P2P Foundation Blog
Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices
Updated: 4 weeks 1 day ago
P2P Authors talking about their books
From David Levine’s Hearsay Culture interview program, and other sources including our own directories on books, podcasts and webcasts, we have selected for you, a series of authors passionately talking about their books.
If you have little time to read, but can spend time listening during your commute or otherwise, this will provide you with many hours of interesting listening and watching experience.
For fast access, use this page here.
Here’s the list, please do suggest others:
1. Cass Sunstein on Infotopia
2. Charles Leadbeater on We Think
3. Chris Anderson on the Emergence of Free
4. Christopher Kelty on Free Software as Culture
5. Clay Shirky on Here Comes Everybody
6. Daniel Solove on the Future of Reputation
7. David Brin on the Transparent Society
8. David Korten on The Great Turning
9. David Weinberger on Everything Is Miscellaneous
10. Douglas Rushkoff on Corporatism
11. Erik Davis on TechGnosis
12. Interview with Mark Anielski on the Economics of Happiness
13. Joanna Demers on Steal This Music
14. John Thackara on Participatory Design for a Complex World, on the book “In the Bubble”
15. John Willinsky on The Access Principle
16. Jonathan Zittrain on the Future of the Internet
17. Julian Dibbell on Play Money
18. Kristin Lord on the Perils of Global Transparency
19. Matt Mason on the Pirate’s Dilemma
20. Paul Duguid on the Social Life of Information
21. Richard Lanham on the Economics of Attention
22. Robert Markley on Virtual Realities and Their Discontents
23. Rod Beckstrom on The Starfish and the Spider
24. Steven Weber on the Success of Open Source
25. Terry Fisher on Promises to Keep
26. Tim Wu on Who Controls The Internet
27. Yochai Benkler on the Wealth of Networks
Categories: Feeds
Links for 2008-09-14 [del.icio.us]
- Internet Users and Statistics in Thailand
- Main Page - Fab Lab Wiki
- Chile and the UK, what future for labour
we were concerned about Tony Benn precipitating a policy decision by Britain to turn its back on the IMF. I think if that had happened the whole system would have begun to come apart. God knows what Italy might have done; then France might have taken a radical change in the same direction - Digitallyours » Les entretiens du nouveau monde industriel
Enjeux technologiques et industriels des réseaux sociaux et du Web collaboratif - Recent barcampbangkok2 Bookmarks on Delicious
- More Videos from Iam.in.th Team | BarCamp Bangkok
- On BarCamp Bangkok 2 :
blogs, photos, slides, media | BarCamp Bangkok - European Centre for the Experience Economy -Four types of open and free business models by Michel Bauwens
We are talking here about free price, not free speech. - FrontPage - eXe : eLearning XHTML editor
The eXe project is developing a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup - Linux.com :: Installing Cinelerra on Ubuntu Studio
Ubuntu Studio is a relatively new distribution based on Ubuntu (the version I'm using is 7.04 Feisty Fawn), whose specific aim is multimedia production - MBDC: Cradle to Cradle Design
Minimizing toxic pollution and the waste of natural resources are not strategies for real change. Designing industrial processes so they do not generate toxic pollution and "waste" in the first place is true change. Long-term prosperity depends not on the efficiency of a fundamentally destructive system, but on the effectiveness of processes designed to be healthy and renewable in the first place.
Categories: Feeds
Douglas Rushkoff on the party of thought vs. the party of violence
What should we think of the U.S. Elections? Especially as a pluralist network?
Consider this entry an update to the Predator State article.
Can we be neutral towards those kind of forces?
Consider this hair raising theocratic video from Sarah Palin’s local church … , and then ask yourself whether you would like to live under such a regime?
I consider Douglas Rushkoff a wise and moderate guy, with an integrative bent that tries to overcome different viewpoints in a higher unity.
But here’s what he said after witnessing the Republican convention:
“What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.
Last night, the Republican Convention made it clear they prefer war. They see the world as a dangerous and terrible place. Like the fascist leaders satirized in Starship Troopers, they say they believe it is better to be on the offensive, taking the war to the people who might wish us harm than playing defense. It is better to be an international aggressor - a bulldog with lipstick - than led by the misguided notion that attacking people itself makes the world a more dangerous place.
In their attack on community organizing - a word combination they pretended they didn’t know what it meant - Giuliani and Palin revealed their refusal to acknowledge the kinds of bottom-up processes through which our society was built, and through which local communities can begin to assert some authority over their schools, environments, and economies. Without organized communities, you don’t get the reduction in centralized government the Republicans pretend to be arguing for. In their view, community organizing as, at best, equivalent to disruptive and unpredictable Al Qaeda activity.”
And here’s how he explains the dynamic behind it:
“As I explained in Coercion, having a parent figure on whom to transfer authority allows people to regress to a more childlike state. This not only allows them to feel safe; if gives them the freedom to express their rage. Make no mistake - that’s what we’re witnessing. And this rage - not America - is the greatest threat to humanity’s long-term chances for survival.
It’s much easier to get people riled up but inviting them to hate a man - particularly one who they haven’t been allowed to hate for traditional reasons. Giuliani’s job - much like his job as mayor of NYC - was to give the Republicans in attendance permission to hate Obama and the potentially intelligent society he represents. It’s not about city vs. country or educated vs. military. It’s about thought vs. violence.
They would prefer the simple relief of a “yes or no” world, where the evil are punished and the good rewarded. For in such a world, we get to know who the enemy is and just hate them.
I don’t believe hate is the best way to motivate people to develop long-term solutions to problems. It is a tried and tested way to motivate them to short-term support of dangerous leaders. That much is certain. But if McCain and Palin are able to rouse the national hatred they will need to actually win this election, I fear they will have unleashed a force that they will be unable to control. ”
Categories: Feeds
Links for 2008-09-13 [del.icio.us]
- Cybersociology Magazine: Issue 7: Religion Online / Techno-Spiritualism
In this issue of Cybersociology, guest editor Michel Bauwens has secured some thought provoking contributions from leading theorists working at the interface between religion and cyberspace. - P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Eric Hunting on the historical origins of peer to peer architecture, part two
fascinating conversation with polymath Eric Hunting - P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The status of 3D Printing
There’s a lot of movement on the ‘fabbing’ front, i.e. the ability to make 3D objects out of the comfort of your home (by either owning a 3D printer, or sending it by email to a company which sends you the object). - P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The extraordinary shift to peer to peer trust forms
an extraordinary job in summarizing recent surveys and polls showing the decline in trust in intermediary institutions, and the rise in trust in peers. - P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The role of the market in a Peer to Peer Society
if they have always co-existed, it may be illusory to aim for a stateless and marketless society, rather, we should expect states and markets to continue to exist in some form or other, but informed and trans-formed by P2P principles
Categories: Feeds
New podcast on the P2P Society
David Levine of the Hearsay Culture radio program in Stanford has done an 50-minute interview with me, the 72th in an excellent series.
