incommunicado

The conference “Future Internet and Society: A Complex Systems Perspective” will take place on 02-07 October in Acquafredda di Maratea, Italy.

The digital revolution and the advent of the Internet are transforming the way we work, how we spend our free time. These phenomena are also changing how we communicate with each other and the way in which we establish and maintain our social relations.

The relationship between Internet and society is complex and bidirectional, leading to a co-evolution of the two systems. In fact, the Internet exists because humans need networking and the Internet evolution is ultimately driven by our ever-increasing use of it.

The complexity of the current Internet structure and its future developments cannot be understood without taking a full multi-disciplinary approach. Such an approach must necessarily be based on the science of complex systems, and in particular complex network theory. It must also depend on social sciences and humanities to elucidate the underpinnings of the Internet at a societal and economic level.

This conference will bring together experts in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), social scientists, as well as experts in the area of complex systems They will assess the state-of-the-art, identify new trends and envision future developments in the intertwined domains of future Internet and society.

Topics that will be covered in the conference include:

• Internet topology and modelling
• Complex techno-social networks
• Modelling of collective social behaviour
• Social and human dynamics
• Spreading and epidemics in techno-social systems
• Virtual social systems
• Co-evolution of Internet and society
• Internet as a socio-economical system
• Mobile social networks
• Internet enabled applications and business
• Future Internet as a techno-social system

We welcome top-level presentations on the most recent results in analysis and modelling, from the point of view of complex systems and other techno-social issues.

Invited Speakers

• Petra Ahrweiler, University College Dublin, IE
• Enrico Gregori, National Research Council CNR Pisa, IT
• Fredrick Liljeros, Stockholm University, SE
• Angel Sanchez, Universidad Carlos III, ES
• Andrea Scharnhorst, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, NL
• Bosiljka Tadic, Jozef Stefan Institute, SI
• Alessandro Vespignani, Indiana University, US / ISI Foundation, IT

The preliminary programme will be published in February.

For more information please visit the ESF Research Conferences website: http://www.esf.org/conferences/10341

David Ronfeldt has a post recalling his recent interventions on tribal governance, and part of it is a recall of a recent debate we had.

David Ronfeldt:

“A set of interesting posts appeared at the P2P Foundation blog — one of my favorite blogs — in August 2009 comparing the histories of Maghrebi and Genovese traders in the Middle Ages. The posts concerned a view, raised at another blog, that the Maghrebis exhibited an early kind of P2P/network approach to organization, the Genoveses a more market-like approach — and that this might explain why the latter proved more durable and successful as traders.

My point was that the Maghrebis were less an expression of the p2p/network form than of the tribal form — and that’s what explained the differing outcomes:

The Maghrebis do exhibit some P2P relationships. But it’s one thing to exhibit some relationships, quite another for those relationships to add up to a full, distinct system of thought and action. The key systems of organization that have developed across the ages so far — tribes, hierarchical institutions (like states), and markets — all contain some P2P relationships in varying respects and degrees. But we have yet to see a full-fledged, distinct P2P /network system emerge to take its place alongside those systems. That still lies ahead.

The Maghrebis appear to correspond far more to an innovative tribal system than to a P2P system. This is particularly so given the exclusionary behavior that accompanied their ethnic orientations. And it’s this tribal nature that ultimately limits them. The Genovese appear to have been less tribal. Thus, perhaps it remains an open question as to whether and how much it’s the tribal, the market, or the P2P orientations that explain the differing outcomes.

• Shareable: Is Income Equality the Killer App?
  The below video and the study it promotes make the bold claim that there's one thing that increases almost all social problems in developed countries - income inequality. Apparently, they have 30 years worth of research to back it up, here's a summary.
• Trust is the Only Currency: Barter and Cashless Trading Summit
  The International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA) announces Reaching The Stars: Uniting People & Standards In A Cashless Trading World,” a comprehensive barter and cashless trading conference to be held September 22nd — 25th 2005 at the Wyndham Palace Resort and Spa in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, USA. Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World, will deliver the keynote presentation.
• Trust is the Only Currency: Local Currency Council to hold it's First Online Conference
  The Local Currency Council, will host their online conference on March 6th, 2010 from 12-3pm (Pacific Standard Time). Participants from around the world are facilitating discussions intended to establish and strengthen the bonds between various community-based currency systems.
• Trust is the Only Currency: The Future of Money: It’s Flexible, Frictionless and (Almost) Free
  perhaps nobody is as ambitious as PayPal. In November, it further opened up its code, giving anyone with rudimentary programming skills access to the kind of technology and payment-industry experience that Ivey used to build Twitpay. The move could unleash a wave of innovation unlike any we’ve seen since self-publishing came to the Web. Two months after PayPal opened its platform, 15,000 developers had used it to create new payment services, sending $15 million through the company’s pipes. Software developer Big in Japan, whose ShopSavvy program lets people find an item’s cheapest price by scanning its barcode, used PayPal to add a “quick pay” button to its app. LiveOps, a call-center outsourcing firm, built a tool that streamlined payments to its operators, turning what had been a nightmare of invoicing and time-tracking into an automated process.
• Trust is the Only Currency: Report: 1st Solidarity Economy Social Forum
  The 1st Solidarity Economy Social Forum took place at Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil from 22nd to 24th January 2010, showing achievements in different aspects of this new economy and defining challenges to get over, with hundreds of participants mostly from all over Brazil and neighbouring countries
• Sustainable Money | matslats.net
  Following a presentation I made on the subject of money and sustainability, I thought it would be useful to note a list of the characteristics of the present dominant monetary system, and why it is unsustainable.
• Trust is the Only Currency: 21 hours: Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21st century
  This report sets out arguments for a much shorter working week. It proposes a radical change in what is considered ‘normal’ – down from 40 hours or more, to 21 hours. While people can choose to work longer or shorter hours, we propose that 21 hours – or its equivalent spread across the calendar year – should become the standard that is generally expected by government, employers, trade unions, employees, and everyone else.
• Trust is the Only Currency: The Great Transition
  what we measure ends up driving what we do. The Great Transition proposes a move beyond GDP, to start measuring the things which really produce value, for our communities, our societies and our environment. The report sets out seven main interventions.
• Trust is the Only Currency: Co-opted: The Fall Of The Natural Foods Cooperative And What We Can Do About It
  Sadly, the once vibrant organic and natural foods movement has been taken over by the very businesses and business models that the founders of food co-ops a generation ago set out to replace. Not helping matters is the food co-op's own desire to survive at any cost and the widespread belief that continual growth is necessary and even beneficial for small businesses. Add to the mix a conservativeness that comes from doing something a certain way for a long time and we end up with...well, go see for yourself.
• Trust is the Only Currency: Montpelier, VT is Piloting a Food Currency
  On the subject of food - we are in the process of piloting a food currency here in Central Vermont that is designed to help our local farmers cope with low prices and escalating costs. It will be a hybrid, where dollars, food storage units, and food credits will be used for transactions...
• Trust is the Only Currency: Other Economies are Possible: Organizing toward an economy of cooperation and solidarity
  The idea and practice of "solidarity economics" emerged in Latin America in the mid-1980s and blossomed in the mid to late 1990s as a convergence of at least three social trends.
• Rights-based Organizing
  The biggest threat posed by corporations is not the illegal stuff of headlines. The real danger is what they are empowered to do legally, every day, in every community across the country. From water withdrawal to polluting refineries, toxic sludge spreading, GMOs and more, the corporate few wield the law against our communities, endangering our health, safety and the environment.
• Trust is the Only Currency: Damanhur Economics
  The Damanhurian economic system blends free enterprise with solidarity and communal sharing, with the objective of creating the most advantages and wealth possible at an individual and collective level. This “richness” is expressed in houses and land, schools and services, art and gardens, forests and meeting spaces, health and wellness, as well as a sense of belonging and security, and attention for the individual, from an economic and human point of view. This quality of life rivitalizes the Damanhurian territories, and in addition to the citizens of the Federation, everyone can enjoy the services and activities that exist here.
• Trust is the Only Currency: We're In This Together: Taxes and the Commons
  John Gurda, a history columnist for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, paints a frightening picture of where continuing cuts in public services will lead us: “The day may come when librarians have to leave a key under the doormat at each neighborhood branch, when homicides are reported to a call center in Bangalore, when every household is expected to bury its own garbage and to keep its own fire bucket at the front door.”
• Trust is the Only Currency: BRAZIL: Solidarity Economy Thriving
  The Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum (FBES) emerged at the
  2003 WSF which coincided with the start of the government of
  leftwing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who established a
  National Secretary of the Solidarity Economy (SENAES) under the
  Labour Ministry.

