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• 

  Links for 2008-02-29 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 29th, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • i-genius World Summit - Events - i-genius
    The i-genius summit is bringing the most creative and innovative social entrepreneurs from around the world together with leaders in government, business investors and NGOs to participate in a unique event.
  • 2008 CC Korea Conference

  
• 

  Adam Arvidsson: Social innovation in Malmo

  Posted: February 29th, 2008, 7:01pm PST by Michel Bauwens

  Via.

  Adam Arvidsson:

  “In modern society we were used to thinking of culture and its production as business of specialized institutions of groups. Indeed the progressive disappearance of spontaneous popular culture, and the concomitant institutionalization of mass culture, were understood to be to central tendencies within the modernization process.

  “Spontankultur”

  Since the post-War years this development has been reversed, and there has been a continuous tendency towards renewed forms of autonomous cultural production, first with youth culture and the counter culture, then with participatory consumerism, fan culture and finally, through the socialization of networked ICTs, today’s generalized interactivity or Web 2.0.

  To some extent this new cultural production constitutes a revival of older forms of traditional, popular culture. Largely however it emerges form a new situation, itself created by the massive reorganization of social relations that have resulted from the modernization process.

  ‘Spontaneous’, non-institutionalized culture today is the outcome of a dual technological and existential condition. From a technological point of view, the diffusion of networked ICTs has worked as a massive socialization of the means of cultural production, much like that imagined by Hans Magnus Enzenberger in the early 1970s. The multi-purpose, networked computer radically facilitates the production of culture, its distribution and, of equal importance, the organization of productive processes that can span over geographical distance. Existentially, the ‘post-modern condition’ where tradition and inherited identities count less than before force a growing number of people to themselves understand what their values are, know their motivations and aspirations, give meaning to their existence, in short to produce a meaningful, affective and ‘ethical’ context for life. When networked ICTs combined with these existential needs, they work to release an immense productive condition that is immanent in social life itself: the desire to overcome the alienation and solitude imposed by the modernization process and to come together and produce community: what Italian philosopher Paolo Virno has called ‘mass intellectuality’.

  Sustainable Policies (after Florida)

  Such mass intellectuality has been the focus of a number of theories and suggestions for urban development, from Charles Landry to Richard Florida. Mostly however these suggestions are not sustainable: they tend to use up the very creativity that they seek to build on, in transforming it into an ‘experientially rich’ consumer environment for the educated middle class.

  In this project we want to develop a different more sustainable strategy for valorizing creativity. This presupposes a more advanced and multi-faceted definition of the value of this mass intellectuality. With ‘value’ we mean three different things. First, these practices can have what we call an ‘ethical value’, that is they can generate valuable forms of community and belonging that serve to anchor individuals into a social context and can function as a point of departure for political participation and awareness. Mass intellectuality can work as a driver for new kinds of democratization. Second, these processes can have direct economic value. As the distinction between cultural and material production keeps breaking down (BMWs most valuable resource is their brand), companies take an increasing interest in the immaterial productivity of everyday life. This is particularly true for the kinds of ‘cool’ or ‘creative’ productive processes that unfold in the urban environment. Can the mass intellectuality function as an economic resource for the city, and how can it , in that case be valorised? Finally, mass intellectuality has symbolic or ‘brand’ value. Too many cities try to brand themselves as ‘creative’. Mostly this is a matter for rather superficial forms of intervention. Are their ways in which the city of Malmö can make actually existing form of mass- intellectuality contribute to developing its brand and attraction? “

  
• 

  Book of the Week: Hacking Capitalism. Part Three: From class struggle to play struggle

  Posted: February 29th, 2008, 3:54am PST by Michel Bauwens

  We continue our presentation of Johan Soderbergh’s book with a last excerpt about perhaps the key concept of the book: Play Struggle.

  Johan Soderbergh:

  “The notion of hackers becoming ‘revolutionaries just for fun’ would have appealed to the eighteenth century poet Friedrich Schiller. Disappointed by the failure of the French Revolution, he sat down to ponder over how to make it work better the next time. Friedrich Schiller saw the ‘aesthetic play-drive’ as the primary force which could foster a more wholesome human being, whose maturing would also create and be able to sustain a post-revolutionary aesthetic state. Schiller meant that the aesthetic education of man was necessary to heal the rift within man caused by specialisation: “[. . .] If man is ever to solve the problem of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to Freedom.” Both adherers and critics of Schiller have pigeonholed him in the tradition of romanticism. Marxist scholars have followed Marx’s lead and passed over Schiller’s work as a footnote in German, idealist philosophy. The noteable exception was Herbert Marcuse. He declared his indebtedness to the old poet for his own life-long investigation into the liberating potential of aesthetics and play. Shiller’s philosophy ought to be reclaimed from the fine art scene and high-browed poetry. It would do him more justice if his words were applied to the politics that flow from the ‘beauty of the baud’ and the play with source code in the computer underground.

  Herbert Marcuse is best known for deploring the one-dimensional rationality of technology. Today, with the rise of a ‘creative industry’ and a cultural economy, art, language, and fantasy too have been put to work and incorporated in instrumentalist thinking. Conversely, however, technology is aestheticised and put to play. A hacker does not speak about a program script in terms of functionality. Neat source code is a matter of good taste. Aesthetics is the organising principle of their play, which, mostly by accident, also produces working computer applications. A paraphrase of Friedrich Schiller can underline the ramifications of what just has been said: The object of hackers’ play is the beauty of the baud and its goal is software freedom. This reasoning is also consistent with how Marcuse envisioned that the instrumentality of technology could be resolved in modern society. Technology had to be returned to its origin in craftsmanship. Since the day when techne was split between useful arts and fine art proper, technological development has been defined by utilitarianism, while poetry has been relegated to the domain of the unreal and inconsequential. At least that is how things generally come across. A closer look will reveal that a play element has persisted throughout the history of technology. To the side of industrial and military innovations, there have also been innovations made purely for the sake of amusement. These technologies flourished in the renaissance courts. It was here that engineers of the day found their outlet since they were kept at bay from entering the industry by trade guilds. Architecture, gardens, water works, pyrotechnics, and automata are some examples. Moreover, to the list can be added cabinets, bestiaries, and scientific experiments that were as much performed as researched. It is this marginal and aristocratic lineage of technological development that has been picked up, and, to some degree, democratised, by hackers, by radio amateurs, and hobbyists.

  The first generation of hackers nurtured a dream of making computer resources accessible. Members in the Homebrew Computer Club envisioned a small computer ‘able to run on the kitchen table’. They were in part motivated by a desire to play with those machines; in part they were aware of the political importance of democratising computer technology. Present-day hackers pursue the same mixture of play and politics within the technological platform of small computers and open-edited software handed down to them by the first generation. The passion for writing software code is contagious and easily spills over to other fields of doing. A popular sideline within the computer underground is to build mechanical replicas of classic computer games and exhibit these gadgets at hacker conferences. The step is a short one to more ambitious hardware projects, such as the OScar project. It is a collaboration between car engineers and tinkerers to design an ‘open source car’. What is gradually taking shape within the hacker movement at this moment is an extension of the dream that was pioneered by the members of the Homebrew Computer Club. It is the vision of a universal factory able to run on the kitchen table. The idea is not as far-fetched as it first might seem. Development trends towards flexible production within industry are pushing in the same direction. Researchers at the MIT laboratory, for instance, have experimented with computer-aided manufacturing facilities small enough to fit into a single room and easy enough to operate by lay people after a short, introductory course. The facility can be used to cut, solder, cast, compress, etc. almost any material into a finished product. Likewise, a group of engineers in Brighton try to construct a ’self-replicating ‘rapid prototyper’ that can mould everyday items out of plastic. The performance and significance of these research projects are open to dispute. In most cases, hardware developed from below will proceed through the novel combination of mass-produced, off-the-shelf electronic parts. More important than the individual technologies is that these dreams are now being articulated. This is not how cadres of revolutionaries visualised the ‘expropriation of the expropriators’. Nonetheless, the desire for a ‘desktop factory’ amounts to the same thing as the reappropriation of the means of production. The seizure is unfolding as new productive relations are being invented in play.”

