for homework in schools. There’s a lot of interesting material about fair use in the Center for Social Media website.

Moving on to the topic of Open Access and Access to Knowledge, it was pointed out that Open Access in public universities is low-hanging fruit and we should contact these universities to encourage them to adopt this model. The Open University Campaign, a Students For Free Culture project, contains valuable information about this. Also, the Right to Reseach Coalition is an excellent source of info about how to demand the research work paid with our taxes to come back to us without having to pay additional unfair fees.

Unfortunately, some countries lack from copyright exceptions for libraries and universities, and the changes in the law, usually promoted by the industry, always tend to make it more restrictive.

We need to take the discussion about Access to Knowledge from experts to the “family dinner”, explaining current common behaviour that is or would be illegal under the current laws, to make the public aware of how are they affected and take part in the legal discussions about copyright laws.

Also, it was pointed out that personal meetings, faxes and phone calls are much more effective than emails or Facebook campaigns to make the politicians hear our opinion.

The next panel was about Open Educational Resources (OER). Eric Frank, from Flat World Knowledge (FWK), told us that textbooks are a major portion of the tuition costs in some countries. Flat World Knowledge provides a platform to create, publish and distribute quality, peer-reviewed, customizable and flexible-licensing books that are freely accesible online and affordable as printed copies. The people from FWK have observed that, even when there’s a free printable copy of the book available, some students prefer to buy the book, which makes this publishing model presumably sustainable.

The Michigan University OER Team (Open.Michigan) is working on an impressive list of projects to enable groups and individuals to openly share their work. These are mostly collaboration tools, supporting the idea of that the knowledge is not just “transferred” from teachers to students, but something socially constructed. Some of the most interesting are dScribe, a framework to help faculty staff to gather available educational material, clear possible copyright restrictions over it (so it can be published legally under certain circumstances) and reuse it to create and publish new OERs; or OERca, the free software platform that powers most of the dScribe framework.

Finally, Timothy Vollmer, from ccLearn, told us about how CreativeCommons is helping to the development of OERs, the available tools for adequately tag content for further indexing and discovery.”

The two economies

Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 1:09am PST by Michel Bauwens

Mr. Obama’s most dangerous belief is the myth that the economy needs the financial sector to lead its recovery by providing credit. Every economy needs a means of payment, which is why Wall Street has been able to threaten to wreck the economy if the government does not give in to its demands. But the monetary function should not be confused with predatory lending and casino gambling, not to mention Wall Street’s use of bailout funds on lobbying efforts to spread its gospel.

Michael Hudson explains the interplay between the predatory FIRE economy, and the underlying productive economy that it is destroying underneath.

Michael Hudson:

“We are not really emerging from a “recession.” The word means literally a falling below a trend line. The economy cannot “recover” its past exponential growth, because it was not really normal. GDP is rising mainly for the FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate – not the “real economy.” Financial and corporate managers are paying themselves more for their success in paying their employees less.
This is the antithesis of recovery for Main Street. That is what makes the FIRE sector so self-destructive, and what has ended America’s great post-1945 upswing.

There are two economies – and the extractive FIRE sector dominates the “real” economy

When listening to the State of the Union speech, one should ask just which economy Mr. Obama means when he talks about recovery. Most wage earners and taxpayers will think of the “real” economy of production and consumption. But Mr. Obama believes that this “Economy #1” is dependent on that of Wall Street. His major campaign contributors and “wealth creators” in the FIRE sector – Economy #2, wrapped around the “real” Economy #1.

Economy #2 is the “balance sheet” economy of property and debt. The wealthiest 10% lend out their savings to become debts owed by the bottom 90%. A rising share of gains are made in extractive ways, by charging rent and interest, by financial speculation (“capital gains”), and by shifting taxes off itself onto the “real” Economy #1.

John Edwards talked about “the two economies,” but never explained what he meant operationally. Back in the 1960s when Michael Harrington wrote The Other America, the term meant affluent vs. poor America. For 19th-century novelists such as Charles Dickens and Benjamin Disraeli, it referred to property owners vs. renters. Today, it is finance vs. debtors. Any discussion of economic polarization betweens rich and poor must focus on the deepening indebtedness of most families, companies, real estate, cities and states to an emerging financial oligarchy.

Financial oligarchy is antithetical to democracy. That is what the political fight in Washington is all about today. The Corporate Democrats are trying to get democratically elected to bring about oligarchy. I hope that this is a political oxymoron, but I worry about how many people but into the idea that “wealth creation” requires debt creation. While wealth gushes upward through the Wall Street financial siphon, trickle-down economic ideology to fuel a Bubble Economy via debt-leveraged asset-price inflation.

The role of public spending – and hence budget deficits – no longer means taxing citizens to spend on improving their well-being within Economy #1. Since the 2008 financial meltdown the enormous rise in national debt has resulted from reimbursing Wall Street for its bad gambles on derivatives, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that had little to do with the “real” economy. They could have been wiped out without bringing down the economy. That was an idle threat. A.I.G.’s swap insurance department could have collapsed (it was largely in London anyway) while keeping its normal insurance activities unscathed. But the government paid off the financial sector’s bad speculative debts by taking them onto the public balance sheet.

The economy is best viewed as the FIRE sector wrapped around the production and consumption core, extracting financial and rent charges that are not technologically or economically necessary costs.
Say’s Law of markets, taught to every economics student, states that workers and their employers use their wages and profits to buy what they produce (consumer goods and capital goods). Profits are earned by employing labor to produce goods and services to sell at a markup. (M – C – M’ to the initiated.)

The financial and property sector is wrapped around this core, siphoning off revenue from this circular flow. This FIRE sector is extractive. Its revenue takes the form of what classical economists called “economic rent,” a broad category that includes interest, monopoly super-profits (price gouging) and land rent, as well as “capital” gains. (These are mainly land-price gains and stock-market gains, not gains from industrial capital as such.) Economic rent and capital gains are income without a corresponding necessary cost of production (M – M’ to the initiated). “Banks have lent increasingly to buy up these rentier rights to extract interest, and less and less to promote industrial capital formation. Wealth creation” FIRE-style consists most easily of privatizing the public domain and erecting tollbooths to charge access fees for basic necessities such as health insurance, land sites, home ownership, the communication spectrum (cable and phone rights), patent medicine, water and electricity, and other public utilities, including the use of convenient money (credit cards), or the credit needed to get by. This kind of wealth is not what Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations. It is a form of overhead, not a means of production. The revenue it extracts is a zero-sum economic activity, meaning that one party’s gain (that of Wall Street usually) is another’s loss.”

SKDB: An infrastructure for DIY manufacturing?

Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 12:34am PST by Michel Bauwens

H+ Magazine has a great article,

* From Hackerspace To Your Garage: Downloading DIY Hardware Over the Web, written by: Bryan Bishop & Surfdaddy Orca

It focuses especially on the SKDB project as an example, but offers a lot more than that, so we recommend going to the full article.

“The Social Engineering-Knowledge Database (SKDB) project provides the means for specifying dependencies and applying standards that can be shared by open source DIY makers. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you begin a new project. Someone may have already done most or all of the work for whatever you are trying to do, and then released the plans on the internet. And there are many common tools and parts involved in making things. The SKDB project directly tackles the challenge of packaging and distributing these plans.

The SKDB project simplifies the process of searching for free hardware designs, comparing part compatibility, building lists of materials and components, and determining where to get them by organizing them into packages.

The SKDB project is like apt-get (in Debian), but for real stuff. In the SKDB project, hardware specifications are organized into packages. Packages are a standard and consistent way for programs to find data.

For each part in a package, there are a number of interface definitions that describe how the part can connect with other parts, even parts from other packages. Each package also lists dependencies which have to be bought or built in order to successfully carry out a project. For example, a drill press is required to make holes with a certain level of accuracy. The SKDB project downloads all of the dependencies automatically and compares them to your existing inventory, and generates instructions for your computer numerical controlled (CNC) machinery, if you have any. ”

Links for 2010-02-21 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 12:00am PST

How to Fix Venture Capital - Umair Haque
I agree with Fred that the venture industry is broken. In fact, quite a few eminent investors have said so in recent years. But I think many of them miss a crucial point. Let me take a minute to discuss it (and while I do, you might note that I think Fred is one of the few investors to whom this stuff doesn’t apply) Yes, we do need a better path to liquidity than the broken one we've got today. But, paradoxically, it's the same old path – which we must somehow rediscover. That path is simple: true, durable radical innovation, backed up by something today's venture industry is missing in spades: a deeply felt sense of purpose; the courage, hunger, and commitment to stay the course.
We Need A New Path To Liquidity
The Internet is decomposing into a vast array of micro-services that we, the end user, stitches together to make our own unique web experience. It is the de-portalization of the Internet and it is very real. And yet, these large behemoths are trying to do their normal consolidation play on the Internet. First of all, it's not going to work. They are destroying value with all of their M&A efforts and the bigger they get, the more value they will destroy, for them and their shareholders.
The 10 conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies (ISQOLS)
theme: happiness
Free Classic: ‘How to Build Your Own Living Structures’ by Ken Isaacs — The Pop-Up City
Check out this PDF version of the book ‘How To Build Your Own Living Structures’ by Ken Isaacs, published in 1974. This classic is about Isaacs’ Matrix Idea of building sustainable, eco-friendly, modular, flexible, multi-functional living structures which reconfigure the entire volume of a room, being bigger than furniture and smaller than architecture. The book explains how to make a variety of flexible experimental indoor interiors, storage units, and a flexible microhouse.
Emergency Communication Systems | Public Sphere Project
In terms of advocating for improved communications systems and facilities, the World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies has compiled a special dossier on the role of regulators and policymakers in ensuring that adequate emergency communications are available.
Open Peer-to-Peer Design » Blog Archive » openp2pdesign.org Cinema: 02_The Code
a Finnish-made documentary about Linux from 2001, featuring some of the most influential people of the free software movement. It’s in English with Finnish subtitles (and some small parts are in Finnish).
Sapere aude! · Free Culture X Conference notes
The Free Culture X Conference and Unconference took place the past 13th and 14th of February at the George Washington University, in Washington, DC. I had the privilege to attend thanks to a travel grant from the generosity of Google, Mozilla and Shareable.
Michael Geist - ACTA Internet Chapter Leaks: Renogotiates WIPO, Sets 3 Strikes as Model
Several months after a European Union memo discussing the ACTA Internet chapter leaked, the actual chapter itself has now leaked. First covered by PC World, the new leak fully confirms the earlier reports and mirrors the language found in the EU memo. This is the chapter that required non-disclosure agreements last fall. The contents are not particulary surprising given the earlier leaks, but there are three crucial elements: notice-and-takedown, anti-circumvention rules, and ISP liability/three strikes.
ACTA "internet enforcement" chapter leaks Boing Boing
Someone has uploaded a PDF to a Google Group that is claimed to be the proposal for Internet copyright enforcement that the USA has put forward for ACTA, the secret copyright treaty whose seventh round of negotiations just concluded in Guadalajara, Mexico. This reads like it probably is genuine treaty language, and if it is the real US proposal, it is the first time that this material has ever been visible to the public. According to my source, the US proposal is the current version of the treaty as of the conclusion of the Mexico round.
Computerworld > Leaked ACTA draft reveals plans for internet clampdown
The US, Europe and other countries including New Zealand are secretly drawing up rules designed to crack down on copyright abuse on the internet, in part by making ISPs liable for illegal content, according to a copy of part of the confidential draft agreement that was seen by the IDG News Service.
Green Chameleon » From Data, with Love
That most hallowed of mental models and glib explanations, the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom hierarchy has taken a bit of a beating this week. It started in an innocent enough way when, in a discussion about knowledge sharing and generation on the KM4Dev listserve, somebody cited the DIKW model as a way of describing how knowledge is generated in organisations. This provoked Dave Snowden into some sharp but illuminating posts (by the way, if you ever get bored and feel like doing some Dave-baiting, get yourself a false identity, sign up to one of the listserves he frequents, and make an enthusiastic post about DIKW, wisdom management, Six Sigma, Ayn Rand or KM certification - or any combination thereof):
Learning Alliances » Tagging and face-to-face events
For me, the reason to go to a big conference is the small group conversations with people I already know somewhat or with whom I share a common interest We have the tools to coordinate and connect before, during and after the event — to keep the conversation going (it starts before the conference and goes afterward as well) I always want to know who else is attending an event, what they’re thinking about, where people are staying, and where we’re going to eat. During the conference, it’s useful to eavesdrop on parallel sessions that I’m missing by watching the twitter stream. And it’s helpful to be able to look at people’s slides right away, and to find related materials that’s mentioned or written during the conference. And it’s nice to see photos of the event afterward, too. Tagging before, during and after a conference is a key tool for using a big conference as a kind of host system a smaller group that wants to connect.
“selling by giving”, or, “gift economics” | gapingvoid
Selling by giving. Anybody who’s been watching any of these guys for a long time will know exactly what I’m talking about. But here’s what’s interesting to me: I can remember not that long ago, say 5 years, when this type of marketing seemed pretty freaky to most people. Now it’s considered normal, at least to smart marketers. FIVE years. That’s all. I could see that in another five years, ANYONE who wants to market ANYTHING successfully- be they small mom n’ pop shops to large companies, will have to be fluent in Gift Economics, to a level that seemed COMPLETELY alien only a few years ago.

Is free software private property?

Posted: February 21st, 2010, 11:43pm PST by Michel Bauwens

In a 2003 essay, BENJAMIN HAK-FUNG CHIAO makes the startling claim that FOSS is actually Private Property, not in the legal sense, which creates a fictional Common Property, but in a economic sense, as individuals and companies can effectively exclude others from using it, thereby achieving one of the key characteristics of private property.

See: [opensource.mit.edu]

Here’s the key argument:

“The GPL originated at the time when the mode of software distribution was through magnetic tapes because network transfers were not feasible. Though the advent of the Internet allows for these transfers, distributors are also equipped with the ability to adjust the excludability of a network. Hence, FOSS is not necessarily a public good.”

Benjamin Chiao gives an example to show how open source companies can exclude people from using free software, thereby effectively privatising it:

“Over the last four years, the author measured the time needed to download various versions of Red Hat Linux, from 5.2 to 8.0. On average, it took more than 5 hours. In September 2002, the author spent about 10 hours to download this software through the Internet. This finding can be easily verified by anyone who has access to the Internet.