Clear insight on the necessary preconditions for open and distributed manufacturing to become the next ecosystem for making things.

Dominic Muren:

“We need to identify new methods and research directions which will lower the systemic barriers of entry to making. I believe that three primary directions exist for this exploration.

Humblefacture’s mission is to work bring together as much information as possible on the progress toward making these three pillars a reality.”

Al Jazeera reports on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a proposed reinforcement of free speech rights based on the best available legislation in the whole world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbGiPjIE1pE

• Confucius | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
  Ten years ago American journalist T.R. Reid wrote a book called Confucius Lives Next Door, in which he tried to make a compelling argument for the West’s adoption of Asian ways. I read it when it first appeared and thought what many critics wrote: Are you crazy? His itemized lists of Japanese virtues read like a laundry list of American phobias: respect your elders, don’t question authority, do your work obediently, learn to live with adversity, don’t challenge the status quo. But rereading the book now, ten years after its publication, I realize Reid was on to something, however poorly timed his analysis.
• Clash of Civilizations | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
  Richard Bulliet is a professor of history at Columbia University who specializes in the history of Islamic society. Adbusters contributing editor Micah White talked to him about his book The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.
• Philosophy at Zero Point | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
  Have we reached systemic collapse and civilizational crisis?
• Just Coffee's Mission | Just Coffee Cooperative
  Just Coffee Cooperative is a worker-owned coffee roaster dedicated to creating and expanding a model of trade based on transparency, equality, and human dignity. We strive to build long-term relationships with small-scale coffee growers to bring you a truly incredible cup of coffee.
• Lifestreams Project Home Page
  Welcome to the Lifestreams project homepage. Lifestreams was invented by Eric Freeman and David Gelernter as a network-centric replacement for the desktop metaphor. That original work is detailed in the Lifestreams dissertation:
• Edge: TIME TO START TAKING THE INTERNET SERIOUSLY By David Gelernter
  The Internet will never create a new economy based on voluntary instead of paid work — but it can help create the best economy in history, where new markets (a free market in education, for example) change the world. Good news! — the Net will destroy the university as we know it (except for a few unusually prestigious or beautiful campuses). The net will never become a mind, but can help us change our ways of thinking and change, for the better, the spirit of the age. This moment is also dangerous: virtual universities are good but virtual nations, for example, are not. Virtual nations — whose members can live anywhere, united by the Internet — threaten to shatter mankind like glass into razor-sharp fragments that draw blood. We know what virtual nations can be like: Al Qaeda is one of the first.
• Back to Mono
  More likely is that we’ll see a healthy battle for the legacy of FriendFeed between Facebook, Twitter, and Google. First will be the conversational flow, still a pathetic hack in Twitter, possible in Facebook only with a fast (three month) Everyone newstream rollout with 2 way Twitter/Everyone stream sync. Never mind the Web site; this has to come from the API, complete with granular tools for filtering the flow by data type and guaranteed RSS-hubbed delivery. Facebook must invest quickly in stream splicing to make filtering useful, and Twitter Lists give them the room to build it while no such tools exist on the Twitter side.
• echovar » Blog Archive » A Little Bit Louder Now…
  Moving from Space to Time is another kind of transition. David Gelernter is one of the few who has spent time thinking about organization based on time and stream. Why should we have to give names to digital files or assign them to folders? Can’t things just take the initiative? Once we shift the axis of organization from Space to Time, we begin to think about how we could relate to dynamic flows of information.
• Truth to Power: "This or that Hierarchy"
  When discussing issues related to our actions within hierarchies, such as voting, working, being subject to laws and workplace rules, propertarian laws, and so on, our opponents inevitably bring up the concepts of “voluntary” and “consent.” In order to properly understand these issues, we must therefore consider the concepts of what is “voluntary” and what is “consent.”
• Truth to Power: "Any Hierarchy that Exists"
  “equality.” The word evokes two general extremes. One is the total dehumanizing equality that reduces man to a machine, famously parodied in the story Harrison Bergeron, where people are made scrupulously equal in capacities by burdening them with crippling handicapping devices or weights. The other is the absurd capitalist concept of “equality of opportunities,” meaning nothing more than “you can get what you can get” (which leads today’s “socialists,” who are in fact as capitalists as everyone else, to try to make opportunities available to everyone, instead of correcting the more fundamental problems).
• P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » “Intellect” as a Component of Price
  In The Tom Peters Seminar, the business guru who goes by that name celebrated the fact that only some 10% of the price of his new Minolta camera resulted from materials and labor. The rest was “ephemera” and “intellect.” That means, translated from Peters-speak into English, that only a tenth of the hours we work to pay for a piece of consumer electronics go to pay the production cost; the rest go to embedded rents on artificial property rights.
• Rad Geek People’s Daily 2009-01-08 – Can anybody ever consent to the State?
  In their remarks on Crispin Sartwell’s Against the State, both Christopher Morris and Jan Narveson object to Sartwell’s conclusion that "existing states are conceptually incompatible with the very possibility of consent" (40, emphasis added). Specifically, they object to the strength or the sweep of the incompatibility claim: Morris thinks that this "is an exaggeration and an unnecessary one," and Narveson insists that such a strong claim of incompatibility "cannot be taken literally." Each attempts to refute the incompatibility claim, at least as originally stated, by means of counterexamples. Presumably, if you can point to at least one case where individual consent to be ruled is actually secured by an existing state, then clearly (modal logic and all that) it must not be logically impossible for existing states to secure it.
• P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Langdon Winner: from cyber-libertarianism to cyber-communautarianism?
  One especially foggy area in cyberlibertarian rhetoric is its depiction of matters of power and distribution. Who stands to gain and who will lose in the transformations now underway? Will existing sources of injustice be reduced or amplified? Will the promised democratization benefit the populace as a whole or just those who own the latest equipment? And who gets to decide? About these questions, the cyberlibertarians show little concern.
• Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published "Speak out against ACTA", stating that the ACTA threatens free software by creating a culture "in which the freedom that is required to produce free software is seen as dangerous and threatening rather than creative, innovative, and exciting."[44] Specifically the FSF argues that ACTA will make it more difficult and expensive to distribute free software via file sharing and P2P technologies like BitTorrent, which are currently used to distribute large amounts of free software. The FSF also argues that ACTA will make it harder for users of free operating systems to play non-free media because DRM protected media would not be legally playable with free software
• P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Mobile vs. Internet for the Global South: continuing the debate
  The Community Informatics mailing list has a continuing debate on whether the diffusion of mobile broadband is sufficient to replace the internet in developing countries. One of the best contributions is from Parminder Jeet Singh of IT for Change:

