It has been a while since I've been able to produce a normal, non-thematic issue. So here is a more varied mix of topics. We continue our examination of 'P2P Capitalism', this time looking at the role of venture capital. The other main topic is what is happening in Latin America, and since most of us are badly informed, I really recommend reading a summary of the evolution in Venezuela and Argentina. Finally, there's the usual mix of miscellaneous items. For my Belgian friends, I recommend looking at the very last item: a Belgian book, in English, about open sources and free software, which deserves support. If you can circulate this item in your networks, it would be encouraging to the Crosstalk team at the VUB.
Have a look at the editorial, which discusses how the P2P approach differs from more classical political approaches, and tell me what you think.
ISSUE 92, Table of Contents
P/I: PLURALITIES/INTEGRATION
A newsletter about participation
in multiple worlds, multiple visions, but one humanity ; a monitor of P2P
developments
-
Archive at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
; foundational essay at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2ptheory1
Compiler:
Michel Bauwens, michelsub2003@yahoo.com ; P/I is an emanation of the FOUNDATION FOR PEER TO PEER
ALTERNATIVES
ISSUE 92: October 10, 2005: Why this newsletter? Why the title?
The title refers to
the enduring tension between a multitude of worldviews, and their eventual
integration. For a full explanation of the rationale behind the newsletter, see
issues 1 and 2. An alternative name could be "P2P and Empire" because in
practice I mostly focus on a analysis of the crisis of the current system on
the one hand, and the emergence of a more participative worldview, which I call
"peer to peer", on the other.
Preferred themes: the networked society, cognitive capitalism, Empire and its
discontents,emancipatory processes among the `multitudes' and the possible
emergence of a peer to peer civilization, truth-building as a collective and
`dialogical' effort, the challenges posed to traditional religions and humanism
by spiritual P2P experiencing and technological transhumanism.
The P2P meme map (i.e. related, but not
necessarily completely similar terms: peer to peer,
many to many, edge to edge development partnerships, distributed networks,
egalitarian networks, protocollary power, user innovation communities, social
networking, smart mobs, filesharing, grid computing, theWriteable Web (or
Read-Write Web), FLOSS i.e. Free, Libre, Open Source Software, CPBB or
Commons-Based Peer Production, the alterglobalisation movement as a network of
networks, free software and open sources as a 'third mode of production', the
coordination format, non-representationality, the rhizome, parallel and
distributed computing, object oriented programming, object-oriented sociality,
the Information Commons, the GPL Society, the hacker ethic, folksonomies and
tags, the long tail, Napsterization, cooperation studies, collective
intelligence, synergetics, wirearchy, peer governance, common-property regimes
If you like
this project, please suggest any interesting links! We would be very happy
to list you as a contributor. Thanks to John Dermaut, Christophe Lestavel, John
L. Petersen, George Dafermos, Jim Hightower, David Spillane, Larry Penslinger,
Nik Baerten, Maurice Nsabimana, Tattoo Mabonzo, Philippe Van Nedervelde, Pascal
Houba, Jaap van Till, and the Multitudes mailing list for regular suggestions.
Recommended:
JamesBurke of Lifesized, http://lifesized.blogspot.com/;
Kris Roose, at http://www.noosphere.cc/
; Nicole-Anne Boyer, http://www.fuzzysignals.com/
How
to subscribe: Write to compiler Michel Bauwens at michel@noosphere.cc
or at michelsub2003@yahoo.com.
QUOTES
-
The Linux
breakthrough in numbers
"Hardware companies
are selling more than $1 billion in servers to run Linux every quarter, while
sales of servers running proprietary software continue to fall. And now, slowly
but surely, Linux is making inroads on the desktop as well. According to IBM,
10 million desktops ran Linux in 2004 -- a 40% jump from a year ago."
(Source:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20050103_7038_tc_218.htm?)
-
The Wiki
Numbers
"The online
encyclopedia and its sister projects, including Wikiquote, record 60 million
hits a day and have amassed more than 2.2 million entries in 120 languages,
making Wikipedia the most detailed collection of information in history."
(Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/next/life-the-universe-and-wiki/2005/09/19/1126981972225.html )
-
Paramedia
defined
"Paramedia
are networks of people with access to media publishing tools and training that
align through self-organizing or by explicit planning to promote and support
the discussion of an idea, agenda or problem."
(Source:
http://www.ratcliffeblog.com/archives/2005/10/the_era_of_para.html)
CONTENTS
-
A completely updated PDF version of the P2P
manuscript is available, specially prepared for the Re-Activism conference, and
225 pages long. Available upon request by email. See also the abstract of the
Budapest lecture at http://mokk.bme.hu/centre/conferences/reactivism/submissions/bouwens
-
Timothy Wilken has written an update on peer
governance, where he compares sociocracy, with the related but different
concepts of synocracy and ortegrity, from within the context of synergetics,
see at http://futurepositive.synearth.net/2004/03/15
-
I'm putting the manuscript up for discussion in
a Wiki-format, at the P2P Foundation site, section by section, at http://p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Manifesto
-
Read: Extreme Democracy, or 'Deep Confidence in
the People', from Mitch Ratcliffe, at http://extremedemocracy.com/chapters/Chapter%20Four-Deep%20Confidence.pdf
-
Check this out, it is absolutely fabulous,
and allows you to build and share your own book catalog: http://www.librarything.com/
-
Marleen Wynants of the Free University of
Brussels, starts a new blog, at http://mwynants.blogspot.com/
During the last few
days, I have been thinking about a neo-libertarian movement called Inclusive
Democracy, and its call for a marketless and stateless society, and its
rejection of anything that falls short of that elusive goal.