David was a skillfull interviewer who had clearly done his homework, so this conversation allowed us to go deeper than usual.
Listen to it here.
(our other interviews are listed here)
The past archive of interviews conducted by David is here, and the future programming is here.
We have integrated those that are most related to our own p2p concerns in our own podcast directory, which now contains nearly 600 items.
Categories: Feeds
Exploring Resilient Communities with John Robb (2): the infrastructure
Resilience comes in two main parts: food production andindustry, supported by two underlying infrastructural elements: smart local information networks and local money systems.
1. Agricultural and food resilience
As the first solution for farming, John Robb proposes subscription farming:
“In addition to entrepreneurial mini-farms, local farming can also be supported through subscriptions (aka Community Supported Agriculture). These subscriptions entitle the buyer to weekly deliveries/pick-ups of fresh produce. Subscription farming grew from 50 farms in 1990 to over 2000 today.
What makes this interesting to our exploration of community resilience is:
* Subscription farming (like mini-farming on small plots) spreads the risks (if you know farming, then you know that it is a VERY risky business) among participants and smoothes cash flows.
* It’s a model that communities can implement on arable public land, where the rent for the land is provided as a share of the crop to the community.
* If you combine both models (subscription and mini-farms), you can develop hybrid models where individuals rent/manage small plots on a larger parcel and purchase services (from weed/pest control to tilling) from the land’s manager.”
The second solution is SPIN, Small Plot Intensive Farming for the cities and suburbs.
“The a return to local agriculture within suburban and urban environments won’t be a redux of amateur gardening nor will it be done on local traditional farms (mostly, long since paved over). Instead it will feature high tech, intense, and energy efficient efforts on clusters of small plots. In short, it will buffer families from the risk of soft and hard disruptions as well as provide an opportunity for income generation. In fact, we are already seeing signs of resilience entrepreneurs in this space. One example is SPIN (small plot intensive) farming, a company that has optimized/packaged techniques for suburban/urban farmers.
Elements include:
* The aggregation of plots near demand. SPIN farmers cut deals with the owners of suburban yards and/or unused spaces to put together viable acreage for farming. Local landowners are paid in kind (produce).
* Intensive utilization of plots. Optimization of plots to generate the highest possible yields depending climate, sun, and rainfall. Low energy methods are preferable since they maximize profitability. There is also an ability to leverage local utilities for water and electricity without any infrastructure expense.
* High value products. A focus on products that cost the most and are the most valuable to local buyers (restaurants and farmers markets). Freshness premiums and fuel cost ratios are important variables.”
Does a SPIN-like approach work?
Early indications are that it works. An interesting study done by Urban Partners for the city of Philadelphia indicates that a fully ramped up effort can generate upwards of $120,000 a year in sales and $60,000 in net income.
How it Will Accelerate
Factors that will accelerate local farming include (in addition to the acceleration of effort due to negative pressure, like those listed above):
* Open source tinkering networks. Everything from the optimization of crop layouts to low cost DIY farming equipment.
* Clustering. Shared equipment, insight, etc. While some of this can be achieved via online connections, local physical connections improve productivity.
* Community support and demand. Relaxation of zoning/community regulations against yard conversions, support for a farmer’s market, etc.”
2. Local industrial fabrication networks
For industry, what is needed is the creation of fabrication networks:
“John Robb:
“Already, the fabrication equipment necessary to build complex objects/products costs only $20-50 thousand (some systems are in the hundred dollar range) and the costs are plunging. Given the technological trends, it will be possible in the next decade or so to produce nearly any product locally through these local fabricators in a cost competitive way — some at home and the rest at a local shop. The system like the one I built above would make it possible to take designs you purchase or acquire on a Web site, modify them as you see fit, and then send them to a local fabrication company (or your desktop) nearby for production.
So What Does This Mean?
The shift towards local fabrication and fabrication networks, added to local food/energy/security/etc. completes the transition of barren bedroom communities into resilient communities. It’s a 90% solution for communities, where only the most complex and difficult items are globally sourced. It also enables:
* A torrent of crowd-sourced improvements. Rather than a small design team deciding when/how a product is improved, products can be improved by vast global tinkering networks. Further, you can modify it yourself, if you are so inclined. In the not so distant future, buying a mass produced or unmodified product will be seen as a buying a broken/used/antiquated item.
* Self-supply. 21st Century military units (like Marines in the field), with a trailer full of fabrication equipment, will be able to produce nearly anything they need — from parts to DIY weapons. It takes “make do” to a new level. Capturing and sharing (in real-time) the innovation produced here is going to be a challenge.
* Comparative/competitive advantage. Communities that shift to self-production early will benefit from an ability to not only deal with shocks/disruptions better than global competitors, they will be able to generate wealth faster through cost reduction and commercial exploitation of innovations.”
3. Smart Local Information Networks
All this need to be tied together through smart local information networks, you can’t just rely on the international infrastructure, he insists:
“Most of the local loops (from telco fiber to cable company coaxial) currently in place and/or being installed in the US are dumb (I suspect it is the same globally). They simply route data from local customers to regionally clustered corporate server farms and then outwards/back. This means that any disconnection (physical or logical fault) between local customers and these remote systems will result in a complete cessation of service.”
They have 3 characteristics:
“* A high availability local network for emergencies. A local emergency network that connects all homes and business in the area by accessing the local aggregation nodes of cable/telco operators (which is actually a relatively trivial/inexpensive network exercise). It should become the default network if access to the greater Internet fails. Optimally, the network should sit astride both cable and telco services to provide a seamless community “footprint.”
* High availability servers (computers that host Web sites) in the local loop. Servers that are on the community network and located within the communities environs. Back-up power should be provided to ensure that these servers maintain high up time.
* Community coordination software to sit on these servers. Easy to use and edit social software: blogs, wikis, etc. If the market is large enough, there will be software packages (hopefully open source) that replicate the functionality of a fully functional emergency response system (i.e. locally cached Google maps, etc.). In terms of operating this software, most communities could ask schools/boy scouts/etc. to maintain the software, even during an emergency (young people are much more likely to have the skill sets to do this w/o specific training).”
4. Local monetary systems
Finally, control of local money may be very important:
John Robb:
“despite spotty record so far, scrip is an extremely powerful means of accelerating local economic activity when nothing else seems possible (in economic extremis).
Past experience with depression era scrip Abschein_vornelike Austria’s Worgl indicate that the following will accelerate scrip adoption, velocity, and robustness:
* Allow community members to use it to pay all or part of their tax liabilities to local governments. This instantly establishes a market for the currency. Also, pay local government employees a portion of their wages in scrip.