Recently Bolivia have published it’s cmmunication to WTO’s TRIPS Council on the Review of Article 27.3(b). This article allows patenting of life forms and requires provision to be made for the protection of plant varieties

Article 27.3(b) says the following:

“Members may also exclude from patentability:
plants and animals other than micro-organisms, and essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals other than non-biological and microbiological processes. However, Members shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof. The provisions of this subparagraph shall be reviewed four years after the date of entry into force of the WTO Agreement.”

Here you can read the full review. Really interesting reading.

———————————————————————
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION
IP/C/W/545

26 February 2010
(10-1102)

Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Original: English

REVIEW OF ARTICLE 27.3(B) OF TRIPS AGREEMENT

Communication from Bolivia

The following communication, dated 24 February 2010, is being circulated at
the request of the delegation of Bolivia.

_______________

I. INTRODUCTION

1. The purpose of this submission is to contribute to the work programme of
the TRIPS Council under the review of Article 27.3(b).

2. Article 27.3(b) allows Members to exclude from patentability plants and
animals, but not micro-organisms, and allows Members to exclude from
patentability essentially biological processes for the production of plants
and animals, but not non-biological or microbiological processes.
Furthermore, it also requires a legal form of protection for plant
varieties, by requiring members to provide plant variety protection either
by patents or by an effective sui generis system of protection or by any
combination thereof. It also requires that Article 27.3(b) be reviewed four
years after the entry into force of the WTO agreement.

3. The review of Article 27.3(b) is an issue within the mandate of the Doha
Work Programme under paragraph 19 of the 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration
(WT/MIN(01)/DEC/1).

4. The review is also an issue within the mandate of the Doha Work Programme
under Implementation-Related Issues and Concerns (paragraph 12 of the Doha
Ministerial Declaration). Paragraph 12 mentions the adoption of the Decision
on Implementation-Related Issues and Concerns (WT/MIN(01)/17) to address a
number of implementation problems faced by Members. It also clearly states
that the “negotiations on outstanding implementation issues shall be an
integral part of the Work Programme”.

5. The “Compilation of Outstanding Implementation Issues Raised by Members”
(JOB(01)152/Rev.1) has several items relating to the review of Article
27.3(b). The relevant tirets and paragraphs are as follows:

“Tiret 91: The period given for implementation of the provisions of Article
27.3(b) shall be five years from the date the review is completed.”

“Tiret 95: …[Article 27.3(b) to be amended (...) The amendments should
clarify and satisfactorily resolve the analytical distinctions between
biological and microbiological organisms and (...) processes that produce
living organisms should not be patentable. The amendments should ensure the
protection of innovations of indigenous and local farming communities; the
continuation of traditional farming processes including the right to use,
exchange and save seeds, and promote food security.]”

“Proposal by Least-Developed Countries 22 October 2001: The General Council
agrees that the review process should clarify that all living organisms,
including plants, animals and parts of plants and animals, including gene
sequences, and biological and other natural processes for the production of
plants, animals and their parts, shall not be granted patents.”

II. PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE OF REVIEW OF ARTICLE 27.3(B)

6. Over the years, various submissions and proposals have been made on the
review of Article 27.3(b). Some important concerns raised by the submissions
and proposals are the need to amend or clarify Article 27.3(b) to prohibit
the patenting of all life forms, the need to protect farmers’ rights,
genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional practices in
developing countries.

7. Meanwhile various developments have taken place at different national,
regional and international levels that highlight the need to conduct
concrete and expedited discussions on the Review of Article 27.3(b). In
brief some of these developments are explained.

8. First, and for us most importantly, in January 2009 the people of Bolivia
adopted a new Constitution, which states:

Article 255 paragraph II: Negotiation, signature and ratification of
treaties will be governed by the following principles:

* Respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and peasants.

* Harmony with nature, protection of biodiversity and prohibition of private
appropriation of plants, animals, micro-organisms and any living matter for
exclusive use and exploitation.

9. Another important development is the adoption of the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. Article 11.1 of the
Declaration recognizes the right of indigenous peoples “to practise and
revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to
maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of
their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts,
designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and
literature”. Article 11.2 of the Declaration requires states to “provide
redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution,
developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their
cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their
free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions
and customs”.

10. Further Article 31 of the Declaration recognises that “indigenous
peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their
cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural
expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies
and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines,
knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions,
literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing
arts” and the “right to maintain, control, protect and develop their
intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge,
and traditional cultural expressions.” Thus States have the duty to “take
effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights”.

11. Furthermore extensive patenting of life forms, misappropriation of
biological resources originating from developing countries, increasing
concentrated corporate control over the agriculture industry due to various
acquisitions, undermining of the rights of indigenous peoples, local
community and farmers including farmers being prosecuted for alleged patent
violations, proliferation of trade agreements and initiatives focused on
enforcement of intellectual property, pressures to adopt a particular model
for plant variety protection, in our view makes a strong case for an
in-depth and accelerated review of Article 27.3(b).

III. ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION

12. This communication is a brief introduction to some of the issues that
need to be addressed under the review of Article 27.3(b).

A. PATENTING OF LIFE FORMS

13. The rationale behind Article 27.3(b) is not clear. This relates to the
artificial distinction made between plants and animals (which may be
excluded) and micro-organisms (which may not be excluded); and also between
“essentially biological” processes for making plants and animals (which may
be excluded) and non-biological and microbiological processes (which may not
be excluded).

14. There is no reason why “micro-organisms”, “micro-biological processes”
and “non-biological” processes for the production of plants and animals
should be singled out for patentability, whereas members are given the
discretion to prohibit patents on plants and animals, and on essentially
biological processes.

15. Moreover, by giving Members the option whether or not to exclude the
patentability of plants and animals, Article 27.3(b) allows life forms to be
patented.

16. Consequently, since the adoption of the TRIPS Agreement, there has been
a proliferation of patents and patent applications involving micro-organisms
and other biological resources. This phenomenon has serious social, economic
and ethical implications, which are adverse especially for developing
countries.