There are ways in which Red Hat can increase the inconvenience of the free download:

(i) it can easily limit the speed of download, for example, by setting the number of connections allowed on an Apache web server or ftp server, or limiting the bandwidth;

(ii) it can lengthen the time needed to publish links of organizations volunteering to store Red Hat Linux for downloading;

(iii) it can increase the uncertainty over the time needed for downloading and the quality of the downloaded files.

Unlike Cnet.com, which links to download sites for other software, Red Hat does not rate the connection reliability of published links. Unpublished sites face significant difficulties and incur considerable costs to claim to hold an original, virus- free version of Red Hat Linux.

Are these measures effe ctive? One might argue that with the increase in bandwidth, the download time constraint may not be binding. However, the size of the software also increases over time. Or at least, Red Hat has an incentive to increase the size of the software. In fact, Wheeler finds that, “Red Hat Linux 7.1 represents over a 60% increase in size…over Red Hat Linux 6.2 (which was released about one year earlier)”40. The proprietary Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional comes with one CD but the comparable Red Hat Linux 8.0 Professional Edition comes with five.

There are many other ways in which one can exclude easy access to the code, which will not be listed here.”

Therefore:

“One might argue that one buys the package not because of the time earned but due to value-added services such as documentation and support. However, documentation from famous publishers like O’Reilly is easily available and cheap. This strongly suggests that users buy the CD to get rid of the burden of the download process.”

Paying Attention: Digital Media Cultures & Generational Responsibility

Posted: February 21st, 2010, 2:59am PST by chris pinchen

flyer_10-316

P2P-oriented net.art (2)

Posted: February 21st, 2010, 12:03am PST by Michel Bauwens

This is the second part of a text taken from a presentation at Medialab Prado in Madrid, by Juan Martín Prada, for the Inclusiva-net meeting in July 2009. Our first excerpt yesterday dealt with the commons, today, Juan covers specific p2p dynamics.

Juan Martín Prada:

NET.ART AND “PEER TO PEER” PROCESSES

“Clearly, given that for years many online activism proposals focused their efforts on the analysis of how exchanges are produced on the Web and on how common goods circulate, inevitably many of them soon devoted their main research to P2P (peer-to-peer) networks and the social dynamics they have generated.

Since the mid-1990s, the use of P2P networks (distributed networks comprised of nodes that function simultaneously as clients and servers) has skyrocketed. These communication networks are among users, which makes many services they need available, such as many process cycles or large bandwidth or storage resources. In addition to enabling file sharing directly among multiple users, P2P networks make countless communication services possible. Some examples include: telephone communications, video conferencing, television, and even decentralized information distribution systems that escape censorship in a highly efficient way, such as Freenet), entertainment (multi-player games), and distributed computation (for example, P2P networks are used for projects such as Tsunami Harddisk Detector by Michael Stadler), among many other possible services.

All of these uses are legal. However, at present, the majority of the most popular P2P networks are utilized by users for illegal downloads of movies and music under copyright. Therefore, the applications of these networks and the anonymity they enable have many facets and purposes. Digital piracy is precisely the greatest threat posed by these networks and that is why their development, even for completely different uses, will be increasingly controlled and hindered. There is no question that since the beginning of this decade, we have witnessed continuous questioning of these networks from business and institutional circles that see them as the main instrument for carrying out infractions of intellectual property law. Moreover, when majority media mention P2P networks, they usually speak exclusively about these illegal practices, which implies their continual criminalization.

In this respect, a growing number of people think that instead of attempting to halt what seems to be an inevitable process, the efforts of businesses in the audiovisual sector should be directed at designing new business models in which P2P networks are seen as a new field offering possibilities and opportunities, not as a terrible threat. Thus, those who oppose the anti-piracy measures being taken in many countries affirm that the music industry is making a huge mistake by continuing to focus its business expectations on the sale of CDs. Trying to prevent the proliferation of copies of something so easily reproducible (once something has been digitalized, it will inevitably circulate over the Web) is an anachronistic standpoint based on the belief that business based on anti-Web logic is still possible, when the fact is that we are fully immersed in the Network Era. Nor should we forget that the problem of digital piracy is something that has its roots in the past. It is curious that many software companies who already suffered from massive piracy of their programmes prior to the appearance of P2P never did much to prevent the circulation of thousands of pirate copies of their products. In fact, on many occasions it has been stated that the almost complete dominance of Photoshop, for example, as compared to other graphic editors, would not have been possible if Adobe Systems Incorporated had not permitted the more or less secret use of its programme by people who were not willing or able to pay for it. In contrast to the logic of traditional capitalism, which consists of the sale of material goods whose value is based on scarcity, this proves that in cyber culture, the value of any digital good always increases with its distribution .

These issues are so relevant and up to date that their presence is continuous as a central theme in many artistic and digital activism practices on the Web. There is a large group of initiatives whose critical foundation can be exemplified in another project by UBERMORGEN.COM, Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico: Amazon Noir (2006). This project aimed to get Amazon.com, the well-known online bookstore, to offer users complete volumes of books on sale, free of charge. This was achieved by an application designed for that purpose by the Firefox search engine, to be installed in each user’s computer, which made it possible to transform the “Search inside the book” function that Amazon.com offered to all users on its Web site to “browse” through the book by using the search words chosen by the user. In this way, over 3,000 books were downloaded and distributed via P2P networks (Gnutella/G2, BitTorrent, FastTrack, ed2k) between April and October 2006. What is most interesting about this initiative is that the authors of this application did no more than enhance a service provided by Amazon.com bookstore itself. That is, a restrictive system was used and subverted to enable downloads of the complete work.

Another well-known project related to forms of piracy against Amazon.com is Pirates of the Amazon (2008) created by two students at the Piet Zwart Institute of Rotterdam. It was also based on a Firefox application that enabled changing the Amazon.com page format on the user’s search engine, by placing a button that read “Download 4 Free” over each product, CD, DVD or book for sale. The application included links in each button to “free” copies of each product available on The Pirate Bay . Thus, it was possible to make purchases on Amazon.com without paying anything. This “add-on” did not download any files of its own, given that it was a simple interface between the Web pages of Amazon.com and The Pirate Bay, it being the user’s choice whether to make the free (and illegal, according to the laws of many countries) download of the file.

In sum, as opposed to those who conceive of P2P networks as a way of democratizing access to cultural contents, others see them as merely swarms of users grouped together solely out of their interest in downloading films and music for free. However, those two positions take into account only a tiny part of the multitude and complexity of aspects at play in the dynamics inherent to peer-to-peer networks. Therefore, other perspectives must be included in this debate, which is at the forefront today, that make it possible to reflect more broadly on P2P networks, transcending mere diatribes as to the legality or illegality of the uses that can be made of them. The proposal would be to talk less about P2P networks and more about social and production processes based on the P2P network model.

Therefore, what is proposed is to broaden the terms of discussion with special emphasis on the huge social potentials of the systems and processes in networks based on P2P structures, looking at their capacity to consolidate voluntary social organization forms to develop participatory social processes and collective cooperation in networks in all areas of human activities.

Certainly, there are many hugely interesting elements that characterize P2P networks and are perfectly applicable to the development of forms of social and productive relations both in and out of the Web. Firstly, the lack of a specific structure of P2P networks makes them immensely adaptable and flexible. Order in them arises not out of organizational development but rather from a permanent mixture in an intensely alive chaos motivated by each participant’s actions in generating dynamics of exchange and production of contents. And we must remember that structures close to the transition to chaos are usually very fertile for the generation of fruitful changes and evolution on all levels of culture.

We must also mention some of the most significant elements of the P2P model: the fact that there is no a priori selection for participation. As stated by Michel Bauwens, “The capacity to cooperate is verified in the process of cooperation itself” , given that validation is provided by the community in this type of organization model, where participants are filtered “a posteriori”. This does not mean that the P2P network model has no hierarchy, but rather that it is formed by flexible hierarchies based on merit, which is also always considered as a necessary catalyst for participation . The P2P philosophy depends to a large extent on a meritocracy system that awards the most privileges and the fastest access to more content to those who share the most (the BitTorrent protocol, for example, is based on this principle; the system awards those who share the most, making the highest number of connections to download nodes available to them).

P2P networks have mechanisms for their operation that are ideally based on social relations that make publicly available a set of what are considered universally common goods, resources that are not subject to price or market systems. However, the fact that the production model based on P2P architectures is not based on economic compensation does not mean that the model turns its back on the market. It proposes the possibility of an economy whose central axis is principles of the commons, in an attempt to reduce the dominance of proprietary strategies. If supply and demand is the major motivating component of the market economy, here the motivations are quite varied and different. The result of peer-to-peer production is a collective good, the commons. Therefore, “losing” something can only be understood in this context as remaining outside of any possible exchange relationship.

Undoubtedly, the GPL licence, open source initiatives and Creative Commons constitute some of the fundamental conditions of production forms based on P2P networks. These possibilities are gaining significance in relation to concepts such as “P2P production”, “P2P property” or “P2P governance”.

We must also remember that P2P networks make it possible to regulate interactions among participants which do not, however, restrict the heterogeneity of their members. That is why the P2P theory has unity in diversity as its core theme, which could also be called “a Post-Enlightenment universalism” .

The P2P model leads toward a reformed market that opens up new ways of determining the value of things. It arises out of the need for alternative systems in many areas in which the logic of economic exchange based on that of the market is either not suitable or completely inappropriate, as inferred by the possibility of paying for ideas with other ideas, for example. It is very important to point out that P2P economies are based on the value of the use of things. The intention is to make the value of use freely accessible universally (a value that must emerge without the intermediation of companies or corporate agents of production or distribution).

It must be made very clear that the P2P model consists of creating and sharing common goods, not in turning what belongs to someone else into common goods. If the piracy operating on P2P networks is circulated as a common good, that is, something that belongs to us all, but was not conceived as such, then that “commons” is created by illegally freeing a private good. This process -regardless of whether it is illegal or desirable, or not- should not be considered an example of the P2P action model. The social and productive model based on the structure of P2P networks does not consist of this. Its ways of producing the commons must always be based on free and open production, not on acts of liberating what has not been liberated by its authors or owners.

Thus, the artistic-activist proposals which reflect on the P2P model use as an argument the emancipatory potential of certain aspects immanent in the connected mob, especially as related to the principles of “panarchy” and network government, showing a large variety of work lines related to the immobilization assumptions of the economic colonization of telecommunications networks. For example, some recent proposals like don-x-change (2009) by Laura Bey, that aim to show the social possibilities of P2P networks and processes, point to the ideals on which these networks are based: free cooperation among peers, equality among participants, placing or forming goods considered commons in circulation, the participation and communication of many to many, etc., revealing the affirmation of P2P logic as a political programme of its own. Bey’s project shows very clearly that the P2P model consists of non-reciprocal community participation , that is, P2P is not a system of reciprocity. Indeed, in the P2P model, each person contributes and receives, not in terms of equality but rather each contributes according to his or her abilities and wishes, and takes according to his or her needs . This work by Bey, a fictional programme for the Gnutella2 network, uses a subtle display of metaphors and language games with the user, to show the need for users of P2P networks and protocols to be more than mere swarms of persons whose only common interest is each person’s own interest in downloading films or music. Certainly, P2P networks must reach a stage of real community, in which participants manage to consolidate forms of voluntary social organization, where the goods placed in circulation act intensely as mediators for specific social relations, and do not only satisfy common interests or needs.

Other projects focused on P2P dynamics are centred on what Alan Page Fiske presented in Structures of Social Life as a universal grammar of human relations. These forms of exchange that have co-existed historically over thousands of years, although some always prevailed over others. The point was to try to show how some of them are being reactivated or intensified today, characterized as new and in other terms, such as the social and productive model based on P2P logics. The irony characteristic of some projects, such as P2P Applied (2009) by Rene Zangl, suggests interesting ideas about how to recover on digital networks some of the exchange forms that constituted the essential bases in anthropological studies since their beginning. Some of the fundamental notions on which they operate are: plays of equality (I should give something of equal value for what I have received to maintain the same status); systems inherent to price (exchange of the same value); communal sharing (donation to form part of a collective resource; and so on.

Explorations of what is called “commons-based peer production” , “open manufacturing”, or “wikinomics” are recurring features of many new projects of network art. On occasions, these explorations are specified in a production model based on the cooperation of autonomous agents, the coordination of the creative energy of a huge number of people, joining the efforts and enjoyment of a multitude of singularities, in which each of the members has different abilities, quite diverse knowledge, different “properties” that are added together and creatively complement the others’. Projects such as Perry Bard’s work titled Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake (2008), a collaborative development of a recreation of the well-known film made by Vertov in 1929, are good examples of this type of extreme approach to “open work”.

The range of network art proposals operating on the dynamics of the P2P model also included those initiatives specifically focused on concrete uses of P2P networks and clients, two lines of work that have barely been developed. The first consists of projects using P2P networks as the only possible context for the existence of the work, in which the work is subject to the operating dynamics of the Web. Good examples of this work line are the video projects carried out since 2006 by Anders Weberg , which exist only as long as other users share them on P2P networks, or those projects whose main axis for reflection are specific actions in the use of these networks, which occurs in works like N.A.G. Network Auralization for Gnutella (2003) by Jason Freeman, centred in the file search process on the Gnutella network.

The second is much more developed at present, composed of projects that study alternate forms of surfing and visualizing data flows on these networks. These initiatives are proposals for the development of interfaces that are completely different from the usual ones, such as Minitasking (2002), a free client to search the Gnutella network, or Torrent Raiders (2007) by Aaron Meyers, a project based on dynamic visualizations of BitTorrent users’ activity which, through aesthetics much like a video games arcade, brings up interesting questions related to privacy, surveillance and piracy on P2P networks.”