* Deflate the value of the scrip (optimally, one percent per month) to promote immediate use rather than hoarding.
* To the extent possible, connect scrip to local production rather than retail. Locally produced food (farmer’s markets), energy (via local microgrids), products (personal fabs), and labor/services. Further, work with local banks to establish checking accounts for scrip and to enable conversions hard currencies (at a slight discount).
There is one element of the above explanations that strikes a doubtful chord, i.e. the jump from present 3D printing of simple molds, to complex personal fabrication networks, in just a decade. I may return on that topic after consultation with our own network.”
Here’s another commentary, from Sam Rose:
“Robb recognizes the technology and infrastructure systems that we need in place for resilient community. “SPIN” ventures are a definite focus on Ohio Local Food Systems Collaborative.
I think Robb is also on the right track in thinking about people pooling resources to create “coworking”-style facilities (the local place-based “clustering” that he talks about above)
One of the items missing from Robb’s outline, is a general Literacy of Cooperation. People will need some real insight into the gravity of the situation we are in as a world, and into their local situations, to help motivate them to adopt what Robb is talking about. People will also need to learn to volntarily collaborate together effectively, which is something that has for a long time been suppressed in industrial cultures. People without this literacy will want to understand how these choices are better long term choices for themselves and their communities, and this boils down to understanding the core concept of the “commons” (and the “tragedy of the commons”), and the realization that there is a good chance that adopting what Robb is talking about will help people live effectively within a commons, and avoid the dystopian outcomes that so very many people wake up every day and march about the face of the earth believing to be inevitable.
I think that Literacies of Cooperation/Collaboration, participatory culture, human nature, and foresight must go hand in hand with systems that leverage people’s ability to work together. And so, education systems, local money systems, local production systems should also provide infrastructure and support for people who are learning to transition away from unsustainable unlimited growth systems.
For instance, a person new to these ideas could follow a “plan” that would help them become self-employed, voluntary network participant withing 3-4 years time. This is similar to general plans that show people how to plan/save for retirement, how to buy a home, how to be more energy efficient, etc. It’s just that in this case people would be learning how to change the way that they procure food, technology, etc …
Categories: Feeds
Links for 2008-09-12 [del.icio.us]
- New Statesman - Battle of the blogs in Iran
over the past seven years blogs have come to fulfil the role of liberal newspapers, civil society organisations and even private gatherings. In 2004 unofficial estimates placed Persian as the fourth most common language in the blogosphere. - Born Digital: A review for the moment - Digital Native
postulates a watershed between those born on or before 1980 and those born after. - Digital Natives » Digital Natives Forum Today! & Obama Works: Online Activism Breeds Local Change
Obama Works is an independent grassroots organization that helps Obama supporters in neighborhoods across the country to organize community service events. The group was founded in early 2008 by a group of Yale students who were inspired by Barack Obama - liquid culture: <i>The Pirate Bay</i>: the fine line between publishing and “merely providing” data
On the 5th of September 2008 it transpired (TT, 2008) that The Pirate Bay was making public some of the evidence from a well-known murder case in Sweden where the victims had been children. - If God had a powerbook at Mediacology
Sarah Palin’s church is apparently quite media and tech savvy. Who could imagine the apoloclypse would be made so vivid by FinalCut Pro. (You can skip the little intro bit and go straight to the church video towards the end.) PS Please spread widely. People need to know what these people are up to. - Life Despite Capitalism - Building Radical Economies — keimform.de
We will analyse why the current economic system has failed and we will learn from the possibilities and experiences of those working despite capitalism to build autonomous networks of production and circulation from a basis of sustainability, self organization, solidarity, respect and social/environmental justice. - ESCANDA - Espacio Social Colectivo para la Autogestión, la Diversidad y la Autonomía
Escanda is a space for practicing and experimenting how to live together, without exchange relations and with horizontal structures. The common thread is non-hierarchical, anti-capitalist grassroots movements, with an emphasis on the environment - Thinking Space: Programming The Universe, Part Two
In contrast to energy or mass, Seth's research discovered that information computes by itself. It means that essentially information production could be energy free when its output does not involve mass/energy production - Towards a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business [SR-851A] | The Institute For The Future
Traditional business strategy is organized around competition: win–lose models fueled by SWOT analyses, market share frameworks, hard measurement, and protection of quantifiable private assets. - Ohio Local Food Systems Collaborative
Welcome ...to a network of the many people who support local food production and consumption in Ohio! - Greener Acres | Ohio Local Food Systems Collaborative
Advance ideas for new or expanded businesses within local food systems among communities and neighborhoods in the Columbus, Ohio area - USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative grant awarded! | Ohio Local Food Systems Collaborative
The overall goal of the project is to support the networking needed for rapid commercialization of innovations emerging in production and marketing of specialty crops in local food systems. - WxMonitor - Open Source Weather Monitoring
- OSCirrus open source software weather station
an expandable, open source software weather station built on inexpensive hardware and weather sensors. - Weather Toys - Build your own Weather Station
This is the official site to learn more about the Weather Toys book, download the source code for the book's projects, get the latest updates, and share your weather station photos and information with others
Categories: Feeds
Trusted search trumps untrusted search
What is my most valuable source of information?
Without any doubt, it is the delicious network feature, which lets me directly peep into the minds and discoveries of people I respect most, such as Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, McKenzie Wark and four dozen other people.
I’ve always wished that when I search, I could use some feature that would prioritize the items that those trusted people have already chosen.
So I totally symphatize with the feelings of Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion, in his analysis of the link between search and social networks:
“TRUSTED SEARCH TRUMPS UNTRUSTED SEARCH - Do you trust Google? I do as does most everyone. Do you trust what’s in Google? For me, that depends on what I am searching for and where it comes from. However, I do trust the 1,000 people I have added to my social network on Facebook. In fact, it’s why I limit my connections there to people I have either met or corresponded with. I value what they talk about and share there.
However, there’s a gaping hole in the Facebook experience. While I can search through my friends, find new friends and also groups, I can’t search the content my network creates. In addition, I can’t go a layer deeper to see what my friends’ friends are sharing (as I can on Friendfeed). Look for search to get embedded deeper into the social networking experience and create a split between trusted and untrusted search. “
Categories: Feeds
Exploring Resilience Communities with John Robb (1): definition
John Robb, master analyst of global guerilla warfare, is very pessimistic about the potential of the current global system to prevail. This means that he expects, like us, a strong trend towards relocalization. However, his vision is more radical since he expects a global breakdown. Hence, the need for a distributed network of resilient local communities, that can thrive amongst the chaos. However, it is not survivalism he is advocating, but local communities connected with global tinkering networks, supported by smart local and international network technology, and that are hyperproductive compared to the nation-state.
