Dear friends:
I have accumulated quite some bit of material on the theoretical aspects of P2P, and since the newsletter also serves a the documentary base for the writing of my manuscript, I am going to 'pump up the volume' in the next few weeks, focusing on a series of thematic issues. The negative of this for readers is the amount of information to digest, and less of a focus on actual developments, though they will still be covered in the Miscellaneous section. But the advantage is that you can browse the issues and then keep them for exploration later, and since they are thematic, it will be easier to digest this more structured information at a later stage. I'm aiming to publish every Tuesday and Friday, until I'm through the backlog of material.
This issue is an examination of the overall theme of P2P and the natural world, and a thinking through of the scarcity vs. abundance. We have abundance in the immaterial sphere, abundance of the productive capacity of the industrial system, but the unsustainable processes of our current system are scarcity-inducing in the natural world.Is P2P, predicated on abundance, possible in such a world?
See the contributions of Herman Daly in particular, who spells out the major issues and the more critical and pessimistic vision (regarding P2P) of Larry Penslinger.
As you know, I am aiming to reformulate a 'differentiated and integrated' theory for social change. With an understanding of Daly, we are coming closer to that goal.
Our next issue 97 will be on P2P and Economic Governance. Other issues in the pipeline is an updated issue on alternative currencies and monetary reform.
Michel Bauwens
ISSUE 96, 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 96: November 1, 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.
-
Attention and
interruption in the contemporary workplace
When [Gloria] Mark [from UCI] crunched the data, a picture of
21st-century office work emerged that was, she says, "far worse than I could
ever have imagined." Each employee spent only 11 minutes on any given project
before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else. What's more,
each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute
tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a
spreadsheet. And each time a worker was distracted from a task, it would take,
on average, 25 minutes to return to that task. To perform an office job today,
it seems, your attention must skip like a stone across water all day long,
touching down only periodically. Yet while interruptions are annoying, Mark's
study also revealed their flip side: they are often crucial to office work...
(Cited in http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/10/20/i_dont_trust_your_attention.php )
-
Horizontal vs. Vertical Information Assembly,
Ross Mayfield
"Open
source software and Wikipedia are both driven by commons-based peer production.
How they differ, and the reason software development requires rigorous
quality-control, is that code has dependencies. Writing code is vertical information
assembly, while contributions to a wiki is
horizontal information assembly. Wikipedia does have quality control and an organizational model,
but it isn't a feature embodied in code, it is embodied in the group."
(http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/10/20/nick_carrs_amorality.php
)
-
Peter Barnes'
strategy to rebuild a commons-based society
"So
here's what I propose:
-
Our organizing principle for the next 20 or 30 years should be: reinvent and
rebuild the commons. This needn't be done all at once; it can be done brick by
brick.
-
We design institutions to manage commons at local, regional, national and
global levels, and road-test these institutions wherever possible.
-
We challenge the divine right of capital in the media, the universities and the
courts. And we promote every citizen's right to an equal share of some common
wealth. We won't win at first, but we keep chipping away.
-
We nourish institutional seeds. For example, land trusts, watershed councils,
air quality districts and similar entities already abound. What they lack,
largely, are property rights and steady revenue streams.
-
We make polluters pay into trusts. After all, they're trespassing on our common
inheritance.
-
We build alliances with religious groups and reframe the debate about morality.
Many religions believe that nature is a gift of God that humans must respect
and preserve. Many are also concerned about the effects of commercialism and
materialism on children and families"
Source: http://onthecommons.org/node/698 )
-
Graph:
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Online Communities
Reprinted at http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/images/uploads/maslow.gif
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. You can also
order a "bound volume" for EURO 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
-
Recently, the P2P essay has been mentioned in Network
Dialectics, at http://networksdialectics.blogspot.com/2005/10/p2p-and-human-evolution.html ; the Critical V
blog, at http://critical-v.blogspot.com/2005/09/its-always-frustrating-yet-fascinating.html ; ebuddha's
Integral Practice site has some extra kind words, at http://integralpractice.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/20/1241161.html
-
A short review from Larry Penslinger, the author of The Moon at
Hoa Binh:
"I have been reading your essay. The information in book form is far
easier to approach than the online newsletter, of course. This is truly a great introduction to
this field of thought. A major accomplishment,
even in its present "a work in progress" stage. Thank you very much for making this
available.
One of the very useful aspects of P2P&HE, I find, is contextualization of
the notes with their many website referrals. This allows me to follow out the ideas
in a coherent fashion. A
significant body of this material has been available only in French, which I do
not read, and much of it remains untranslated. However, much information is now
available in English on the net concerning what remains untranslated, and P2P&HE
is an excellent guide."