Links for 2010-02-20 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 21st, 2010, 12:00am PST

Konteiner — Athens
a monthly independent magazine on politics, culture and arts which is distributed independently around the country and also comes as an inside of "Eleftherotypia", a major and well known Greek newspaper. Konteiner aims an in- depth analysis and texts on political theory, arts, new media, urban culture. It is created by journalists, artists, new media activists, designers, musicians, film makers, video artists, political scientists, bloggers, writers and poets and cultural workers. Every issue has a special focus and for the month of April our topic will be around the networks at the turn of the new decade.
Northern Thailand] Sustainability and Alternative Agriculture Projects
[Panya Project: Permaculture, Natural Building and Community Living in Northern Thailand] Volunteer Opportunities
Marcus Veerman (Aus) and Saw Tha Wah (Karen/Shan) are a pair of privately funded guys building playgrounds in the poor and under-resourced migrant and refugee schools of Mae Sot, Northwestern Thailand. Using many recycled and reused objects they create all sorts of fun and adventurous elements for kids to play on. They are looking for creative, hardworking people who like kids and experimenting with ways to help them use their bodies and minds in fun ways. There will be projects from now until mid 2009 in many different schools and environments.
ludic pyjamas | stories about play and cultural [net]working
stories about play and cultural [net]working
Bali Institute for Global Renewal | The World's Premier Learning Center for Leadership, Global Activism and Indigenous Wisdom
A world in which people understand what it means to be a global citizen and who are fully empowered and equipped to act for the common good.
Pun Pun - sustainable living and learning center : Organic Farm, Seed Saving, Natural Building, Earthen Building, Organic Restaurant, appropriate technologies, permaculture, etc
Pun Pun Centre hosts trainings, workshops, and internships on organic farming, natural building, and seed saving. We are a small community of people living together, growing our own food, building our own natural homes and working to be self-reliant in any ways we can.
Whispering Seed Home
The Whispering Seed is a village-based sustainable living and learning center and home for children who have been orphaned, abused and neglected along the Thai-Burmese border.
Research: The Open Government Data Project | Open Data Network
Open Government Data Project: Research project by Access Info and the Open Knowledge Foundation, in collaboration with the Open Society Information Program, to map out and evaluate the current state of initiatives to promote access to government data in formats that can be freely used, reused, and distributed by anyone. The project will also identify the obstacles to accessing and reusing public data and recommendations for future initiatives to address these.
About Chris Brogan
Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.
Tiny Revolutions
Every step towards success requires a tiny revolution. Evolution is too subtle. Revolution is too drastic. In between, let’s add “tiny revolutions.”

Transitioning to money system reform

Posted: February 20th, 2010, 11:46pm PST by Michel Bauwens

Via Thomas Greco:

James Robertson on the need for monetary reform:

(also see the video trailier below)

1. EDITORIAL: THE TRANSITION TO A NEW DECADE

“The ‘Noughties’ have shown that we in the “democratic West”, led by a global super-power in the USA, can no longer claim a specially democratic and influential position in world affairs.

The claim to be democratic has been disastrously damaged by our self-imposed dependence on profit-making commercial banks to provide our public money supply, by our elected representatives’ money-grubbing, and by the way the US and Britain invaded Iraq and destabilised the Middle East.

The claim to be influential has been shown up at the recent Copenhagen conference on climate change, when the newly powerful nations, led by China and supported by many “less developed” peoples, insisted that their future development prospects should not suffer from the need to repair the global ecological damage caused by Western development over the past 200 years, and that we should bear the main cost of repairing it.

In Britain we face a general election within the next six months. There is a widespread sense that none of our mainstream political parties is capable of responding effectively to the range of national and international challenges we now face. If their election campaigns confirm this, the result could be a temporary “hung Parliament”.

We electors and our politicians might then recognise the need for deeper-seated changes than mainstream agendas now offer. A two-year transition to the ‘Teenies’ decade could then see the start of a deliberate shift to a new worldwide path of co-operative development and democratic participation. It would give us a much better chance of securing the future of our and other endangered species, than trying to restore competitive Business-As-Usual.

2. MONEY SYSTEM REFORM

A major aspect of that new path of development has to be a money system fit for its purpose.

2.1. The Purpose of the Money System

The money system’s purpose must change from what it has been since its origins in the distant past. It must no longer be designed to provide a stealthy way to transfer wealth from weaker and poorer people to richer and more powerful ones. (If you don’t believe that this is a fair description, take a look at my short History Of Money -www.jamesrobertson.com/books.htm#history).

Its new public purpose now must be to enable everyone to benefit from fair and efficient exchanges of goods and services, reflecting what we each contribute to and take from the common wealth. It is a purpose for which governmental agencies at local, national and international level must become directly responsible.

To get the money system reconstructed for this new purpose, we have to understand it as a system of interacting money subsystems which influences our behaviour at every level – personal, household, local, national, and global. We have to understand how it generates a calculus of values, and how that operates as a scoring system motivating us by rewarding some things and penalising others. And we have to understand how its present modes of operation motivate us to behave in ways that hasten our species’ suicide.

The following four governmental decisions primarily determine how the money system works – in other words, what values it generates in terms of the prices and costs of everything compared with everything else, and so how it motivates us to behave:

* how the public money supply is created, by whom and in what form (as debt or debt-free);

* how governments collect public revenue (for example, what they tax and what they don’t tax);

* what public spending is spent on and what it isn’t spent on; and

* how governments regulate the financial dealings of individual people and other organisations.

Today, all of those urgently need systemic understanding and reform.”

A similar message from Bill Still, monetary historian and director of the widely acclaimed film, “The Money Masters,”:

The prehistory of open source: episodes in collective invention

Posted: February 20th, 2010, 10:54pm PST by Michel Bauwens

I found this April 2003 paper, which details historical examples of shared design in the industrial era:

* Essay: Episodes of Collective Invention. Peter Meyer. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Office of Productivity and Technology, 4 August 2003

The author seems to suggest that in the past, such open periods were temporary, and of course they were, but this could lead to the erroneous conclusion that the same is true today. We would rather argue today that it is the collective invention that is the norm, which subsumes proprietary development as just a moment in its development.

The Examples:

Peter Meyer:

Blast furnaces in Britain’s Cleveland district

Allen (1983) found that from the 1850s through the 1870s iron-making companies in northeast England’s Cleveland district allowed visitors and consultants to see the insides of plants and to write about the way their blast furnaces made usable iron from ore. Wellknown researchers at the time such as Isaac Lowthian Bell, Thomas Whitwell, and J.G. Beckton published information about the designs, size, temperature, and contents of blast furnaces. The information came from observing production, not from formal research efforts. Publications and well-informed consultants helped establish which blast furnace designs used fuel most efficiently. Plant designs evolved to have taller furnace stacks (filled with the input materials) and toward hotter and hotter furnaces. The design changes were not generally patentable because of the nature of the technology. Since plant design was a natural area of competition one might have thought the owners of blast furnaces would each prefer to keep this information secret. But Allen concluded that through the sharing process firms could reasonably expect to learn more valuable information than they gave up, and therefore each firm preferred such information be made public over taking the risk of shutting it down by withdrawing. The collective invention regime substituted for research and development spending. Furnace efficiency improved over time. Allen found that little of this improvement was caused by private research and development efforts. He attributed most of the productivity improvement in blast furnace practice over time to the sharing of information which he called collective invention.

Steam engines discussed in Lean’s Engine Reporter (1811-1904)

Steam engines had been around since 1712 but in 1769 James Watt patented a new, much more efficient design for them. Despite legal attacks on his patent, it was upheld until 1800. Mine owners in the Cornwall region of England used steam engines to pump water out of mines, sometimes using illegal copies of Watt’s design. Mine owners and steam engine makers resented Watt’s unwillingness to license the invention cheaply. After Watt’s patent expired they could legally make modifications to the design. There was an explicit debate on alternative forms of intellectual property rights among the steam engine engineers. Few actually filed patents. Rather, there was a collective invention environment, as shown by Nuvolari (2002).

Starting in 1811 there was a publication read by the Cornish steam engine makers, called Lean’s Engine Reporter for its editor, Joel Lean. Its contents were technical comparisons of operating steam engines. Nuvolari (2001) establishes that the efficiency of steam engines improved substantially in Cornwall through this period, probably through many minor or unattributed innovations and discoveries by the steam engine engineers. Collective invention sustained by the Reporter thus supported useful engineering improvements.

Bessemer steel in the U.S. (1866-1885 and beyond)

British inventor Henry Bessemer announced a new steel making process in 1856. He correctly foresaw it would be a quick, high volume, fuel efficient approach and trod lightly on the fact that it hadn’t actually worked yet. After some further innovations with others, it developed into a thriving business in the 1860s. It took longer to transplant the technology to the U.S., which took another wave of innovations.

Several institutions served to aid collective invention in the U.S. technology. First, several new industrial journals and organizations arose during this period when mass production steel technologies were being adopted. The open-discussion environment in the British iron and steel industry may have been a model for its extension in the U.S., leading to collective invention on both sides of the Atlantic. Second, famous engineer Alexander Holley ran a consulting practice which pooled the key patents for Bessemer steel manufacture so members of one licensing organization would have access to them all. Holley himself designed most of the first fifteen Bessemer steel plants though they had different owners. Third, job turnover was high in the industry, so many employees had diverse experiences drawn from previous employers.

Huge demand for steel rails for railroad construction sustained the industry through a depression that started in 1873. Production quantities rose dramatically, as shown in Figure 1. The technologies in use improved quickly, and the price of Bessemer steel fell from over $100 per gross ton of rails in 1870 to about $60 in 1880.”

Discussion by Peter Meyer:

“As societies have adapted to waves of new technology there have been phases where technological information was openly and enthusiastically shared. We will look here at certain cases where technological developments were published openly to some community, and we consider why it happened and what institutions made it work.

Robert C. Allen (1983, p. 2) used the term collective invention to describe “the free exchange of information about new techniques and plant designs among firms in an industry.” Allen saw that this had happened among iron producers in Britain’s Cleveland district. Richard Nelson (1982, p. 468) encouraged research into the subject.

Schrader (1991) and von Hippel (1987) documented explicit, informal “know-how trading” among mini-mill steel makers in the U.S. in the 1980s. Nuvolari (2002) showed that steam engine engineers in Cornwall maintained a collective invention approach. Harhoff, Henkel, and von Hippel (2002) collected several recent examples of “freely revealed” innovations in recent years and modeled a game between innovators in which revealing could be an optimal choice by an innovator because it helps diffuse the technology. A number of investigators have described open-source software projects as examples of collective invention; relevant papers are at the web site opensource.mit.edu.

One might take the view that a technology is truly invented only once, and subsequent applications of it are innovations which are part of a separate process of diffusion. If so, collective invention is not the right term – collective innovation or user innovation would be better. But in the cases we will consider, the first versions of the technology are not applied for long. The invention as generally perceived afterward includes the many improvements from the early discussion. In these cases the form of the technology that turns out to matter is the one slowly invented over the course of years, so for this paper’s purposes we will say it was collectively invented.

There are several differences between collective invention environments and those depending on legal enforcement through patents. A patent system tolerates bogus submissions or unclearly described inventions, since an inventor benefits from users who pay for a license or are otherwise dependent. On the other hand, in a collective information environment, the innovator does not have an incentive to hide essential details. Patenting environments encourage the inventor to invest in and develop inventions, whereas collective information environments do not give an inventor a direct financial incentive to develop it further. Either environment could give innovators the satisfaction of seeing their innovations widely used. Which one will generate more technological advance depends on context. Below I argue that when the technology’s future is uncertain, collective invention does better at advancing the technology.

As we shall see, restricting the technical community to for-profit firms makes it hard to use the term in other episodes.

Therefore let us enlarge the definition for the purposes of historical comparison:

• Include hobbyists and workers in not-for-profit organizations such as universities and government agencies in the community of technologists.

• Include job changes by people working with the technology as one of the mechanisms of interchange of technical information.

• Include cases in which collective invention practices co-exist with some firms who do secret research and development.

Even if some firms keep their findings secret, collective invention may still occur in some subset of an industry. So collective invention is defined here to be a process in which improvements or experimental findings about a production process or tool are regularly shared. Put this way, collective invention seems to be an important and regular feature of the historical process by which societies adapt to radically new technologies. It is part of a larger picture in which the new technology turns into new products and the producers, consumers, and markets are jointly developed.”

Call for papers: International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE)

Posted: February 20th, 2010, 11:58am PST by Franco Iacomella

The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE) seeks papers from researchers describing best ethical practices in the investigation of online communities. This special issue, edited by Aleks Krotoski, aims to create a compendium of case studies and theoretical frameworks which future scholars will reference when designing their own analyses of populations and practices in social networking sites, weblogs, listservs, online games, video sharing sites, virtual worlds and other Web environments that demonstrate evidence of community processes.

Topics of particular interest include:

- Vulnerable populations (e.g., youth, medical contexts, extremism)
- Outcomes of challenges to the online community due to research ethics decisions
- Research design (e.g., how to factor in experimentation that involves research deception)
- Methodological practices (e.g., data scraping, behavioural tracking, successful methodological combinations)
- Working with commercial companies
- Negotiating the online-offline identity (both research participants/subjects and investigator)
- Implications of the community content/framework
- Ecological validity: extrapolating the findings to other communities and non-Internet conclusions
- International ethics considerations

These are not exclusive topics, and other areas that outline best practices in the ethical analysis of online communities are welcomed.

The special issue seeks to include submissions that introduce extensions to existing theories - including new frameworks for approaching the ethical issues that emerge in online communities and novel applications of existing offline ethics frameworks - and examples of best practice - including case studies of successful ethical solutions, both qualitative and quantitative research approaches, issues associated with international ethics practices, and changes to ethical approaches over the short- and the long-term.

While all forms of scholarship and research are welcome, the special issue will feature theoretically and empirically grounded study in the social or behavioural sciences.

Submission guidelines:

The special issue is edited by Aleks Krotoski. Please contact the editor atakrotoski@yahoo.com to discuss your submissions. The editor welcomes contributions from new and established researchers. Submitted manuscripts will be subject to peer review.

Papers of approximately 6,000 words are encouraged. Critical insight and strong ethical and theoretical foundations are expected. International Journal of Research Ethics submission guidelines and referencing styles will be followed [see [ijire.net] ].

The guest editor will consider papers received by 18 April 2010. Fewer than 10 papers will be accepted. The special issue will be published in October 2010. Please send papers toakrotoski@yahoo.com, clearly indicating that your submission is for the special issue on ethics in online communities by using the subject heading: ‘Submission: IJIRE Special Issue, Best Ethical Practices in Online Communities’.