  Book: Johan Söderberg. Hacking Capitalism: The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Movement. Routledge, 2007

  

  
• 

  Podcast: Interview with Michel Bauwens, P2P and spirituality

  Posted: February 28th, 2008, 11:15pm PST by James Burke

  Enclosure: [download]

  A interview between James Burke and Michel Bauwens on participative spirituality and the relationship of P2P with religion and religious practice.

  This podcasts clarifies and adds to a recent series of posts including, The next Buddha will be a collective.

  See related posts below:
  part 1:Spiritual expression in the peer to peer era
  part 2: Towards a theory of the spiritual commons
  part 3: Commons-oriented approaches: Working the “we field” through peer circles, The development of intersubjective facilitation, Chaos religions on the internet, Open Source Religions, Towards a contributory spirituality

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-28 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 28th, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • BlogBaud.com - A Nonprofit Blog Powered by Blackbaud Employees
    covers a variety of important topics related to how nonprofit organizations can leverage Web 2.0 and other social networking technologies.
  • Plumi — Plone CMS: Open Source Content Management
    is a package of Plone products that enable you to create your own video sharing site. By adding it to an existing Plone instance you can quickly have a wide array of functionality to facilitate video distribution and community creation.
  • Category:Zero Hour - Open Souce Ecology
    When Open Source Ecology Social Synergy comes across people who are releasing under some form of open/reusable license, ideas or theories that we collectively think are useful, we will start an active project to immediately apply those ideas.
  • CommunityWiki: Think Talk Act
    I feel that it's best, in general, to focus on action, since that's what I find lacking the most, both in myself, others, and societies as a whole. Action is tied to enthusiasm, which is an energy we use to get moving.
  • Talk:User Owner Project - Open Souce Ecology
    There is a special economic case that occurs when the Owner of some Physical Sources (the material Means of Production) are also the Users of the Object[ive]s (output, product, purpose) of that production.
  • Wikia Open Sources Social Networking - Focused Networking Now Open to All - ReadWriteWeb
    The ability to set up an Open Source social network is now available to anyone who can put a Mediawiki install on their servers. Look out Ning and other proprietary social networking platforms!
  • 21 Days of Wiki Adoption
    Your competitors are using wikis. Your customers are using wikis. So are other employees in your organization. You need to use wikis too. It’s where your future is. And I’ll show you how.
  • Exemple d'intégration de flux XML dans un (media)wiki
    Comment installer un lecteur de flux (RSS, Atom) sur Mediawiki ?
  • Coalition for a Global Commons
    Berlin March 4-6, 2008
  • Welcome to Google Sites
    Google Sites, a new offering from Google Apps, makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information -- from videos to presentations -- and share your site with just a few people, your entire org
  • Erich Fromm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Erich Fromm postulated five basic needs: 1. Relatedness - relationships with others, care, respect, knowledge;
  • Free WordPress Blogging Tutorial
    WordPress tutorials.
  • Joomla Video Tutorials
    video tutorialsP2P

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-27 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 27th, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
    The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast.
  • captura - Schule Zukunft Mensch
    see Finanzierung for microsponsoring
  • FilmForge | web video for all!
    FilmForge is a version of the content management system Drupal, tailored to the needs of videomaking communities. FilmForge makes it simple to install and run your own video sharing site.
  • EngageMedia
    a website for video about social justice and environmental issues in Australia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
  • Creativity, Spirituality, and Transcendence
    They present a variety of new perspectives on creativity, spirituality, and transcendence as experienced in adulthood.
  • Thanks for using MediaCoder
    The goal of the project is to provide the community with an easy-to-use, all-in-one, high performance media transcoder with up-to-date codecs and tools integrated. As it is under intensive development, it may not be problem-free for all the time.
  • The Coming Ad Revolution - WSJ.com
    The discussion about privacy is changing as users take control over their own online data. While they spread their Web presence, these users are not looking for privacy, but for recognition as individuals
  • Shambles Forest of Theme BLOGS
  • Dopplr Blog » New Feature: Dopplr Subscribes to Your Personal Calendar
    integration of Dopplr with Google Calendar
  • Show in a Box » Your show. Your site. Your style.
    a package of free video-centric themes and plugins for WordPress, made by and for independent web video creators. All of these tools are open source and ready to be tweaked to look as good as your video content does.
  • Edge: SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE LIKE THE EYE: A Talk with Nicholas A. Christakis
    people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent.
  • Disinfo.com - The Age of the Online Micro-Celebrity
    a daily exploration to track, analyze and understand the new cultural phenomenon of online micro-celebrity.
  • Pop17
    monitoring online celebrity
  • Debunker: Wikipedia And Digg Are Exactly As They Seem, Damn It
    Debunking the Chris Wilson article on Slate on the power of the elite editors at Wikipedia and Digg
  • Slate: 1, Wikipedia straw man: 0 - - mathewingram.com/work
    another debunking of Slate article

  
• 

  Stan Rhodes: Advertising is waste

  Posted: February 27th, 2008, 9:06pm PST by Michel Bauwens

  Republished from Stan Rhodes:

  You’d think that everyone that’s ever seen an advertisement would know this, but no one seems to want to say it. We’re all thinking it, aren’t we?

  Advertising, at its root, is waste.

  Advertisements are waste.

  Right now, we have an arms race between what a person wants to pay attention to and what someone else wants them to pay attention to. The companies competing see that usability rules the day, but they’re in a tough spot, because advertisements are poor usability: I should only see what I’ve asked to see. That arms race continues because the communication lines are privatized. If they were not, if we owned and supported our use of communication lines, advertising would wither, because it has no place. It’s not just annoying, it’s inefficient. It’s waste!

  In some commons, companies already have complete monopolies. In other commons, companies have to compete, and they compete by having a bit better usability, being a bit more streamlined, and feigning a commons model. The commons model is the most efficient, so they are inevitably drawn toward it unless or until they can attain a monopoly. That closed, privatized property can never truly be a commons–truly be open and for the public good only–is their fatal flaw. I mean property in the broadest sense: goods that are both property and goods that are not (like information), but are legally treated like property (”intellectual property”). Companies exist for profit, and they’ll be tempted to impose on users to gain it. If users were to hold the commons, this would all be irrelevant. Companies would have to provide the service of creation, and everyone would be better off. Google is a for-profit company, and cannot help but be evil, even if they try to stave it off. They are evil by design; their goals are inherently contrary to the public good.

  By owning the commons, the public retains control of the purposes of business. The public says “We need this.” Today it’s backwards, business own the commons and they tell us “You need this.” We need their products, we need their services, we need their jobs, we need their vision of ourselves to define our own damn identity.

  Enough.

  

  
• 

  Charles Leadbeater’s book on mass innovation, We Think, is out!

  Posted: February 27th, 2008, 7:28pm PST by Michel Bauwens

  Announcement from the author:

  “WE THINK: mass innovation not mass production - is published this week.

  The book was partly written online and incorporates readers’ comments on a draft released on the web in late 2006.

  The first three chapters of the finished book can be downloaded from my website, where you can also comment.

  There’s a short animation explaining the book on my YouTube Channel.

  You can buy a copy from Amazon here.

  
• 

  The Medium is the Mess…

  Posted: February 27th, 2008, 7:14am PST by Simon Edhouse

  This is an adaption of a recent entry on my own blog in which I discuss the nature of ‘The Web’ and why it needs to be seen as quite distinct from ‘The Internet’. The focus of this piece is a little different, as I believe there is particular relevance to the P2P movement, in that the term ‘P2P’ when used to refer to P2P-technology, has high relevance to the discussion about ‘Web vs Internet’, and some focus may be needed to differentiate this specific application of the term P2P, from its many other close derivatives. This then is a reference point to keep in mind in relation to the following discussion.

  Although Web leviathans like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook all clearly leverage aspects of the many-to-many/ peer-to-peer trend, they also usurp and plunder many aspects of the contributions freely given by their users via constraining them inside the legacy client-server system of the web. However, most web users blindly accept the Web’s plutocratic rules of engagement hook-line-and-sinker and are locked-in to its operational logic which is still very much the antithesis of a peer-to-peer orientated approach.