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2005/11/LATOUCHE/12900
If the current mode of endless material growth is
unsustainable, we have to seriously think of how to transform into a not only
zero-growth economy (since that is in fact also unsustainable) but even
`de-growing' (decroissance). The following editorial in Le Monde Diplomatique
notes an increasing convergence amongst transformative social movements around
this issue. If we do not transform into such a new type of society, the
alternative is not endless and unsustainable growth, but ecofascism, a highly
unequal distribution of the remaining resources for the benefit of a few.
« Septembre a été le mois le plus chaud jamais enregistré sur la
planète depuis que les températures sont prélevées scientifiquement (1880), a
annoncé le 14octobre le Centre national océanique et atmosphérique américain.
Cinq jours plus tard, le Conseil international pour la science mettait en
garde : le monde va subir davantage de catastrophes naturelles meurtrières
liées à l'accélération du réchauffement climatique. Emissions de gaz à effet de
serre, pollution de l'air, consommation des ressources non renouvelables et de
l'eau... Comment enclencher les cercles vertueux de la décroissance tout en
garantissant la justice sociale, sans laquelle l'humanité est condamnée au
désordre ?
Le projet de construction d'une société autonome et économe rencontre une large
adhésion, même si ses partisans se retrouvent sous des bannières
différentes : décroissance, anti-productivisme, développement requalifié,
voire développement durable. Par exemple, le slogan d'antiproductivisme
développé par les Verts correspond exactement à ce que les « objecteurs de
croissance », membres du Réseau des objecteurs de croissance pour un
après-développement (Rocad), entendent par décroissance. Même convergence avec
la position d'Attac, qui, dans une de ses brochures, plaide pour
« l'évolution vers une décélération progressive et raisonnée de la
croissance matérielle, sous conditions sociales précises, comme première étape
vers la décroissance de toutes les formes de production dévastatrices et
prédatrices ».
Réévaluer, reconceptualiser, restructurer, relocaliser, redistribuer, réduire,
réutiliser, recycler : les huit « r » constituent des objectifs
interdépendants pour enclencher un cercle vertueux. Et, de fait, l'accord sur
les valeurs rendues souhaitables par la nécessaire « réévaluation »
va bien au-delà des partisans de la décroissance, puisque certains tenants du
développement durable ou du développement alternatif font des propositions
similaires. »
http://www.umass.edu/peri/forum/daly.pdf.
http://onthecommons.org/node/699
One of the key problems I'm struggling with in my
manuscript is the reality of abundance of capital and financial resources and
productive capacity, vs. the scarcity of natural goods.
I recently discovered Herman Daly as the key economic
thinker in environmental economics, i.e. a type of economy which does not
destroy the current and future capacity of the earth to renew its resources.
Here's a very good introductory lecture, on a `Forum on Social Wealth', which
also contains an interesting contribution on the environmental justice
movement, by Martin Pastor.
Here's a commentary on the Daly lecture by David
Bollier of On the Commons:
"Why
do economists insist on treating information and creative works as scarce -
while making the opposite mistake with respect to the depletable services of
nature, which they treat as limitless by pricing at zero? Last week, in the
inaugural presentation of the new Forum on Society Wealth lecture series at
UMass, Amherst,
economist Herman Daly tried to shed some light on these paradoxes. His goal was
not just to dissect the illogical mindset of mainstream economics, but to help
explain why we fail to see and protect our social wealth. Much of the problem,
he suggested, lies with the market's skewed metrics for seeing and
understanding. Daly is the celebrated ecological economist who once pondered
these questions for an unlikely employer, the World Bank. He has explored the
collision of economics and environmental protection in such classic books as
Steady-State Economics, Beyond Growth and For the Common Good.
Daly is currently professor at the University
of Maryland's School of Public Affairs.
It was refreshing to hear Daly unpack the economics of social wealth so lucidly
-- and to have such a large crowd (100+) show up on a Thursday evening to hear
him. Our current economic system treats natural resources as essentially
limitless, said Daly, but of course, after a sufficient period of use, most
fruits of nature (oil, timber, clean water, air) can be used up. It therefore
makes sense to impose "a regime of excludability" on certain natural resources
before they become scarce. One tool for doing this is a cap and trade system,
which allows governments to prevent the tragedy of an open access regime (often
confused with the commons). A cap on usage prevents over-exploitation of a
resource, while trading allows people to maximize its efficient use.
In
the information commons, by contrast, intellectual property law is used to make
an essentially limitless resource - knowledge - scarce. The over-propertization
of knowledge can have lots of unfortunate effects, from preventing universal
access and benefit to inhibiting the development of new knowledge. Economists
see the imposition of artificial scarcity on knowledge (via copyright and
trademark law) as a necessary condition for enabling market exchange. But the
upshot, said Daly, is that "we mistakenly think that scarcity increases public
wealth." In fact, its chief result is the creation of private wealth.