In other words, John Robb is moving into the same style of thinking and seeking for solutions that is characteristic of other ‘peer to peer thinkers’ (and doers), and it is time to present his thinking more extensively.
We’ll do that in two parts. First, a general presentation of resilience; then, in the next installment, we focus on the constituent parts. We will quote liberally but not fully, so please go to the original articles for more extensive context and treatment.
Good complements to John Robb are the similar and complementary explorations by Eric Hunting, Steve Bosserman, Dave Pollard, and Jeff Vail, with Marcin Jakubowski as the ultimate practicioner.
So, how does he define resilient communites?
John Robb:
“This conceptual model creates a set of new services that allow the smallest viable subset of social systems, the community (however you define it), to enjoy the fruits of globalization without being completely vulnerable to its excesses. These services are configured to provide the ability to survive an extended disconnection from the global grid”
The resilient community has broad applicability beyond just improving the ability of those of us in developed economies to preserve wealth and a quality of life despite severe system shocks. It can also be applied to the problems of counter-insurgency in semi-modern urban environment (to radically update a process that was built for the last century) and provide the potential for organic development in underdeveloped areas of the world. The key is that we need to support the open source efforts currently underway to expand this capability underway such as the transition towns movement to MIT’s low tech solutions effort.”
What is his rationale for resilient communities? Answer: the coming state failure.
He writes:
“As you watch the global financial system continue to unravel this fall, think hard what it will take to prevent rampant state failure in a chaotic global market system that has already weakened (privatized, hollowed out, and bankrupted) nation-states across the entire landscape.”
Given the depth of the crisis, the emergence of such resilient communities are nearly inevitable, he argues:
“* Local is the only choice. The ability of the global system to dampen instability and prevent failure is nearing zero. We have neither the organizational frameworks necessary for global governance nor the precise tools of global policy required (even IF we were smart enough to manage something this complex). Any chance of real global change must start at the ground level by correcting the true sources of the problem and spread virally. Resilient communities eliminate nearly all of the drivers towards global instability and mitigate the effects of instability already in the system. It’s self-reinforcing.
* RCs guard against systemic decay and catastrophic failure. Survivalism assumes isolation, hoarding, and subsistence means to preserve only the bare essentials of life (the Jeremiah Johnson scenario). It’s an approach that guarantees only long term privation and nearly inevitable failure. In contrast, resilient communities replace increasingly unreliable and expensive global sourcing of energy, food, etc. with locally efficient (and offer higher quality) alternatives. It also provides the ultimate level of protection against superempowered threats and hollow states. As a result, it preserves an existing quality of life (or lays the foundations for the creation of one where it didn’t exist before).
* RCs offer a path to accelerating returns. In contrast to the isolation of survivalism, the RC is community driven — both within the community’s physical environs and across similar efforts (via data connectivity). As such, it will benefit (we are already seeing this) from rapid rates of innovation available through open source development — across the entire range of activities from energy to food to product fabrication. Relatively quickly, the solutions generated from these efforts will convert a community that was once a black hole of economic productivity into its exact opposite: a fount of accelerating wealth and life improvement that is orders of magnitude more efficient in its use of mass, energy, space, time, and information.”
Resilient communities are a result of superempowerment created by distributed networking, he explains:
“Most important to our analysis is how this change superempowers small groups, allowing them to accomplish activities normally reserved for large corporations or governments.
The keys to this superempowerment are:
* Better tools. Moore’s law, Carlson curves, and personal fabrication (DIY everything, the start of an exponential rate of improvement for matter/products). Shift from centralized production to ‘grow’ your own computer/chemicals etc. Local energy.
* Rapidly expanding network resources. How to’s on everything. Basic education via open courseware (from the best Universities in the world). Sensor networks. Spimes.
* New social connectivity. Expert networks. Tinkering via open source development. Telecommuting. Wisdom of crowds and crowd-sourcing.
Unfortunately, this supempowerment makes it possible for small groups to do incredible damage to global society. Fortunately, it also making it possible for resilient communities to efficiently and productively emulate global production/services locally. As a result, the resilient community isn’t a step backwards to 19th Century approaches (survivalism, scarcity, and low productivity), but rather a move in a direction that makes it possible to generate rapid and sustained (as opposed to the relative stasis and irregular progress of the current system) improvements how we live.
Commentary:
Here’s a comment by Jeff Vail, author of the Theory of Power:
“I think that John Robb takes the most implementable and realistic approach to improving decentralized resiliency by placing the locus of self-sufficiency at the community level. However, I think that the ideal approach is to view the drive to replace hierarchal and centralized processes with a scale-free or fractal approach to self-sufficiency. In a dystopian view of the future resilient communities become indistinguishable from networks of feudal fiefs and manors. The key, in my opinion, to maintaining the participatory, egalitarian, and advancing mode of community is that it must be composed of individuals and sub-community groups that are equally self-sufficient and resilient. A community made up of people who depend on the good governance of community leaders is a recipe for localized totalitarianism, and even communities that begin in egalitarian, representative fashion will trend toward localized centralization, localized autocracy unless the components cut the same ties of dependency on and control by the community support structure that Resilient Communities seek to cut from the global system. Additionally, while some forms of self-sufficient production may be most appropriate at the community, or even bio-regional level, others may prove most efficient at a much lower level: water collection, storage, and purification; energy for home heating and cooling; substantial food production; etc. While it may be most realistic to target the Resilient Community theory at community organizers, this theory should at least encourage those organizers to actively facilitate the creation of scale-free self-sufficiency within their communities.”
Categories: Feeds
An update on Christian Siefkes’ Peer Economy (3): Characteristics of Sharing Networks
We continue our coverage of Siefkes’ discussion of his Peer Economy workshop in Hiddinghausen, where he proposed the idea of a Commons Network.
In the same article, he proposes an interesting typology of such a commons.
I suggest that perhaps we could distinguish sharing networks in case of Granted Property, and talk of a Commons Network in case of Common Property?
Here is the summary by Christian Siefkes:
Typology according to Property Format:
Shared goods and the necessary means of production are either:
• Granted Property: (private property shared by the owners)
• Common Property (permanent part of the commons—nobody has the right to take them out)
Typology according to Usage Formats:
• “Shares: goods that are shared
o Parallel co-use (e.g. Wi-Fi)
o Serial co-use (e.g. book lending, apartments) o Repositories (e.g. of tools; libraries)
o Open Production Places (e.g. on-demand book/media printer, individual furniture-maker)
• Floaters: goods that can “float” from one peer to another (“New user wanted”)
• Sources (“Open X Source”): peers or projects producing new goods
Sample: Open Food Source, maybe using permaculture/community farming
• Sinks: peers or projects using/consuming goods
Sharing Constraints:
“Based on an idea by Thomas Kalka.