  The concept of P2P on the Web is actively stigmatized from many quarters, mainly by the Music and Movie industries that would like to bury the whole idea, or work out a way to buy and control it. (both unlikely) The difficulty is, that on the pro-P2P side, discussions of the broad applicability of the ‘P2P-Meme’ to so many diverse aspects in our culture, might have the unintended consequence of making the term almost apply to everything and (possibly) nothing at the same time. In other words, the P2P meme’s pluralistic tendencies tend to see the term ‘P2P’ applied in ever increasing ways, arguably diluting some of its power and potential, and its valid heritage as a technical-system born of the Internet that actually predates ‘The Web’ by about 20 years. (my concern is not about ‘history’ so much as the future, as I see P2P-Technology as one of the most compelling potential agents of change in this now fundamental global arena)

  From where I stand there is a clear ‘value-axis’ existing on the Internet, and a rather peculiar ‘Cargo-Cult’ type adherence to a dominant cultural meme called “The Web” which as a term is used too often interchangeably with the term “Internet”. This simple semantic muddle must end, as it is the source of a lot of confused reasoning.

  There are three primary components in a value-axis of the Internet, Connectivity, Communications and Transactions. Of these three, Connectivity is the most fundamental, with the next most fundamental factor being Communications and then Transactions with all other general applications, (information, entertainment, blogs, websites, web2.0 etc) sitting above these three. This simple taxonomy ranks factors in terms of which is more primary in its ability to ‘enable’ the others.

  Websites, Portals (Facebook, MySpace, Saleforce, etc) are at the upper end of this scale of importance. (ie least fundamental) This does not mean to imply that consumer or business websites and ASP-based web-services are not important, but rather that as a rule these sites function atop a foundation of established connectivity, communications and transaction protocols, and are not in themselves ‘fundamental’ in the sense that they exclusively enable higher applications.

  The Web itself sits on layer 2, ‘Communications’. After all, the Web, for all the hype associated with it, really just resembles a massive Amusement Park accessed by obtaining a ‘Browser’ ticket. In other words the Browser is your ticket, and you ride this communication platform which is actually built on the more fundamental Connectivity layer. Its no secret where the value truly resides in this mega-market duality. Browsers are free, Connectivity you pay for, and the ‘Attention Economy’ (acknowledgement to Umair Haque) sits like an ecosystem above all that, with Google currently at the top of the food-chain.

  In his illuminating article ‘Content is Not King’ written in 2001, Andrew Odlyzko nailed it with prescient clarity, even though he, like so many, has used the term Internet, when he could well have been referring to the Web.

  “The Internet is widely regarded as primarily a content delivery system. Yet historically, connectivity has mattered much more than content. Even on the Internet, content is not as important as is often claimed, since it is e-mail that is still the true “killer app.”
  - Andrew Odlyzko, First Monday: [www.firstmonday.org]

  Email (by the way) has the same status as the Web, it is a communication platform on layer two. Andrew Odlyzko does not distinguish between Communications and Connectivity. In his article referred to above, they are to all intents and purposes the same, yet his message is clear. Its the connectivity between people that is more fundamental (and valued) than the content exchanged.

  The Web and the Internet are not interchangeable concepts

  So we need to appreciate that the internet and the World Wide Web are quite different things. The internet is a network that is in fact a loose array of interconnected networks. The Web has been superimposed on this global network, and is the dominant overlay-system, but it is not the only possible system that can utilize that network. The web has allowed many hundreds of millions of people to download information from ‘servers’ via protocols like DNS, (domain name system) and communicate between each other via email by use of DNS and SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol). However these protocols, serve to lock users into the ‘client’ paradigm where ‘clients’ have to accept the terms of the businesses that control the web servers. Albert Benschop pulls back the curtains in this slightly ominous description.

  “The exponential growth and far-reaching commercialization of the web have lead to an ever-stronger manifestation of the power structures of society in the virtual world. At present specialized computers channel the data traffic on the Internet and portals and search machines such as AOL, Google and Yahoo! dominate and exploit the market of the internet-dollars. Strongly concentrated hubs have arisen that play a crucial role in the Internet traffic. They are monster-servers, diverting their information to millions of regular web-users.”
  - Albert Benschop, Peculiarities of CyberSpace- University of Amsterdam

  The client/server paradigm of the World Wide Web, overlaid on the internet in the late 1980‘s, with its multiple layers of servers sitting on their underlying enabling protocols (DNS, SMTP, FTP etc) represented, at the time, a ground-breaking innovation and has gone on to become a global phenomenon. However, as the Web has grown, its hierarchical structure, identity and addressing protocols have also facilitated many of its almost intractable negative externalities. (Spam, Spy-Ware, Email-Born-Viruses, D.O.S. Attacks, Invasive Key-Stroke-Logging, Phishing (Banking Fraud), Packet-Sniffing, Trojan-Horses, Identity-Spoofing etc)

  For all the web’s vulnerabilities to attack and corruption, there is considerable ‘lock-in’ to WWW legacy systems, with the marketplace in general having built up a history of blind-acceptance trust and familiarity with it’s processes. This is a large part of the conundrum that is represented by the search for solutions to the web’s problems.

  Projects like APML (Attention Profiling Mark-up Language), BCCF (the Buyer Centric Commerce Forum) and Project VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) are all well intentioned projects by switched-on people who want to do something about the inherent inequities and privacy problems of the web, and are arguably contained within this larger P2P pluralism. But… with the greatest respect, they all miss the point. Doing it actually ‘on the Web’, is self-defeating because its not a level playing field. There’s an orthodoxy present on the Web almost as dominant as the Catholic Church during the middle ages.

  This is where an understanding of the pure definition of P2P, as it has developed on the Internet, may provide an instructive counter-weight, and clues to dealing with the over-hyped and over-rated orthodoxies of the web.

  
• 

  Book of the Week: Hacking Capitalism. Part Two: Hacking as a labour movement

  Posted: February 27th, 2008, 3:49am PST by Michel Bauwens

  Book: Johan Söderberg. Hacking Capitalism: The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Movement. Routledge, 2007

  We continue our presentation with an excerpt on the topic of “Hacking and Capitalism”, which stresses the continuation between the hackers and the labour movement.

  Johan Soderbergh:

  “The skirmishes between the hacker movement and corporations and governments have deeper roots than is shown by the confrontations over treacherous code, hostile legislations, and public smear campaigns. More fundamental is that the norms and aspirations motivating people to be hackers are at odds with at least some aspects of capitalism. The central claim of this book is that the hacker movement is part of a much broader undercurrent revolting against the boredom of commodified labour and needs satisfaction. These sentiments, however, can be made to cut in two ways. In business literature, managers are often advised to encourage a ‘hacker spirit’ among their employees. Dennis Hayes gives a good account of how such a hacker spirit among engineers in Silicon Valley educes them to work harder without asking for anything in return. While he acknowledges the autonomy that software engineers enjoy, he doubts that any serious political agenda can arise from it. “Capital and modern technology apparently have seduced the computer builder with rare privilege: a genuine excitement that transcends the divide between work and leisure that has ruptured most industrialized civilizations. […] When computer-building becomes an essential creative and emotional outlet, any politics larger than those governing access to work and tools seem distant concerns” Dennis Hayes’ doubts are very justified, though his observations are limited to in-house programmers. The demand for ‘access to tools’ becomes political dynamite once it is articulated outside the wage relation, i.e. by people who are denied access to the tools. When the ‘hacker spirit’ sticks among workers with no foothold in the creative business, the spirit warps into a ‘refusal of work’.

  The ranks of these people by far outnumber those of the professionals in the media and information sector. And even among the lucky few who enjoy stimulating jobs, many of them will in due time find themselves deprived of their privileges. Programmers are being thrown into the lower tier of the labour market since the computer industry is maturing. Occupations that recently were felt as gratifying, such as writing software code, are becoming as routinised as any other field of activity that has fallen under the spell of exchange value. Ironically, the deployment of computer technology has been decisive in degrading work elsewhere in the economy. The growth of the software sector, which is providing exciting new jobs for computer programmers, rests in no small part on the usefulness of software as a means for deskilling the workforce in other sectors. This connection is laid bare when we consider the role of the first computer engineers employed by the industry. These programmers worked in the same company and side-by-side with the blue-collar workers who were subjected to computerisation. David Noble has documented how the embryo of computer software: templates, hole cards, recordable tapes, and numerical control (N/C), was deployed in heavy industry exactly for the purpose of intensifying the techniques of Taylorism. “By making possible the separation of conception from execution, of programming from machine operation, N/C appeared to allow for the complete removal of decision-making and judgement from the shop floor.