Daly
lamented the fact that economics deals mostly with the allocation of a resource
among competing users, but fails to deal with issues of scale and just
distribution. Economists don't really address the appropriate physical size of
the economy relative to the ecosystem - and thus they ignore the environmental
sustainability of the economy. Similarly, economists don't trouble themselves
with the issue of who gets property rights in the first place -- and therefore,
whether the distribution of market results are legitimate and just. Neither of
these problems - sustainability and just distribution - can be solved from
within the market paradigm, Daly warned. They require pressure from outside of
the market, from civil society and governments. Daly broached an area of social
wealth that is rarely explored -- the private privilege of issuing money,
called seigniorage. Historically, this was the king's prerogative that
was later passed to the commercial banking sector. Some 95 percent of the US's
money supply exists in the form of demand deposits and loans made by banks.
Under our system of fractional reserve banking, which allows banks to retain
only a small fraction of money on hand as a reserve against money lent out,
banks are able to reap enormous private profits through their seignorage
privileges. Why not gradually raise the reserve requirement to 100 percent,
asked Daly, and reap some public gain from the ability to create money?
Daly
conceded he might be regarded as a "monetary crank" in making this
proposal, but cited some illustrious economists of the 1920s who agreed with
him. (Note: James Robertson, a progressive-minded economist in Great Britain,
has also proposed reforms along these same lines. See his speech, "The Alternative Mansion House Speech,"
by James Robertson of the New Economics Foundation, London, and his report, with Joseph Huber, "Creating New Money.")
One reason that the fallacies of mainstream economics go unaddressed, said
Daly, is because few colleges and universities even teach the history of
economic thought any more. Exploring this history just might expose the
frailties and fallacies of economic assumptions that the profession likes to
regard as universal and timeless.Daly's remarks are entitled, "Sustaining Our
Commonwealth of Nature and Knowledge." The text - as well as a video version -
will be posted soon on the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass (I'll
post a link). In the meantime, more information about the Forum on Social
Wealth can be found here."
Herman E. Daly
is currently Professor at the University
of Maryland in the School of Public Affairs.
His numerous works include: Steady-State Economics , Beyond Growth
, and For the Common Good . Daly is also a co-founder of the journal Ecological
Economics and serves on its editorial board.
The Forum's site
with link to the other lectures, at http://www.umass.edu/peri/forum/daly.htm
Larry Penslinger is an American author, of the
legendary novel "The Moon at Hoa Binh", and an expert on quantum physics and
m-valued currencies, who lives in Noonkai,
Thailand. His
thought is complex, sometimes difficult to understand without philosophical and
scientific grounding, and many people of my circle here in Chiang Mai, including
myself, highly value his comments. Here's a reaction to the P2P essay, which
deals with the issue of the `parasitic' nature of P2P (vis a vis the current
abundance and the productive capacity of capitalism), and if it would survive a
collapse of the natural environment. See the links below for an introduction to
his writings, in particular the Chiang Mai Chronicles.
"I
can easily view this whole area of thought -- involving "cooperative
individualism", participatory process, partnership-based models, and, indeed,
P2P, itself -- as continuation of the postmodernist attempt to save whatever
can be saved of"simple identity" in face of quantum weirdness and
m-valued
logics. For instance,
"distributed networks" as defined by Galloway
rule out actual quantum
processes
of self-production (zero-point energy) and self-organization, for in such
processes, for instance a holographic process, the information is not distributed;
it has no locality spatially or
temporally,
and the identity of a "bit" does not exhibit selfsameness (as do
cooperating individuals,
participants,
partners, peers). This is by no
means to suggest that consensus quantum physicists are not postmodernists; they
very definitely are, and probability interpretations and definition of q-bits
in
terms of binary logic instead of m-valued logics are clear indications of that.
Why
is this important to attend to?
Because the fossil-fuel era is coming to an end and the
"abundance-oriented" and "already existing social practice"
of P2P can be regarded as
symbiotic
to, or parasitic upon,cheap-energy-dependent, market-organized, industrial
and
postindustrial capitalism. The only
way P2P could escape this status and begin the transformation you propose would
be for it to solve cheap-energy dependence and overcome the limitations of externality-blind
market as less-than-pan processor.Using the holographic example, information is
distributed over a holographic plate because the experimental set up (quantum
measurement problem) that created the plate was formulated on the basis of binary
logic, which, by conventions of Aristotle's syllogistic, rules out quantum
non-locality (except as dissimulated as "probability
amplitude"). Existing holograms
are, thereby, something less than actually holographic; they are made to
conform to the principles of heat engines.