Links for 2010-02-19 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 20th, 2010, 12:00am PST

ETSI Cellular History
History of SMS "Work began on a European standard for digital cellular telephony in the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunication Administrations (CEPT) in the mid-1980s. The task was entrusted to a committee known as Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSMTM), aided by a 'permanent nucleus' of technical support personnel, based in Paris. "
JULIAN DIBBELL - a rape in cyberspace
the classic
Ideagraph
The Ideagraph is democracy as it ought to be - it's an open, non-profit system for organizing arguments and achieving consensuses.
Welcome | SCALE 8x - 2010 Southern California Linux Expo
The 8th annual Southern California Linux Expo has begun!
Facebook | Seth Johnson: Secure and Free Telephony over IP: SIP Witch
David Sugar will be presenting SIP Witch, the secure telephony portion of the GNU Telephony project, this Saturday at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE/8X)
Shareable: Government 2.0 and Motivation
So what are the most basic intrinsic motivators? The answer is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. How did I come upon this magical triplet? Two words: Dan Pink. One place: TED talks.
Communication Privacy for a Free Society | SCALE 8x - 2010 Southern California Linux Expo
Last September we presented the technological aspect of the secure calling project at LinuxCon 2009. This was an important milestone in presenting the technological aspect of how this project will offer the means for anyone to create and deploy network scalable and secure VoIP/collaboration solution to enable privacy without the need for a central service provider or proprietary software to achieve these goals.
The Apache Cassandra Project
The Apache Cassandra Project develops a highly scalable second-generation distributed database, bringing together Dynamo's fully distributed design and Bigtable's ColumnFamily-based data model.
Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » Highlights from the Feb. 15 Spiritual Progressive Conference
Hundreds of warm voices rang out Monday at the University of San Francisco as spiritual progressives sang together and debated how best to push our society toward a vision of economic justice, environmental sustainability, ethically oriented institutions, and a foreign policy based on generosity rather than militarism. Hosted by the Network of Spiritual Progressives and Tikkun, the one-day conference in San Francisco included in-depth strategy sessions about how to develop a constitutional amendment to establish that corporations are not persons and how to support Obama while pushing him to live up to his progressive campaign promises.
Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » Bring Back Israel’s Left
Nearly everyone I met while living in Israel last year was politically apathetic — with the notable exception of right-wing ideologues. What had happened to the strong left-wing that had built the country? Where had the once-dominant Labor Party gone? Where were the peace activists? The hippies? The reformers? The answer, to my relief, was that there was still a strong left-wing. But its adherents shunned politics. Disaffected by a stagnant and ineffective political system, they flocked to human rights organizations, the arts scene, high tech companies, and universities.
Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » On the difference between conflict resolution and nonviolent conflict
The question I would like to ask is this: Were Gandhi and MLK in the conflict resolution business? Yes they were, in the long term. India and Britain, American blacks and whites, could only resolve their conflicts by the establishment of justice. But to get that justice (and the struggle is ongoing), their movements had to bring the conflict, that was being absorbed in pain by the oppressed, to the doors of the oppressors, into their media and their faces. So in the short term, they looked to many people as if they were in the conflict promotion business.
Roadmap to a New Economics: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism « Canadians for Climate Change Action
When thinking of a new economics, let’s not think of stocks, bonds, derivatives, or other financial instruments. Let’s think of children. Let’s ask what kind of economic policies and practices are good for children. Let’s ask what’s needed so all children are healthy, get a good education, and are prepared to live good lives. More fundamentally, let’s ask what kind of economic system helps, or prevents, children from realizing their great potentials for consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity — the capacities that make us fully human.
Time to clean up: UN study reveals environmental cost of world trade | Environment | The Guardian
Political pressure is growing to make big businesses pay for the damage they cause to the environment
Canadians for Climate Change Action
Zero Carbon is the one and only solution there is to global warming, climate disruption and ocean acidification. That’s a fact.

Links for 2010-02-18 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 19th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Anne Ryan – Enough is Plenty on Vimeo
Anne B. Ryan is the author of Enough is Plenty which will appear later this year. She argued that the adoption of a new self-limiting worldview is as crucial as the adoption of new technologies. "We are all born with the capacity for enough and everybody has a part to play in the creation of a culture of enough, as a way to understand the world and to live in it," she says.
The New ‘Marshal’ Plan for Europe – Smart Taxes Network
The plan of which I write is of course, Marshal Auerbach’s proposal that one trillion euro should be distributed by the ECB on a per capita basis to the Eurozone governments to reduce their debt burden. In his latest post in New Deal 2.0, he mourns Greece’s fate as the fiscal conservatives demand their pound of flesh,
Richard Curtis and Bill Nighy team up in new film urging Tobin tax on bankers | Business | The Guardian
Campaign film says 0.05% 'Robin Hood' tax on financial trades could raise $700bn for world's poor
Call for 1 Trillion per Capita Predistribution by ECB – Smart Taxes Network
Within the euro zone, short of leaving, the most elegant adjustment mechanism is for the ECB to distribute 1 trillion euro to the national governments on a per capita basis, as our friend, Warren Mosler , has suggested. This proposal would operate along the lines of the revenue sharing proposals we recently advocated for the American states. The nation states of the euro zone would the instructions from European Council of Finance Minister (ECOFIN) and the ECB would then change the balances in all of the national member bank accounts, in effect increasing their assets, and thereby reducing debt as a percentage of GDP. Within the euro zone, this sort of a proposal would likely give the respective EMU nations more bang for their respective euros, given the more elaborate social welfare programs in the EU.
Not as Good as a Trillion Euro Distribution… – Smart Taxes Network
“(There is) a lack of European macroeconomic structure to help countries with particular difficulties,” he told a conference in Athens.
Cap and Dividend V Cap and Trade : Cantwell-Collins V Waxman-Markey – Smart Taxes Network
The Kerry-Lieberman-Graham framework is based on the Waxman-Markey bill that narrowly passed the House. It would create a complex and opaque cap-and-trade system riddled with favors for utilities and Wall Street. Roughly 85 percent of the initial carbon permits would be handed free to utilities and other entities, which could sell them for cash. In theory, utilities would return much of this cash to their customers, but exactly how they would do this, along with all the monitoring and enforcement, is left to the 50 states.
Debtonation
Welcome to my blog about the financial crisis. I'm Ann Pettifor, author and analyst of the global financial system, and co-author of the Green New Deal. I predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis back in 2003, and am known for my work on sovereign debt and international finance
What Bill McKibben doesn’t like about the Copenhagen Accord is precisely what I like about it. « Climate Progress
we don’t need 192 nations to come to an agreement on mitigating carbon emissions in order to get the job done. We only need those countries responsible for 85% of emissions to move forward on the pathways identified by the IPCC with a promise to the world to do so in a responsible manner
Change the way you do business - Go IMS!
Two Videos Describing Trade Money – Smart Taxes Network
From Thomas H Greco website Beyond Money, I found links to two videos giving a quick description of trade money not using conventional money such as Euros or Dollars. The first video is educational and has been developed by Paul Grignon and uses early city markets to explain the system. The second is promotional and describes a contemporary US trade money system, IMS. Videos are a great way of making what is really quite simple but obfuscated by the financial high priests of the current money system, simple again.
Greece Signs its National Suicide Pact » New Deal 2.0
Weighing in on Europe’s new “rescue” package for Greece, Marshall Auerback warns that deficit-bashing is an increasing threat the global economy.
Identification and Tracking in the Brave New World–RFID Chips and You « Beyond Money
For more than 30 years I’ve been monitoring developments in the technologies for identification and tracking. Each innovation has been more awesome than the last one in its capabilities. This article from the Michael Journal describes the present state of technology. Complete control requires a system for positive personal identification (PPI). That is now not only possible, it is being implemented.
The Real Meaning of “The Wizard of Oz” « Beyond Money
Bill Still, monetary historian and director of the widely acclaimed film, “The Money Masters,” has produced yet another important film that tells the real story behind the “The Wizard of Oz.” The author, L. Frank Baum, wrote the story as an allegory of our corrupt money and banking system. Still’s new film, “The Secret of Oz” (www.secretofOZ.com), tells that story.
The Story of Growth as it Truly Is « Beyond Money
If you still believe in the growth economy, watch this:

Ludwig Schuster on the need for a New Monetary Pluralism

Posted: February 18th, 2010, 1:29am PST by Michel Bauwens

Ludwig Schuster talks about A New Monetary Pluralism: from a recombination of regional economic circles to investing in a sustainable future.

Recorded on day two of The New Emergency Conference: Managing Risk and Building Resilience in a Resource Constrained World. Held on 10-12 June 2009, All Hallows College, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland

This conference was organised by Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability.

Watch the video here:

Ludwig Schuster – A New Monetary Pluralism from Feasta on Vimeo.

P2P Metaphysics: One, None, and the Many

Posted: February 18th, 2010, 12:38am PST by Michel Bauwens

There are exactly two ways to do things: one, and many

Spurred by William Tozier’s meditation above, which is an argument for generalist practice and knowledge as against hyper-specialisation, our friend Paul Hartzog wrote some interesting observations in the comment field.

Paul Hartzog writes:

“The classical opposition to the One was always the Many.

Somewhere in the rage against monolithic meta-thingies the binary opposition became One vs. None. So for example, nihilistic postmodernism claims that we must throw out the One and be left with the None (and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth).

But the rejection of the One does not necessarily demand the substitution of the None, when in fact we could embrace the Many instead.

There is a historical trajectory here:

1. Modernism: embrace the One

2. PostModernism: reject the One, lament the None

3. PostPostModernism (or Pre- Panarchy): reject the binary opposition constituted by 1 and 2 and embrace the Many (Spinoza’s Multitude).”

In other words:

“During Modernism we are told that there is only one way. The universalism is imposed.

During Postmodernism, universalism is rejected, but the only alternative is a chaotic nihilism in which there are no solutions.

Under panarchy, the entire notion that we must choose between an oppressive universalism vs. a nihilistic particularity is rejected. There is a whole world of third way possibilities when we come together to share and build them…”

Additional commentary by Sam Rose, more directly related to William Tozier’s argument:

“One of the things that I thought about while reading your excellent, post above is that, for more and more of us to effectively do *this*, it turns out that we need each other, more than anything else.

All of those people who want us to think we need to be specialsts have to convince us of this, if they are ever to control us. And that is what they need: control. At the beginning of the last century, it was decided that society could become near-perfect, if it became highly ordered, with everyone in their place, working on keeping things nice and ordered.

This is breaking down in reality. In real life, if you really stand back and look at it, it takes more energy, more time, more forcing and pushing, whip cracking and mutual/-self psychological mutilation to have everyone specialize.

The path of *least resistance* is to generalize. Before Mass Industrialization, I contend that people knew this, and applied it directly. I think that upon the emergence of Mass Industry, that for a brief period, abundant, but depletable resources made it possible for people who controlled those resources to force us all to specialize. But, once those resources started to dwindle, we were told that we are on our own to replace those things that came cheap, easy, and mass produced. Naturally, people start to follow the path of least resistance, to become an adaptive generalist. But, there is litte infrastrucutre, little support for the generalist. Our systems are set up for the specialist, as you discuss in your article above.

This is what I am interested in. Part of what I am concentrating on these days. *It’s up to us to plant thesseds and grow this dynamic societal infrastructure for generalists.* If we can make a better choice, people will likely choose it. People need generalist-centric alternative ways to solve their basic survival problems. We need new ways to “bank”, new ways to grow food, make the things we want and need, research and develop new things, better insights on how to work together as generalists.”

Links for 2010-02-17 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 18th, 2010, 12:00am PST

[Feature] Everybody's a Manufacturer: Era of User-Generated Devices (1) -- Nikkei Electronics Asia -- May 2009 - Tech-On!
Over the last few years, though, the walls have been coming down, and there are signs that the world of handmade equipment will begin to push into the mainstream. Based on emerging trends such as hardware modularization and open-source software, along with outsourcing of development and manufacturing, progress toward user-centric development is being made round the world.
Hacker ethic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The hacker ethic comprises the values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community. The early hacker culture and resulting philosophy originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1950s and 1960s. The term 'hacker ethic' is attributed to journalist Steven Levy as described in his book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, written in 1984. The guidelines of the hacker ethic make it easy to see how computers have evolved into the personal devices we know and rely upon today. The key points within this ethic are that of access, free information, and improvement to quality of life.
The Hacktivist
David A. Mellis
open hardware blog
SparkFun Electronics - News - 2009.07.10
We've been periodically posting engineering files, schematics, and firmware for some of our designs for an awfully long time. Not to mention the eagle footprints for a lot of the stuff we design around. Do a product search for 'eagle' to see the products with eagle files posted. I don't really push the fact that we're posting these files (do these constitute open source hardware?). We often forget to post the eagle files so if there's a board that you want to get the eagle files for, email us (spark at sparkfun com) and we should be able to get it posted.
Episodes in collective invention
historical examples of shared designs in the industrial era
what is hacktivism
Hacktivism is the fusion of hacking and activism; politics and technology. More specifically, hacktivism is described as hacking for a political cause. In this context, the term hacker is used in reference to its original meaning. As defined in the New Hacker's Dictionary, a hacker is "a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities" and one who is capable of "creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations". (1) Activism is defined as "a policy of taking direct and militant action to achieve a political or social goal". (2) Therefore, a clinical definition of hacktivism is:
The open-source hardware distribution model? (David A. Mellis)
Most open-source hardware projects (including Arduino) seem not to have taken advantage of the distributed manufacturing models enabled by the open nature of their designs. Instead, we mostly see two conventional distribution models: centralized manufacturing and artisanal production.
Making Money from Open-Source Hardware (David A. Mellis)
slideshow
Value and the Arduino Ecosystem (David A. Mellis)
There are a lot of people creating value around Arduino: e.g. this experimentation kit from oomlout, tons of videos from Make Magazine, various books, etc. When I see all this activity, two questions come to mind, one selfish and one altruistic. The selfish question is: how can I capture more of this value? The altruistic question is: how can I make these things more accessible and useful to the Arduino community?
Open-Source Data Models? (David A. Mellis)
What could help people share the models they use for generating data so that others can investigate alternative scenarios or presentations of the model (and not just the resulting data)?
Principles for Open-Source Hardware (David A. Mellis)
Some general principles for the development of open-source hardware that I hope to elaborate on in the future:
Hear: Secrets Of The Watchmen - Planet Money Blog : NPR
Planet Money is a multimedia team covering the global economy.
La démocratie inachevée
on peer democracy
FOSS as private property
since open source companies can exclude, it effectively privatises the software

On the convergence of open/p2p movements

Posted: February 17th, 2010, 7:32pm PST by Michel Bauwens

In October 2005, Seedling, the magazine of GRAIN, published a series of contributions on the ways in which people are resisting the push for monopoly rights over information in different sectors. They interviewed a ten-person panel includes people working in the fields of free and open software (FOSS), access to medicines, seeds, communications and the media.

(GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.)

Still very valuable 5 years on, below are three excerpts:

1. Beatriz Busaniche

“What common ground does the FOSS movement share with the struggle against IPR on life?