  Such ‘mental’ parts of the production process could now be monopolized by managers, engineers, and programmers, and concentrated in the office”. Crucial to this strategy was to keep the workers ‘in the dark’ about the source code. In the same breath as N/C technology was designed to lock workers out, workers were held in contempt for being too simple-minded for programming tasks. Nonetheless, supervisors attested that workers learned on their own to read the program language backwards. It was useful for them to know the program in order to anticipate the next move by the machine, and to foretell malfunctions and possible accidents. Workers were not meant to have this knowledge though. The routine was that upon discovering a bug, the worker had to report it to an engineer. It was a cumbersome and frustrating procedure to both the worker and the programmer. Instead of following the correct procedures, workers often showed ingenuity in fixing bugs by themselves. Such initiatives by workers were beneficial to the bottomline of the firm. In order to take full advantage of the N/C technology it had to be opened up to allow feedback loops from the workers back into the work process. But managers had embraced the technology for exactly the opposite purpose. The machinery had been devised to regulate the performance of workers and to force a higher work pace upon them. With insight into how the machinery and the software functioned, workers also knew how to use the technology to their own advantage. They could now alter the instructions of the machinery and reduce its speed. This practice spread spontaneously yet rapidly in factory districts and was occasionally discovered and documented by supervisors. Managers fought back by trying to make the clockwork of the machinery impregnable and incomprehensible. Antagonism between capital and labour was contested on code level and ‘access to tools’ was the name of the game.

  The dream of managers to build away workers’ discontent through black-box technologies has continuously been frustrated by hacking. Computerisation has not eradicated workers’ resistance but displaced it, from the execution stage to the conception stage. When more and more people are assigned to conceptualise rather than execute work processes, capital must economise this labour force too. The same tight regime is imposed on engineers and programmers as has previously been, with their help, forced upon blue-collar workers. At this point, however, Taylorism runs into its own limits. There is no easy way to deprive ‘knowledge workers’ of knowledge and still have them working. One unexpected outcome from the mechanisation of the office is that the opportunities for hacking and sabotage abounds. The fact that these attacks are charged with labour discontent almost always goes unreported. Managers are anxious not to inspire other employees to work the same deed. With these reflections in the back of the mind, Andrew Ross insists that the perspective on hacking must be broadened. The media image of hackers as apolitical, juvenile pranksters belittles the issues at stake: “While only a small number of computer users would categorize themselves as ‘hackers,’ there are defensible reasons for extending the restricted definition of hacking down and across the case hierarchy of systems analysts, designers, programmers, and operators to include all high-tech workers—no matter how inexpert—who can interrupt, upset, and redirect the smooth flow of structured communications that dictates their position in the social networks of exchange and determines the pace of their work schedules.”

  Employees crashing the computer systems of their employers gives a clear indication of that hacking can be an act of labour resistance. How does this observation reflect upon hacking done by students, unemployed, and sparetimers, in other words, hacking unrelated to the workplace? After all, both the self-image and the stereotype of the hacker portray someone positioned outside and against the profession. The conflict over surplus labour that characterises the antagonism between labour and capital at the workplace has little explanatory power in the computer underground. Hackers volunteer to write software applications. They are more likely to be happy about spending an extra hour in front of the computer than trying to sneak a shortcut. As far as money is concerned, many hackers couldn’t care less if a corporation profits from a project that they have contributed to. From the perspective of a trade unionist, amateurs labouring for free are nothing short of alarming. The unsuspecting hacker is ripe for exploitation, and what’s more, while working away he is weakening the bargain position of employed programmers too. What hackers do care about, mainly free access to information, seems peripheral in comparison to social, labour, and environmental concerns. The glaring ignorance towards labour issues in the hacker movement has convinced Alan Liu to write off cyber-politics as subcultural ‘bad attitude’. He charges that the demands for free information are individualistic, consumerist and entrepreneurial. Alan Liu is mistaken because he portrays information in the same way as ‘content providers’ do, as merely a consumer product. From this perspective, the hacker’s wish to have information for free appears like just another angry customer demanding more value for his money.

  If we acknowledge that information also is a means of production, it becomes clear that the demand for free information is the same thing as ‘access to tools’. With free licenses the tools to write software code are made accessible to everyone, thus they are free as in free from knowledge monopolies, white-collar professionals, and corporate hierarchies. Hacking undermines the technical division of” labour that is pivotal to Taylorism. Furthermore, the failure of hackers to mention labour issues is consistent with the fact that their politics is the politics of ‘zero work’. At first it might sound odd, but the statement above is consistent with the extreme motivation and discipline of many hackers when they develop software code. The radicalism of the FOSS development model springs exactly from the distance it places between ‘doing’ and the wage relation. Hackers are contributing to radical social change because they prevent the labour market from being the sole determinant over the allocation of programming recourses in society. As a consequence, the economic rationality and instrumentality of technological development can not be taken for granted anymore, at least not in the computer sector. The model for developing technology invented by hackers is guided by the most non-instrumental of human activities: the play-drive. Software code is not the end-purpose of hacking but rather an excess flowing from the playful form of life that hackers are choosing for themselves. Hackers may or may not be conscious about and motivated by the wider political implications from promoting access to computer tools. Linus Torvalds, for instance, has repeatedly proven his political innocence in rows with the Free Software Foundation. Nonetheless, he made the key decision to license the Linux kernel under a free license. The demand for free information is not grounded in ideological convictions as much as in the fact that the public space that hackers draw from can be sustained only if software technology stays open and accessible. It is the form of life of hackers that command resistance. Their commitment to sustaining the FOSS community is in conflict with at least some priorities of capital, though, admittedly, it also plays into the hands of capital in other respects. Would it not be fair to object that with corporations making millions of dollars out of FOSS applications, the liberating potential of hacking has been lost? In that case we must also say that the struggle of waged employees is non-existent since corporations make millions of dollars out of them. The fact that the hacker movement has partially been recuperated by capital does not falsify hacking as a radical praxis, unless we badly want to think so. The hacker movement is in continuation with more than two hundred years of labour struggle.”

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-26 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 26th, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • Fritzing
    Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers and artists to take the step from physical prototyping to actual product.
  • Processing 1.0 (BETA)
    Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions.
  • hardware.processing
    This page is a short list of electronics prototyping systems that relate to Processing. The Wiring and Arduino systems utilize the Processing Development Environment (PDE). The Wiring programming language (used for the Wiring and Arduino boards) is based
  • Arduino - HomePage
    Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.
  • Freeduino: Open-Source Hardware
    Freeduino is a collaborative open-source project to replicate and publish a completely open version of the Arduino project's closed PCB design.
  • Electronic design automation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Electronic design automation (EDA) is the category of tools for designing and producing electronic systems ranging from printed circuit boards (PCBs) to integrated circuits. This is sometimes referred to as ECAD (electronic computer-aided design) or just
  • fanrosana
    video for thai elections
  • YouTube - Thai Politics is So Boring.... (เลือกเบอร์อะไรดี)
  • YouTube - Thai Politics is so Boring.... (เบื่อการเมือง แต่...)
  • Intentional Communities Web Site (ecovillages, community, communes, cohousing, coops, sustainable living...)
    Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, alternative communities, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.
  • Open source compressed earth block machine - Boing Boing
    The Liberator project aims to make an "open source" compressed earth block machine that can turn out 3-5 blocks per minute for a total cost of $1,000-$1,350. That's enough blocks to build a new house every day, turning dirt into shelter.
  • microclesia blog» About
    1. ecclesial consilience facilitated by the microprocessor, 2. a self-organizing virtual concurrence of local and global faith communities, 3. the shrinking of widespread ecclesia into a common forum, 4. a personal journal which explores the congruence of
  • Factor E Farm Weblog » Blog Archive » Turn Up the Heat
    We are all weaving threads of Commons Production; production of goods At Cost by users (our renegade friend Patrick Anderson); distributive production; self-replicating industrial and natural ecologies; and other breakthroughs in social organization - gen
  • Choose a License
    makes it easy to choose an appropriate license
  • home | Tactical Technology Collective
    an international NGO working at the intersection of advocacy and technology. We use our technical expertise to increase the impact of campaigns in social justice and human rights.
  • PC World - The 50 Most Important People on the Web