It has been a
useful exercise to think about how the "peer to peer approach" is
different:
-
P2P theory does not seek in perfect state of
society, but rejoices in any movement that marks a change for the better. That
'better' being defined as more free, autonomous, free and equal social
processes that enhance our changes for survival and a meaningful life
-
P2P does not seek a universal abstract utopia
(marketless, stateless), but a differentiated social order based on 'complex
equality', and a rich mix of 'concrete utopias', i.e. changes proposed in many
areas of ameliorating a current process of production or governance. Thus, it acknowledges
four types of intersubjectivty not just one communal form. Though, I personally
abhor the current economic order, and think it is a major structural cause for
the multidimensional crises that we are going through, I am not opposed on
social practices that attempt to make the current economic system better
(natural capitalism adepts for example), or even the Millenium Goals, even
though 'by themselves' they may be insufficient.
-
P2P theory does not start from any vision of
'how things should be', but start from currently 'emerging' autonomous
processes, i.e. how today's humanity, with its current form of desire for
autonomy and cooperation, invents new social processes that are more in harmony
with it. There is no blueprint for a better tomorrow, but a spontaneous
unfolding of human creativity, and an attempt to create supportive social
institutions and processes.
-
P2P theory aims to be integrative, i.e. to
honour initiatives throughout the social fields, taking place within the four
intersubjective typologies. It does not see why free software should be opposed
to the basic income, or why the basic income should be opposed to the movement
for complementary currencies. All have their place, and P2P aims to uncover the
common ground between them, to network the various initiatives into a more
coherent global movement.
-
That does not mean that P2P theory wants to be
wishy washy and has no "enemies", the enemy however, is not a
person or a group of persons, it is
that part in all of us which opposes free and autonomous cooperation, that is
afraid of it, or wants to preserve its own personal power against it
So, what do think about this? Comments are
welcome.
For more info: see http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/index.html
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc2005103_0519_tc_218.htm?
The Open Source movement is being taken up in a big
way in the business environments, in particular by venture capital. This means
that they have a strategy of monetarisation for it. Overview with many
subarticles in Business Week. The second item is an interview with Linus
Torvalds, initiator of Linux.
"The
open-source movement is making another big thrust forward. Entrepreneurs,
investors, and many analysts say they're confident that all of a company's
business software -- representing hundreds of millions in sales -- will soon be
available as open source. "I don't think there are any limits," says
Ray Lane, a Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner and software industry
veteran. Many of Lane's colleagues agree. Venture capitalists have pumped nearly
$400 million into 50 open-source companies in the last 18 months -- and more
are on the way. That may not seem like a lot of money, but bear in mind these
companies are incredibly capital-efficient. They don't need to hire armies of
salespeople or engineers because the open-source community does a good deal of
the heavy lifting. Investors have
funded new ventures offering everything from broad business applications like
business intelligence programs that monitor company operations to very
specialized applications, like running a hospital's computer systems.
Every open-source program companies download, investors say, marks one step
closer to changing forever the applications business long dominated by the
likes of SAP (SAP
), Oracle (ORCL
), and Microsoft (MSFT
). Software that companies once paid millions for is now available for free via
the Internet. Harried tech managers can simply download an operating system or
application and play with it -- no need to free sizable chunks of the budget or
get the board to sign off, as is the case with big, multimillion-dollar
purchases. And since this is open source, they can customize the programs on
the fly to better fit their needs.
2.
Comments from Linus Torvalds:
URL
= http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20050103_7038_tc_218.htm?
What
do you think of the new generation of open-source applications and services
companies popping up today? What does this means for the future of open-source
software?
I
don't think this is anything new. That has always happened in the open-source
community, namely that the area of development ends up expanding. If you look
at open-source development, it used to be relegated to only very core and very
technical areas. As those core tools end up being more and more mature, the
development effort starts building "higher abstraction"-level tools
on top of the old ones. [That] is not to say that the core developers
necessarily move on, but what you see is that new blood tends to concentrate on
the things that the old projects didn't do, and thus the horizons for open
source keep on widening. The applications and services [companies] are just a
sign that the core competencies of open source have grown up enough that these
things make sense. It certainly wasn't something you could do five years ago;
the infrastructure just wasn't there.
What needs to be done to make Linux an even more popular choice for mobile
applications and consumer-electronics devices?
Well,
one of the things happening is just the devices themselves growing up, and that
will obviously continue. A big issue keeping Linux away from
[consumer-electronics] devices was simply that the devices generally weren't
capable enough for it to make sense. We're only now starting to see that issue
go away. On the software side, the kernel is actually doing pretty well. The
biggest problem I see on that front is just the psychological one: The
[consumer-electronic] device manufacturers are coming to grips with the whole
open-source community thing, but it will take them a while to be entirely
comfortable with it. The same way it took the server-side companies a while to
get used to the notion of open source a few years ago.
What about Linux on the desktop? Why hasn't it taken off?
Oh,
it has absolutely taken off, but some people seem to think that "take
off" means that suddenly everybody is running it. That's clearly not true.
It's a very slow conversion. There are more people running it this year than
there were last year, and it all looks and works a bit better all the time. But
did everybody suddenly convert? No. It's one step at a time. Some people seem to think that we got
where we are overnight. Not so. I've been doing Linux for 15 years, and hey, if
it takes another 5 or 10 for the desktop to be a big part of the market, that's
what it will take.