What we are fighting in both cases is a growing monopolisation over knowledge by major corporations, many of which are more powerful than most governments. These companies can deny others access to knowledge and the benefits of science. We are all fighting against this exclusion. Our common points are the spaces where we struggle on all the fronts, such as WIPO, the WTO, agreements like TRIPs, free-trade agreements, etc.

In addition, these movements are united by the idea that there are parts of knowledge and of life that must not be the property of anyone, that no one has a right to preclude access by others to certain “common goods”. When we speak of knowledge, access to these goods is not exclusive, nor does it degrade or destroy them.

There is another detail uniting us which must be carefully considered due to the particular dangers it presents: code-based regulations. In software and digital culture, we speak of digital rights management (DRM), which is a means to restrict access to culture by means of regulatory code (software). In the fight against the privatisation of life, we confront other forms of regulation also based on codes, such as the genetic modification of seeds and the creation of suicide (Terminator) seeds, whose genetic code has been modified to no longer give life, to stop reproducing. Both of these code-based regulations go beyond mere legal requirements, both consolidate monopolies and both are invisible but obvious enemies in our common struggle (see box on p 15).

Another similarity in some cases has to do with community. Free software has been built via a collective, community process, fed by programmers from different corners of the planet who do their part writing code, reporting errors, making suggestions, and so on. The concept of “community” is very strong for us, and brings us closer to all communities that work collectively.

What are the differences you perceive?

There are several points of divergence. To begin with, we must look at the kind of regulations that control each situation. Regarding knowledge and software issues, we fight copyright and software patents. On matters related to the privatisation of life, we generally deal with patent laws. There are other differences too. A programmer can write software with a piece of paper and a pencil, while a pharmaceutical patent rides on a huge investment in research and development. These different characteristics mean that the possibilities for resisting monopoly will also be different. The other difference we see today is that the free-software movement has already consolidated a hard-to-beat form of resistance, while other movements are still searching for a strategy.”

2. Peter Drahos

“What links do you see between the struggles happening in different sectors around patents, copyrights and other forms of monopoly rights over information?

One effective way to fight the powerful without getting caught up in their games is to turn to the deeper principle of simple rules. We can learn from the free software movement about simply saying no. We need to learn to walk away from deals and strengthen the capacity to say no. We need need to look for ways to say no in which you can’t be compromised or betrayed. So much of the game of international negotiations depends on local betrayal – officials signing off on things that they don’t really understand. The way to stop that is to stick to very simple rules. These may be different for different groups, but they are simple rules that we can unite behind, and they will trigger an evolutionary sequence that will allow us to win the struggle.

One key to the success of US negotiators is making the pace so fast that no-one can keep up. In Geneva there are developing country negotiators with responsibility for 12 different sectors. That’s ludicrous – anyone knows you can barely keep up with one sector, let alone 12. Of course people suffer from negotiating fatigue. That’s why the capacity to say no is so important. Local NGOs have to say to their negotiators, “Walk away: do not open up yet another negotiation, do not say yes to this offer of a bilateral negotiation”. Pick a few negotiations and target all your resources on them, because that way you can gain strength and unity.

Another key to fighting power that we can all unite behind is civil disobedience. When a country is negotiating with the US behind closed doors, and there are huge riots in the country, the weak negotiator can turn to the US and say, “I would love to give you those patent terms, but my hands are tied – this is just politically unsaleable in my country”. But if there is no riot and the negotiation takes place behind closed doors, the negotiator is going to cave in. Civil disobedience is one of the few tools left for weaker parties to work with, and it can be very effective. Look at the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War in the US. Things change when people get out on the streets.

2. What are your views on a convergence of these movements?

There is such massive diversity in the world and such different moral views that you have to find a common framework. That framework is human rights. It’s institutionalised and on certain issues – like health and education – there is massive cross-cultural agreement. Other rights – like the right to food security – are not so widely shared, but that doesn’t matter. The strength of human rights is that is recognises diversity, and has a common conceptual framework. You can try and invent your own language and globalise that language, but it’s going to take a long time to get anywhere. Human rights have been institutionalised in our world and a lot of people have given up a lot to get those rights on the table. That counts for a lot. Every country is going to come up with the same fundamental rights – like education and health. Other rights are much more contestable, but that doesn’t matter, because some rights may be more important to some countries than others. Every country has to practice the principle of toleration (which is implicit in human rights) and unite around that vocabulary. The vocabulary gives them the tools to look at intellectual property rights and ask what do these monopoly rights do to meet their objectives. So I think it is possible for all these groups to unite around human rights, using its vocabulary, to form a more global community.

You might not like the idea of rights, but that’s all you have to work with. When I went to the Philippines doing some work on access to medicines, a lot of groups there told me that they found the language of human rights – ‘the right to health’ – very helpful. You’ve got to use it. You have to think of ways of bringing that language to life. There is so much moral diversity in the world, you need abstract ideas to unite around.

If you don’t want to call it a right, call it a ‘fundamental claim’. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be trying to look at alternative solutions and creating new languages, but you can’t turn your back on the things previous generations have fought for; it doesn’t make sense. You have to use the language of human rights because it is institutionalised into a common framework and so many countries accept it, even though their practices may not be consistent with what the language says.”

3. Onno Purbo

(Onno Purbo is Indonesia’s celebrated promoter of wireless networking; he is credited with inspiring the creation of RebelNet, which now links over 1,500 schools, 2,000 cybercafes and more than 2,500 outdoor WiFi “hotspots” in Indonesia.)

I see the movements fighting monopoly rights facing a common struggle polarised around three simple issues: money, power/authority and mass. A simple example in the information technology industry is the widely known struggle between Microsoft and the movement for free and open source software. One side insists on enforcing copyright, while the other favours public license. The war between these two sides is quite ugly in Indonesia, and has resulted in significant casualties. In the last three months, the police raided many Internet kiosks in dozens of cities in Indonesia, and in some cases they confiscated the computers and put people in jail. Such action has prompted a outcry against Microsoft and started a migration process towards Free and Open Source Software, especially Linux-based software.

The key to making this kind of shift happen is changing the mind-set of software users, and fostering a strong community focus. Increasing education and cultivating the spirit to share will help the shift towards a more liberalised market and a fruitful proliferation of work in the public domain. This in turn will reduce poverty and engender further comm-unity participation.

Creating pro-poor, pro-community and pro-liberalisation policies is always a struggle. We can win through money, power, or mass. For the poor, creating mass is the only option – and it can be very effective. A simple example is the liberation of 2.4GHz WiFi/Wireless Internet in Indonesia. Until recently the Indonesian government controlled all telecom frequencies. But the rise of an alternative network installing Internet using wireless network technologies that bypass the telecommunications companies has created sufficient mass that the Indonesian government was forced to delicense the 2.4 GHz frequency in January 2005.”

WikiSym 2010: Call for papers

Posted: February 17th, 2010, 6:48pm PST by Franco Iacomella

WikiSym 2010, The International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, that will take place is recieving proposals until March 7.

Here is the full announcement:

WikiSym 2010 website

July 7-8-9 in Gda?sk, Poland.

Co-located with Wikimania 2010 (Intl. Conference on Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikimania 2010 website).

Peer-reviewed and archived in the ACM Digital Library.
Important dates

March 7: Submission deadline for research papers.

March 21: Submission deadline for Doctoral Symposium proposals, posters, demonstrations, workshops, panels, tutorials.

May 4: Notification of acceptance for research papers.

May 11: Notification of acceptance for Doctoral Symposium proposals, posters, workshops, tutorials, panels.

July 7-9: WikiSym 2010!

Summary
WikiSym, the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, will be held this summer in Gdansk, Poland. Starting this year, WikiSym aims to explicitly broaden its scope, exploring not only the thriving wiki community, but also other open movements and open collaboration initiatives. This includes related areas such as open online communities, collaborative creation of multimedia content (with or without wikis), and open journalism and publishing, just to list a few examples.

Furthermore, our goal is to establish WikiSym as a venue for the exchange of information, experiences and practices among an interdisciplinary audience, including researchers, practitioners, industry representatives and experts with a wide variety of different backgrounds.

As a result, WikiSym has established 3 complementary tracks to merge the contributions from such a diverse community:

Wiki track: Focused on research in wiki technology, wiki websites, wiki communities, and in general any kind of initiative pivoting around wiki software.

Industry track: This new track will focus on the specific needs of enterprises and private companies interested in sharing and promoting their experiences around wikis and open collaboration projects/products/initiatives.

Open collaboration track: This track is a dedicated venue for sharing research results and experiences in initiatives that may not be built specifically on wiki software, but share the "wiki way" of organization. These may include open collaborations, open communities, and open movements that allow the interchange of ideas and contributions from participants with a range of interests and motivations.

Research manuscripts may be sent to any of these tracks. However, submitting the same manuscript to more than one track at the same time is not allowed. Therefore, please select the most appropriate track for the topic covered in your manuscript before submitting.
Topics of interest
Given the interdisciplinary nature of wikis and open collaboration initiatives, WikiSym invites contributions in a wide range of fields to any of the 3 available tracks.
Topics of interest: Wiki Track

Wiki user experiences, usability, and discourse analysis

Reputation systems and quality assurance processes

Scalability — social and technical

Wiki technologies and implementations

Translation and multilingual wiki content

Educational applications

Wikis for non-textual media (images, video, audio)

Content dynamics and wiki evolution

Wiki archiving and versioning

Wiki administration: dealing with abuse and resolving conflict

Wikis and the semantic web, knowledge management and tacit knowledge

Wikis for small audiences (departmental and family wikis)

Legal issues (copyright, licensing)

Visualization of wiki structure

Topics of interest: Industry Track

Business opportunities around wikis and open collaboration

Best practices to adopt wikis and open collaboration in industry

Information disclosure: practices and experiences

Community building and support

Open publishing and open licensing in the industry

Wikis and open collaboration entrepreneurship

Coopetition: best practices

Interaction and synergies between industries and open communities

Open innovation: strategies and experiences for leaders/followers

Promotion, support and funding of open collaboration initiatives

Knowledge management

Topics of interest: Open Collaboration Track

Social software for collaboration and work group processes

Open online communities

Technologies for networked collaboration

Social interactions on the web

Open and citizen journalism

Social networks

Collaborative content creation

Distributed development of software

Cooperation for problem resolution

Information disclosure strategies

Open call working environments

Crowdsourcing and information synthesis

Collaborative multimedia collections

Distributed content categorization/tagging

Open publishing

Commons projects and repositories

Distributed selection of content

Research papers
Research papers present integrative reviews or original
reports of substantive new work: theoretical, empirical,
or in the development or deployment of novel systems.
We encourage emphasizing lessons learned and providing a
clear concise message to the audience about the relevance

of the work. The paper must place your work in context
within the field, citing related work and indicating clearly
what aspects of the work are new.

Research papers will be reviewed by the Program Committee
to meet rigorous academic standards of publication.
They should be written in English and must not exceed 10 pages (for full papers) or 4 pages (for short papers). Papers will be reviewed both with respect to conceptual quality and
clarity of presentation. Authors of accepted papers are
expected to attend the conference in order to present the paper.

Accepted submissions will be published in the WikiSym
proceedings and archived in the ACM Digital Library.

Submitted papers should use the ACM SIG Proceedings Format, see: http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html
Doctoral Symposium
The Doctoral Symposium is an interactive forum for doctoral
students to receive present and discuss their doctoral work.

Students who are at least one year away from dissertation
completion are invited to submit to the Doctoral Symposium.
Students beginning their research are especially invited to attend.

To submit a proposal send a 2-3 page description of your
dissertation research, including:

A description of your work

The goals—what contributions will your research generate?

The approach—what is being performed to achieve the goals? How will results be validated?

Additionally, your adviser must send a brief statement
of your dissertation progress to date and a statement of
recommendation to the Doctoral Symposium chair.
Workshops
Workshops provide an opportunity for researchers and

practitioners to discuss and learn about topics that require
extended engagement such as new systems, research methods,
standards and formats. A workshop should require participants
to engage with each other for at least half a day. For shorter sessions, please consider WikiSym’s open space format. A workshop proposal should consist of approximately two pages describing what you intend to do and how your session will meet the criteria described above. It should include a concise abstract, proposed time frame (half-day, full-day) and one-paragraph biographies of all people relevant to the submission. Workshop proposals will be reviewed and selected for their interest to the community. Each workshop will be allocated a half-day or a full-day and a room.
Panels
Panels provide an interactive forum for bringing together
people with interesting points of view to discuss compelling

wiki issues. Panels involve participation from both the
panelists and audience members in a lively discussion.
Proposals for panels should consist of approximately two pages describing what you intend to do and how your session will meet the criteria described above. It should include a concise abstract and one-paragraph biographies of all panelists. A panel submission will be reviewed and selected for their interest to the community. Each panel will be given a 90-minute time slot.
Posters
Poster presentations enable researchers to present late-breaking results, significant work in progress, or work that is best communicated in conversation. WikiSym’s lively poster sessions let conference attendees exchange ideas one-on-one with authors, and let authors discuss their
work in detail with those attendees most deeply interested in the topic.

Poster proposals may describe original research, engineering, or experience reports. Submissions should consist of a two-page extended abstract outlining the content of the poster. Successful applicants will be invited to display a poster, 1×2m in size, at a special plenary session of the Symposium.
Demonstrations
Wikis are intended to be used, and no format is better suited for demonstrating the utility of new wiki research and technology than showing and using it. If you would like to demonstrate new features or products, this is the place! Demonstrations give presenters an opportunity to show
running systems and gather feedback. Demo submissions will be reviewed based on their relevance to the community. A submission should be one page in length, with a title and a short description of the demo. The description should include what you plan to demonstrate, what you hope to get out of demoing, and how the audience will benefit. A short
note of any special technical requirements may be included.
How to submit
Please send all submissions in PDF format through our submission system: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wikisym2010

For detailed instructions on the format, length and submission procedure, plese refer to the Submission instructions page

All accepted submissions will be published in the proceedings and archived in the ACM Digital Library.

Submitted work in all categories should use the ACM SIG Proceedings Format, see: http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html

Questions regarding submissions may be directed at the respective chair using the following email addresses:

Research papers (all tracks): document.write(protectEmail(’papers’, ‘wikisym.org’, ‘@’));papers at wikisym.org

Workshops: document.write(protectEmail(’workshops’, ‘wikisym.org’, ‘@’));workshops at wikisym.org

Demonstrations/Tutorials: document.write(protectEmail(’demos’, ‘wikisym.org’, ‘@’));demos at wikisym.org

Posters: document.write(protectEmail(’posters’, ‘wikisym.org’, ‘@’));posters at wikisym.org

Doctoral Symposium: document.write(protectEmail(’docsym’, ‘wikisym.org’, ‘@’));docsym at wikisym.org

General questions should be directed at document.write(protectEmail(’chair’, ‘wikisym.org’, ‘@’));chair at wikisym.org.