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-25 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 25th, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • PATH: A catalyst for global health
    open research on malaria, etc...
  • 12 Myths about International Trade and Pharmaceuticals
    Dr. Brook Baker defends thailand's compulsory licensing for lifesaving drugs
  • Straight to the Point : The time to end drug patents is now « Article « www.prachatai.com/english
    Because of drug patents, numerous life-saving drugs for treating Aids, cancer, heart disease, etc, are priced at anything between five times to 20 times their production cost, putting them out of reach of millions of people across the globe
  • Prachatai
    progressive website with english reporting about Thailand
  • Using Wikipedia as a Web Database
    The DBpedia dataset describes 1,600,000 concepts, including at least 58,000 persons, 70,000 places, 35,000 music albums, 12,000 films. It contains 557,000 links to images, 1,300,000 links to relevant external web pages, 207,000 Wikipedia categories
  • BarCamp Bangkok | บาร์แคมป์ บางกอก
    The first Barcamp Bangkok is over and it was a huge success!

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-24 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 24th, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • German documentary (arte-metropolis) with Cory Doctorow
  • Video explains timeshifting and Canadian copyright
  • Random House abandons Audio DRM
  • São Paulo No Logo : Environmental News Blog | Environmental Graffiti
    documenting the systematic removal of all advertising in the city of São Paulo. Since 1st January 2007 São Paulo has been living under the new ‘clean city’ law, this bans all advertising
  • International e-Participation and Local Democracy Symposium - Promoting Social Inclusion via e-Participation
    The second International e-Participation Symposium is coming!
  • Conference: Economies of the Commons April 2008 A'dam
    Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Images and Sounds Online
  • Climate and Capitalism
    ecosocialist blog
  • Notes on Design » Blog Archive » Creative Commons for Designers
    for graphic and web designers, Creative Commons-licensed components can be pulled together (along with non-CC components, your own art, and so on) to create new pieces that solve design challenges in exciting ways
  • from the horizon » Blog Archive » Aid 2.0
    I would like to take some of the principles of Web 2.0 and apply them to International Aid, to look at how technology can flatten the hierarchical systems, engage people and bring them close together.
  • Expert Patients - A New Healthcare Paradigm - Health Supreme
    The fact that our personal health records are actively being collected and will in the future be coveted objects of trade, according to Kathryn will actually catalyze patients, the real owners of these personal data, to band together. Patients will become
  • Responsibility for Global Governance: Who? Where? When? (Anthony Judge)
    An initiative of global importance requires engagement Everywhere
  • Criticat - Rate your company and share your workplace experiences
    Don't feel comfortable asking HR about everything such as how does one change groups within the company? Come to Criticat, anonymously ask the current employees of the company.
  • CouchSurfing - CouchSurfing Project News
    To help make it easier for members to keep track of progress at the Collective, a new Thailand Collective webpage has been created that brings together the different avenues you can find information.
  • CouchSurfing - CouchSurfing Collective - Thailand 2008
    CouchSurfing's 5th Collective is currently being held with CouchSurfing's full-time employees and a group of volunteers in Thailand. This Collective's goal is to build sustainable volunteer teams, who will operate on an on-going basis beyond the Collectiv
  • Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series: Lessons From Advogato
    Advogato is an interesting reputation oriented community. This video is great on the mechanics of reputation.

  
• 

  Chris Cook on a structure for Market 3.0, part three: Market Corporations

  Posted: February 24th, 2008, 2:29am PST by Michel Bauwens

  Third and last part of Chris Cook’s propositions for a new market structure:

  Chris Cook:

  We have seen how two distinct consortia comprise Market 3.0. How is it possible to link them together into a seamless enterprise with a viable business model?

  Virtually all markets were until relatively recently run by cartels of intermediaries (i.e. exchanges) in their own interests. They were typically constituted as not for profit or mutual entities which would return any surplus of income over expenditure to members.

  The recent trend among exchanges in response to the threat posed by ATSs has been demutualisation into for profit entities; the reasons being:

  * the requirement for capital to fund development of the exchange’s own dealing systems and networks;

  * more flexible management, free of the factionalism that plagues exchanges;

  * the prospect for executives and shareholders alike of mouthwatering returns on their investment from exploitation of a dominant position.

  A moment’s reflection on the latter leads to the conclusion that the ’shareholder value’ thereby generated has to be at someone’s expense, i.e. the constituency of customers, now including the ex-members. In other words, the flaw (which is a fundamental flaw of capitalism itself, excused by the fact that alternatives have to date proven to be worse) lies in the divergence of interest between the providers of this capital and the users. At this point, an innovation is proposed which may square the circle. The ‘open corporate’ entity suggested is not rooted in the UK body of Companies Act legislation, but rather in the unintended potential of a recent innovation in UK Partnership Law. It has been possible in the UK since 1907 for a partner to introduce capital and limit his liability but at the price of being unable to participate in management. The key UK legislation in the creation of the open corporate was the Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000 which came into effect on April 6, 2001. This Act effectively enables partnerships, typically of professional firms such as accountants and lawyers, to protect the assets of the individual partners in the event of insolvency — itself increasingly likely in the face of massive claims of compensation. It reflects similar US Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs).

  A UK LLP is a corporate body with members/partners who may be individual or corporate (or a mix of the two). It is governed by a member agreement which sets out the rights and obligations of the members inter se. However, it is doubtful that the use to which it may now be put was ever conceived when the Act was drafted.

  A Market Corporation will be a UK (or possibly for tax reasons Jersey) LLP.

  Members of Market Corporation LLP will own proportional shares in the value of the enterprise rather than the shares in a for profit joint stock company, which are created and issued with a nominal value –typically GBP1.00.

  Such proportional shares are infinitely divisible: a partner with a half share therefore has 500 thousandths or 500,000 millionths and so on, and the value of such a share may be determined at any time as a proportion of the value of the enterprise. The member agreement of Market Corporation LLP will allow such proportional shares to be freely tradeable between members or constituencies of members. New members will be invited to contribute capital or services in return for shares. Most revolutionary of all, it will be possible to raise additional capital without relinquishing control by lending or pledging shares.

  This will be accomplished through the use of the ‘repo’ agreement — the sale and repurchase of shares. Repos — which are relatively little known for a multi-trillion pound industry — allow institutional investors to generate an income by lending shares to each other for a period of time. The Repo price would reflect a benchmark cost of money plus a risk premium. A default gives rise to a very simple outcome, which is that the financier would automatically acquire full ownership of the shares. The outcome is that the utility cash-flow received by the Market Corporation from its ITA members and remitted to its MSP members may thereby be simply and effectively securitised. In an open corporation, debt is equity traded forward.

  

  
• 

  An appeal by Franz Nahrada: Quality evalution of physical peer production efforts

  Posted: February 23rd, 2008, 11:57pm PST by Michel Bauwens

  This appeal is related to the earlier proposal by Marcin Jakubowski.

  Franz Nahrada:

  “Dear Michel, dear all!

  this (the p2p-people page) is a great idea and “thank you for the flowers” for including me allthough I could not yet congtribute much to our wiki. Yet I feel its allready an invaluable tool for me, the richest collection of free modes available anywhere in the net and on the planet. And I feel proud to be a member of this group which does exactly what I thought Oekonux would be good for.

  I am still in the rehabilitation center and I met quite a lot of interesting people here, the advantage is that all these people had heart attacks or surgeries and they now take their time and listen. So I was fortunate to have some good talks, among them with a representative of a foundation for global cooperation in Bulgaria. I just want to urge us to take a quick mental note of the cooperative sector with its incredible possibilities. We can show them new ways!

  But what I want to report here is rather the one talk with the owner of a very ordinary medical tech business with 20 employees or so, selling stuff to doctors and hospitals. I told him about models for open source business and he was really taken away by the idea - so I suggested him to do an instant research on the web, especially for medicine and health care and the way such business models could work for him.