17. Firstly, most of the patent holders and applicants are from developed
countries. Secondly, the granting of patents prevents those not having the
patents from making use of the patented materials, and this is also made up
of persons and institutions in developing countries, including indigenous
peoples. Thirdly, many of the biological resources originate in developing
countries and are obtained without their knowledge and in violation of their
laws, thus resulting in “misappropriation” and biopiracy. Fourthly, genetic
material may be inserted via vectors such as bacteria into plants and
animals, and all these living things (the genetic material, the
genetically-modified bacteria, and the genetically-modified plants and
animals) may then be patented.

18. The resulting effect is concentration of ownership of patents in a few
entities (largely based in developed countries) with detrimental effects on
competition and on social and economic situation (including food sovereignty
and livelihood of farmers) that most affects the vulnerable and poor,
including indigenous peoples in developing countries.

19. Patenting of life forms promotes an imbalance in the current
intellectual property system. The TRIPS Agreement while granting monopoly
rights to private parties does not explicitly recognise the collective
rights of indigenous peoples and local communities over their biological
resources and traditional knowledge, farmers’ rights or the sovereign rights
of States.

20. There is also an ethical dimension to the issue. The patenting of life
forms is unethical as it is against the moral and cultural norms of many
societies and indigenous peoples, of members in the WTO including that of
Bolivia.

B. PROTECTION OF PLANT VARIETIES

21. The issue of protection of plant varieties is also of concern to the
delegation of Bolivia. Prior to the TRIPS Agreement, countries had
flexibility to deal with the issue of plant varieties protection in the
manner they chose. However, TRIPS Article 27.3(b) requires protection of
plant varieties by either a patent, a sui generis system or a combination of
both. In this regard there are a number of concerns.

22. Firstly, in several developed countries, patenting of plants is already
taking place, and in the process, there is misappropriation of biological
resources, as plants and seeds originating in developing countries are being
patented, usually without the knowledge or consent of the countries of
origin. Secondly, the 21st century has seen significant corporate control
over the agriculture industry due to various mergers and acquisitions.
Thirdly, in some countries where there are patents on plants, farmers are
being prosecuted for alleged patent violations.

23. Fourthly, pressures are often placed on countries to accept a certain
definition or model for implementation of Plant Variety Protection although
there is no such requirement in Article 27.3(b). In this regard it is
important to ensure that innovations of indigenous and local farming
communities; the continuation of traditional farming practices including the
right to use, exchange, save seeds and sell their harvest is recognised and
protected. It is also equally important to recognise the right to take
measures to prevent anti-competitive and other practices, which threaten
food sovereignty in developing countries.

24. In this sense, the new Constitution of Bolivia is a step towards
providing protection to its farmers and peasants against actions and
practices, which threaten food sovereignty. Article 16.II establishes that
“the State must guarantee food security through a healthy, adequate and
sufficient alimentation for the entire population”. Consistent with this
provision, the new Constitution also states in its Article 255.I.8 that
“negotiation, signature and ratification of treaties will be governed by the
following principles: security and food sovereignty for all the people;
prohibition of importation, exportation production and marketing of
genetically modified organisms and toxic elements, which damages the health
and environment”.

C. TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

25. The process of review of Article 27.3(b) should take into account the
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as noted in
Part II above and the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore.

26. One of the cornerstones of Bolivia’s new Constitution is full respect
for the culture and rights of indigenous peoples. For example Article 100 of
the Constitution recognizes “the cosmovision1, myths, oral history, dances
and cultural practices, traditional knowledge and technologies of indigenous
peoples and peasants as their heritage [and that] this heritage is part of
the expression and identity of the State”. Article 382 states that it “is
the competence and duty of the State to defend, recover and protect
biological material coming from natural resources, ancestral knowledge and
anything else that originate in the territory”

27. The indigenous peoples’ cosmovision has been a structural element in the
design of the National Plan of Development. This philosophy is reflected in
the indigenous concept of “Suma Qamana” (that can be translated as “living
well”) which supports the idea that humans should live in harmony and
equilibrium with nature. The strong connection that Bolivian indigenous
culture has with nature is the heritage of humanity and represents an
alternative to the capitalist model of development, that is in crisis and in
which development is linked to the depredation of natural resources for
short-term profit.

28. In addition, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples was incorporated into the national legislation of Bolivia in
November 2007 through Law 3760, which requires all Bolivians to comply with
the Declaration.

29. Therefore, the Plurinational State of Bolivia shall prevent the
patenting of any form of life and the granting of private monopolistic
intellectual property rights on any traditional-ancestral knowledge.

IV. CONCLUSION

30. Following the above, we conclude on the need to urgently review Article
27.3(b) to:

(a) prohibit the patenting of all life forms, including plants and animals
and parts thereof, gene sequences, micro-organisms as well as all processes
including biological, microbiological and non-biological processes for the
production of life forms and parts thereof;

(b) ensure the protection of the innovations of indigenous and local farming
communities and the continuation of the traditional farming practices
including the right to save, exchange and save seeds, and sell their
harvest;

(c) prevent anti-competitive practices which threaten food sovereignty of
people in developing countries; and

(d) to protect the rights of indigenous communities and prevent any private
monopolistic intellectual property claims over their traditional knowledge.

31. The above-mentioned issues are long outstanding and thus the delegation
of Bolivia hopes that the issues will receive immediate attention. The
delegation of Bolivia will also further elaborate on the issues highlighted
above.

__________

1 “Cosmovision” denotes a set of concepts and beliefs related to the
universe, nature and life. The concept of “Cosmovision” is similar to the
German concept of “Weltanschauung” which is a framework for generating
various dimensions of human perception and experience like knowledge,
politics, economics, religion, culture, science, ethics and the relationship
between nature and human beings. The closest translation of this word may be
the English concept of “worldview” or “comprehensive world view”.

Via Keimform (originally from Counterpunch):

Peter Linebaugh (excerpt):

“Human solidarity as expressed in the slogan “all for one and one for all” is the foundation of commoning. In capitalist society this principle is permitted in childhood games or in military combat. Otherwise, when it is not honored in hypocrisy, it appears in the struggle contra capitalism or, as Rebecca Solnit shows, in the disasters of fire, flood, or earthquake.

Human thought cannot flourish without the intercourse of the commons. Hence, the first amendment linking the rights of speech, assembly, and petition. “

What’s often missed in open source discussions is how open source licenses tell only half the story. The governance model, the implicit rules defining transparency and influence into an open source project, is the small print that determines the power dynamics around that project.

The March Issue of OSBR, the excellent Canadian “Open Source Business Resource” monthly, is dedicated to mobile and the role of open source in it.

Amongst the articles:

1. Open Source Enclosures in the Mobile Space

* In, Open is the New Closed: How the Mobile Industry uses Open Source to Further Commercial Agendas, Andreas Constantinou discusses the importance of governance models to understand the dynamics of an open source product, constrasting it to the better understood role of licences. Using the mobile industry as an example, he demonstrates how governance models can be used by open source sponsors to control the development of open source products.