The Article Processing Charge and the Integrity of Open Access Publishing

Posted: February 17th, 2010, 12:19am PST by Michel Bauwens

Richard Poynder has an interesting interview with the CEO of Open Access publisher Sciyo, Aleksandar Lazinica, where the latter states that “author pay formats” should be abandoned.

Here is interesting background to the controversy, read the whole interview here.

Richard Poynder:

“In their efforts to derail the onward march of Open Access (OA) opponents have conjured up a number of bogeymen about Open Access publishing. First, they maintain, asking authors to pay to publish could turn scholarly publishing into a vanity press. Second, they say, OA publishing will in any case inevitably lead to lax or even non-existent peer review. Third, they argue, OA publishing is not financially sustainable.

At the heart of the criticism deployed against OA publishing is the claim that levying an article processing charge (APC) on authors will inevitably corrupt the age-old process of scholarly publishing, and the independent peer review system on which it is based.

Certainly one obvious consequence of “author-pays” publishing is that the nature of the relationship between publisher and author changes radically from the traditional arrangement. While most researchers will doubtless obtain the necessary funds to pay to publish from their institution or funder, they nevertheless become paying customers of publishers not, as heretofore, supplicants seeking a free publishing slot.

For publishers it means migrating from a business environment in which their marketing efforts are focused primarily on selling journal subscriptions to intermediary libraries, to one where they have to sell a publishing service directly to authors.

Amongst other things, this means that many OA publishers have had to start utilising the mass marketing techniques characteristic of business-to-consumer (B2C) markets, rather than the business-to-business (B2B) methods traditionally associated with scholarly publishing.

For some this cultural shift proved difficult, with angry researchers reporting that they were being bombarded with spam messages that — they complained — were unwelcome, badly targetted and probably illegal.

Many researchers receiving these messages immediately conclude they are being invited to participate in some form of vanity publishing, particularly when the invitations arrive from unknown publishers. This serves to breathe life into the vanity press bogeyman.

These suspicions lead naturally to the further conclusion that, even if the invitations are not from a vanity publisher, since there must be huge pressure to accept papers (in order to generate revenue), the publishers concerned will inevitably set more lax peer review standards than traditional subscription publishers.”

In a related article, another interview of Richard Poynder with OA advocate and pioneer Steven Harnad, are some details about the state of the open access movement:

“It has been far from smooth sailing. Harnad had assumed that researchers would immediately see the logic of self-archiving, not the least of which are the benefits they would gain from the greater visibility and impact that their research would have once it was freely available. However, few did (only about 15% of authors self-archive spontaneously).

Out of growing frustration with researchers’ passivity, Harnad became an ardent advocate for the introduction of self-archiving mandates. For the past several years, he has grown hoarse calling upon universities and research funders to require researchers to self-archive their papers, a message he feels has too often been diluted by growing interest in OA publishing (Gold Open Access), which Harnad believes to be a far less certain road to OA.

Fifteen years after he posted his Subversive Proposal, the self-styled “weary archivangelist” is a somewhat disappointed OA advocate today.

There are still only 139 mandates in the world now, and many of those that have been introduced lack teeth. Consequently, most institutional repositories remain all but empty. Meanwhile, the research community keeps succumbing to what Harnad calls “gold fever.”

But it is not all doom and gloom. “All of the U.K.’s Research Funding Councils and 14 U.K. universities have mandated OA,” says Harnad. “So have NIH [the National Institutes of Health], Harvard and MIT in the U.S.”

And with last year’s reintroduction of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) and President Obama’s recent public consultation on requiring U.S. federal science and technology funding agencies to introduce public access policies, Harnad is hopeful that in 2010 we will finally see the tipping point needed to usher in universal OA.”

Here is a detailed overview of what happened in 2009.

Links for 2010-02-16 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 17th, 2010, 12:00am PST

GRAIN | Seedling | 2010 | The Tyranny of Rights by Brews
Kneen has become increasingly convinced that the expansion of the use of the “rights” discourse, by both activists and corporations, is a central problem facing global struggles for social justice. In this book, he explains why.
GRAIN | Seedling | 2009 | The international food system
Today’s global food system, with all its high-tech seeds and fancy packaging, cannot fulfil its most basic function of feeding people. Despite this monumental failure, there is no talk in the corridors of power of changing direction. Large and growing movements of people clamour for change, but the world’s governments and international agencies keep pushing more of the same: more agribusiness, more industrial agriculture, more globalisation. As the planet moves into an accelerating period of climate change, driven, in large part, by this very model of agriculture, such failure to take meaningful action will rapidly worsen an already intolerable situation. But in the worldwide movement for food sovereignty, there is a promising way out.
GRAIN | The Ecological Revolution – Making Peace with the Planet
Capitalism as a world economy, divided into classes and driven by competition, embodies a logic that accepts no boundaries on its own expansion and its exploitation of its environment. The earth as a planet, in contrast, is by definition limited. This is an absolute contradiction from which there is no earthly escape.
The Tyranny of Rights | Ram's Horn
In this provocative book, Brewster Kneen asks why the demand for rights – human rights, intellectual property rights, the right to save seed, the right to food – has become such a dominant strategy of movements for social and economic justice. As he discusses this question, he uncovers ways in which concept and language of rights imposes the individualistic and legalistic approach on other civilizations and ways of thinking.
Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country : Center for Global Development : Publications
Bill Cline has been a pioneer in the study of the economic effects of global warming. His latest book on the effects on agriculture is of great importance and he has provided another important landmark in the study of this crucial issue
GRAIN | Resources | Food crisis
Documents and links on the current food crisis, including the rise in land grabbing by nations.
GRAIN | Resources | Landgrab resource page | Se adueñan de la tierra! | L'accaparement des terres
In October 2008, GRAIN released a report on the new trend in landgrabbing spurred on by the food and financial crises. A large number of governments and corporations are out scouring the globe right now in search of productive farmland to buy or to lease for offshore food production.
List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita from 1990 through 2006. All data were calculated by the US Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), mostly based on data collected from country agencies by the United Nations Statistics Division.
Fuels and Emissions from Industrial Agriculture — Food & Water Watch
The amount of energy used in agricultural production may account for only 20 percent of the total energy spent by the overall food system, but it is still staggeringly high. Industrial farms use fossil fuels to power inefficient fuel systems and spread large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides––approximately 5.5 gallons of fossil fuels per farm acre
SD : Environment : The energy and agriculture nexus
Energy has a key role in economic and social development but there is a general lack of rural energy development policies that focus on agriculture. Agriculture has a dual role as an energy user and as an energy supplier in the form of bioenergy. This energy function of agriculture offers important rural development opportunities as well as one means of climate change mitigation by substituting bioenergy for fossil fuels. This report focuses on the challenges and opportunities of advancing modern bioenergy technology, in general, and on the technical, environmental and economic benefits of the energy function of agriculture, in particular.
Waste - Tristram Stuart - Penguin Books
The world has a 'food problem' - rapidly rising prices, shortages, 100 million people starving, environmental depredation - or it thinks it does. This book shows that farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard between 30 and 50 per cent of their fresh produce - enough to feed the starving in the world six times over. Additionally, while affluent nations throw away food through neglect, up to 40 per cent of some crops in the developing world are wasted because farmers lack the basic infrastructure to process and store them before they rot.
The Ram's Horn | Ram's Horn
The Ram's Horn is a monthly newsletter with stories and analysis of what is happening in the food system, locally and globally.
$100 DIY Shelter Could Help Homeless Haitians | Wired Science | Wired.com
With just $100 worth of plywood and screws, almost anyone can build a shelter known as a Hexayurt that can last three years and possibly even withstand a hurricane. The simple DIY structure could be a critical temporary solution for some of the estimated 1 million or more people left homeless in quake-torn Haiti.
Eco-Dome: Moon Cocoon - Cal-Earth Building Designs
The Eco-Dome is a small home design of approximately 400 square feet (40 sq. meters) interior space. It consists of a large central dome, surrounded by four smaller niches and a wind-scoop, in a clover leaf pattern. Learning and building an Eco-Dome is the next stage after building a small emergency shelter and provides hands-on learning experience in the essential aspects of Superadobe construction.

Links for 2010-02-15 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 16th, 2010, 12:00am PST

heekscad - Project Hosting on Google Code
a free, open source, CAD application
POV-Ray - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Persistence of Vision Raytracer, or POV-Ray, is a ray tracing program available for a variety of computer platforms. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David Kirk Buck and Aaron A. Collins. There are also influences from the earlier Polyray raytracer contributed by its author Alexander Enzmann. POV-Ray is freeware with the source code available.
YafaRay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
a free, open source ray tracing program that uses an XML scene description language. It has been integrated into the 3D modelling software Blender, and so can now be used to render scenes made within it directly, without the need for an exporter.
pythonOCC, a 3D CAD/PLM development library for the Python programming language.
pythonOCC is a 3D CAD/PLM development library for the Python programming language and provide the following features: 3D hybrid modeling, data exchange (support of STEP/IGES file format), GUI management support (wxPython, PyQt, python-xlib), parametric modeling, advanced meshing features. pythonOCC is built upon the OpenCASCADE 3D modeling kernel, the salomegeom and salomesmesh packages.
POV-Ray: Documentation: 2.2 Scene Description Language
The scene description language allows you to describe the world in a readable and convenient way.
Arduino - Introduction
Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.
FabBlog
The conference was well attended, almost every Fab Lab and most of the ones in development had at least one person there. It was really neat to see what other people are doing with fabrication equpiment. While the crowds we hang out in tend to be more job shops, industrial designers, and hobbyists, lots of the people there came from an educational background, as many Fab Labs are part of a college program. We all have different ways of achieving our goals, but we all have the same one in the end: bringing the excitement of building things to everyone.
Fab Lab Gurus | Google Groups
Mailing list for experienced Fab Lab managers and Fab Lab Gurus, technical advice and discussions about Fab Labs in general.

Iceland could become a internet and press freedom haven

Posted: February 15th, 2010, 7:09pm PST by Michel Bauwens

A communication by Smári McCarthy of the Icelandic Digital Freedoms Society on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative:

This really important project, endorsed by the P2P Foundation, was also reported on BBC News:

“In recent months a group of local and international people has been working on an initiative here in Iceland to propose reforms in media- and freedom of expression law, with the goal of creating the best environment for publication in the world. The method has been to adopt the strongest protective laws that exist in the world, such as the Swedish press freedom law, the Belgian source- and communications protection law, the New York Libel Terrorism Protection law, and so on, and bundle them into a broad proposal.

As the freedom of expression is constantly eroded, with recent
examples of a source secrecy ban in Ethiopia, a draconian data retention policy being enacted in Belarus, and even in supposed liberal
democracies, laws such as the FRA law in Sweden, censorship lists in
various countries including Australia, Sweden and Norway, and more than 300 secret gag orders in the United Kingdom, the need for a place where the right to know is guarded and the right to share knowledge is upheld becomes ever greater.

We have set up a website for this initiative, which is, while we
finish the final cleanups and such, closed, but it will be open soon.
Until then I invite you to preview it. I hope that you will share the
URL and credentials with trusted friends and contacts.

Our goal is to get public endorsements from a number of international
organizations who believe this is generally a step in the right
direction. We have already received a few endorsements, including from Wikileaks and Eva Joly. If your organization is willing to endorse the proposal, I request that you let me know via e-mail. If you have a
comment of some sort, please let me know.”

Book of the week: the shift to the era of Open Collaboration

Posted: February 15th, 2010, 6:29am PST by Michel Bauwens

Book: Open collaboration. Alpha Io. Lulu, 2008

This is a book that is very much in the spirit of our p2p work, covers the same domains, but in print, and bring together the work being done out there to pioneer models of open collaboration, participation and self-organization.

The editors define the qualities of an Open Collaborative Project as:

• nonhierarchical (vs hierarchical) • open (vs closed) • emergent (vs planned) • nonowned (vs owned) • participatory (vs watching)

Here is how Alpha Lo & Alden Bevington describe this important social shift in societal values and practices:”