As the owner of the Linux trademark, you have begun enforcing it by
demanding licensing fees from companies that use it. Why are you doing this,
and how do you respond to critics within the open-source community who call you
a hypocrite?
I
don't know why that thing became news. I've been the owner of the trademark for
something like 10 years, and I have not "begun" enforcing it. It has
been ongoing all the time. Has it been a big enforcement push? No. [In August,
Torvalds did start cracking down on some companies in Australia.] That may be
why it took some people 10 years to even notice. But the way trademarks work,
you sadly have to enforce them to keep them valid.
Your employer, the Open Source Development Labs, recently proposed a patent
commons project, where it would create a legal entity to administer open-source
patents and a database to organize the claims, providing protection to
open-source developers and companies who implement their software. Why is this
important to the open-source community?
Patents in general are a big issue. There are worries about the situation at
the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office among pretty much all tech companies.
Absolutely everybody knows it's a seriously broken setup, although opinions
differ on how to fix it. The patent
commons is just one thing to do. [We're] trying to at least make the situation
a bit more bearable for open-source developers that under normal circumstances
don't really have a lot of input on patents.
3. Related
information:
-
Interview with
web founder Tim Berners-Lee on how the Web 2.0. embodies his original vision,
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4132752.stm
-
What venture
capitalists look for in a OS project, at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc2005103_5298_tc_218.htm?
-
Profiles of the
latest start-ups, at http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/09/opensource/index_01.htm
-
A good
explanation of what the Long Tail economics do for the bottom line, at http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/08/the_8020_rule_r.html
-
Shoppers are
starting to use blogs for bargain hunting, says a survey, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4282614.stm
-
Corporate
blogging 2.0, CEO's are getting at it, at http://www.blogwriteforceos.com/blogwrite/2005/09/corporate_blogg.html
-
An IBM VP on why
the company supports Open Source, at http://irvingwb.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/the_economic_an.html#comment-9996809
-
Trading guilds, a
scenario of new form of distributed capitalism that enhances the networked
power of small day traders, at http://ideologi.typepad.com/ideologi/2005/09/scenario_the_tr.html
-
A critique of the
Creative Commons, "non-commercial distribution" clause, at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/11/16331/0655
-
The New York
Times on the collaboration revolution in business, and the copying of
nonbusiness innovations from the open source community, at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/technology/techspecial/05lohr.html
http://www.rushkoff.com/interviews/krug.html
Some quotable comments on the occasion of his new book, 'Get Back
in the Box', from an interview.
"On a deeper level, the book is about
renaissance, and the unique moment we're in as a society. A renaissance allows
for a profound shift in perspective. While the original Renaissance invented
the individual, as well as competition, this renaissance has really brought us
new possibilities for collaborative action - networked collectivism and a
society of authorship. We've been wrestling since the Renaissance - and some
would say since high
Greek culture - with the seeming contradiction between the agency of
individuals and their power as a collective. I mean to show that we have new
ways of contending with dimension that let us see how individuality is itself
defined by connections to other people, and that agency is really a group
activity.
How
did we get to this unique moment? What factors have made this age so special?
Are you talking purely technology here?
Well, it's a
combination of things. Technology is a big part of it, sure. We've been using
technology in basically one way since the original Renaissance: to allow for
command and control. Everything from the steam engine to Ford's assembly lines
helped reinforce a mechanistic model where a manager controls machinery - or
people through machinery. Networking changed things, and allowed complexity to
emerge through technology instead of simply being quelled all the time. But
other changes abound. The original Renaissance brought us perspective painting,
the extended metaphor, calculus, circumnavigation of the globe, and the
printing press. Our renaissance brings hypertext, chaos math, orbiting the
globe, and the internet. We're experiencing a shift in our ability to contend
with dimension that is profound as the shift experienced back in the 1500's.
And the same kind of shift is happening across all the disciplines, not just
technology. In fact, it's rupturing the notion of separated disciplines,
itself.
How
will this Renaissance change how we understand ourselves and our place in
society?
I
think the "renaissance man" is obsolete. There's only collectives. The
individual - which was actually invented during the Renaissance, and then
celebrated during the Enlightenment - no longer exists. At least not in
isolation. The individual is defined by his or her connections. We are our
connection to other people. And the failed experiments of the 20th Century, in
collective action, give way to a much more emergent sense of group
cohesion."
http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4423646
A summary of the
'far-reaching consequences" of the open access movement in the sciences.
"IT USED to be so straightforward. A team of
researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of
their research to a journal. A journal editor would then remove the authors'
names and affiliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review.
Depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for
publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and
researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the
journal.
No longer. The internet--and pressure from funding agencies, who
are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from
government-funded research by restricting access to it--is making free access to
scientific results a reality. This week, the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report describing the far-reaching
consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria University in
Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers
who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It
signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific
endeavour.
The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment
in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is
big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at
between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of
Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than
2,000 publishers worldwide specialising in these subjects. They publish more
than 1.2m articles each year in some 16,000 journals.
This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of
scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are emerging;
three main ones were identified by the report's authors. There is the so-called
big deal, where institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of
online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is open-access
publishing, typically supported by asking the author (or his employer) to pay
for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access archives, where
organisations such as universities or international laboratories support
institutional repositories. Other models exist that are hybrids of these three,
such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a
paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone
who wishes to see it.