  In the course of this talk I had to come up with quick proofs and compelling examples and facts, which was not easy at all, there was no medical hardware stuff in sight, so I showed him the pages of twibright / ronja that I also had demonstrated to Marcin as the first example of a complete high tech open source hardware business cycle. The advantage is that they put not only the design online, but really are keen to describe the whole manufacturing process from bottom up, They provide part lists, sources, not leaving anything out (including transparently the donors). I showed him the new roles and opportunities, especially in distribution and support, that he could take over in a hypothetical Open Hardware business cycle.

  Its exactly this need that I want to highlight now: how can we proove the concept when talking to people from all walks of life that can make business decisions? There are many doubtful projects out there (theoscarproject?), and we need to help each other recognize the quality of endavours, maybe even provide some guidelines and keypoints that we expect from an open project or free modes. Also we must separate the theoretical speculation from the working examples.

  One of the major points is complete documentation, and i imagine that we introduce a rating process in the not too distant future to make it easier for us to evangelize p2p production by living examples. Maybe this should already be taken into consideration when we think about design issues now. Openbusiness.cc has become a complete failure in this respect after nice beginnings.

  I think this group and especially Marcins invaluable work could be a much better starting point to get to serious business, but that also means that there is a lot required from us.

  Maybe - if you agree in the general direction - we also should start thinking about a proposal to business associations, the cooperative sector, progressive governments and others to support this immense work ahead of us. This can by no means be done one the base of hobbyism any more.

  What do you think?“

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-23 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 23rd, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • Cheap international mobile calls – Rebtel
    Just dial and talk internationally at local rates!
  • OAK Law Project | Open Access to Knowledge (OAK)
    a web-enabled database containing information about publishing agreements and publishers’ open access policies and practices.
  • About the project | OAK Law Project
    The project will develop legal protocols for managing copyright issues in an open access environment. At a technical level it will investigate provision and implementation of a rights expression language. The project will integrate with existing open acce
  • IOSA.it | Open Archaeology
    to promote and discover the use of open source software and open stardards in archaeological research
  • ibiblio speaker series
    provides millions of digital educational resources to those without adequate Internet connectivity via the innovative eGranary Digital Library.
  • econ - The Open Knowledge Foundation
    Open economic data storage and visualization along with associated web services and assorted modelling code.
  • about/people - The Open Knowledge Foundation
  • iai - The Open Knowledge Foundation
    Promoting Accessibility to Information in a Digital Age
  • shakespeare - The Open Knowledge Foundation
    To provide the complete works of shakespeare, along with textual apparatus (introduction, notes, concordance) all in open form.
  • pdw - The Open Knowledge Foundation
    The Public Domain Works database is an open registry of artistic works that are in the public domain.
  • Open Text Book » About
    Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks and text book material that is open in accordance with the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD). It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation.
  • microfacts - The Open Knowledge Foundation
    A web application to allow people to string together 'factlets' into narratives organized by theme, time and space.
  • okforums - The Open Knowledge Foundation
    The purpose of the forums is, simply, to promote open knowledge, be that getting it, using it, or sharing it. They are a series of informal gatherings and while centred on the subject of open information/data they are flexible in form and content.
  • The Habitat of Information (SSIT 8)
    Social and Organizational Consequences of Information Growth The 8th Social Study of ICT workshop (SSIT8) at LSE 25 April 2008
  • Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
  • iCommons.org - Creative Commons at BarCamp Bangalore
    The 4th edition of BarCamp Bangalore took place at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore on July 28th & 29th, 2007.
  • Tempostand
    cc-based initiative for independent musicians in India
  • DLD Conference - Digital, Life, Design
    DLD (Digital, Life, Design) is Europe's conference for the 21st century, covering digital innovation, science and culture and bringing together thought leaders from Europe, the Middle-East, America and Asia.
  • Tricky Wiki: How Public Relations Companies Try to Spin Wikipedia | Full Frontal Scrutiny
    Workers at an array of corporate titans have altered their firms' Wikipedia entries, in apparent violation of the site's ideals, a variety of sources demonstrates
  • Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy. - By Chris Wilson - Slate Magazine
    This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.
  • Helium - Wikipedia-like repository of articles and editorials.
    On Helium, contributors compete to have the top-ranked article on a given subject. As soon as you write an article, you're invited to pick your favorite of two articles on a similar subject.
  • YouTube - Technocalyps
  • Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: John Wilbanks of Science Commons
    Rather than treating research as a scarce resource that needs to be rationed, therefore, Open Access advocates argue that we should aim to maximise the number of eyeballs that can read it.
  • Online Print On Demand Space Heats Up - ReadWriteWeb
    There have been three major developments in the self-service POD industry over the past six months.
  • Bangladesh Open Source Network

  
• 

  Erik Davies reviews Steven Vedro’s Digital Dharma

  Posted: February 23rd, 2008, 4:50am PST by Michel Bauwens

  Erik Davies:

  “Ten years ago, I came out with the first edition of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Information Age, which for its novelty alone still stands as probably the most “important” thing I’ve written. Lots of things have happened in the last decade to the media ecologies I looked at back then, but I am happy to say that, though the book was written at the height of the dot.com mania (which also explained the advance that allowed me to take a few years to write it), most of the stories and concepts and critiques I sling around still retain something of their original spark. More importantly, the book helped set the stage for a number of ongoing and often heretical discussions about the interpenetration of consciousness and its communicating tools.

  One sign of the vitality of these discussions is Steven Vedro’s cool new book Digital Dharma: A User’s Guide to Expanding Consciousness in the Infosphere. It is, if I may say, a deeply techgnostic text, almost a workbook of IT mysticism. Using a perspective loosely inspired from Ken Wilber’s integral thought, Vedro looks at a variety of electronic media technologies as expressions and reflections of the evolution of consciousness (which I tend to think is really a mutation). With not a small amount of audacity—especially for a telecommunications consultant—Vedro maps seven different communication regimes (telephony, peer-to-peer networks, pervasive computing, etc.) onto the classic system of the Hindu chakras. The muladhara chakra at the base of the spine, associated with security and earthly reality, gets linked to radio telegraphy, which not only needs a good ground connection but which formed the infrastructural basis of the electronic universe in the late nineteenth century. Later in the book, Vedro also connects the visionary third eye with digital compression, the array of algorithmic processes that drive the vast multiplication of concocted worlds that now make up the multi-perspectival matrix of digital reality.

  Digital Dharma was published by the high-quality Theosophical press Quest, and it is unquestionably an example of the spiritual self-help genre. It’s got a blurb from the What the Bleep?! physicist Amit Goswami, and includes a number of “teleconsciousness visualizations” like “Reediting your Emotional Videos” and “Checking your Inner Voicemail.” But Vedro is a smart and grounded guy, as well as a compassionate and imaginative one, so even though I have no attraction to such practices, I am intrigued to see what he’s doing, and his lessons always seem less silly once I’ve read the section. Vedro also knows what he’s talking about, and provides clear-eyed explanations of contemporary technologies that everyone should be familiar with these days. He goes into more helpful detail than you might expect, and despite the Goswami quote, does not really muck around the nebulous waters of quantum mysticism. That’s the thing about electronic tech: if you look closely enough, you realize this stuff is weird enough you don’t even need to talk about quantum entanglement.

  Most generally, you can read Digital Dharma as a creative and insightful study into the metaphoric connection between technological regimes and consciousness, in its social, perceptual and “higher” aspects. With his technical detail, Vedro only deepens the fundamental point: that the technical properties of these technologies hold lessons for us, regardless of how we use them on a social level, because they emerge from and reflect our consciousness in the first place. He also acknowledges the dark side of these regimes, and is admirably sober about some of the deep difficulties—psychological as well as social—that lie ahead as we wrap ourselves in a cocoon of interconnectivity. In intensifying the feedback loops that fringe and compose consciousness, media technologies have let loose a process that, in cultural and spiritual terms, can perhaps only be called apocalyptic. Vedro does not shy away from the hypermediated Omega Point glimmering from around the bend, though he does not spend as much time with it as I would like. I only wish I could share Vedro’s fundamental optimism, which is, nonetheless, refreshing.”