Cheap-energy dependence cannot be overcome within the purview of the thermodynamics
of heat engines (linear-time-bound closed systems). I would argue only within time-independent,
multiply-self-reentrant, non-orientable systems (not merely orientable open systems,
wherein life is regarded as inherently, even by definition, multi-scaled as
order is borrowed by the nested system from the nesting system). By choosing the distributed,
non-quantum, account over the non-local quantum account of self-production and
self-organization,
the possibility of overcoming cheap-energy dependence, necessary to the
transformation
you propose, is nullified. This discussion
is not exactly correct, illustrative only,
so
as to convey the basic idea. Noting
the caveats would lead to details of many discussions."
William L.
Pensinger's Web pages are at http://www.geocities.com/moonhoabinh/,
http://www.geocities.com/m_valuedlets/,
http://www.geocities.com/chtn_nhatrang/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4245584.stm
P2P Power generation: Small networks of power
generators in "microgrids" could transform the electricity network in
the way that the net changed distributed communication.
"That
is one of the conclusions of a Southampton
University project
scoping out the feasibility of microgrids for power generation and
distribution. Microgrids are small community networks that supply electricity and
heat. They could make substantial savings, and emissions cuts with no major
changes to lifestyles, researchers say. Electricity suppliers are aiming to
meet the UK
government's Renewables Obligation, requiring them to generate 15% of
electricity from renewable sources by 2015. Microgrids, say the researchers,
could easily integrate alternative energy production, such as wind or solar,
into the electricity network. They could also make substantial savings and cuts
to emissions without major changes to lifestyles, according to lead researcher,
Dr Tom Markvart.
That
network could be made into a smart grid using more sophisticated software and
grid computing technologies. As an analogy, the microgrids could work like
peer-to-peer file-sharing technologies, such as BitTorrents, where demand is
split up and shared around the network of "users". Microgrids could
exist as stand alone power networks within small communities, or be owned and
operated by existing power suppliers. Campaign groups such as the Green Alliance
have been pushing for micropower generation technologies, such as micro-CHP
(combined heat and power) boilers - a vital part of microgrids - mini-wind
turbines and photovoltaic (PV) solar arrays. Micro-CHP units work by turning
heat which would normally escape through flues into electricity. Homeowners
then sell any surplus heat back to the national grid. The Green Alliance says
the government should take micro-generation more seriously."
http://www.forbes.com/2005/09/20/google-maps-technology-cx_tt_0921straightup.html
"The explosive innovation triggered by Google Maps
produced a shock of recognition. We always knew that our meatspace coordinates
would merge with our cyberspace addresses. Now that it's really happening,
familiar topics--identity and privacy, grassroots collaboration and centralized
control, ownership and use of data--will be newly refracted through the
geospatial lens."
1.
Forbes magazine overview
"Already, there has been an explosion of Google Map
applications. As evidence, take a look at Google
Maps Mania.
Many of these applications are grassroots efforts, such as celebrity maps, which locate the homes of stars like Brad Pitt and Alyssa
Milano, maps to find cheap gasoline and even a map
of UFO sitings. However, the
mapping phenomenon is not just about fun and games. Companies like Salesforce.com
(nyse: CRM - news - people ), a leading developer of customer relationship management
software, are using Google Maps. Basically, you can map your business contacts
and leads. So if you plan a business trip to New York, you can see your contact base
around the city and, thus, perhaps set up more meetings.
Take another company, smugmug.com. Co-founder Chris
McAskill is no stranger to the Internet world. During the 1990s, he started
Fatbrain.com, an online bookseller of professional and technical titles
(he sold the company to barnesandnoble.com in 2000). Smugmug is a photo-sharing
site, which has more than 32 million photos. It was McAskill's customers that
led him to mapping. "Our biggest category is travel," he said.
"We noticed our customers uploading maps into their albums to show where
they've been. They fumble with Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Streets and Maps or whatever, but it's not the same as having
the actual photo spotted on a map and clicking it to see it big, scrolling,
zooming." So, in late August, Smugmug used Google Maps to launch a new
service, called smugMaps. A user can either add an address or click a spot on
the map to create an album. The software can also read the global positioning
system (GPS) of a phone to tag a picture. "Honestly," said McAskill, "we
love Google Maps, and we're looking for excuses to program them. The idea
evolved as we had our fun."
Someone else having fun is Ivan Mitrovic. He's a
programmer in the financial services industry who, over the years, has logged
many airline miles. "I use a Treo," said Mitrovic, "but wanted
to find ways to use it to find, say, a local restaurant. When I started to look
at Google Maps, I knew I had a solution."