Family of constraints which shares may apply (family of “sharing agreements”, similar to the family of Creative Commons licenses):
• Permanent: good must remain permanently in the commons (“permafloater”)
• Transitive: any goods produced with the help of this good become part of the commons (“copyleft” for physical goods/means of production)
• Attribution appreciated: sharers wish to be attributed, if practical (not a strict requirement)
• Details for serial co-use:
o Use on site (e.g. washing machine, on-demand press, house/apartment) or move to user (e.g. books)?
o If move to user: who (user or sharer) organizes/pays for transport? o Transfer to others allowed? (only within a specific region?) o Return on date / on demand?
o Must repair if broken by user?”
Why Participate?
For the same reasons that motivate people to develop free software or participate in community networks:
• To produce goods they like to have (“scratching an itch”)
• To do something they enjoy doing (“fun and passion”)
• To give something back to the community
• To learn something or expand their skills
• To increase their reputation or community standing
• Because sharers might get preferred treatment
Source: http://www.keimform.de/2008/09/08/hiddinghausen-talks-2-commons-network/
Categories: Feeds
Cyber-Conflict and Global Politics
P2P security scholar Athina Karatzogianni has edited an excellent collection of essays on cyber-conflict.
(unfortunately it is only avalailable at extortionate prices)
The abstract says that:
“This volume examines theoretical and empirical issues relating to cyberconflict and its implications for global security and politics.
Taking a multidimensional approach to current debates in internet politics, the book comprises essays by leading experts from across the world. The volume includes a comprehensive introduction to current debates in the field and their ramifications for global politics, and follows this with empirical case studies. These include cyberconflict, cyberwars, information warfare and hacktivism, in contexts such as Sri Lanka, Lebanon and Estonia, the European Social Forum, feminist cybercrusades and the use of the internet as a weapon by ethnoreligious and socio-political movements. The volume presents the theoretical debates and case studies of cyberconflict in a coherent, progressive and truly multidisciplinary way. ”
Athina has contributed the introduction: New Media and the Reconfiguration of Power in Global Politics as well as a separate essay.
My own contribution is a reworking and expansion of: Some notes on the social antagonism in netarchical capitalism.
Amongst the other contributions:
*2. War and the New Media Paradox Hall Gardner
*3. The Internet as a weapon of war? Some thoughts on radicalization Ben O’Louglin and Andrew Hoskins
*4. Transparency and accountability in the age of cyberpolitics: the role of blogs in framing conflict
* 8. The Internet and Militant Jihadism: Global to Local Re-imaginings Frazer Egerton
* 12. Electronic Civil Disobedience and Symbolic Power Graham Meikle
* 13. Decentralization and Communication: Email lists and the organizing process of the European Social Forum Anastasia Kavada
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How many kinds of free? Indirect generosity as a business model
We are talking here about free price, not free speech.
Chris Anderson’s book offers a triarchy of three kinds of free:
“The cross-subsidy model: the razors-and-blades model, as well as loss leaders of all sorts, from “free gift inside” to “free toaster for opening an account
The media business model ranging from free-to-air broadcast radio and television to all ad-supported content online today
The Freemium model: “The third is the new one, enabled by digital markets where the marginal cost of production and distribution is close to zero. This is the one that allows the “freemium” business model, where 90% of the users get the basic product for free and 10% chose to pay for a premium version.”
It is glaringly obvious that something is missing here, the kind of exchange that takes place through couchsurfing for example … which has variously been called the freeconomy, the adventure economy …
(it also does not cover state-subsidized free services)
This is well explained by the Digital Extremist blog, which insists on this fourth kind of free, and calls it “IASCT” which stands for Indirect Abundant Synergistic Cooperation Theory.
“It is both another economic structure and a fourth model in the antique models in use today. The premise is abundance (where the premise of the systems today is scarcity) and its methodology is indirect (where the model’s today use direct cooperation).
Even when indirect cooperation is simulated in present forms of economics they are still direct. For example, in Chris’ Free 2 & 3 at least one person directly pays for the others. So it is really direct for one and “non” cooperation for other participants in the exchange.
IASCT is similar to the “pay-it-forward” idea where a person carries out a certain number of acts which are seemingly unreciprocated generosity.
The thing is though, we have this feeling of scarcity and risk which causes us to be fearful about giving away much. People give away their goods in Free 2 and Free 3 because they are not giving them away at all. They experience remuneration on the back-end from one big fish rather than many little fish. The premise of IASCT is that the universe is not a closed system and it has participants which are undeclared, or at least unrevealed, but who nonetheless catalyze transactions of a certain kind. That is where the Synergistic aspect comes in, and it takes place on a grand scale.
It takes a degree of faith, yes; but it is valuable to list because it is truly and legitimately Free #4
I would also like to remind our readers of the very valuable typology of open and free business models developed by Steve Bosserman.
Here is my summary of Steve’s quaternary typology:
“Differentiating between open and closed content/code/design, and free/paid approaches, yields for quadrants:
a) Quadrant 1 = Open and free: you can download content, software code or open designs for free; and the more successful of these initiatives will derive income from advertising, selling the attention. The problem remains that many will not be able to do this
b) Quadrant 2 = Open and paid: why would you pay for open code? The short answer is you wouldn’t, unless it is augmented by differential value that is scarce and also useful in your particular context; in this context you are paying for these added value practices that come together with the free code, not the code itself
c) Quadrant 3 = Closed and free: this is a classic commercial strategy; you give the primary commodity for free (say, free cell phones), because it helps you to sell secondary commodities (say mobile phone connectivity)
d) Quadrant 4 = Closed and paid: the classic business model that we are all familiar with and which relies on state-protected intellectual rights monopolies. This is the model that is being most severely undermined by the free replicability of information. This means that it is not just the hackers and consumers that threaten such a business model, but your own competitors. In any sector, there will always be a pioneering company that decides to give the primary commodity for free, or gives away the source code, deriving income from secondary modalities, leaving the traditional closed rights holders in the cold, and making this model unsustainable in the long run.”
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Links for 2008-09-11 [del.icio.us]
- How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar. - By Evgeny Morozov - Slate Magazine
I knew that the only reliable way to find out what was really happening was to enlist in the Russian digital army myself. - Global Guerrillas: OPEN SOURCE WARFARE: Cyberwar
a form of open source warfare (see Brave New War for a deep exploration of open source warfare) over the Internet fought by groups civilians for reasons of nationalism, revenge - Global Guerrillas: RESILIENT COMMUNITY: Technological Acceleration
the resilient community isn't a step backwards to 19th Century approaches (survivalism, scarcity, and low productivity), but rather a move in a direction that makes it possible to generate rapid and sustained (as opposed to the relative stasis and irregular progress of the current system) improvements how we live. - Global Guerrillas: RC JOURNAL: Survivalism?