  

  
• 

  Chris Cook on a structure for Market 3.0, part two: Regulation 3.0

  Posted: February 23rd, 2008, 2:27am PST by Michel Bauwens

  We continue the exposition of the proposal for a new market structure by Chris Cook, which we started yesterday.

  Chris Cook:

  Mutual trust is the glue that binds markets together. Regulation engenders trust, and the setting and enforcement of market standards of behaviour and propriety are the essence of successful regulation. At the dawn of markets — Market 1.0 — this trust was based upon self-regulation: upon subjective judgments by one individual of another, backed by a fundamental regulatory concept — ‘mutual reference’.

  Mutual reference essentially consists of the collective experience of the market community in respect of their dealings with each other. Any individual who offended against accepted standards of market behaviour, and was thereby in breach of trust, would be judged by his peers and subject to penalties up to and including exclusion from the market — if not to a grimmer fate under the harsher laws of those times.

  Intermediation and centralisation have led to centralised markets — Market 2.0 — and to centralised regulation, exemplified by Regulation 2.0 regulators such as the SEC/CFTC and the FSA.

  In the UK the advent of self-regulatory organisations in 1987 — such as the AFBD and TSA — was remarkably successful in raising the standards of UK exchanges and financial intermediaries. This was because prior to that point no-one was looking at what the intermediaries were doing. That, on a global basis, is the position to which we have returned — the ‘Sumitomo Gap’ — no-one is looking at what the customers are doing.

  Centralised national regulation — Regulation 2.0 — can go no further. There is no access to global market data; there are no global market standards; and even if there were, no-one has the ability to enforce them. A new architecture is required. Regulation 3.0 is a return to self-regulation, but this time by market participants themselves in the form of an ITA. An ITA will set market standards:

  * the crucial market standard jurisdiction;

  * standard contract terms (cf. ISDA, ISMA);

  * standards of behaviour;

  * standards of ‘fitness and properness’;

  * standards of transparency.

  The all-important regulatory ‘teeth’ derive from the fact that anyone suspended or expelled from an ITA has no access to the market, becoming an ‘outlaw’ consigned to the ‘outer darkness’.

  Perhaps the most important regulatory tool in internet markets is the ‘mutual reference’ function. A good example of this function in action was, until 1995, the London Stock Exchange’s ‘Mutual Reference Society’. This was essentially a database of customer identities kept in card index files which LSE members were obliged to check when opening a new client account. While this was primarily aimed at clients who had defaulted in payment (whose card would be flagged appropriately), not all undesirable clients are unable or unwilling to pay, as the regulatory requirement for anti-money laundering ‘due diligence’ makes clear. Nevertheless, LSE closed down the mutual reference service, apparently on cost and data protection grounds and in view of the perceived prohibitive cost of automation.

  However, the function, which is little more than the operation of a database to be maintained by brokers themselves, is perfect as an internet application and mutualreference.com was therefore set up in 1999 to meet the continuing regulatory requirement for due diligence by brokers.

  One example will suffice of mutual reference in practice: where a proprietary ‘e-marketplace’ has evolved, by way of quality control, a form of genuine and effective self-regulation into its business model. eBay is a retail auction-based marketplace connecting individuals to a centralised server-based marketplace: in essence, a cross between an automated electronic car boot sale and an auction. There are literally millions of auctions, in every conceivable kind of goods, being operated by eBay at a given point in time, each probably lasting several days. In fact thousands of businesses, particularly in areas such as antiques and collectibles, operate exclusively on eBay.

  As the business evolved it became apparent that there were some serious ‘conduct of business’ issues involved:

  * were the goods actually the property of the seller?

  * even if they were the seller’s goods, were they what he/she said they were?

  * did the buyer have the money to pay for the goods?

  * was he/she in a position to take delivery?

  Beyond these issues were questions of public policy in relation to the nature of the items for sale, such as the offer for sale of securities, or firearms.

  The regulatory model developed by eBay was based upon ‘feedback forums’ whereby buyers and sellers would post positive or negative feedback in respect of their dealings on eBay. This in turn has led to ’star ratings’ whereby regular eBay users acquire a rating based upon the aggregate of feedback received, where +1 is a positive; 0 is neutral; and –1 denotes negative feedback. eBay then awards star ratings banded by the number of points received.

  In addition actual feedback, in terms of comments, may be posted by buyers, sellers or both and these comments may be made publicly available with the consent of the person in receipt of the relevant comments. eBay actively encourages such disclosure. The outcome of this model can be fairly draconian in practice: miscreants are given short thrift by their peers.

  Because markets are by definition open, there are important issues in relation to the enforcement and disciplinary process which may not apply to a proprietary system where someone unfairly excluded may perhaps take his business elsewhere. Clearly, ITAs would therefore have to take care in drafting their rules/user agreement to meet appropriate regulatory standards of fairness and transparency.

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-22 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • Free Software Foundation Releases Affero General Public License - Open for Business
    many Web services providers are able to use open source software without publishing their changes under the GPL because they technically don’t “distribute” their software
  • 451 CAOS Theory » Closing open source loopholes
    the update to the most popular open source software license continues to close loopholes that have been used to avoid sharing source code, patent protection and other freedoms that the authors intended
  • OSS.Net, Inc. Home Page
    This is the first book in a series of three (perhaps six). Mark Tovey, PhD student, is the editor. He began with a rich collection from ''friends of Tom Atlee and George Por'
  • Vox Pop Micropublishing
    VOX POP has merged with/acquired Long Dash LLC, to provide even greater print-on-demand solutions to all the writers, historians, and poets out there with that book in them.
  • Collaborative Thinking: Legal Profession Explores The Value of Social Network Sites
    the social networking buzz is slowly working its way into the legal world.
  • Web 2.0, Entertainment and the Network - The Platform: The Official Cisco Blog
    so what’s Cisco’s and the network’s role in bridging the We/Me gap? Cisco is working on Eos, a software platform that serves as an entertainment operating system
  • Collaborative Thinking: Cisco 2.0: Walking The Talk
    Prior to 2005, four internal councils with 50 members planned corporate strategies. Now strategy is set by 25 councils and boards with 500 to 1,000 participants.
  • Collaborative Thinking: Peter Saint-Andre on Presence
    about the synergy between XMPP and lifestream tools
  • Collaborative Thinking: Decentralized Co-Creation of Value
    a social music initiative (Project Opus), a part of which involves Mixxmaker, a web service that helps music lovers build playlists collaboratively
  • Collaborative Thinking: IP Democracy: The Futility Of Internet Privacy?
    One discouraging conclusion from a panel of privacy experts at today's State of the Net conference is that it's almost impossible to keep putatively private data out of sight on the Internet.
  • Collaborative Thinking: From Star Power To Network Power
    social networking in sports
  • Why Is Social Software So Important? - overturning form follows function design metaphors
    Workers resort to e-mail to solve such contribution gaps – a key reason why e-mail remains the most popular tool used by workers to express themselves.
  • Collaborative Thinking: Opening Up The Social Graph: An Identity Perspective
    Opening the social graph will destroy social networks, and turn them into sterile public spaces in which formation of meaningful and intimate relationships is not possible.
  • Collaborative Thinking: More On Presence And The Social Feed
    where presence intersects with social feeds
  • Collaborative Thinking: Social Presence: Time To Push The Reset Button
    People participate in presence systems because they wanted to broadcast their availability
  • Open Business Models ProjectSelectionMetricWiki: HomePage
    draft page to work on Marcin Jakubowski's Product Selection Metric
  • 'Open source drug discovery will lower costs'
    Q&A/ Samir K Brahmachari
  • OtherOrganizations - Open Knowledge Foundation Wiki
    Listing of other organizations and individuals interested in, or working on, open knowledge issues
  • The Alexandria Archive Institute
    an open, Internet-based knowledge commons of world cultural heritage
  • okcon - The Open Knowledge Foundation
    Saturday 15th March 2008 (1030-1830), Where: LSE, London, UK
  • GNULinux Centar - Home
  • CJD Alliance
    (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies) such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).
  • LocalGroups - Free Culture UK
  • Knowledge Politics Frontiers of Freedom
    offers a range of responses to the recent Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, commissioned by the Treasury.
  • AMEE » Start Here - Overview / 概况
    AMEE is designed as a neutral platform to aggregate and distribute all the CO2 data in the world.
  • Development of the Free Public Consortium (CONSOLE) — Libre.org
    The Free Knowledge Foundation (FKF) and four towns of the Madrid Sierra have developed the First Public Consortium of Free Knowledge and Free Software of Spain.