The article gives clear insight in the power dynamics that detract the use of open source from its original aim:

“In practice, mobile open source initiatives use a variety of control points - such as trademarks, private lines, distribution of derivatives, ownership of reviewers, gravity of contributions and contributor agreements - to turn an egalitarian governance model into an authoritarian one. Such control points can detract the very freedoms that open source licenses are meant to bestow.”

2. The State of Free Software in Mobile Devices

* In The State of Free Software in Mobile Devices, Bradley M. Kuhn reviews the state of the art of free software in mobile telephony.

He writes and concludes:

- “Based on this analysis, it appears that the HTC Dream currently gives the most software freedom based on the Android/Linux platform. It is unlikely that Google wants anything besides their applications to be proprietary. While Google has been unresponsive when asked why these hardware interface libraries are proprietary, it is likely that HTC, the hardware maker with whom Google contracted, insisted that these components remain proprietary.”

- “I must also mention the FreeRunner device and OpenMoko. This was a noble experiment: a freely specified hardware platform running 100% F/LOSS. I used an OpenMoko FreeRunner myself, hoping that it would be the mobile phone our community could rally around. I do think the device and its software stack has a future as an experimental, hobbyist device. But, just as GNU/Linux needed to focus on x86 hardware to succeed, so must software freedom efforts in mobile systems focus on mass-market, widely used, and widely available hardware.”

Paul Fernhout unearthed this older piece from Langdon Winner:

“One especially foggy area in cyberlibertarian rhetoric is its depiction of matters of power and distribution. Who stands to gain and who will lose in the transformations now underway? Will existing sources of injustice be reduced or amplified? Will the promised democratization benefit the populace as a whole or just those who own the latest equipment? And who gets to decide? About these questions, the cyberlibertarians show little concern.

The pressing challenge now is, in my view, something entirely different: Offering a vision of an electronic future that specifies humane, democratic alternatives to the peculiar obsessions of the cyberlibertarian position.
…
In sum, my suggestion is not that we need a cyber-communitarian philosophy to counter the excesses of today’s cyberlibertarian obsessions. Instead is a recommendation to take complex communitarian concerns into account when faced with personal choices and social policies about technological innovation. Superficially appealing uses of new technology become much more problematic when regarded as seeds of evolving, long term practices. Such
practices, we know, eventually become parts of consequential social
relationships. Those relationships eventually solidify as lasting
institutions. And, of course, such institutions are what provide much of the actual framework for how we live together. That suggests that even the most seemingly inconsequential applications and uses of innovations in networked computing be scrutinized and judged in the light of what could be important moral and political consequences. In the broadest spectrum of awareness about these matters we need to ask: Are the practices, relationships and institutions affected by people’s involvement with networked computing ones we wish foster? Or are they ones we must try to modify or even oppose?”

The Community Informatics mailing list has a continuing debate on whether the diffusion of mobile broadband is sufficient to replace the internet in developing countries.

One of the best contributions is from Parminder Jeet Singh of IT for Change:

“PC/Internet versus mobiles is one of the most important policy issues in ICTD today. It is not that I want to present it as a ‘versus’ issue, I would prefer not to. However that is how those with unadulterated belief in markets-as-panacea present it as, ironically, even when the dominance of their ideology has largely been responsible for what as been described as the failure of first generation telecentres initiatives. And this ‘versus’ thinking also dominate policy makers today, and thus we need to address it.

So while we discuss much whether mobiles can provide more Internet to more people, we need to at the same time ask the question, what kind of Internet is this? It exactly parallels the key development question around us today - the issue is not only ‘more development’ but also ‘what kind of development’. “

• GridRepublic | Grid Republic | BOINC Volunteer Distributed Grid Computing
  GridRepublic members run a screensaver that allows their computers to work on public-interest research projects when the machines are not otherwise in use. This screensaver does not affect performance of the host computer any more than an ordinary screensaver does.
• Progress Thru Processors | Facebook
• The Pirate's Dilemma
  a quick email interview for Dirk Koppes, a journalist at the Dutch newspaper De Pers, on the future of ebooks.
• We Tell Stories
  Digital fiction from Penguin
• Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: Passion Versus Obsession
  We are all familiar with cautionary tales of people so consumed by their passions that they lose their social standing, meaningful relationships, and—ultimately—their mind. Their professional and social lives fall apart as obsession grips their every waking hour, crowding everything else out. It’s no wonder people fear passion.
• Charles Lamb - Sanity Of True Genius
  SO far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius, in our modern way of speaking), has a necessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to he the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to he understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend,
• Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: Shifting Identities - From Consumer to Networked Creator
  identity in the 20th century increasingly took two different forms – we were company men (and as the century progressed, company women) and consumers. Since the professional identity offered little room for individual expression, we poured much of our energy into expressing individuality through our consumption – perhaps a sportier car or a fancier dress. Our status hinged on our ability to consume. That is all changing now – our identities are shifting in ways that we are only beginning to understand. All around us, we see people engaging in creation of various forms, sharing these creations and deriving satisfaction, meaning and status from these activities.
• The Play Ethic: Work, Play and Boredom: abstract of paper for St.Andrews University / Ephemera conference
  5-7 May 2010
• Ομιλία του Michel Bauwens στην Αθήνα | Re-public : re-imagining democracy
  “P2p Networks and the Production of the Commons» [??????? ?????? ??? ? ???????? ?????? ??????] ?? ??????? 13 ??????? ???? 18.00.
• Dwolla p2p payment startup aims to cut costs of money transfer - P2P Foundation
  bills itself as a peer to peer payment platform
• P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Financial Crisis—Environmental Crisis: the link with ‘green money’
  The Ecopolitics Online Journal 3, Spring/Summer 2009: Green Economics, is dedicated to the following important topic:
  * Financial Crisis—Environmental Crisis: What is the Link?
• folded-in: O Michel Bauwens στην Αθήνα
  ?? ?????????? ????????? MIG@NET ??? ?? ?????? p2p ??? ?????????? ???? ?????? ??? Michel Bauwens ?? ???? “P2p Networks and the Production of the Commons» [??????? ?????? ??? ? ???????? ?????? ??????] ?? ??????? 13 ??????? ???? 18.00.
• P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The emergence of the radical homemakers movement
  Below is an excerpt from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture, Left to Write Press, 2010, which was previously published in Yes magazine (CC license)

Ryan Lanham proposes a set of P2P Commons Boundary Conditions to delineate real commons from weaker versions and even counterfeits:

“I think the key boundaries are as follows:

Primary Boundaries:

1. A P2P Commons attempt to maximize free, voluntary and open sharing of assets that are engaged in the commons.

2. Assets placed in the commons are irrevocably there and cannot be removed for personal gains. Ongoing participation in a commons implies shared responsibility for its sustaining expenses. When a commons cannot be sustained, it is dissolved so as to maximize reuse and sharing of its prior assets without cost or selfish limitations.

3. P2P (though not necessarily a commons) emphasizes reduced hierarchical control and greater autonomy of the individual. The role of parties, states, churches, co-ops, corporations, shareholding owners and other collective action bodies is intentionally minimized in any form of governance of the commons.