All this could change the traditional form of the
peer-review process, at least for the publication of papers. The process is
organised by the publisher but conducted, for free, by scholars. The advantages
afforded by the internet mean that primary data is becoming available freely
online. Indeed, quite often the online paper has a direct link to it. This
means that reported findings are more readily replicable and checkable by other
teams of researchers. Moreover, online publication offers the opportunity for
others to comment on the research. Research is also becoming more collaborative
so that, before they have been finalised, papers have been reviewed by several
authors. This central tenet of scholarly publishing is changing, too."
I'm reproducing a debate
in the Oekonux mailing list, where Stephan Merten makes a very good point.
Getting paid for free software projects, or peer production generally, is a bad
idea, as it introduces alienation in the production process. It defeats the
very reason why free modes are superior. The context is a discussion on a open
hardware producer who waits for subscribers before releasing his machines. See
the difference between Simple and Double Free Software.
"To understand it fully: You develop something but don't release it unless someone paid (enough) for it. Then you release it under GPL. Right?
I think Free Software would not have even
started if developers would have thought that way. They released what they
created and created besides their market compatible activity. Your way of doing
things is very similar to Free Software built for money for a specific customer
who doesn't care much about the license. We call this software Simple Free
Software in contrast to Double Free Software where not only the user of the
software is free but also the creator.
When I think of an Oekonuxian perspective I
find this a bad approach because it reintroduces the alienation of the money
system back into Free Projects. It is the customer / boss who says what is good
and what not. At least for software if this would be the best way to do things
than M$ would need to have no fear of Free Software. In other words: The
quality of things produced without this type of alienation is higher than with
alienation.The deeper reason is that if you create a good for nothing else than
its use value than you can create the very best thing thinkable. This mode of
production also attracts bright engineers because this is what they want to do
deep down in their hearts."
http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26804.shtml
Why are social democracy
and the labour movement still geared to the nation-state? Why does it not
develop pan-European proposals?
"In nearly all cases, social protections have been
established at the national level and it is these that have been dismantled.
While so-called `reform' has on several occasions been stubbornly
resisted--notably in the great French strikes of November-December 1995--this resistance
has eventually been worn down by a succession of half-measures with great
cumulative effect. In 1998 there was a brief moment when the German and French
finance ministers seemed poised to drive through a programme of tax
harmonization and Keynesian macro-management at European level but, with the
resignation of Oskar Lafontaine in 1999, this soon passed. The remorseless
sapping of social provision at national level continued and was propelled by
pressure from the eu and ecb--indeed
the latter gave an alibi to national governments. The toleration of deflation
and mass unemployment further demoralized and weakened organized labour. The eu does
not have a fiscal regime adequate to the huge challenges that its member states
face. These include the heavy costs of the ageing society, the knowledge-based
economy, and such ecological shocks as global warming, desertification and the
destruction of marine life. For two decades the Union has been dogged by
persistently high levels of unemployment in its core states, and it is now
unprepared for the consequences of a poorly planned enlargement. Although the
proposed Constitutional Treaty paid lip service to `social Europe', it did not
envisage a single new measure that would extend social provision on a eu-wide basis, nor furnish the eu
(which only commands 1 per cent of the gdp of its
member states) with new fiscal powers.
Some of these challenges have been seized on by Europe's leaders to
justify downsizing entitlements. Social movements will defend these where they
are rooted in national welfare regimes, but they are more likely to be
successful if they also respond on an eu-wide
basis. The Left now has the chance to articulate its own alternative at
continental level. The eu has a scale and level of
development which potentially allows it to contain the corrosive forces of
globalization and elaborate its own social model--one in which the promises
embodied in universal social insurance are met and combined with low levels of
unemployment and more generous provision for education, childcare, social
infrastructure and research and development. It has an economic weight equal to
that of the United States and a fiscal and regulatory regime which the large
corporations and finance houses are obliged to respect. A distinctive feature
of Europe is its relatively strong labour and social movements. It has a
successful record of public initiative in areas like transport, communications
and land reclamation, and a tradition of decent social provision, even if the eu's current leaders have largely turned their backs on
this inheritance. In what follows I will be exploring the ways in which Europe
could reorient its economy and find new pathways to economic redistribution,
good labour standards, social justice and ecological sustainability. I will
argue that we need to find qualitatively more effective ways to tax
corporations and, with the proceeds, to establish a network of social
funds."
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/archives/2005/sp05/wilpert.htm
It is difficult to have a
well-informed view of what Chavez is doing. Gregory Wilpert, from Venezuela
Analysis, gives a very good overview of the many innovative social policies
initiated, and he particularly stresses the participatory aspects of the new
structures and initiatives.
"There are three areas where Chavez has
shifted course from that of his predecessors and of most other Latin American
governments. First, the new Constitution opened the country's politics to much
broader participation and, simultaneously, strengthened the position of the
president. The participatory aspect of the Constitution means that, on a
national level, ordinary citizens may now petition for four different types of
referenda: for the recall of elected representatives, the repeal of laws,
consultation on issues of national importance, and the approval of
constitutional amendments. Although it is debatable whether referenda are a
good idea for democracies (think of California), Venezuela's politics for most
of its forty years of democracy was ossified, and its citizens were apathetic.
Opening the possibility for national referenda has energized civil society and
generated forms of political expression that go beyond the dysfunctional party
system. On the other hand, the lengthening of the president's term from five to
six years and the direct control he now has over military promotions has
strengthened the presidency--making the opposition more desperate and
politicizing the military. These two factors contributed to the coup attempt
against Chavez in April 2002.