The result was a software service called KMaps. "I guess I wasn't the only one interested in this,"
said Mitrovic, "because within the first day of posting version 1.0, I got
thousands of downloads." KMaps is essentially a location-services
platform. For example, it has its own API to allow others to create new
applications. Mitrovic has been quite busy
developing his own applications, which he calls KMaplets. Examples include
social networking and dating. Along with the Treo, KMaps operates on BlackBerry
and Tungsten devices. "There is so much
location-aware information out there for which online maps provide the natural
interface," said Mitrovic. "Mobile online mapping is much more
important than the desktop approach, since mobility assumes constant location
change. People on the go need to understand what services they can find around
their current location. So I think these location-aware services are now in
their prime time to be fully commercialized."
Tom Taulli is an adviser to early-stage companies and
is an adjunct professor at the University
of Southern California,
teaching corporate finance and corporate law. He has written several books,
including The Complete M&A Handbook (Random House) and Tapping
Into Wireless (McGraw-Hill). He can be reached at tom@taulli.com and has a blog at Taulli.com.
2.
More examples:
`Hotmaps' for dating, Tagzania
-
"Do you have stories about the incredible
uses that Google Earth is being put to? Here's an example that might give you
misgivings ('hot people by zipcode'), but it is just one example of what people
are doing with these interactive maps, http://hotmaps.frozenbear.com/
-
Tagzania is
about tags and places. If you register and log in, you can add places, points,
to create and document your maps. When you add a point, you may tag it with
keywords. That way, Tagzania is not only a place to build and keep your own
maps, shared territories are created as well.
-
Using the Google
Map API, to power the site Suramya
Tomar created gWiFi to make it easier for the
road-warrior's, students, free loaders etc to find locations that offer free
wireless internet access in the New York City area by showing all free wireless
nodes on a Map of New York.Tomar says to have created gWiFi because nothing
like this already existed and it is something that a lot of people will find
useful. In a request to collaborate he adds: "The best way to help me would be to
point me to a geocoder program/Create a Geocoder program that is not as picky
as Geocoder.us.
If thats a bit to heavy for you (As its for me) you could instead volunteer to
help manually fix the address that Geocoder chokes on".
-
Google map meet the vlogs, at vlogmap.org
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/7929/7929greenchemistry.html
Green chemistry is a science-based, nonregulatory,
economically driven approach toward sustainable development
Green
chemistry, also known as sustainable chemistry, is an umbrella concept that has
grown substantially since it fully emerged a decade ago. By definition, green
chemistry is the design, development, and implementation of chemical products
and processes to reduce or eliminate the use and generation of substances
hazardous to human health and the environment.
The
conference covered an ambitious range of topics, which included alternative
reaction and separations media, such as supercritical CO2 and ionic
liquids; environmentally benign agricultural practices; emerging biotechnology
alternatives, such as enzyme-catalyzed reactions; product life-cycle impacts,
from raw materials to recovery and reuse; establishing national green chemistry
programs; and green chemistry education.
Some of the report's key
findings are as follows:
- Many technologies that meet green chemistry objectives
already exist and offer immediate opportunities to reduce environmental
burdens and enhance economic performance.
- The incorporation of green chemistry and related approaches
into the training of current and potential science students increases the
effectiveness of recruitment and retention efforts in this crucial field.
- Research investments beyond current "pilot
program" levels are needed from both government and industry to
empower and enable the development and utilization of green chemistry
technologies by the broad spectrum of private-sector interests.
- Key action items include the following:
- National centers for green chemistry should be established
or expanded, and these centers should be linked to create an effective
worldwide network.
- Educational initiative funding in green chemistry is needed
to focus on curriculum materials development, faculty training centers,
fellowships, and recruitment and retention activities.
- Increased incentives are needed for the initial
implementation of green chemistry technologies by industry to offset
investment, policy, and regulatory barriers that may exist.
- Informational outreach is needed to educate industry,
public, and environmental groups of the benefits of green chemistry
adoption.
2. Twelve Principles Of Green Chemistry
Prevention It is better to prevent waste than
to treat or clean up waste after it has been created.
Atom
Economy
Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all
materials used in the process into the final product.
Less
Hazardous Chemical Syntheses
Wherever practicable, synthetic methods should be designed to use and generate
substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the
environment.
Design
Safer Chemicals Chemical
products should be designed to effect their desired function while minimizing
their toxicity.
Safer
Solvents and Auxiliaries
The use of auxiliary substances--solvents, separation agents, and
others--should be made unnecessary wherever possible and innocuous when used.
Design
for Energy Efficiency
Energy requirements of chemical processes should be recognized for their
environmental and economic impacts and should be minimized. If possible,
synthetic methods should be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure.
Use
Renewable Feedstocks
A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than depleting whenever technically
and economically practicable.
Reduce
Derivatives
Unnecessary derivatization--use of blocking groups, protection/deprotection,
and temporary modification of physical/chemical processes--should be minimized
or avoided if possible, because such steps require additional reagents and can
generate waste.
Catalysis Catalytic reagents (as selective as
possible) are superior to stoichiometric reagents.
