The Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives

All Blog Posts (767)

Transition - The Movie

Via John Thackara:

"One way is achieve effective eco-communication is to be James Cameron and spend

$300 million making Avatar. Another way is to be the Transition movement in

which hundreds of communities around the world are both stars in, and users of,

their own film. 'In Transition' is the first detailed film about the movement

filmed by those who are making it happen on the ground - communities around the

world responding to peak oil and climate change… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on January 5, 2010 at 15:06 — No Comments

Introducing OpenKollab

Via Suresh Fernando:

Openkollab is an open collaboration environment, the primary vision of which is to develop infrastructure and processes to connect socially beneficial projects that have aligned missions. In support of this larger vision, we have three primary goals.

1. Create a community of practice around issues relating to open collaboration and the development of social ventures

2. Identify and develop innovative tools, processes and infrastructure to… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on January 5, 2010 at 9:58 — No Comments

Planetary Forum = a project for a global forum where everyone has the right to speak and vote on all the subjects that one feels related to

Proposed by elf Pavlik at Rise Up Labs:

"Please feel officially invited to join the "Planetary Forum" which I like to compare to the mythical concept of 'the round table' just thanks to our current technology with a 'seat' for every single human being interested in participation. Please also feel free and even encouraged to invite all the people you know for participation and creating it.

I have just started putting some information at:… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on January 4, 2010 at 15:00 — No Comments

P2P Etiquette

I am hopefully not breaking P2P etiquette here, but my Kickstarter project funding seems to be stalled.

If I am to make further progress this year, I need to make this work.

So, I am requesting that you consider 5 or 10 dollars for the project, its is less about the amount, than about attracting a show of interest and support. This is a reasonably small sum, and you'll all have access to the full plans when they are published in march 2010. Equally important is for interested… Continue

Added by James Jones on January 3, 2010 at 2:00 — 1 Comment

Observations on "Open Everything"

I was finally able to slow down enough from catching up on things and do a little exploring of the P2P site. And so, had the chance to watch Mr. Bauwens TEDx “Open Everything” presentation .

I was most taken by the observations about the shifts between periods of acceptable norms in society, and their reflected effects on the structure of governance. Especially as it relates to the current transition.

A more concise analogy might be that small independent bubbles form at… Continue

Added by James Jones on December 27, 2009 at 20:00 — 1 Comment

Editorial "from Ecorev 33 : Thinking after capitalism with André Gorz"

Via Emmanuel Dessendier, editor in chief of Ecorev:

Two years ago, a few days before our patron André Gorz and his wife passed away, he had sent us his last text.

EcoRev’s present issue pays tribute to this great thinker and father of political ecology. It is special also in the sense that it is published ten years after the original issue, which focused on “Surviving capitalism”. Yet, this tribute does not want to regard the “Gorzian philosophy” as sacred.… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 27, 2009 at 1:09 — No Comments

Social Implications of Local Fabrication

Reposted from the CubeSpawn site

As the title implies, there is more to local fabrication than meets the eye.

How would things change (meaning society in general) if local fabrication became the predominant form of production? This is speculative, but some likely consequences emerge:

Converting to local fabrication has at least four potential impacts,

• Improved economic independence

• Significant… Continue

Added by James Jones on December 24, 2009 at 0:00 — No Comments

CubeSpawn

This is a brief re-hash of the basic premise, assumptions, and intents relating to the "CubeSpawn" project.

CubeSpawn is an open source, Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS)

The fundamental premise is two-fold:

1) To provide a hardware framework to encapsulate other open source manufacturing technology.

2) To accelerate the adoption of a System for manufacturing that combines… Continue

Added by James Jones on December 23, 2009 at 22:00 — No Comments

System Malfunction, a book about the oncoming global catastrophe and the potential of Systems Thinking to address it

Via Timothy Barker, at http://www.webjam.com/systemmalfunction

See text at http://www.webjam.com/systemmalfunction/~Media?id=2f80933d-97f2-4d48-bf69-e8dff2008ab4

"System Malfunction is a book about the oncoming global catastrophe. Motivated by a need to address current systemic failings across a spectrum of observable… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 23, 2009 at 7:59 — No Comments

Call for Papers -- Linking the Local with the Global within Community informatics -- Journal of Community Informatics

Journal of Community Informatics:

Call for Papers for Special issue on Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatics

Guest editors: Liisa Horelli and Douglas Schuler

The Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, Community Informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers.