The ability of the global system to dampen instability and prevent failure is nearing zero. We have neither the organizational frameworks necessary for global governance nor the precise tools of global policy required - Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: Governance of the Wilderness
al Qaeda's theory is edging ever closer to Global Guerrilla thinking (the optimal approach for small group warfare/global insurgency). Amir Taheri has an excellent review of the book - Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: Amplification
how decentralized tinkering networks (al Qaeda's media arm) improve over time: "The Power of Truth" Review of the video by Jarret Brachman, - Global Guerrillas: BOW-TIE CONTROL SYSTEMS
a form of universal control system architecture that underlies complex systems from the Internet to cell metabolism - Global Guerrillas: THE RESILIENT COMMUNITY: SCRIP
scrip is an extremely powerful means of accelerating local economic activity when nothing else seems possible (in economic extremis). - Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: Task Force ODIN and Cloud Power
'Cloud Airpower' -- a three dimensional blanket of microsensors and machines that can dominate a target zone -- is the future of the Air Force. - Bow ties, metabolism, and disease
The aims of this article are to describe the features of one common organizationalarchitecture in biology, the bow tie. Large-scale organizational frameworks such as the bow tie are necessary starting points for higher-resolution modeling of complex biologic processes - Global Guerrillas: RC QUOTE: Competitive Advantage
How will a home or a community be valued by the marketplace in the future? By the amount of solar energy it captures - Global Guerrillas: BOOK REVIEW: The Unthinkable (Ripley)
Just wrote a review of Amanda Ripley's new book, "The Unthinkable" for the City Journal. This book is about how human beings respond to disasters (psychologically and biologically) - Open Source Roboticists On a Path to C3P0 | OStatic
In the open source community, though, there are several efforts to develop robots that look and/or act like humans, performing interesting and useful tasks. - ROS - Wiki for robot operating system
ROS is an operating system for your robot. It provides the services you would expect from an operating system, including hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of commonly-used functionality, message-passing between processes, and package management - Personal Robotics Program: Program Overview
platform for Personal Robotics – robots that do tasks for humans in human environments
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New trends in P2P filesharing
From an interesting post by Robert Cringely:
“I’ve been hearing that peer-to-peer file sharing has declined a bit. Actually, it’s the rate of growth that has declined, but in a market where volume is always rising and prices always falling, even a decline in growth can be significant. This is happening for lots of reasons (market saturation, summer vacation, etc.) but the effect appears to be real, much to the relief of the RIAA and MPAA, which hate people sharing music, TV shows, and movies that they see as violating the intellectual property rights of their members.
But I think something else is actually happening. People are just finding new ways to share files — ways that are harder to detect and even more chilling for society to prohibit.
Look at where P2P came from in the first place. The idea behind BitTorrent and similar programs was that many people wanted the same content and few users could afford the bandwidth to run their own dedicated servers, so sharing files by caching and re-serving small pieces of files was very efficient, especially with flat-rate bandwidth. Depending on your point of view, P2P has been a huge success or a huge pain in the ass.
But all the while, the cost of Internet bandwidth has come down A LOT. Remember P2P was born in the 1990s when most users still had dial-up connections. With the cost of Internet backbone bandwidth dropping 50 percent per year for the last decade or more, the economics have changed dramatically and it has become reasonable to effectively have your own server. No, I’m not talking about YouTube, I’m talking about dedicated servers used in large part to distribute movies and music. I’m talking about any of a number of Internet backup services.
The poster child for this new kind of service is RapidShare, a German file-sharing service that will let you distribute files up to 200 megs each for free and up to two gigs for not much money — 55 Euros per year — with no limit on the total number of files, total storage, total downloads or even total simultaneous downloads. Rip your copy of The Dark Knight, store it on RapidShare, then send the download URL to anyone you like or simply post it somewhere on the web. It’s not as efficient as P2P, but it sure is easier AND harder to detect since nothing but http is used.”
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Contract manufacturing as distributed manufacturing
Eric Hunting writes:
The intermediate level of industrial demassification that is underway today and not necessarily dependent upon open source technology or peer-to-peer activity, creates a fertile ground for the immediate future and drives the complementary trend in the miniaturization of machine tools
One of the key underlying trends that we see as supporting the emergence of peer production in the physical world, is the ‘distribution’ of production capacity, i.e. lower capital requirements and modularisation making possible more decentralized and localized production, which may eventually be realized through the free self-aggregation of producers.
In this context, Nathan Cravens has launched a collective document, which proposes to create a roadmap to achieve what he calls Mutually Assured Production. The working draft is located here and Nathan reports, I’m happy to hear that, that our appeal has generated 17 co-authors.
The appeal is already generating a little buzz at our Ning community space and Eric Hunting has just published an informed reaction which I think bears refracting in our blog as well.
He explains how distributed manufacturing is already in many ways a reality, in particular through the practice of contract manufacturing.
Eric Hunting:
“Industrial ecologies are precipitated by situations where traditional industrial age product development models fail in the face of very high technology development overheads or very high demassification in design driven by desire for personalization/customization producing Long Tail market phenomenon. A solution to these dilemmas is modularization around common architectural platforms in order to compartmentalize and distribute development cost risks, the result being ‘ecologies’ of many small companies independently and competitively developing intercompatible parts for common product platforms -such as the IBM PC.
Increasingly, we see today the design of many kinds of durable goods shifting away from monolithic architectures and their manufacturers shifting away from sole-ownership of production capacity. Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes it occurs when products become platforms by default through the emergence of after-market competition driven by the desire for customization and service. (as was nearly the case with the Volkswagen Beetle but suppressed by VW for lack of comprehension of the nature of the market phenomenon their product had produced) Production is increasingly contract-based and a growing number of ‘manufacturers’ don’t actually manufacture anything. They just contract. This has produced a dual global trend in demassification and generalization (still across certain product sectors) of manufacturing capacity that has now produced a situation where the volume of consumer goods now produced by contract manufacture exceeds that produced by traditional factories.
The more vertical the market profile for a product the more this trend penetrates toward production on an individual level due high product sophistication coupled to smaller volumes. In the 90s the aerospace, defense, telecom, and IT industries experienced a phenomenon of engineering entrepreneurial flight, sometimes known as the midnight engineer phenomenon, where lack of job security coupled to cuts in benefits compelled many engineers to abandon corporate employment in favor of entrepreneurship with many becoming contract competitors to their former employers. Competitive contracting regulations in the defense industry (when they’re actually respected…) tend to, ironically, turn many kinds of military hardware into open platforms by default, offering small businesses a potential to compete with larger companies where production volumes aren’t all that large to begin with. Consequently, today we have a situation where key components of some military vehicles and aircraft are produced on a garage-shop production level by companies with fewer than a dozen employees.