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-21 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 21st, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • Google’s Experimental Views Improve Perfection
    I’ve been periodically participating in a limited beta test of Google’s new experimental search pages. Today they formally introduce it to the public,
  • Wikipedia and the New Curriculum
    "Literacy in modern society means not only being able to read a variety of informational formats; it means being able to participate in their creation, with Wikipedia serving as the marquee example."
  • How Much Money Are Facebook Apps Making? Not Much Apparently
    Now that Facebook applications will reportedly be able to run on third-party sites, developers may have better opportunities for monetization
  • Open">[http%3A%2F%2Fwww.opensource.gov%2Flogin%2Findex.html">Open] Source Center - Login
    OSC provides foreign media reporting and analysis to policymakers, government institutions and strategic partners. We deliver targeted, timely and authoritative open source intelligence for analysis, operations and policymaking.
  • IAC Buys Stake in HealthCentral
    HealthCentral operates sites on different topics such as “food and fitness” and specific conditions such as Alzheimer’s.
  • The Pirate Bay Grows And Grows: 1m Torrents; 10m Users (And Counting)
    the rebellious website had broken the barrier to 1m torrents in total. It has also now tracking some 10 million users/peers roaming to and fro its well-renowned link farm.
  • Former New Republic Writer Charges Social Web Users As ‘Destructive’
    The author claims “aspects of the Web…devalue serious though,” and says “popular culture has given way to popularity culture.”
  • Copyright Now Extends To Cease-And-Desist Letters?
    Apparently even the cease-and-desist letters sent to sites to inform them to stop violating copyrights are now - copyrighted.
  • Facebook Platform Spreading Out To The Web
    Facebook integrated their platform with their API. What does this mean to you and me? It seems that your favorite applications could possibly start popping up on ordinary websites and blogs any day now.
  • Journalism and PR in the New Media
    There have been some examples of handling potential PR crisis excellently, and examples of handling cbs.jpgit in a way that can lead to the dreaded ‘user revolt.’
  • Children and Youth - Play - Development - Science - New York Times
    while video games do have some play value, a true sense of ‘‘interpersonal nuance’’ can be achieved only by a child who is engaging all five senses by playing in the three-dimensional world.
  • Can Social Technology help prevent Genocide? | internet.artizans
    when looking at the impact of the social web on genocide, the focus on tools is the wrong tack.
  • J Bradford DeLong on Martin Wolf's warning in the Financial Times
    the fragility of the financial system with the huge rewards it generates for insiders will destroy something even more important – the political legitimacy of the market economy itself...”
  • Artistic License 2.0 | Open Source Initiative
    The intent is that the Copyright Holder maintains some artistic control over the development of that Package while still keeping the Package available as open source and free software.
  • Everything you needed to know about human-created life forms but were afraid to ask
  • Lauriault on open data in Canada
    The open data movement is lagging in Canada as demonstrated by exorbitant fees for such basics as the data set of postal codes correlated to electoral districts.
  • The curse of social recommendation « tiinker blog
    giving highly contributing members more influence serves that community well, but this continues to narrow the range content available
  • Spidering the "Dark Web" - ReadWriteWeb
    "From 2006-2007, the lab found the greatest increase in terrorist activities was on various new "web 2.0" sites
  • Free Our Data: the blog » Australia moves to Creative Commons licensing for PSI
  • datalibre.ca · urging governments to make data about canada and canadians free and accessible to citizens
    all levels of Canadian governments should make civic information and data accessible at no cost in open formats to their citizens
  • Hatcher: The Science Commons Protocol
    In December 2007, Science Commons released their Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data.
  • Michael Geist - Technology Plays Key Role in Obama Success Story
    The cumulative effect of this substantial online presence is to connect with youth on their terms and in their environment, fostering a new generation of politically active supporters.
  • iCommons.org: South-African cinema and piracy
    This paper does not aim to account for all of the complex dynamics in South African film distribution, but rather to focus in on two broad themes: the dynamics of digitisation; and the dynamics around rights
  • Some general comments on reputation economies " P2P Foundation
    Cyber-reputation has the advantage of measurability and transparency. actions and contributions in the online world leaves traces, that can be judged by all.
  • Towards Abundance economics, but against pseudo-Abundance " P2P Foundation
  • Intention Economy - P2P Foundation
    In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer's purchase. Simple as that.
  • APIs for GeoTagging with Google Maps API to Wordpress etc..
    makes it convenient to open the Google Maps web site while editing, where you can generate your map and copy the needed code to paste into the editor.
  • Holistic ICT for EcoLiving » Dec 13 Open Hardware Meeting in Paris
  • Holistic ICT for EcoLiving » Open Hardware Router
  • NetEquality.org — Home Page
    dedicated to providing free internet access for low-income communities.
  • OpenFM: An Open Source FM Radio Station | Adapted Consulting
    OpenFM is a low power, affordable open source FM radio station created for use in remote areas

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-20 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 20th, 2008, 10:00pm PST

  • Talk:Peer Trust Network Project - P2P Foundation
    in-depth discussion about peer economy issues by Stan Rhodes, Christian Siefkes, Patrick Anderson
  • GISS (IS NOT) TV
    free streaming services for free media. free as in cost, free as in software.
  • ateneu candela | espai d'iniciatives per la ciutadania global
    Social centre in Barcelona, active around 'free' topics
  • communia.org - barcelona
    gives tools for the spreading of free software and working environments registered with free licenses.
  • Edge 237: Drew Endy on engineering biology
    an ownership sharing and innovation framework needs to be developed that moves beyond patent-based intellectual property and recognizes that the information defining the genetic material's going to be more important than the stuff itself
  • Proposal on how to end copyright abuses | The Family Guide to Digital Freedom
    Guidelines for individual behavior
  • FrontPage - Free Map Wiki
    This is the public collaboration wiki for the FreeMapSystem, designed to run as an open hosted service for mapping applications using free and open source software, public and copyleft geographic data, and community information anywhere in the world.
  • geocoder.us: a free US address geocoder
    Geocoding is the process of estimating a latitude and longitude for a given location. Geocoder.us is a public service providing free geocoding of addresses and intersections in the United States.
  • [iDC] Some notes on value... (brands as a third circuit of value)
    Brands can be understood to embody a third important form of capital in the knowledge economy, along with material capital and knowledge capital.
  • Welcome to Hadoop!
    The Apache Hadoop project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing

  
• 

  Steve Bosserman on Common vs. Differentiated Value

  Posted: February 19th, 2008, 11:07pm PST by Michel Bauwens

  A follow-up to yesterday’s contribution and in particular to the graphic presented in that article.

  Steve Bosserman:

  “There are two planes, common value and differentiated value, that establish an operating space in which a person divides efforts between giving some or all of what is done to the commonweal versus presenting it for sale in targeted markets.

  Due to rapid advances in communication and information technologies, it is increasingly easy to post knowledge in the public domain as condition / problem identification and analyses, solution design and logistics associated with its delivery, education and training materials, and individual / community capacity-building tools and techniques. Well and fine for common value. And if the society to which one belongs covers the essentials for adequate quality of life, well and fine for the person who contributes what is of common value.

  The flip-side is what does a person do as a member of a society that does NOT guarantee quality of life essentials? In these circumstances, one cannot sustain oneself or exercise responsibility to one’s family by giving everything away. Instead, it is imperative such individuals provide differentiated value to others and are fairly compensated through a medium of exchange so they can procure these essentials.

  Increasingly, differentiated value consists of producing / manufacturing deliverables close to the point of consumption (food, feed, fiber, energy, housing, etc.) or providing what must be accompanied by human touch (social services, healthcare, palliative care, education, etc.). There is a blending of effort and output that yields common value and differentiated value. The important aspect is hitting the critical balance between the two. And as the title of the slide suggests, finding an adaptable yet sound business model to stay on track is mandatory.”

  

  
• 

  Links for 2008-02-19 [del.icio.us]

  Posted: February 19th, 200