“This shift is about a way of doing things that is more collaborative and sharing-based, – less on command and control hierarchy, tit-for-tat resource exchange, and centralized planning. It taps into the power of self-organization. It taps into the power of community, local and global. Bicycle shares, tool libraries, potlucks, town squares, place-making, online social networks, ideabanks and ecovillages tap into this power. This shift is about a way of doing things that is more emergent, evolving and dynamic. Social permaculture taps into this power. Open Space Technology facilitation methods tap into this power. Agile project management taps into this power. Our world is in a difficult state right now, and what is clearly called for is a way to create system-wide change, in the environment, in the way we behave, and in what is considered socially acceptable action by governments and business institutions. There has thus far proven to be no central agency, no closed group of world-controllers, capable of micro-managing the infinite complexities of such a world as ours, at least without adversely affecting the human spirit. However, one way we have seen which holds promise to create such fundamental and systemic changes, and which still remains to be given a full try, is to tap into the power of open collaboration. The openness allows limitless people to contribute, and the collaborative part, if well-facilitated, allows the energies of different individuals to add together rather than cancel each other out. In a word, it taps the genius at the table, and the table is large. For every one-in-a-million mind, as of this writing there are 6,796 others like them on the planet. We have now the technologies to bring such people together easily. But lets not just believe the hype, or idly think of all those great things we could do, if only… We must come to application, here, now. How can you organize your town, or your state, or your company, or your country, to ride this tide of transformation, to be ready for the new game that is emerging? That is where this present study of open collaboration can be very, very useful. By mastering some of the techniques contained in this book, untold numbers of projects and organizations have become many times more effective than than they were before. Scores of communities and businesses have much more efficiently achieved their actual goals, creatively, participatively, and made their members and employees happier in the process. The cultural shift we are in the midst of is also about the changing values of a society. It’s about ever-greater social and institutional expressions of becoming more loving, honest, accepting, embracing, empathic, connected with deeper purpose, emotionally intelligent, responsible, contributing. As these are the foundation ethics of this book, many of the entries contained here may not initially make sense to a conditioned dog-eat-dog mind, or to those who, in their own interest, have callously applied half-understood Darwinism to economics and social science. To some, these principles contained herein might even at casual glance appear naive. Of course there is another perspective, and this book is a testament to that perspective, and that an open, caring, intelligent, and just system is forever on the higher ground, and with more view of the actual landscape, despite the inning’s score. To effectively accomplish the transition implied here, the shift in the social structures needs to be accompanied by, and in many cases preceded by, a shift in the values. The shift in values needs to be accompanied by, and in many cases preceded by, a shift in social structure. It works both ways. These changes may be in many cases, and especially initially, guided by people and groups adept at facilitation, with the ability to bring people together and enable them to work together and co-create, to bring people of differing views into harmony, to assist people to listen and come to care more about each other. Such facilitation creates the conditions that allow people to realize they may want to shift to a higher value system, to create social architectures that allow everyone to participate, and to seed grassroots efforts – people like Sharif Abdullah who is a catalyst for inclusivity and consciousness transformation, Joanna Macy who facilitates people to connect at deep levels with each other and the environment, Marshall Rosenberg and his lineage of Non-Violent Communication facilitators, and Linus Torvalds who facilitates the growth of Linux open source software with an inclusive, caring, transparent and allowing style. Also groups and movements such as Search for Common Ground, the United Religions Initiative, the Village Building Convergence, the Heart Circle network, and the Transition Town network. These changes will be aided by our further study, understanding and spread of facilitation techniques like World Café, Appreciative Inquiry, Deep Democracy, and Dynamic Facilitation. The essence of many of these facilitations, and many open collaborative projects, involves tuning into the larger picture, whatever it is we are doing. It is about tuning into humanity, the earth, and the life we share it with. It’s sensing how our open collaborative projects harmonize and fit into the larger system, and checking our compass often, that we remain complementary. These shifts are also mirrored by changes in our scientific perspective. The late 20th century has seen a dramatic rise in the study of systems, network theory and how systems can self-organize. The study of emergence in systems theory looks at how complex behavior can arise out of simple rules without the need of hierarchical control or planning. They provide a hopeful basis upon which we can understand how a social structure, in the absence of command-and-control hierarchies, can self-organize to form a well-functioning society populated by responsible members. In general these system theories like Complex Adaptive Systems have looked at agents that are concerned mostly about themselves, a cynical generalization of human nature that has persisted in, and underlies the data in, numerous fields of study. We have seen that cultural values, from a familial to national level, play a large part in where an individual falls on the spectrum of altruism. As such we are adding in a new variable into the equation, and this is expansion of consciousness, and inclusivity of identity. What we hope is that systems theory will begin to look at how emergence can arise out of agents who are not acting in pure self-interest but in ways where they care about each other. Part of the vision of this book is to begin to lay out what this new systems theory will look like. In our research for this book, and our experiments in our communities, we have come to find that open collaborative systems work differently as the amount of caring in the system increases. They also work differently as people are able to tap more deeply into their identity, below certain culturally conditioned layers, and give of themselves from that place. We are in the process of mapping a phase transition in the way open collaborative systems behave as these parameters increase. The open collaborative systems also undergo yet another behavioral shift/phase transition as people are supported by the system to enter into more inclusive consciousness states, allowing them to more easily tap into the collective consciousness field, a group mind so to speak, and allowing it to guide their behavior. The independent agents of the collaboration begin to work more as one unit, and the action of the whole is somehow amplified by this synergy. People, processes, theories and groups involved with helping this aspect of the transition include Integral Ecology, Council of All Beings, Theory U facilitation techniques, Spiral Dynamics in its turquoise and higher levels, global meditations, and Sri Aurobino’s work with collective consciousness.

… In this spirit, this present book is a compilation of many of the ideas and examples that are bringing this new and also ancient worldview into the forefront of our culture today. It is an open collaborative project itself, tapping into the power of the collective, by being not only about open collaboration, but the product of it as well. It draws encyclopedic content from the communal well of open-source wikis such as Wikipedia, and architects these isolated pieces of information into a form that gives a sense of this new paradigm landscape. Its principals have been engaged in it as an open collaborative experiment from the outset. Further, as an iterative book, now in version 2.2, it is an experiment of the principle that projects don’t have to be finished before they are put out to the world, as ‘finished’ is in some sense just an idea; everything is always evolving. So as you read study and apply it, do please consider this book to be in perpetual beta, and one which you can give feedback to and participate in; it is an emergent and perpetually changing, hopefully improving, collaboration. A bit like this world.”

Links for 2010-02-14 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 15th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde Starts Money Sharing Site | TorrentFreak
Flattr allows consumers to flatter content producers for a flat-rate fee, and offers a revenue stream to those who create and share content.
Open-Book Management
In its simplest form, Open-Book Management is a way of running a company that gets everyone focused on building a better business - helping the business be more successful. It teaches all employees the goals of the company and how they can make a difference - both individually and as part of a team. Open-Book Management works because employees get a chance to act â€“ to take responsibility rather that just 'doing their job'. Each employee knows enough about the company to understand how their actions will affect their stake in the outcome.
Building the Open Source Bussard Fusion Reactor — Kickstarter
Without university funding, I've been working at my lab in Brooklyn to build the world's first superconducting Bussard reactor, a nuclear fusion technology that promises clean, cheap, abundant energy. I track my progress on the Prometheus Fusion Perfection blog.
Getting Things Done - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
a method created by David Allen, and described in a book of the same name. Both "Getting Things Done" and "GTD" are USPTO registered trademarks of the David Allen Company (numbers 2431583 and 3591195). GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.
Home-Built TTL CPU
This is about my homebuilt TTL computer processor. TTL stands for "transistor-transistor logic" and refers to a set of first-generation integrated circuits (I.C.'s) that contain simple logic gates, buffers, a binary adder, flip-flops, registers, decoders, multiplexors etc. These series 7400 I.C.'s are carefully designed so they can be connected together in patterns to make larger logic circuits. I built a computer central processing unit (CPU) of my own design out of these I.C.s.
Robocrane - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
a kind of manipulator resembling a Stewart platform but using an octahedral assembly of cables instead of struts. Like the Stewart platform, the Robocrane has six degrees of freedom (x, y, z, pitch, roll, & yaw).
Mission – The Lemelson Foundation is dedicated to improving lives through invention | The Lemelson Foundation
Established by American inventor Jerome Lemelson, the Foundation supports inventors, invention and innovation at every stage. This helps ensure that great ideas and great inventors will continue to serve the U.S. and the world.
AshokaTECH: Technology, Invention and Social Entrepreneurship
The panel The Ever Green Revolution: Trends in Agriculture featured Amitabha Sadangi, Tarcio Handel, and Ashoka-Lemelson fellows Joseph Sekiku and Muthu Velayutham. One of the key questions in the discussion was how entrepreneurs can empower farmers who may only be able to feed their families to develop their farms into sustainable businesses.
Who We Are
helps entrepreneurial men and women in poor areas of the developing world to build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries.
Open Source DIY Robotic Arm, A Call For Your Skills - Gizmo Watch
The Opensource robotic arm at Thingiverse.com invites you to build your own robotic arm and more importantly calls for assistance to improvise on the developed arm. Costing about $150, with all pieces and servo controller, the robotic arm with only 5 degree mobility freedom, has lot that can be improved upon.
charles hugh smith-The Wal-Mart Model of Self-Destruction: Lowest Prices, Always
The devolution of the American citizen into a self-destructing consumer starts with the devolution of a value system into an monomaniacal obsession: "the only thing that matters is the lowest price," regardless of the true costs or consequences.
Radical Shifts Take Hold in U.S. Manufacturing - WSJ.com
America's industrial base is undergoing its most radical restructuring in decades as manufacturers rethink their businesses in the wake of the recession. From Dow Chemical Co. to Intel Corp., iconic companies are telling stories of wrenching change—both contraction and recovery—as they report their earnings for 2009.

The Indian tradition of open knowledge sharing

Posted: February 14th, 2010, 10:52pm PST by Michel Bauwens

When we look back on our times, we may find that the term, “Intellectual Property” has taken its place along side another archaic term, “Horseless Carriage.” Both were attempts to impose metaphors of the past on the future. And the folly of our times is that we treat inexhaustible resources like knowledge as finite resource and treat finite resources like oil and forests as infinite resources. The sooner we turn these attitudes around, the better it will be for the future of mankind.

Great editorial from Red Hat director, Venkatesh Hariharan:

“The current model of trying to “propertize,” “privatize” and “commoditize” knowledge comes from a very mercantile, reductionist model of treating knowledge. That may be OK for other countries, which have “intellectual propertized” their knowledge and hold the balance of power in IP Rights, but not for India which has had a long, rich tradition of free knowledge cultures like yoga, ayurveda, mathematics and many other disciplines. It would not be far-fetched to say that many Indian traditions place a moral imperative on sharing knowledge.

One of my favorite stories illustrates the importance accorded to the sharing of knowledge. After the brutal battle of Kalinga, the Emperor Ashoka was so overcome with remorse that he renounced bloodshed and embraced Buddhism. As part of his penance, Ashoka went to monasteries across the country. At each monastery, he would leave munificent donations of gold coins. At one monastery, the emperor left behind one solitary gold coin. When his perplexed followers asked him to explain, Ashoka said that the abbot of the monastery was a great man but he did not share his knowledge with others.

This is a deep-seated ethos that is thousands of years old. This is the ethos that created open knowledge traditions like yoga, ayurveda etc, that are freely used by all. However, when India seeks to use “their” “intellectual property” (allopathic medicine, software and business method patents etc.) we are told, “pay up or else….” Talk about an unequal exchange!

The contrast is best illustrated by what happened with Bikram Yoga taught by celebrity yoga teacher, Bikram Chowdhury who makes a fortune teaching yoga to Americans. Bikram copyrighted a series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises practiced in a room heated upto 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Note that Yoga is a body of knowledge which has been free from copyrights, patents and “intellectual property” for more than 2000 years. When asked why, Bikram said that he sought legal protection because “it’s the American way.”

Each society evolves systems that suit its own needs. Most of India’s traditions of knowledge spring forth from a spiritual base whereas America’s treatment of knowledge has a mercantile bias. This is not to pass a value judgment on either. The problem arises when, in a globalizing society the two systems clash and are unable to harmonize with each other.

Sadly most of India’s thinking around legal protection of knowledge has been “derivative” in nature, a shoddy cut and paste job from the “mature IP systems” of the West. However, as the Bilski case shows, even these “mature IP systems” are having second thoughts on how they treat knowledge, or in this specific case, business methods. As I have argued in my previous blog entry, “The Practical Problem with Software Patents,” the litigation-ridden path followed by US in granting software and business method patents is something India must avoid at all costs.”

From a hymn to Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge, which says that:

Wonderful is your gift of knowledge
the more we share, the more it grows
the more we hoard it, the more it diminishes

Indian Goddess of Knowledge

The inaugural conference of the VIRT3C group

Posted: February 14th, 2010, 9:59pm PST by chris pinchen

The Yorkshire Post recently wrote this piece about the inaugural conference of the VIRT3C group which takes place in Hull, UK, March 19-20.

Get clued up on the ‘anarchic’ power of the world wide web

We exceptionally reproduce this article of a local newspaper in full.

DR ATHINA KARATZOGIANNI: Internet is ‘like a teenager’.

By Alexandra Wood

THE ever-changing world of the Internet will be put under the spotlight in Hull next month.
The inaugural conference of the VIRT3C group aims to put Hull University on the map for Internet studies research.

Organiser Dr Athina Karatzogianni said: “This is an academic conference but we are trying to reach out to the public as well. It will be a fantastic opportunity to hear (keynote speaker) Geert Lovink (from the Institute of Network Culture in Amsterdam).

“The idea is to discuss virtual collaborative networks and looking at the conflicts which are emerging, their difficulties and their successes.”

The Internet revolution has been a huge boon to both anti-war movements, who have been able to mobilise support more rapidly than ever before, and groups like Al-Qaeda which uses the Web to recruit and train members in a way, she said, which “works like a franchise almost”.

Dr Karatzogianni added that until recently the US Government has been “uncomfortable and clueless” about how to deal with the “uncontrollable and anarchic dimensions of the web”.

The world-wide scandal of Abu Ghraib, whose images were first released on the Internet, was a wake-up call.

The US military now posts its own propaganda on YouTube, such as videos of soldiers engaging with local people and playing football with children, in “an effort to humanise an inhuman war”.

Cyberattacks by the Chinese against other powers – German chancellor Angela Merkel brought the issue up with the Chinese when her office was found to be infected with spyware – is another hot topic.

Dr Karatzogianni, a lecturer in media, culture and society at the University, said it remains to be seen whether the emerging conflicts on the Net will transfer to the “real world”, but concluded: “The Internet now is like a teenager – you never know what will come out of it.”

The conference runs from Friday, March 19 to Saturday, March 20, with a public session on Friday at Lecture Theatre in D, Larkin Building, starting at 5pm when Prof Lovink will be speaking. The theorist, activist and net critic has been involved in new media since the early 1980s.

[From Get clued up on the 'anarchic' power of the world wide web - Yorkshire Post ]

Contrasting viewpoints on copyright

Posted: February 13th, 2010, 10:39pm PST by Michel Bauwens

“In The Revolution Will Be Animated, documentary filmmaker Marine Lormant Sebag presents multiple viewpoints on copyright in the digital age. The film’s main character is Nina Paley, an American animator who produced a feature film called Sita Sings the Blues. Nina encountered many copyright issues with the songs she used, from 1920s´ singer Annette Hanshaw. These experiences made her realize that she didn’t want the same thing to happen to her film. She finally used a Creative Commons Share Alike license in order to free her work and present it to the world.”

The Revolution Will Be Animated from Marine Lormant Sebag on Vimeo.

P2P and distributism

Posted: February 13th, 2010, 7:02pm PST by Michel Bauwens

I asked the distributist author John C. Médaille to explain how he sees the connection between the p2p approach and distributism.

This is an excellent and easy to read introduction:

John C. Médaille:

“The most salient point about a peer-to-peer network is that it is a network of peers. That is, at each node, there is an entity that is, in some sense, the equal of all the others. The participants on the net will be, of course, of vastly different sizes and abilities, but in relation to each other, there is a kind of equality. However, if some nodes contain critical code, information, or resources that others must use, and this use can be restricted, then the peer network becomes, in actual fact, a hierarchical one.

Economies are also networks, and “free” economies require a certain equality between participants. Each person produces what he can and trades as he pleases. But if some parties are vastly more powerful than others, then the market cannot be free. If some parties have vast piles of wealth, superior access to public resources, monopolistic control of critical supplies, then the market is no longer “free” in the sense of being a series of free exchanges between peers.