On the local level, the Constitution and the policies of the Chavez government
have also opened opportunities for ordinary citizens to become more involved
than ever before. First, there are Local Public Planning Councils, which make
government more responsive to local needs by increasing transparency and
providing officials with constant feedback from their constituents. This is
something that never existed before and was badly needed because local
government was one of the main areas of corruption--and still is, because the
Planning Councils have so far not been able to live up to their potential.
Citizen involvement has also increased because numerous social policies are
being enacted in direct consultation with neighborhood groups. For example,
access to drinking water, which has increased from 79 percent to 91 percent
during the Chavez presidency, has been facilitated by community "water
committees." Similarly, the effort to regularize land titles in the barrios,
where squatters have occupied land, has been promoted via tens of thousands of
neighborhood "land committees." Democratic community media, which provide a
welcome alternative to the propagandistic programming of the state and the
highly politicized anti-Chavez orientation of the private media, have
mushroomed too during the Chavez presidency, mostly due to government support
of various kinds. All of this grass-roots involvement has also meant an
increase in the number of community organizations.
In the economic sphere, the Chavez government is one of the few in the world
that has successfully pursued a development path that steers clear of
neoliberal economic doctrine. The government is combining a statist approach in
the areas of oil and monetary policy with strong support for domestic small
businesses and cooperatives, which led to economic growth in 2000 (2.8 percent),
2001 (3.2 percent), and 2004 (17 percent est.). For 2004, however, the increase
in the country's gross domestic product (GDP) was largely due to a rebound from
severe recessions in 2002 and 2003, attributable to the effects of a world
recession, the April 2002 coup attempt, and the opposition's shutdown of the
country's oil industry in early 2003.
The years of economic growth were due to the increase in world oil prices,
which began in 2000, mostly because of Chavez's efforts at bringing OPEC
(Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) back together as a functioning
cartel. Prior to Chavez, Venezuela often broke OPEC's oil production quotas,
helping to drive the price of oil to $10 per barrel in 1998. Because
approximately 80 percent of Venezuela's export income and 40 percent of its GDP
comes from oil production, the price of oil has tremendous influence on the
country's economic well-being.
But it has not just been oil policy that has aided the country's
economy. The preferential treatment given to cooperatives and small businesses
in state purchasing and the promotion of micro-credits for women and
cooperatives have also boosted employment opportunities for many. In the wake
of the opposition's oil industry shut-down, unemployment reached a peak of 22
percent. Now it has dropped down to 11 percent, one of the lowest rates in
Venezuela's recent history.
In terms of social policies, the Chavez government has essentially revived
Venezuela's social democratic past, by lavishing its oil dollars on social
programs of all kinds. The main beneficiary of these programs is the education
sector. During the Chavez presidency, the state's education spending has gone
from 3.2 percent of GDP to 4.7 percent. However, the government had problems
with the state's bureaucracy and so ran many social programs outside the
ministries, in what it calls "missions"--scholarships, literacy programs,
continuing-education programs, subsidized food markets, and community clinics.
Although these "missions" are more difficult for the government to oversee
because of their high degree of independence, they seem to be producing
results. Public opinion polls have shown that a vast majority of the population
has had favorable experiences with them. The main problem the government faces
with these new programs, which now take up over 20 percent of the state's
budget, is that they constitute parallel structures that duplicate the work of
existing ministries. The Chavez government has yet to figure out a way of
bringing the missions and the ministries into a coherent framework.
Excellent site to keep up with developments, maintained by
Gregory Wilpert et al, at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
http://vacarme.eu.org/article479.html
Excerpts from an interview
with four Argentineans about the experiences since the collapse four years ago,
and the birth of the extraordinary social movement, which still ripples through
to this day.
"À partir des expériences les plus innovantes menées à
l'intérieur des mouvements, nous en étions arrivés à la conclusion que, pour le
dire vite, la politique ne passait plus par la politique. Et pour la première
fois dans l'histoire argentine, au soir du 19 décembre, face à la proclamation
de l'état de siège par De La Rua, des foules énormes envahissent les rues,
surgissant quasiment de nulle part, sans direction et sans que se soient non
plus activés de canaux de communication informelle. L'unique mot d'ordre est
« qu'ils s'en aillent tous et qu'il n'en reste aucun » (que se
vayan todos, y que no quede ni uno solo) : précisément une destitution
radicale de toute forme institutionnalisée, un décentrement absolu des
institutions, qui ouvre un espace sans que soit du tout abordée la question de
ce qui devrait le remplir.
Les 19 et 20 décembre sont un seuil décisif dans l'Histoire
récente de l'Argentine, au-delà duquel rien n'est plus comme avant. Quiconque
ne tente pas d'en comprendre et d'en élaborer la signification est condamné à
l'anachronisme. C'est aussi un seuil dans la définition du politique, à partir
du véritable effondrement de toute distinction entre le plan politique et le
plan social. Lors de l'insurrection, il n'aurait pas été difficile de prendre
le « palais », la Casa Rosada : cela ne vient à l'esprit de
personne. Quand De La Rua abandonne la résidence présidentielle en hélicoptère,
les gens cessent de s'intéresser à ce qui se passe là-bas, on ne se pose pas la
question de la succession ; on se tourne plutôt vers les quartiers, et la
naissance de centaines d'assemblées dans toute la ville (et dans une bonne
partie du pays) est quelque chose de surprenant, une dynamique complètement
spontanée.