Secondary boundaries (many may reject these in individual terms and still claim status as a P2P commons):

a. Commons work to avoid free riding by encouraging valid and useful contributions to the commons as a sustainable process.

b. P2P commons work to minimize governance interventions.

c. Commons work to provide useful and valuable tools, assets and services to participants.

d. Commons reject inputs and uses that are applied for gains that are not sustainable or that adversely impact the environment.

e. Commons apply open, fair and recognizably democratic means to govern themselves.

f. Commons are not owned by a state. They are created out of voluntary participation mechanisms where users and participants continually and freely choose to participate and the right to exit from participation and support clearly exists.

g. Commons are not a part of or party to any form of capitalism, communism, anarchism or socialism as a political ideal and may be compatible with any form of government that allows voluntary and free participation in protected sharing schemes that are self-governing within reasonably constraints (e.g. valid safety or environmental regulations).

h. P2P commons reject the idea of a single controller, a controller or governor for life, or any mode of control or ownership of the commons that positions one person or one group as a vanguard, protector, trustee or governor acting beyond reasonable terms of a few years and freely chosen by participating members. Organizers and social entrepreneurs who start commons with benign intent and who have imbued a commons with their own personal will have greater latitude under this criterion so long as their actions are reasonably consistent with the long-term goals and boundaries of commons.

i. Commons are perpetual and may not be privatized.

j. Commons work toward ideals of general public good even if the public good is at odds with most members of the commons.”

Via Neal Gorenflo of Shareable Magazine:

“I’ve started a Flickr group call Sharing Illustrated to create a pool of Creative Commons images, photos, and videos that anyone can use to talk about sharing, peer-to-peer production, alternative economy, and the commons. The idea is to empower communicators of all stripes with high quality images about sharing.

You’re invited to join the group and share your images. It’s really easy.

First, join the group here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1365597@N21/admin/

Once you’ve joined, then for any image you’d like to share, click on the “Send to Group” tab just above the image to the left. It’s self-explanatory from there.

The group is brand new with no images. I’m reaching out for your help to get the ball rolling. Once the group is seeded with images, I will promote the group through Shareable to gain momentum. And we’ll
continually promote.

There are a number of benefits to contributing: advancing your work by creating the pool for others, gaining access to the pool yourself, and increased traffic to your site from link backs.

I hope you’ll give this a try! And feel free to pass this request on to colleagues, forums, and lists that might be interested.

Thank you,

More Information:

See also the P2P Foundation Graphics section, with 105 graphics and images so far.

In The Tom Peters Seminar, the business guru who goes by that name celebrated the fact that only some 10% of the price of his  new Minolta camera resulted from materials and labor.  The rest was “ephemera” and “intellect.”  That means, translated from Peters-speak into English, that only a tenth of the hours we work to pay for a piece of consumer electronics go to pay the production cost; the rest go to embedded rents on artificial property rights.

Now Rob Carlson reports recent information that sheds new light on this contention.  He cites Joel Johnson’s inadvertent admission that only 8-10 of the people at Aliph working on Bluetooth headsets are actually necessary to carry out or coordinate the production process.  The rest are involved in administration and marketing.  And the total cost of manufacturing (outsourced to China) amounts 5% or less of retail price.  The proprietary software of the iPhone probably adds around $30 to the price.

On the other hand, the material components of a typical smart phone cost around $170-180.  So total production cost is a little over $200, and the rest of the $500-600 price is retail markup and rents on proprietary design.

The remaining unanswered question, to make sense out of all this, is the cost breakdown of the components themselves.  How much of the price of the components reflects the actual cost of producing them, as opposed to rents on proprietary design?  How much of it is just administrative overhead from conventional corporate modes of organization (Weberian work rules, job descriptions, mission statements, and all the rest of it)?  I suspect it’s a lot, if the efficiencies hardware hackers typically achieve in reverse-engineering proprietary designs are any indication (Factor Twenty cost reductions are not unusual).

Carlson himself, in the same post, goes on to describe how Biodesic’s improvements in manufacturing processes and component designs are resulting in radical cost reductions, further blurring the boundaries between physical components and bits.

I’d be interested in any light the readers could shed on how much of the price of iPhone components results from proprietary design, administrative overhead, etc.  I’m inclined to believe that conventional manufacturing is riddled with overhead costs in a manner comparable to a human body with congestive heart failure, bloated with edema from head to foot.

Here is a paper by Bernard Lietaer and others which points to some important parallels between the (monetary) economy and natural eco-systems.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26248658/Is-Our-Monetary-Structure-a-Systemic-Cause-for-Financial-Instability-Bernard-Lietaer

Via Frank van Laerhoven:

Editors-in-Chief Frank van Laerhoven and Erling Berge are pleased to
announce the publication of Volume 4, Issue 1 (2010) of the International
Journal of the Commons.

Our newest issue contains a special feature called “Innovating through
commons use: community-based enterprises” that was prepared by Iain J. Davidson Hunt and Fikret Berkes.

Also, we would like to draw your attention to the special feature on
Microbial commons, that was prepared by Tom Dedeurwaerdere.

From the Table of Contents:

* Innovating through commons use: community-based enterprises (1-7) Fikret Berkes, Iain J. Davidson-Hunt

* Community-based enterprises and the commons: The case of San Juan Nuevo Parangaricutiro, Mexico (8-35)

* Placing the commons at the heart of community development: Three case studies of community enterprise in Caribbean islands (160-182) Sarah McIntosh, Yves Renard

On the Microbial Commons:

* Self-governance and international regulation of the global microbial
commons: Introduction to the special issue on the microbial commons
(390-403) Tom Dedeurwaerdere

* Governing the management and use of pooled microbial genetic resources: Lessons from the global crop commons (404-436) Michael Halewood