We invite submissions of original,… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 21, 2009 at 5:01 — No Comments

Call for Papers Internet Research 11.0 - Sustainability, Participation, Action

The 11th Annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the

Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)

October 21-23, 2010 University of Gothenburg/Chalmers University of

Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

The challenge of this conference is to find multiple avenues for

participation and action towards a sustainable future. In a society

increasingly aware of social and ecological imbalance, many people now

see information and communication… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 15, 2009 at 9:18 — No Comments

The sharing issue at Copenhagen

This article is recommended as a must read by Jim Garrison of the State of the World Forum, and appeared in the Huffington Post:

William S. Becker

Executive Director, Presidential Climate Action Project

HuffingtonPost: December 14, 2009

COP 15: Accepting Responsibility

Imagine you're a well-to-do person attending a dinner of your peers. The food is top-rate and there's plenty of it. Course after course is laid upon the… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 15, 2009 at 8:35 — No Comments

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

Subject :… Continue

Added by sushil yadav on December 14, 2009 at 6:46 — No Comments

Open Source Development for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

Via Liam Rattray:

URL + http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Open_Source_Development

Good afternoon all,

Some of you who are following the UNFCCC climate negotiations may know

that there is currently an impasse between "developed" (i.e. US & EU)

and "developing" (i.e. China and India) over intellectual property

rights and the transfer of technologies… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 12, 2009 at 9:00 — No Comments

Playing football with Prof. Alexander Repenning

Prof. Alexander Repenning

From here

He is, Alexander Repenning, who is dedicated to psychology and pedagogy of programming. He introduced the idea of anti-objecs, along with an application called…

Continue

Added by Carlos Boyle on December 11, 2009 at 6:30 — No Comments

Education as a Commons

Via Stevphen Shukaitis, Autonomedia Editorial Collective, http://www.autonomedia.org

Beneath the University, the Commons

A conference at the University of Minnesota

April 8-11, 2010

// Antioch 05.08 // Rome 10.08 // Athens 12.08 // New York City

12.08 // Helsinki 03.09 // Zagreb 05.09 // Heidelberg 06.09 // London

06.09 //Santa Cruz 09.09//

Seemingly discrete struggles over the conditions of… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 1, 2009 at 6:15 — No Comments

Open Hardware Conference in London this Friday

Via dan mcquillan, [www.internetartizans.co.uk | twitter: @danmcquillan]

interesting event in london on friday.

http://openhardware.eventbrite.com/

"This is an event to bring key projects, their participants and

stakeholders together in the emerging field of Open Hardware

development, organized by 40Fires in partnership with Nesta.

The… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on November 30, 2009 at 14:22 — No Comments

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?, A film by Oliver Ressler

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Oliver Ressler

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

A film by Oliver Ressler

118 min., 2009

“What is democracy?” is not one question, but is actually two questions.

On the one hand, the question relates to conditions of the current,

parliamentary representative democracies that are scrutinized critically

in this project. On the other hand, the question traces different

approaches to what a… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on November 25, 2009 at 10:37 — No Comments

The Telecoms Package: A Missed Opportunity for Citizen's Rights

La Quadrature du Net - For immediate release

Permanent link:

http://www.laquadrature.net/en/telecoms-package-a-missed-opportunity-for-citizens-rights

Telecoms Package: A Missed Opportunity for Citizen's Rights

*** Paris, November 24th, 2009 - There is no reason to celebrate the

general outcome of the Telecoms Package. The final text… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on November 24, 2009 at 11:12 — No Comments

German conference on creating a neonomad infrastructure for long term travellers

Via Robin :

A loose network of nomads, skillsurfers, hackers, open space fanatics and hospitality exchange addicts is hosting a conference on (postmodern/neo)nomadic culture, with a strong focus on setting up spaces/bases/places that are open for nomads. The conference takes place in Berlin from the 20th to the 30th of November, or maybe even longer. And in New York from the 5th to the 6th of December See… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on November 20, 2009 at 7:46 — No Comments