Design
for Degradation Chemical
products should be designed so that at the end of their function they break
down into innocuous degradation products and do not persist in the environment.
Real-Time
Analysis for Pollution Prevention Analytical methodologies need to be further developed to allow
for real-time, in-process monitoring and control prior to the formation of
hazardous substances.
Inherently
Safer Chemistry for Accident Prevention Substances and the form of a
substance used in a chemical process should be chosen to minimize the potential
for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires.
SOURCE:
"Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice," Paul T. Anastas and John C.
Warner. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
3. The greening of the River Rouge Ford factory,
URL = http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001387.html
"Beyond
recycling, it adopted a 'cradle to cradle' approach: " "Natural
systems take from their environment, but they also give something back. The
cherry tree drops its blossoms and leaves while it cycles water and makes
oxygen; the ant community redistributes nutrients throughout the soil. ... We
can build factories whose products and by-products nourish the ecosystem with
biodegradable material and recirculate technical materials instead of dumping,
burning or burying them."
COGNITIVE CAPITALISM
-
One fifth of the humane genome
is now owned!, at http://onthecommons.org/node/719
News from the journal Science is that 20 percent of the
human genome is now owned by private companies and universities: "Documentation
about the current state of the genomic land grab appeared in the October 14
issue of Science (registered users only, but see
this secondhand account). The report, "Intellectual Property Landscape of
the Human Genome," by Kyle Jensen and Fiona Murray, correlates specific patents
with specific segments of the human genome for the first time. It seems that 20
percent of the nearly 24,000 human genes thought to exist, or more than 4,000
genes, are covered by U.S.
patents. Private firms own about 63 percent of the patented genes; universities
own about 28 percent."
CULTURE
-
Why Heidegger and Freud keep coming back,
despite repeated waves of attacks to obliterate their influence, and what is
their commonality, by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, in Le Monde, at http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-706087,0.html
-
Cryptozoology, the study of mythological
animal creates, which may or may not exist, is getting popular in the U.S.,
at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69426,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html
DIGITAL REVOLUTION
-
Ghost hunters use the latest
technological gizmo's at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/10/31/BUGDCFFS8Q1.DTL&type=tech
San Francisco Chronicle interviews Vince Wilson,
author of "Ghost Tech, the Essential Guide to Paranormal Investigation
Equipment.
EMPIRE
-
The perversion of the `wise use' movement,
or "why save a planet that is divinely ordained to be doomed anyway", at http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0544/051102_news_divine.php
"Today, large, well-organized, and powerful groups of anti-
environmental activists are using similar tactics. The anti-environmental
philosophy known as "Wise Use" has gained a large audience, and many
of its advocates and thinkers hold a menacing influence over government. A
frightening fact in its own right, the widespread acceptance of
anti-environmental thinking in the guise of Wise Use is made more troubling in
that there are increasingly close ties between those who subscribe to the ideas
of Wise Use and members of fundamentalist Christian churches and organizations.
The Wise Use movement's influence over religious conservatives thus mirrors the
traditional relationship between religious and political conservatives in that
Wise Use advocates are increasingly adapting their own agenda to include the
concerns of religious voters. In so doing, they have gained an army of God to
promote their own agenda."
P2P
-
What would it take to make Linux more
competitive on the desktop?, a review of needed improvements, at http://www.raizlabs.com/blog/2005/11/linux-thoughts.html
With
146+ user comments to boot
-
A rundown of where the new version of the
General Public License (3.0) is heading, and the governance process involved,
at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1881088,00.asp,
and http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1879114,00.asp
-
Special: P2P in Brazil, links provided by Karla Brunet karla@karlabrunet.com
This
is a collection of links to the P2P-related media activists in Brazil, received from a very kind and
enthusiastic scholar-activist I met at the Budapest Re-Activism conference. I did not
check the links, most are in Portuguese, but they might be of interest to some
of you. More information can be obtained by email from Karla herself.
Links: Midia Tática Brasil http://www.midiatatica.org; AutoLabs http://autolabs.midiatatica.org/
; Digitofagia http://www.midiatatica.org/wakka/wakka.php?wakka=DigitoIngles;
IP://Interface' Pública http://midiatatica.org/ip/;
Recicle1Político http://recicle1politico.tk/
and http://www.midiatatica.org/wakka/wakka.php?wakka=Recicle1Politico
Colab http://www.colab.info/;
Conversê http://converse.org.br/
MetaReciclagem
http://www.metareciclagem.com.br/wiki/index.php/MetaReciclagem
http://xango.metareciclagem.org
and http://xango.metareciclagem.org/wiki/index.php/ConecTaz
Sampa: http://www.sampa.org;
Radio livre http://www.radiolivre.org/,
http://www.radiolivre.org/node/950
Re:combo http://www.recombo.art.br/
and http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4234
Novae http://www.novae.inf.br/:
Contra TV, http://www.contratv.net/;
MetaONG http://www.metaong.info
Linkania - The Hyperconected Multitude By Hernani Dimantas,
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0508/msg00041.html
1. Two items from the
Social Capital newsletter
- David Halpern, Social Capital, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004.