• Complexity Maps » About Complexity Maps
  How can the city be made legible and comprehensible, understood as a complex organism and as a web of physical and social networks?
• Getting the Most Out of Twitter, No Posting Necessary - NYTimes.com
  "The truth is, you don’t have to post a message to get the most out of Twitter. "
• Shift to a realtime culture
  social media createsde territorialized forms of identification.
• Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » New working group on open bibliographic data!
• The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (9780465014910): Diane Ravitch: Books
• A New Model for Online Publishing — The Keiretsu-Cooperative: An OII Issue Brief at William H. Dutton
• McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models
  In the "information and analysis" category, McKinsey firstly lists tracking behavior. An example is insurance companies installing location sensors in customers' cars, allowing them to base the price of policies on "how a car is driven as well as where it travels." Another example is Tesco's use of sensors to capture shoppers' profile data via membership cards. According to McKinsey, this "can help close purchases by providing additional information or offering discounts at the point of sale.""
• ISU study proves conclusively that violent video game play makes more aggressive kids | www.news.iastate.edu
  analyzing 130 research reports on more than 130,000 subjects worldwide, proves conclusively that exposure to violent video games makes more aggressive, less caring kids
• Who needs a prof? : Macleans OnCampus
  So what role is left for the teacher? To be effective, Wieman says, they must be “cognitive coaches” rather than conduits of information. Rankin believes that the change in pedagogy will happen soon. “It’s comparable to the introduction of a light switch,” he adds. “It’s just going to take a while for people to figure out what this looks like and how it works.”
• Contribute to our open database of educational projects - Creative Commons
• Why DRM Doesn’t Work
  Or, "how to ensure your customers can't use your product and become 'criminals'". Great illustration of why "technical measures" are ridiculous and counter-productive.
• Portal to Asian Internet Resources
• Over 100 ideas for using Twitter in the Classroom | Emerging Internet Technologies for Education
  I’ve come across a lot of articles containing examples and suggestions for using Twitter in instructional applications. I’ve combed through many of these and tried to boil down the redundancies to create a rich set of idea-laden resources. While there’s still going to be some overlap in the concepts presented in these articles, they clearly meet the goal of providing a thorough set of ideas and examples for leveraging Twitter in the educational process
• What Does it Mean to Make 5 Million Maps? Platial's Legacy
  Community mapping service Platial announced this week that it is turning off its servers and asking users to move their content onto the servers of other providers. Just short of 5 years old, Platial raised some venture capital, bought other small companies and made a name for itself, but in the end wasn't able to build a business. Co-founder Di Ann Eisnor defiantly says that Platial changed the world anyway. Cartography used to be an elite practice of drawing borders around resources and power. Platial helped transform it into an accessible practice for millions of people to share how they have experienced the world around them."
• Zen Digital " Blog Archive " Greenshift Europe: Enabling Smart ...
  “Greenshift Europe is a movement promoting ICTs to fight climate change,” says Vin Sumner, CEO of UK-based Clicks & Links, and an expert in applying information and communication technologies to address climate challenges. Sumner and Cheryl Miller, founder of ZenDigital.be, have recently joined forces behind Greenshift Europe to promote ICTs for building “smart,” sustainable communities across Europe.

I believe that the growing fiscal crisis of the state, and the growing tendency toward high unemployment and underemployment becoming a norm, will have two long-term results:  first, the production of a growing share of value in the informal economy in place of its purchase with wages; and second, the decoupling of the social safety net from both the welfare state and wage employment.

Getting from here to there will involve a fundamental paradigm shift in how most people think, and the overcoming of centuries worth of ingrained habits of thought.  This involves a paradigm shift from what James Scott, in Seeing Like a State, calls social organizations that are primarily “legible” to the state, to social organizations that are primary legible or transparent to the people of local communities organized horizontally and opaque to the state.

The latter kind of architecture, as described by Kropotkin, was what prevailed in the networked free towns and villages of late medieval Europe.  The primary pattern of social organization was horizontal (guilds, etc.), with quality certification and reputational functions aimed mainly at making individuals’ reliability transparent to one another.  To the state, such local formations were opaque.

With the rise of the absolute state, the primary focus became making society transparent from above, and horizontal transparency was at best tolerated.  Things like the systematic mapping of urban addresses for postal service, the systematic adoption of family surnames that were stable across generations (and the 20th century followup of citizen ID numbers), etc., were all for the purpose of making society transparent to the state.

Before this transformation, for example, surnames existed mainly for the convenience of people in local communities, so they could tell each other apart.  Surnames were adopted on an ad hoc basis for clarification, when there was some danger of confusion, and rarely continued from one generation to the next.  If there were multiple Johns in a village, they might be distinguished by trade (”John the Miller”), location (”John of the Hill”), patronymic (”John Richard’s Son”), etc.  By contrast, everywhere there have been family surnames with cross-generational continuity, they have been imposed by centralized states as a way of cataloguing and tracking the population—making it legible to the state, in Scott’s terminology.2

To accomplish a shift back to horizontal transparency, it will be necessary to overcome a powerful residual cultural habit, among the general public, of thinking of such things through the mind’s eye of the state.  E.g., if “we” didn’t have some way of verifying compliance with this regulation or that, some business somewhere might be able to get away with something or other.

We need a shift in focus toward creating reputational and quality assessment mechanisms on a networked basis, to make us as transparent as possible to each other as providers of goods and services—and not legible to an all-seeing state.  In fact, the creation of such mechanisms may well require active measures to render us opaque to the state (e.g. encryption, darknets, etc.) for protection against attempts to suppress such local economic self-organization against the interests of corporate actors.

To do this requires overcoming six hundred years or so of almost inbred habits of thought, by which the state is the all-seeing guardian of society protecting us from the possibility that someone, somewhere might do something wrong if “the authorities” don’t prevent it.  We need to replace it with a habit of thinking in terms of ourselves creating mechanisms to prevent each other from selling defective merchandise, protecting ourselves from fraud, etc.  In other words, we need to lose the centuries-long habit of thinking of “society” as a hub-and-spoke mechanism and viewing the world from the perspective of the hub, and instead think of it as a horizontal network in which we visualize things from the perspective of individual nodes.  We need to lose the habit of thought by which transparency from above ever even became perceived as an issue in the first place.

This will require, more specifically, overcoming the hostility of conventional liberals who are in the habit of reacting viscerally and negatively, and on principle, to anything not being done by “qualified professionals” or “the proper authorities.”

Arguably conventional liberals, with their thought system originating as it did as the ideology of the managers and engineers who ran the corporations, government agencies, and other giant organizations of the late 19th and early 20th century, have played the same role for the corporate-state nexus that the politiques did for the absolute states of the early modern period.

This is reflected in a common thread running through writers like Andrew Keene, Joran Lanier, and Chris Hedges, through the occasional offering by Thomas Frank at The Baffler, and through documentary producers like Michael Moore.  They share a nostalgia for the “consensus capitalism” of the early postwar period, in which the gatekeepers of the Big Three controlled what we were allowed to see and it was just fine for GM to own the whole damned economy—just so long as everyone had a lifetime employment guarantee and a UAW contract.

Paul Fussell, in Bad, ridicules the whole Do-it-Yourself ethos as an endless Sahara of the Squalid, with blue collar shmoes busily uglifying their homes by taking upon themselves projects that should be left to—all together now—the Properly Qualified  Professionals.

Keith Olbermann routinely mocks exhortations to charity and self-help, reaching for shitkicking imagery of the nineteenth century barnraiser for want of any other comparision to sufficiently get across just how backward and ridiculous that kind of thing really is.  Helping your neighbor  out directly, or participating in a local self-organized friendly society or mutual, is all right in its own way, if nothing else is available.  But it carries the inescapable taint, not only of the quaint, but of the provincial and picayune—very much like the perception of homemade bread and home-grown veggies promoted in corporate advertising in the early twentieth century, come to think of it.  People who help each other out, or organize voluntarily to pool risks and costs, are to be praised—grudgingly and with a hint of condescension—for doing the best they can in an era of relentlessly downscaled social services.  But that people are forced to resort to such expedients, rather than meeting all their social safety net needs through one-stop shopping at the Ministry of Central Services office in a giant monumental building with a statue of winged victory in the lobby, a la Brazil, is a damning indictment of any civilized society.  The progressive society is a society of comfortable and well-fed citizens, competently managed by properly credentialed authorities, happily milling about like ants in the shadows of miles-high buildings that look like they were designed by Albert Speer.  And that kind of H.G. Wells utopia simply has no room for the barn-raiser or the sick benefit society.