Mais la sensation générale, bien résumée dans le mot d'ordre
« que se vayan todos », est celle d'un vide politique,
comme si les gens, dans une sorte de gigantesque interrogation collective, se
demandaient où est le pouvoir. Il n'est pas à la Casa Rosada, il n'est
pas non plus ailleurs ; tous, militants et organisations, s'attendaient -
et beaucoup ont continué - à la plus classique, selon les
« traditions » du pays, des réponses : un coup d'État militaire.
Qu'il n'y en ait pas eu face à une mobilisation populaire sans précédent est
encore une preuve que les 19 et 20 décembre un seuil a été franchi : c'est
la nature même du pouvoir qui a changé. Et le rapport des gens au pouvoir et à
l'État a changé encore plus profondément : on a vis-à-vis de lui des
attentes nettement réduites, et la conscience, à un niveau de masse, du décentrement
de l'État et des institutions produit par l'insurrection de décembre. En
disant, au moment de prendre la présidence, « nous sommes des gens ordinaires
avec de grandes responsabilités », Kirchner fait d'une certaine manière
écho à cette conscience, et fait preuve d'une vraie compréhension de la rupture
qui s'est produite. Comme si s'était affirmée l'idée qu'une extrême
instabilité, ainsi que la contingence la plus absolue, étaient à la base de
toute forme d'action politique ; et ce pendant que, tout aussi
profondément, l'onde de choc de l'insurrection destituante continue de peser
comme une hypothèque sur le développement politique argentin : une sorte
de « non actif » qui pose des limites précises à ce que le
gouvernement peut faire.
Que se passe-t-il après les 19 et 20
décembre ? Comment évoluent les différents acteurs dans le vide politique
produit par l'insurrection ?
Le 21 décembre, tout le pays est en quelque sorte réuni en
assemblée : d'un côté l'assemblée législative, convoquée pour élire un
nouveau président et retransmise en direct à la télévision ; de l'autre
les centaines d'assemblées de barrio. Puis deux présidents en une
semaine, Rodriguez Saá et Duhalde. Avec ce dernier arrive au pouvoir une
fraction du péronisme critique vis-à-vis du néolibéralisme ménémiste qui, dans
un premier temps, évite toute forme de répression ouverte face aux mouvements -
même si elle n'hésite pas à recourir à l'appareil péroniste en province pour
les contenir, y compris de façon violente, dans les actions de rue. Duhalde se
fixe quelques objectifs minimum : la stabilisation des prix et de la
monnaie, une trêve pour les épargnants victimes de l'effondrement des mois
précédents, un premier plan d'urgence distribuant des allocations aux chômeurs
(le « Plan Jefas y Jefes de Hogar »). Avec un néolibéralisme
manifestement en difficulté et un duhaldisme qui dessine clairement une
hypothèse de gestion post-ménémiste, les mouvements continuent à se développer
avec une créativité et une force incroyables. C'est au cours de ces mois que
des centaines d'usines sont « récupérées » par des travailleurs, que
se constituent les processus d'échange entre ces usines et les assemblées de
barrio, qu'émerge une véritable économie alternative autour des réseaux du
barratto et des « acquis communautaires ». Le débat politique à
l'intérieur des mouvements se polarise schématiquement autour de deux
positions : d'une part la gauche traditionnelle (communiste et trotskyste)
parle d'une « situation pré-révolutionnaire » et lance le mot d'ordre
d'« assemblée constituante » ; de l'autre, de manière très
diffuse, à un niveau de masse, d'un ensemble de situations émerge une hypothèse
que l'on pourrait qualifier de contre-pouvoir, en insistant sur
l'autonomie des mouvements, sur leur capacité à produire de véritables formes
de vie, formes d'institutions sociales sans la moindre vocation à remplacer
les institutions.
2. The article then goes
on to describe of the policies of the Kirchner government, and their divisive
effect on the counter-movement, resulting in two factions, one pro-government,
one anti-government, but in between, a large space of social innovation
remains:
C'est précisément dans cet espace, à notre avis, que vivent et
se reproduisent les éléments les plus nouveaux, les plus inventifs, les plus
riches qui ont caractérisé les mouvements en Argentine ces dernières années.
Leurs expériences sont des plus diverses : piqueteros et étudiants,
secteurs du mouvement paysan du nord du pays et du mouvement indigène du sud,
groupes développant des logiciels libres, collectifs issus d'assemblées de
quartiers et groupes d'enseignants engagés dans la construction de
« communautés éducatives » avec les parents et les étudiants. La
liste pourrait être longue : mais ce qui réunit ces différentes
expériences, c'est davantage un « mode de construction » qu'une
représentation des différents secteurs de la société. C'est un espace fragmentaire
mais incroyablement diffus et capable de se recomposer d'une manière imprévue
et surprenante face à des urgences spécifiques, qu'elles soient liées à la
répression, ou à l'émergence de luttes singulières mais perçues comme
« exemplaires ». Ce n'est que de l'intérieur de cet espace que
peuvent venir des réponses innovantes aux grandes questions politiques qui sont
à l'ordre du jour en Argentine et en Amérique Latine.
3. A perhaps necessary
correction to any optimistic reading of the Argentinian experience can be found
here:
URL = http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/is2/galafassi.htm
The above mentioned examples are still marginal phenomena, while
the majority of the population still remain detached from any perspective of
social change, as it was shown in the recent elections in which the various
proposals tainted by conservative ideology raised more than 80% of the votes.