The concept of 'social capital' is currently the focus of an
explosion of interest in the research and policy community. It refers to the
social networks, informal structures and norms that facilitate individual and
collective action. This explosion of interest is driven by a growing body of
evidence that social capital has enormous effects on economic growth, health,
crime and even the effectiveness and functioning of governments. David Halpern
provides a guide through the many and sometimes confusing definitions of social
capital. The various literatures examining the empirical consequences of social
capital are brought together from across academic disciplines to demonstrate a
remarkable range of effects. A model is then presented to account for the
causal pathways that create social capital, and that lead from social capital
to its outcomes. International evidence is used to establish whether social
capital is on the decline, and the thorny question of whether social capital
can harm or exclude is also examined. Finally, the policy implications are
considered, including how social capital can be measured, created and utilised.
Social Capital offers an overview of one of the most important and exciting
areas to emerge out of the social sciences in many years. It assumes no
previous knowledge of the literature or statistics, and will be of interest to
students and researchers in politics, sociology, social administration and
social psychology (from the book's flyer).
Sam Pizzigatti, Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcomng the Inequality That
Limits Our Lives, New York, Apex Press, Council on International &
Public Affairs, 2005.
This extraordinary book begins with a detailed demolition of the
trickle-down case for inequality. Pizzigati, a labor economist, also makes the
case that vast accumulations of wealth neither create effective incentives to
work harder nor ensure that the appropriate level of savings will be
forthcoming. The author continues in the second part by arguing that inequality
encourages inefficiency and has tremendous social costs. He compellingly
asserts that a less unequal society would benefit the very rich as well as the
poor. The final section begins with a historical analysis of the debates over
inequality in the US
from the early days of the republic to the present. The book ends with a short
discussion about the possibility of creating a more equitable society. No brief
description can adequately describe the mass of valuable insight and
information contained within this volume. The footnotes alone run more than 80
pages. References come from the popular press as well as professional journals.
Pizzigati tells his story well and on a level easily accessible to
undergraduates, while still providing material that advanced researchers will
find valuable. This book deserves the highest possible recommendation. Summing
Up: Essential. Public, academic, and professional library collections. (from a review in the March 2005 issue
of the American Library Association journal, Choice, by economist Michael
Perelman).
2. The End of the Line for Global Corporations ?
URL = http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/23/RVGC9F7EK31.DTL&type=books
Book: End of the Line. The Rise and Coming Fall of the
Global Corporation. By Barry C. Lynn DOUBLEDAY
"Cataclysmic images of the future are typically the stuff of Hollywood directors, science fiction writers and
fear-mongering politicians -- not international business reporters.
Yet iconoclastic Barry Lynn, former executive editor of Global
Business magazine, argues that 21st century global corporations have rendered
us vulnerable to conflict, social disruption and economic collapse. Today's global assembly line, he notes,
is "a system so hyperspecialized and so lean that a relatively small
glitch in production on the far side of the world has the potential to
devastate large swaths of the American economy."
To understand how things got to this point, Lynn takes the reader on a historical
journey. Early in the 20th century the most successful corporations were
"vertically integrated" firms controlling production at multiple
stages. For example, in the 1920s Henry Ford's Detroit factories received iron ore at one
end and delivered shiny automobiles at the other. But since the 1980s many
corporations have "outsourced" work, transferring jobs to subcontractors
in low-wage countries such as China
and India.
More recently, corporations have employed advanced logistics for
coordinating the global movement of components, allowing them to
"single-source" parts (that is, receive parts from a single supplier)
for cell phones, snowmobiles or sneakers. Single-sourcing, in conjunction with
"just-in-time" delivery, can reduce inventories, thereby cutting
rent, insurance and security costs. Although shareholders might applaud such
changes, there is a potentially high social cost associated with this system,
for today's ultra-efficient global "supply chains" have been reduced
to dangerously fragile threads. Lynn
provides vivid examples of how supply chains stretched to the breaking point
can easily snap. A September 1999 earthquake in Taiwan led to factory shutdowns in
scores of countries, since semiconductor exports were cut off. In 2002, a
10-day U.S. longshoremen's
strike forced the closure of Honda, General Motors, Toyota and Mitsubishi assembly plants. The
Sept. 11 attacks grounded airplanes for a week, and slowed traffic through
ports and border crossings, harming many industries. With so many recent
examples, Lynn needs only to suggest how
"cascading economic breakdowns" would occur if political turmoil or
war were to erupt in China, India or Korea."