Aesthetic sensibilities aside, such critics are no doubt motivated to some extent by genuine concern that networked reputational and certifying mechanisms just won’t take up the slack left by the disappearance of the regulatory state.   Things like Consumer Reports, Angie’s List and the Better Business Bureau are all well and good, for educated people like themselves who have the sense and know-how to check around.  But Joe Sixpack, God love him, will surely go out and buy magic beans from the first disreputable salesman he encounters—and then likely put them right up his nose.

But seriously, practical questions concerning the feasibility of such a shift from state certification to networked reputational  certification systems are entirely legitimate.   Reputational systems really are underused, and most people really do take undue caution in the marketplace on the assumption that the regulatory state guarantees some minimum acceptable level of quality.

And as Michel Bauwens pointed out by email, the sudden implosion of the state and its certification mechanisms results in disaster unless there’s something in place to fill the vacuum.  The corporation and the central state have so crowded out social mechanisms, and so atrophied civil society, that there’s good reason to worry about how people will take up the slack as the old corporate-state system fades away.

But I think this seems like more of a danger when we take a static view of society.  It also helps to keep in mind that the collapse of the state-corporate system will probably not be sudden or catastrophic, but rather a generation-long process.  Given chronic underemployment and the imperative of networking in the social economy to prevent homelessness and starvation, the pressures to develop such networked mechanisms will be steady and consistent over time.  At the same time, network technologies are making such organization more user-friendly with each passing year.

I think people will be capable of changing their habits quite rapidly in the face of necessity.  Because people are not presently in the habit of automatically consulting such reputational networks to check up on people they’re considering doing business with, and are in the habit of unconsciously assuming the government will protect them, conventional liberals assume that people will not shift from one to the other in the face of changing incentives, and scoff at the idea of a society that relies primarily on networked rating systems.

But in a society where people are aware that most licensing and safety/quality codes are no longer enforceable, and “caveat emptor” is no longer just a cliche, it would be remarkable if things like Angie’s list, reputational certification by local guilds, customer word of mouth, etc., did not rapidly grow in importance for most people. They were, after all, at one time the main reputational mechanism that people did rely on before the rise of the absolute state, and as ingrained a part of ordinary economic behavior as reliance on the regulatory state is today.

In a society with rapid shortening of supply and industrial chains, of community reindustrialization through microfactories, of local production of ever larger shares of food and clothing, it would be remarkable if “friend of a friend” reputational systems didn’t regulate people’s choice of business ties.

Fifteen years ago, when even the most basic survey of a research topic began with an obligatory painful crawl through the card catalog, Reader’s Guide and Social Sciences Index—and when the average person’s investigations were limited to the contents of his $1000 set of Britannica pending a visit to the liberary—who could have foreseen how quickly Google and SSRN searches would become second nature?

• The Total Growth of Open Source
  In this paper, we quantitatively analyze the growth of more than 5000 active and popular open source software projects. We show that the total amount of source code as well as the total number of open source projects is growing at an exponential rate. Previous research showed linear and quadratic growth in lines of source code of individual open source projects. Our work shows that open source is expanding into new domains and applications at an exponential rate.
• Global Guerrillas: OPEN SOURCE ECONOMIES
  open source economies would have a rate of innovation far in excess of traditional economies due to the speed at which innovation percolates through the system. With each successive cycle, innovation upon innovation, the process accelerates until dominance is achieved.
• Global Guerrillas: CHARACTERISTICS OF OPEN SOURCE WARFARE
  Sean Gourley, one of the authors of "Common Ecology Defines Human Insurgency" (Nature magazine's recent cover story!!), has a very succinct list of characteristics that define open source warfare. I don't disagree with any of them. One caveat though: I would have explicitly listed stigmergy as a factor, particularly since stigmergic communication via the media was a central theme of the paper published in Nature.
• Agile_Agriculture_Summit_Report
  The Agile Agriculture Summit was conducted June 30 & July 1, 2009 in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
  The Summit brought together diverse stakeholders to design and launch projects bridging the
  gap between market desire for local food products and lack of supplies; attainment of this goal
  can have far?reaching positive benefits to agricultural producers, food distributors and retailers,
  and consumers.
• Value based food supply chains
  Case Studies | Applied Sustainability Center | Sam M. Walton College of Business | University of Arkansas
• Dwolla COM
  DWOLLA is a peer to peer payment platform which allows any user to exchange money with another user quickly, safely, at a lower cost.
• Frequently asked questions | ROBOXchange.com
  Our service was founded in 2002 and had been performed some 3 000 000 (three million!!) sussesful transactions. You can find links to our exchanger at website of every payment systems we are working with, that means that we are always in direct connection and parthership with payment systems we service. You should also check forums and simply search Internet for the references. We are member of GDCA from 2004 without single complain, largest Webmoney exchanger (see megastock.ru) and so on.
  Still no trust ? Try to exchange small amounts, check speed and usability that are key features of Robox. Then sit, relax and start exchanging through us :)
• In Search of Self-Governance - Rasmussen Report
  Years of public opinion polls have shown a growing disconnect between the American people and the nation’s political leaders. Rasmussen’s conclusion: Americans don’t want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. They want to govern themselves. The American desire for – and attachment to – self-governance runs deep. It is one of our nation’s cherished core values and an important part of our cultural DNA. And right now, it needs to be saved.
• About Tapatio | March Hare Communications Collective
  Tapatio is intended to be a communications resource for the radical anti-authoritarian community. We have developed a system that can be used in mass direct action scenarios to gather tactical information, categorize that information based on type and urgency, rate the information for reliability, and then dispatch reliable information to individuals in the streets based on the criteria they request (for example, maybe the user only wants information about legal updates, or maybe they want to hear about police mobilizations and medical information).
• Online gaming time volume continues growing | Ecommerce Journal
  Online gaming time has been increasing considerably as proves data from The NPD Group. Thus, the average amount of hours spent each week on online gaming has climbed by 10% since the last year, while an average of 20% of all games purchased were digitally downloaded up from 19% in 2009.
• Articles, Payment systems | Ecommerce Journal
  Articles on Payment systems
• Exhange offices | Ecommerce Journal
  e-commerce exchange service
• OnTheCommons.org » Commons Grow on Main Street
  West Marin Commons is working to make Point
  Reyes Station and neighboring towns at the edge of
  the California’s Golden Gate National Seashore into
  a model of commons thinking and practice, and to
  foster a social ecology that complements the natural
  kind in which the area is so rich. This unique community
  effort to strengthen the commons in one
  place is coordinated by OTC Fellow Jonathan Rowe
  and Elizabeth Barnett.
• OnTheCommons.org » "The institutions that are supposed to reproduce daily life are incapable of acting on behalf of the people any more -- so we need to produce our own institutional alternatives."
  Wainwright is that rare bird who combines personal reportage with political theorizing, and movement journalism with a fierce independence and insight — all in highly readable style.