Moreover, two of the candidates (Carlos Menem and Ricardo Lopez Murphy) who
received 40% of the votes, had openly threatened with a strong suppression of
the social protest by military means.
4. Related Information:
Clifford Geertz, legendary anthropologist reviews ongoing 'Third
World Revolutions', at http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/archives/2005/wi05/geertz.htm
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail672.html
Thanks to James Burke for
the suggestion.
"In a world where information overload is common,
attention is a very scarce resource and there is an increasing need to manage
it efficiently. In this panel discussion, Steve Gillmor, Glenn Reid, Doreé
Duncan Seligmann, David Sifry and Linda Stone talk about the problem of coping
with more information than one can handle and the possible solutions.
In a connected world it is becoming very difficult to filter out
the information that really needs our attention from that which is irrelevant
to us. The panel discusses the work that they are currently involved in and
tries to come up with answers to the problem of overwhelming information, only
some of which deserves our attention. They talk about the tools, practices and
new technology being developed to effectively use data which matters to the end
user.
Privacy is paramount when developing tools and systems which
help in determining and tracking what is important and needs attention. The
panel tries to come up with an answer to the question of ownership of the data
which channel attention effectively. The discussion ends with a question and
answer session where members of the audience share their thoughts and clarify
issues with the panelists.
- Wikipedia entry on Attention
- Attention.xml
- an open standard, built on open source that helps you keep track of what
you've read, what you're spending time on, and what you should be paying
attention to.
P2P
-
The personal media revolution, Paul Saffo
comments a study of U.S. media use in the Christian Science Monitor, at http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0928/p13s01-lihc.html
-
A French-language podcasting directory, at http://www.podemus.com/
-
The worldwide battle for intellectual
property rents is described in a week-long series of the International Herald
Tribune, recommended, at http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/03/business/iprtrade.php
-
Open Shoot says it is the first Open Source
Movie Project, at http://www.redlightriot.com/openshoot/home
-
A graph outlining the creative production
process in 'remix culture', at http://longtail.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/user_flows.png
-
Garage Influentials, at http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/GARAGE_INFLUENTIALS.htm
"What happens when you open up media platforms
to bloggers, amateur critics, self-educated experts, passionate commenters, and
independent reviewers? You get insightful, surprising and highly original content,
not to mention entirely new products and services from GARAGE INFLUENTIALS:
amateurs-turned-professionals posting their reviews, criticisms, software,
solutions and God knows what else on the web, ready for reading or
downloading."
SPIRITUALITY
-
The state of (neo)paganism in the U.S. and
worldwide, by Selena Fox. Interestingly, she stresses the networked and
inter-traditional aspects of the movement, at http://religion.info/english/interviews/article_186.shtml
-
Wilber reviews post-integral stages?, at http://www.integralspiritualcenter.org/IntegralSpirituality.pdf
"Wilber's writing about what he is calling
post-metaphysics, the basis of his 2 upcoming books, can be found at integral
Spiritual Center. The pdf at Integral Spiritual Center is about 100 pages long
and definitely worth reading. It outlines his new integral methodological
pluralism that expands the 4 quadrants to include 8 fundamental
perspectives. He also outlines his recent post-metaphysical standpoint at the
end in an appendix on p.106. Also on page 32 of the paper is a graph that shows
his change from using psychic, subtle, and causal as the pre-given stages of
third tier, to now using aurobindo's stages that are not pregiven and are
essentially co-created. A more
complete look at his new insights can be found at his shambhala site in his various
excerpts, though the excerpts that deal exclusively with post-metaphysics have
not been posted yet (that is excerpts E and F)." - Lyon Albaugh
-
Project Comet
URL = http://www.sixapart.com/comet/
Project Comet will launch in early 2006 and will combine the
publishing power of TypePad, the community aspects of LiveJournal and the years
of insight garnered from Movable Type. Project Comet is focused on creating an
advanced weblogging technology platform combining the best elements of all our
products, giving people the ability to easily stake out, build and share their
own place on the web.
-
EMS peer to peer video system
URL = http://esm.cs.cmu.edu/
End System Multicast (ESM) is a peer to peer video streaming
system that: 1) runs on your desktop computer; 2) can stream high quality video
(300kbps-1mbit) to hundreds or thousands of simultaneous users; 3) doesn't cost
a dime!