-
P2P
Journal
URL = http://p2pjournal.com/
« P2P Journal is a website striving to provide
comprehensive coverage about Peer-to-Peer and Parallel computing topics. It
intends to be the gathering place for people interested in reading and writing
articles or discussing and chating about p2p technology, instant messaging,
collaborative computing, community information sharing & dissemination
tools and protocols, loosely-distributed, and parallel computing topics. It
will publish a regular technology journal online with insightful articles
written by experts of the fields, editorial review and discussions about
ongoing news, product reviews, and white papers contributed by people and
companies actively engaged in those industries."
-
Ubuntu Linux, 'Linux for Human Beings'
URL = http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning
"humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because
of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of
Ubuntu to the software world. Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating
system, freely available with both community and professional support. The
Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that
software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be
usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that
people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in
whatever way they see fit.
Other easy to use packages are Xandros, http://www.xandros.com/ and Linspire, http://www.linspire.com/
if you're not a tinkerer or a self-described power user, and if
you use your machine mainly for a few key tasks (Web, e-mail, office apps,
music, photos), then what I want you to do is shell out some cold, hard cash
for a copy of Xandros
Desktop OS Deluxe Edition 3.0. This is about as friendly as Linux gets: The
box, which is covered mainly with an impressive list of features, should have a
"Zero Linux Experience Required" sticker on it. Inside, along with
the installation discs, is an extremely well-laid-out, 350-page user manual
with a 24-page index. It's likely to be all the hand-holding you'll need. (http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,119360,00.asp
)
With version Five-0,
Linspire has crafted a Linux operating system that just about anyone can
use--but these days, such a thing really isn't all that unique. Unfortunately,
Linspire Five-0 distinguishes itself only with its custom applications and its
penchant for repeatedly clawing at your wallet. Better Linux alternatives are
out there.
(http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,120096,00.asp)
-
Network Institute for Global
Democratrization
URL = http://www.nigd.org/docs/about
"NIGD aims at promoting global democratization by producing and
developing emancipatory knowledge for democratic movements, organizations and
states. NIGD's work is based on the conviction that globalization as
coming-together-of-humanity must be based on cross-cultural dialogue concerning
both philosophical fundamentals and concrete reform proposals. NIGD projects
are usually joint endeavours with a number of partners from the global south."
-
MetaCollab
URL = http://collaboration.wikicities.com/wiki/Main_Page
Meta Collab is an open research, meta collaboration (a
collaboration on collaboration) with the aim to explore the similarities and
differences in the nature, methods and motivations of collaboration across any
and every field of human endeavour.
Meta
Collab's primary objectives are to:
- create
a continuously developing repository of knowledge surrounding
collaboration;
- develop
a community of researchers and individuals interested in furthering an
understanding of collaboration; and to
- work
towards the development of a general theory of collaboration.
-
Netsukuku, towards a real P2P internet
URL = http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/
Developed
by the Freaknet, Netsukuku is a new p2p routing system,
which will be utilised to build a worldwide distributed, anonymous and anarchical
network, separated from the Internet, without the support of any servers, ISPs
or authority controls. In a p2p
network every node acts as a router, therefore in order to solve the
problem of computing and storing the routes for 2^128 nodes, Netsukuku makes
use of a new meta-algorithm, which exploits the chaos to avoid cpu consumption
and fractals to keep the map of the whole net constantly under the size of 2Kb.
Netsukuku includes also the
Abnormal Netsukuku Domain Name Anarchy, a non hierarchical and decentralised
system of hostnames management which replaces the DNS. It runs on GNU/Linux.
Source: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/10/6/101832/209
-
GNU Media Peer
http://www.masternewmedia.org/p2p/video_publishing/p2p_video_publishing_platform_for_political_discourse_20050719.htm
Developed for the Italian Radical Party, but of use to all
instances of `grassroots political participation'
-
SynchronEdit
URL = http://www.synchroedit.com/
a browser-based simultaneous multiuser editor, useful for "same-time"
collaboration.
(source:
http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/10/for_the_last_se.html)
-
The
Cambia `open biology' initiatives
URL = http://www.cambia.org/daisy/cambia/563.html
"For more than a decade, CAMBIA has been creating new tools and
technologies to foster innovation and a spirit of collaboration in the life
sciences. In Spanish and Italian, CAMBIA means " change". This
meaning is at the very heart of CAMBIA's mission. We're exploring new R&D
paradigms, practices and policies to address neglected priorities of
disadvantaged communities. How? By tapping the huge potential of their own
creativity. Our institutional ethos is built around an awareness of this need
and opportunity: for local commitment to achieving lasting solutions to food
security, health and
environmental challenges."
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