All this represents an intermediate level of industrial demassification that is underway today and not necessarily dependent upon open source technology or peer-to-peer activity but which creates a fertile ground for that in the immediate future and drives the complementary trend in the miniaturization of machine tools.”
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An update on Christian Siefkes’ Peer Economy (2): The Commons Network
Christian continues his report from the Peer Economy workshop:
“”Free design is an important building block for spreading peer production, but it is not enough. A second topic discussed in Hiddinghausen was therefore how to facilitate and encourage the sharing and the shared production of physical goods and of services in all areas of life. My proposal here is called the *Commons Network.*
The Commons Network is inspired by the practices of free software and free content projects, where people do things they like to do (such as writing software or texts) and, by doing so, produce goods that are useful for others; but also by the approach of wireless community networks where the participants jointly build a free network, allowing everyone to transfer data through the free network or to access the Internet through it. Community networks are interesting because they organize the free sharing of limited resources that cannot just be copied freely (bandwidth and Internet access). And some community networks are interesting in that they’re self-organizing and self-healing: whenever nodes (participating computers) join or leave such a _mesh network_, it reconfigures itself to ensure that all data still finds the best route through the network.
The idea of the Commons Network is to build a loose network of people and projects that is based on *commons* (goods which are jointly used, managed or owned) and that allows the free sharing and the shared production of goods and resources among everybody who wants to get involved. Ideally, the network should also become a self-organizing and self-healing “mesh,” where production processes spontaneously adapt to the needs and wishes of the people involved and where anybody can join or leave the network without causing disruption.”
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Links for 2008-09-10 [del.icio.us]
- Ars Electronica FESTIVAL: A new cultural economy, the limits of intellectual property
Webcasts of the conference - How to Chrome Your Industry - Umair Haque
the strategy behind Chrome - Google Chrome's Disruptive Shine - Scott Anthony
If it works as advertised, Chrome could allow consumers to eschew Microsoft's operating system and applications. I - The Bigger Consequences of the Big Sort (the physical clustering of America and its political consequences)
Superb book review: Over the past several decades, people in the United States have moved in growing numbers – and they are moving into more and more homogenous communities that reflect their own beliefs. - I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Doomsday | PBS: the new hidden filesharing
the 2nd part has important remarks about the future of filesharing - Micro Persuasion: How Search Will Revolutionize Social Networking
TRUSTED SEARCH TRUMPS UNTRUSTED SEARCH - Do you trust Google? I do as does most everyone. Do you trust what's in Google? For me, that depends on what I am searching for and where it comes from. However, I do trust the 1,000 people I have added to my social network - Micro Persuasion: The World's Clicks Don't Always Tell the Truth
discusses 2 books: Numerati and Clicks - Books: What collectivism can do for capitalism - Management Today
Jeff Howe explains how companies are tapping the problem-solving skills of their customers. Review by Roger Parry. - Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing Medical Expertise Part Two: Reader Comments
can medical diagnosis be outsourced? - Crazy Meds Talk ver 9.0 - The Crazy Meds Forum (Powered by Invision Power Board)
forum for users of medicines - CreativeIT Community Wiki
NSF research project on creative uses of technology, so that it becomes cross-culturally effective - FOSS infrastructure for Open Digital Villages Development | iFOSSF
oneVillage Foundation has partnered with the International Free and Open Source Software Foundation (iFOSSF) on efforts to develop "Telecenter Portals and Applications." OVF believes that iFOSSF's knowledge and vision is vital to the development of its Open Digital Villages (ODiVs), the first of which will be in Winneba, Ghana - Cultural Fusion | iFOSSF
Cultural Fusion is the new performance art and multimedia collaboration series from Clear CRM Strategy. The series will explore the relationship between art and business as a mechanism in the approach to customer retention and brand building that serve greater causes. - white paper on Open Source Digital Archival and Preservation System | iFOSSF
Towards an Open Source Repository and Preservation System: Recommendations on the Implementation of an Open Source Digital Archival and Preservation System and on Related Software Development', Kevin Bradley,Junran Lei, and Chris Blackall. Paris: UNESCO, 2007.
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Waiting for Anathem and the open design monasteries
Following a remark one day by Franz Nahrada, I often use the analogy of the early medieval christian monastics to explain the logic of open design, imagining the same kind of support that society then gave to its monks, but which is today needed to support open design efforts.
Turns out one of my favourite science fiction authors, Neil Stephenson, has written a soon to be released book (Anathem) on the topic, which describes such a scenario:
“The Diamond Age described a world in the future where nations had receded into insignificance and the population had realigned into enclaves of highly distinctive cultures. Neal Stephenson’s eagerly awaited new book Anathem, to be released this month, apparently returns to this theme by predicting an even bigger sort – between an ADD pleasure-seeking society and those who pursue intellectual inquiry in monastic separation from the broader society.”
This quote is part of a very important review essay by John Hagel, who discusses a new book by Bill Bishop, the Big Sort. Echoing the ideological clustering of internet users seeking like-minded communities, people have actually been moving into separate value-based physical communities for decades now, and this has important political and strategic effects, discussed in this review.
Unrelated but important. I have been looking for cogent analysis of the importance of Chrome, and found two items I recommend reading.
- one by Umair Haque and another by Scott Anthony
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Can we trust ‘trusts’?
Chris Cook’s contribution below can be seen as a response to the Irish appeal we published yesterday, and which favourably looks on establishing an Atmosphere Trust, as proposed by Peter Barnes.
Chris takes issue with the organizational format of a trust:
“While “Custodians” or “Stewards” of productive assets in common ownership are a key part of the global architecture that I envisage, these should not IMHO operate within a Trust law framework but rather a simple consensual partnership based legal framework with global application.
Trust law - unlike partnership protocols - is not noted for simplicity, and is beloved by lawyers - typically paid by the hour rather than the outcome - for that reason. Moreover, the very idea of an entrepreneurial “Trust” is an oxymoron. The creativity and innovation so necessary for climate solutions would be stifled within a “Trust” framework. Finally, the interests of the management and staff of Trusts diverge from those of the “Trustees” - a similar problem to the “Principal/Agency problem” that bedevils all Companies, whether “For Profit” or quasi- Trust “Not for Profit”.
In other words, unlike John Jopling and Peter Barnes, I do not believe the answer lies in global Organisations - like the Red Cross - because such Organisations do not “scale” and invariably become monolithic, hierarchical and “Corporate”, in some cases losing sight of their “mission” or purpose altogether.
We only need to look at the Red Cross Swiss organisation itself for proof of this, although to be fair, it has never lost sight of its mission - unlike (perhaps) the Olympic movement.