-
Associations 'Bien Publics a l'Echelle Mondiale
URL = http://www.bpem.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=1
"Pour que tous les êtres humains aient enfin un jour la
chance de devenir " égaux en dignité et en droits ", une idée
chemine entre autres, en ce début de millénaire : celle que des " biens
publics " sont nécessaires à l'échelle mondiale. Qu'est-ce à
dire ? Chaque société, chaque civilisation, a développé historiquement des
biens et services publics, quels que soient les mots employés et les cadres
culturels dans lesquels ils s'inscrivent. Mais partout, à notre époque, ces
biens sont menacés par la convoitise des intérêts financiers. Simultanément,
l'interaction croissante des sociétés humaines induit des maux et des besoins
nouveaux. La mondialisation incontrôlée des activités financières et
productives s'accompagne aussi d'un développement inouï du système des "
paradis fiscaux " qui ouvre un boulevard à la criminalité économique,
facilite la corruption des responsables politiques et administratifs et sape
les bases économiques du financement des biens publics. Le modèle social
européen, qui a sous-tendu l'un des plus hauts niveaux de développement de la
planète, reste un exemple, et les menaces qui pèsent sur lui sont vivement
ressenties. D'autres contrées, particulièrement les pays du Tiers monde, n'ont
guère le moyen de défendre leurs acquis et pratiques de solidarité face aux
injonctions des institutions financières internationales. C'est dans ce contexte difficile que l'idée de la
nécessité de biens publics globaux fait irruption dans le débat sur l'avenir du
monde. Il ne s'agit pas de substituts aux services d'intérêt général menacés
localement, mais de besoins nouveaux, nés de la prise de conscience de
solidarités et du refus de l'aggravation des inégalités dans le mouvement
planétaire d'interaction croissante des sociétés. Certains voient dans cette
idée une réponse nécessaire aux maux de notre temps. Ailleurs on s'efforce de
la récupérer pour accélérer la marchandisation planétaire, au nom de lois économiques
contestables. Au-delà de ces divergences fondamentales, le débat est
considérable autour de questions intimement mêlées : quel est le contenu
concret du bien public mondial, a-t-il un niveau optimal, à quelle échelle
territoriale doit-il être assuré, et par qui, comment y parvenir... ?
More information in this book available online, La Sante
Publique entre Racket et Bien Public, at http://www.eclm.fr/source/pdf/originaux/293.pdf
-
Item
1: ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS, ALTERNATIVE SOCIETIES. A project by
Oliver Ressler
URL = http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/index.htm
"After the loss of a counter-model for
capitalism - which socialism, in
its real, existing form had presented until its collapse -
alternative concepts for economic
and social development face hard times at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
In the industrial nations, broadly
discussed are only those "alternatives" that do not question
the existing power relations of the
capitalist system and
representative democracies. Other socio-economic approaches are
labeled utopian, devalued, and
excluded from serious discussion if even
considered at all.
This edition of the republicart web journal
presents transcriptions from 13
videos from Oliver Ressler's thematic installation "Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies"
focusing on diverse concepts and
models for alternative economies and societies, which all share a rejection of the capitalist system of
rule."
- Item 2: Generation Hex
"If the modern world is crumbling, then magic is what's
growing up between the cracks. In Generation Hex, editor Jason Louv assembles a
collection of dispatches from the edge--a generation of young adults who are
inventing and imagining radically new directions for spirituality and human
evolution. Through critical essays and practical demonstrations of how a
positive interaction with the magical and psychic undercurrents of human life
can radically alter one's existence, the young magicians collected in Generation Hex
provide a collective blueprint for escaping the suicidal rut of modern
life."
-
Item 3: Ethan
Watters: Urban Tribes - Are Friends the New Family? Bloomsbury, 2003
URL = urbantribes.net
-
Item 4: Here
is the ToC of a book about the future of open source, published in Brussels.
To order: sengelen@vub.ac.be
HOW OPEN IS THE FUTURE?
Economic, Social & Cultural Scenarios based on Free & Open Source
Software. eds. Marleen Wynants & Jan Cornelis. VUB Press.
PART I - DRIVING FORCES: KEYROLE PLAYERS & PROJECTS
1.
Will The Revolution be open-sourced? How open
source travels through society
by Marianne VAN DEN BOOMEN en
Mirko SCHAEFER
2. INTERVIEW : "FREE
AS IN FREEDOM, NOT GRATIS!" - Interview with
RICHARD STALLMAN, the embodiment of the dilemma of our digital
commons
by Marleen WYNANTS
3. The Open Source Paradigm Shift
by Tim O'REILLY
4. Open Courseware and Open
Scientific Publications
by Frederik QUESTIER &
Wim SCHREURS
5. Roots Culture - Free Software Vibrations Inna Babylon
by Armin MEDOSCH
PART II - MAKING IT HAPPEN: CASE STUDIES FROM BRUSSELS, BELGIUM,
EUROPE & BEYOND
6. EXTREMADURA
and the Revolution of Free
Software. Achieving Digital Literacy and modernizing the economy of one of
the poorest regions in the
European Union.
by Angel VACA
7. Building Open Ecosystems for Collaborative
Creativity
by Peter HANAPPE
8. A Walk
through the Music Bazaar and the Future of Music
by Sara ENGELEN
9. Open Source, Science
and Education
by Marc NYSSEN & Frederik CHEESEMAN
10. Open Standards Policy in Belgium
by Peter Strickx
PART III - ETHICS &
BOTTLENECKS
11. INTERVIEW: "The Patenting of
Life" - An interview with VUB scientist Lode
WYNS about the
dangers of patents in biotechnology and the pressing need
for ethics in
law
12. Fostering Research, Innovation
and Networking
by
Jan Cornelis
13. Is Open-Sourced Biotechnology possible?
by
Daniel De Beer De Laer
14. Legal aspects of software
protection through patents, and the future of
reverse engineering
by Bruno De VUYST en Liv STEUTS
PART IV - THE FUTURE IS OPEN
15.
Advancing Social Science Research on the Free and Open-Source Software
Mode of
Production
by J.-M. Dalle, Paul A. DAVID, Rishad A. Ghosh, and W.E.
Steinmueller
16. The Future of Open Source
by Ilkka Tuomi
17. The Future of Software:
Enabling the Marketplace to Decide
by Bradford L. Smith
18. Dual Licensing - A Business model from the
Second Generation of Open-
Source Companies
by Kaj ARNÖ
19. Towards a EU Policy for Open-Source Software
by Simon FORGE
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