This, in a nutshell, is the idea behind the economic philosophy known as “Distributism.” It is simply the idea that economic and social systems work better when productive resources, such as land, tools, and education, are widely distributed throughout the population. There need not be a precise equality in the distribution of these goods, but each person needs some goods in order to make his or her contribution to society, to support himself and his family, to enrich her particular neighborhood, to make their contribution to the common good.

Distributism is distinguished from both capitalism and socialism by its attitude towards productive property. Capitalism, although it formally allows for anyone to have property, tends to gather property in a few hands on the grounds that economic growth is dependent on the control of vast accumulations of wealth. Socialism extends the idea of accumulations by gathering all property into the hands of the state. Functionally, there is very little difference between them, and in practice the two ideologies tend to merge in the welfare state: the corporate world provides what jobs it will at what wages it chooses, and the state provides everything else.

Capitalism and socialism may be critiqued on both economic and social grounds. Economically, capitalism is not as efficient as it claims. Its economies of scale become, at some point, dis-economies, as management becomes more and more remote from both the actual operations and from the nominal “owners” of the firm, while the cost of gathering information in such large organizations exceeds the value of that information However, it is politically “efficient”; that is, it is efficient at getting subsidies and privileges from the state and externalizing its costs. The mere size of these organizations gives them superior access and influence in the political process, and their dis-economies can be offset by public subsidy.

Before the government elected to intervene decisively in the markets, that is, before 1929, capitalism was an extremely unstable system. Indeed, the turmoil we are experiencing today was more the rule than the exception; in the period from 1853 to 1942, the economy was in recession or depression no less than 41% of the time. Since then the economy has been in recession only 15% of the time. Further, the pre-war recessions were, on average, twice as long and twice as deep as the post-war ones. So, does this mean we can safely leave the task of correcting the problems of capitalism to the state?

Although state intervention has worked reasonably well for the last 70 years, the current crises and the rising debts give us reason to doubt that this system can continue much longer. But even if we manage to survive the present turmoil and continue as before, there is another problem. Statism converts everybody from being a citizen to be a client of the state. A citizen is one who takes responsibility for himself and his community; a client demands services for a fee, a fee he frequently demands that somebody else pay. This is not the way to build community. But an economic system must aid community, must be part and parcel of building up the person, the family, and the polis. Indeed, it can have no other justification, for the mere accumulation of wealth justifies nothing, especially when the wealth is gathered into fewer and fewer hands.

The Origins of Distributism

Distributism is a new name for an old system. But in its modern form, it traces back to the meditations of the Catholic Church on economic conditions since the 19th century. It begins with the encyclical (a letter from the Pope, Leo XIII in this case), Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”) written in 1891. This was the moment in history when the art of Political Economy was re-inventing itself as the science of economics. The new economists imagined that they could develop a pure science valid for all times and places, and divorced from any particularities of culture, political systems, or institutional settings. And most especially, they wanted to make it a value-free science.

Leo scandalized the new scientists by insisting that economic systems were not value-free, but properly based in the natural virtue of justice, the virtue that regulates relations among persons and societies. The signs of economic justice were, for Leo, the just wage and a more equitable distribution of property.

This perplexed the new scientists because labor was just another factor of production, its price set by the market, which seeks to purchase it at the lowest rate possible. But the distributists point out that this is self-contradictory. Wages are the major source of demand, and if the workers do not get an adequate share of what they produce, there will be a failure of demand with a recession as the result.

As G. K. Chesterton noted,

Capitalism is contradictory as soon as it is complete. For the master is always trying to cut down what his servant demands, and in doing so is cutting down on what his customer can spend. He is wanting to treat the same man in contradictory ways: He wants to pay him like a pauper but expects him to spend like a prince.

If a just wage was perplexing, the equitable distribution of property was even more so, since “freedom” in this reckoning means the freedom to acquire without limit. But physical property, and especially land, is at any given moment a finite quantity, which makes it a zero-sum game. The more for one, the less for others. This allows not only property, but power, to be gathered in a few hands. However, this concentration of power is contradictory to free market theory, which depends on the production of any given commodity being spread over a vast number of firms, such that no firm has any real pricing power. But in order for the “vast number of firms” assumption to be true, productive property must be widely spread throughout the social order. Persons who have access to productive property are more properly citizens, while those who do not become the mere clients of state or corporate bureaucracies.

The gift economy

As problematic as these principles are for the economists, the current Pope, Benedict XVI, has seriously raised the ante. Benedict insists not merely on the natural virtue of justice, but on the supernatural virtue of love. In his recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Benedict insists on the Principle of Gratuitousness, the idea that underneath the economy of exchange and profit, there is the idea of the gift. At this point, the economist is likely to say, “We can discuss this some other time,” and the businessman is likely to grumble, “I’m in business to make a profit.” And the businessman is right, since without making a profit, he cannot tell if he is running his business correctly and allocating his resources efficiently.

However, profit is not the sole reason for going into business. Rather, business is the way that some express their talents, provide for themselves and their families, contribute to their communities. Profit, save in pathological cases, is never the sole reason. The world of commerce and exchange funds the gift, but never completely explains it. A social order that abandons the idea of the gift, the Principle of Gratuitousness, will find that it has lost the ability to sustain itself. Something over and above the logic of exchange is required for social order, a true lagniappe, as the Cajuns say.

The test of Reality

“Perfect” economic systems are a dime a dozen, in the abstract. It is getting them to work that is the real test. We need to be able to examine a system on the ground and functioning, to walk around it, kick the tires, and see what its problems and its promises are. And distributism passes this test. It passes it in the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation of Spain, where nearly 100,000 worker-owners do $24B/year in sales in over 200 cooperatives. It passes the test in the cooperative economy of Emilia-Romagna, where 40% of the GDP is from cooperatives of every variety and kind, and which boasts an average wage of twice that of the rest of Italy, and one of the highest living standards in Europe. It is tested in cooperative and mutualist ventures around the world.

The viability of a peer-based economy is not a theoretical construct, but a functioning reality. Indeed, distributism goes from success to success, while capitalism goes from bailout to bailout.”

Network culture and its effect on democracy

Posted: February 13th, 2010, 8:12am PST by Michel Bauwens

Whether network culture plants the seeds of greater democratic participation and deliberation, or whether it will only be used to mobilize already like-minded individuals, remains to be seen. The question we face at the dawn of network culture is whether we, the inhabitants of our networked publics, can reach across our micro-clustered worlds to coalesce into a force capable of understanding the condition we are in. Can we produce positive change, preserving what is good about network culture and changing what is bad – or are we doomed to dissipate into the network?

We continue our treatment of Kazys Varnelis’ a remarkable and extensive essay in Kulturos Barai, i.e.The meaning of network culture

Today, we excerpt from Kazys’ treatment of networked publics and how this changes the public sphere.

“It is in this context that networked publics form. Apart from the loss of the self, of all the changes that network culture brings us, the reconfiguration of the public sphere is likely to be the most significant, a distinction that makes our moment altogether unlike any other in three centuries. After the Enlightenment, the public came to be understood as a realm of politics, media, and culture, a site of display and debate open to every citizen while; in turn, the private was broadly understood as a realm of freedom, inwardness, and individuality. The public sphere was the space in which bourgeois culture and politics played out, a theatre for bourgeois citizens to play their role in shaping and legitimating society. In its origin as a body that the king would appear to, the public is by nature a responsive, reflexive, and thereby a responsible and empowered entity. Founded on the sovereign’s need for approval during the contentious later years of the aristocracy (an approval that eventually was withdrawn), the public sphere served as a check on the state. In that respect, the public sphere served in the same capacity as media: at the same time as the emergence of the newspaper, the gallery, the novel, modern theatre, music, and so on, the public produced voices of criticism. Even if the equation of public space and public sphere was a problematic, by understanding media as a space (or conversely space as a medium), it was nevertheless possible to draw a rough link between the two.

As many theorists observed, the twentieth century was witness to a long, sustained decline in the public sphere. In Habermas’ analysis, this came about due to the contamination of the public sphere by private matters, most crucially its colonization by capital and the consequent transformation of the media from a space of discourse to a commodified realm. As media concentrated in huge conglomerates more interested in the marketing of consensus than in a theatre of deliberation, and with little use for genuinely divergent positions, mass media sought consensus in the middle ground, the political apparatus that Arthur Schlesinger called “the vital centre”. The model of the public became one-way, the culture industry and the political machine expecting approval or, at most, dissent within a carefully circumscribed set of choices.

Public space was not left unmolested. On the contrary, it was privatized, thoroughly colonized by capital, less a place of display for the citizen and more a theatre of consumption under high security and total surveillance. In postmodernism, the condition seemed virtually total, the public privatized, reduced to opinion surveys and demographics. If there was hope for the public sphere, it came in the form of identity politics, the increasing voices of counter-publics composed of subaltern peoples (in the developed world this would have been non-whites, gays, feminists, youth, and so on), existing in tension with the dominant public. But if counterpublics could define and press their cases in their own spheres, for the broader public they were marginalized and marginalizing entities, defined by their position of exclusion. Toward the end of postmodernism in the early 1990s, even identity politics became colonized, understood by marketers as another lifestyle choice among many. But if this was the last capitulation of the old publics as an uncommodified realm for discourse, it was also the birth of networked publics.

Today, we inhabit multiple overlapping networks, some composed of those very near and dear to us, others at varying degrees of remove. The former are private and personal, extensions of intimate space that are incapable of forming into networked publics. Interest communities, forums, newsgroups, blogs, on the other hand, are sites for individuals who are generally not on intimate terms to encounter others, sometimes with the goal of making acquaintance, sometimes on a deliberately anonymous and ephemeral level. These networked publics are not mere consumers. On the contrary, today’s political commentary and cultural criticism are as much generated from below as from above. From the deposal of Trent Lott to Rathergate, networked publics have drawn attention to issues that traditional media outlets missed or were reluctant to tackle.

The idealized model for networked publics is, as Yochai Benkler suggests, that of a “distributed architecture with multidirectional connections among all nodes in the networked information environment”. This vision of the network, commonly held as a political ideal for networked publics and sometimes misunderstood as the actual structure on which the Internet is based, is taken from RAND researcher Paul Baran’s famous model of the distributed network. Where centralized networks are dominated by one node to which all others are connected, and decentralized networks are dominated by a few key nodes in a hub and spoke network, under the distributed model, each node is equal to all others.Baran’s diagram has been taken up as a foundation myth for the Internet, but not only was Baran’s network never the basis for the Internet’s topology, it bears little resemblance to the way networked publics are organized. Benkler points out that the distributed model is merely ideal, and if we seek a networked public sphere with everyone a pamphleteer, we will be disappointed. Networked publics are by no means purely democratic spaces in which every voice can be heard. That would be cacophony. But, Benkler continues, if we compare our current condition to the mass media of the 1990s and earlier, we can observe real changes. Barriers for entry into the public sphere have been greatly reduced. It is possible for an individual or group of individuals to put out a message that can be heard globally with relatively little expense.

Still, there are very real threats to the networked public sphere, and Benkler, like many other theorists, warns of them. In terms of infrastructure, the decentralized structure of the Internet allows governments, like the Chinese, to censor information they deem inappropriate for public consumption and the United States’s National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor private Internet traffic. So far, networked publics have found ways of routing around such damage, providing ways of getting around China’s censorship and exposing the NSA’s infamous room at the AT&T switching station in San Francisco.

But a centralization that emerged from within networked publics would also be a danger. Manuel de Landa observes that networks do not remain stable but, rather, go through different states as they evolve. Decentralized and distributed models give rise to centralized models, and vice versa, as they grow. The emergence of networked publics just as mass media seemed dominant is a case in point. In his work on blog readership, Clay Shirky notes that diversity plus freedom of choice results in a power-law distribution. Thus, a small number of A-list bloggers attracts the majority of the readers. If tag-oriented search engines like Technorati or del.icio.us attempt to steer readers into the long tail of readership, they also reinforce the A-list by making evident the number of inbound links to any particular site.[38] Moreover, even if such sites, together with Google, MyTube, Netflix, iTunes, and other search engines, successfully redirect us to the long tail, together they form an A-list of the big aggregators. For now most of these are catholic in what content they include, but it is entirely possible this may change.

The long tail may prove to be a problem for another reason, what Robert Putnam calls “cyberbalkanization”. Given the vast number of possible clusters one can associate with, it becomes easy to find a comfortable niche with people just like oneself, among other individuals whose views merely reinforce one’s own. If the Internet is hardly responsible for this condition, it still can exacerbate it, giving us the illusion that we are connecting with others. Through portals like news.google.com or my.yahoo.com and, even more so, through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) readers, Nicholas Negroponte’s vision of the “Daily Me”, a personalized newspaper freshly constructed for us every morning and tailored to our interests, is a reality. Even big media, under pressures of post-Fordist flexible consumption, has fragmented into a myriad of channels. But this desire for relevance is dangerous. It is entirely possible to essentially fabricate the outside world, reducing it to a projection of oneself. Rather than fostering deliberation, blogs can simply reinforce opinions between like-minded individuals. Conservatives talk to conservatives while liberals talk to liberals. Lacking a common platform for deliberation, they reinforce existing differences. Moreover, new divisions occur. Humans are able to maintain only a finite number of connections, and as we connect with others at a distance who are more like us, we are likely to disconnect with others in our community who are less like us. Filters too can lead to grotesque misrepresentations of the world, as in the case of happynews.com (”Real News. Compelling Stories. Always Positive.”).”

Introduction to the new (p2p) economics

Posted: February 13th, 2010, 2:50am PST by Michel Bauwens

A really really great (Prezi) and very very rich presentation by Arthur Brock, collaborator of the Metacurrency Project, on the newly emerging economy.

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New Economy, New Wealth on Prezi

Links for 2010-02-12 [del.icio.us]

Posted: February 13th, 2010, 12:00am PST

Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: Defining the Big Shift
At the highest level, we would characterize the Big Shift as moving from a world of push to a world of pull. In other words, given the growing uncertainty in the world around us, we must master a new set of techniques required to access, attract and accumulate resources to unleash peer based learning in far more flexible ways than conventional push programs permit.
PharmaGossip: Richard Smith looks forward
Big Pharma claims to be concerned about our health. However, it is interesting to note the results of the Orphan Drug Act. In the decade prior to 1983 only ten drugs and biological products for rare diseases and cancers were brought to the market by the pharmaceutical companies.