The global architecture that I envisage is a networked “partnership of partnerships” or “cooperative of cooperatives”: a partnership based framework agreement within which all the “stakeholders” would “self organise” and new financial instruments and mechanisms would be created to enable - among other things - the “unitisation” of energy and land rental value.
In this context you should note that the idea of a new Organisation as an intermediary which creates tradable permits, quota’s or anything else, runs counter to the disintermediating logic of the Internet.
The necessary global framework for climate solutions is capable of being created organically simply by the linking together of “Local” into Area, of Area into Regional, of Regional into National and National into Global protocols.
So by all means let us found local “Custodian” entities, and agree a protocol within which these would link together with others to a “common purpose” of saving the planet and rseult in what would essentially be the “International Clearing Union” envisaged by Keynes at Bretton Woods upon which “money’s worth” of energy and land rental value - in particular - would be exchanged with credit supported by a mutual guarantee. ”
So how would such entities look like in practical terms?
Chris Cook is collaborating with the Nordic Enterprise Trust in Scotland and has proposed concrete alternatives, such as Community Land Partnerships, or the Energy and Heat Pooling mechanisms.
Here is a more detailed description.
Source: Scottish Parliament. Economy, Energy & Tourism Committee. Energy and Heat Pooling. Submission to Energy Inquiry. By the Nordic Enterprise Trust, August 2008
“What type of future is needed in Scotland in terms of the production, distribution and more efficient use of energy, given the issues of price, security of supply and sustainable development?
The requirement is for energy decentralisation, with energy generated and consumed locally wherever possible. Use of existing National Grid infrastructure should be scaled down and replaced by international connections allowing system and load balancing eg between Scotland and Norway’s complementary renewable resources and the rest of Europe.
How can this future be delivered in Scotland and how will we meet all the various targets and obligations?
Through the use of “Energy Pooling” many sources of energy generation, particularly based on wind and tidal streams, become “self funding” simply by selling production forward to Investors.
The use of “Heat Pooling” allows a significant proportion of the vast amount of heat currently wasted as a by product of energy generation to be collected and delivered to consumers in a simple but elegant way. Similarly, energy savings may be financed by widespread implementation of solar water heating, ground source heating, and where appropriate biomass schemes, all funded from the future energy savings to which they give rise.
What decisions need to be taken, by when and by whom to deliver on Scotland’s energy future?
Both national and local Government should develop policy in respect of the “Pool” concept under the guidance of elected representatives with community participation aimed at identifying optimal outcomes.
Generally
The potential policy outcomes of Pools are compelling, and include:
• Financing at a fraction of the cost of conventional finance, and requiring no Treasury permission.
• A new asset class ideal for long term investment
• A “sustainable” development model, where it is more profitable to develop and operate to high standards of quality
• A policy which requires no legislation to implement
Pooling is an inherently “mutual” and collaborative approach entirely consistent with Scotland’s traditions, culture and values.”
“A Pool is a development and funding mechanism using a UK Limited Liability Partnership as a framework with the following stakeholders:
• Custodian - holds assets in perpetuity on behalf of the Community • Customer - the community of individuals and/or enterprises which use energy produced or benefit from energy savings • Investor - the consortium of individuals and enterprises who invest money and/or money’s worth (eg the value of the site) in a Pool • Developer/Operator - provides development expertise and manages a Pool once the development is complete.
When the development is complete, the Customer either:
• buys renewable energy produced (“MegaWatts”) from a Pool; or
• repays loans out of energy savings (“NegaWatts”) to a Pool.
In an Energy Pool approach, the developer need commit no Capital, and would receive, in exchange for work and services provided, a combination of cash to cover costs, and – in respect of an agreed profit element - a proportional share of the output from the development once complete.”
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Networked resistance and labour struggle
Free market mutualist Kevin Carson has recently published an interesting analysis of networked resistance and how it could be applied to contemporary labor struggles. It’s called “the ethics of labor struggle”.
Incredibly, it has been seized by the local police in Minneapolis.
I was not successfull yet in quoting from the pdf document, so in the meantime, please download it here at http://agorism.info/_media/labor_struggle.pdf.
If you value free thought and free speech, thanks for forwarding it.
The blog version of the text is located here.
We quote the part where Kevin Carson explains his rationale for writing it:
“In the military realm, the age-old methods of decentralized and networked resistance have most recently appeared in public discussion under the buzzword “Fourth Generation Warfare.”
But networked resistance against the Empire goes far beyond guerrilla warfare in the military realm. The same advantages of asymmetric warfare accrue equally to domestic political opposition. There is a wide range of ruling elite literature on the dangers of “netwar” to the existing system of power, along with an equal volume of literature by the Empire’s enemies celebrating such networked resistance. Most notable among them are probably the Rand studies, from the late 1990s on, by David Ronfeldt et al. In The Zapatista “Social Netwar” in Mexico, those authors expressed grave concern over the possibilities of decentralized “netwar” techniques for undermining elite control. They saw ominous signs of such a movement in the global political support network for the Zapatistas. Loose, ad hoc coalitions of affinity groups, organizing through the Internet, could throw together large demonstrations at short notice, and “swarm” the government and mainstream media with phone calls, letters, and emails far beyond their capacity to absorb. Ronfeldt noted a parallel between such techniques and the “leaderless resistance” advocated by right-wing white supremacist Louis Beam, circulating in some Constitutionalist/militia circles. These were, in fact, the very methods later used at Seattle and afterward. Decentralized “netwar,” the stuff of elite nightmares, was essentially the “crisis of governability” Samuel Huntington had warned of in the 1970s–but potentially several orders of magnitude greater.
The post-Seattle movement confirmed such elite fears, and resulted in a full-scale backlash. Paul Rosenberg recounted in horrifying detail the illegal repression and political dirty tricks used by local police forces against anti-globalization activists at protests in 1999 and 2000. There have even been some reports that Garden Plot was activated on a local basis at Seattle, and that Delta Force units provided intelligence and advice to local police.The U.S. government also seems to have taken advantage of the upward ratcheting of the police state after the 9-11 attacks to pursue its preexisting war on the anti-globalization movement. The intersection of the career of onetime Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, a fanatical enemy of the post-Seattle movement, with the highest levels of Homeland Security (in the meantime supervising the police riot against the FTAA protesters in Miami) is especially interesting in this regard.
The same netwar techniques are discussed in Jeff Vail’s A Theory of Power blog, in a much more sympathetic manner, as “Rhizome.”
One question that’s been less looked into, though, is the extent to which the ideas of networked resistance and asymmetric warfare are applicable to labor relations. It’s rather odd labor relations aren’t considered more in this context, since the Wobbly idea of “direct action on the job” is a classic example of asymmetric warfare. My purpose in this article is to examine the ethical issues attending the use of such labor tactics, from a free market libertarian standpoint.”
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