P2P FoundationTowards Keiretsu publishing coops?Via William Hutton: “Cheryll Barron has written a new OII Internet Issue Brief (No. 4), entitled ‘The Keiretsu-Cooperative: a Model for post-Gutenberg Publishing’, which is available online at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1532173 It is an imaginative proposal for a new business model to support publishing in the digital age.” I asked for some reactions on the p2p research list. Below is a reaction from Alex Rollin, and in the comments field, from Sam Rose. Alex Rollin: “In this paper the author goes over a number of facts about the decline of what might be called ‘centralized’ publishing. Newspapers, book publishers, and magazine publishers are looking for new ways of building an maintaining audiences while turning their attention to the possibilities the internet has to offer. On the other side, in this paper, are the ‘bloggers’ and ‘twitterers’ who are publishing. The proposed cooperative publishing effort serves to provide a centralized site where ‘bloggers’ can be published to the largest audience and receive more notoriety as well as a potential income if there is money to be had. This paper doesn’t go into the ethics of content ownership in any meaningful way, and it also doesn’t really deal with the simple idea that large centralized sites aren’t important because Google search works really well. The author spends a great deal of words explaining the environment and the challenges to publishers, and uses a lot of bold type to enumerate the potential gains to authors. While those gains are probably enough to invite folks into a publishing cooperative, I believe that the issues she doesn’t deal with, like content ownership, are at the very least a deciding factor for participants in some way.” Categories: News
Links for 2010-03-12 [del.icio.us]
Categories: News
Lecture by Michel Bauwens in AthensThe European Research project MIG@NET and the p2p foundation invite you to a lecture by Michel Bauwens on “P2p Networks and the Production of the Commons» on Saturday 13 March at 18.00. The event will be held at Bios, Peiraios 84 (map) Michel Bauwens is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He is the author of a number of on-line essays, including the seminal thesis Peer to Peer and Human Evolution, and The Political Economy of Peer Production. Bauwens currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand. The lecture will be held in English. [From Lecture by Michel Bauwens in Athens | Re-public: re-imagining democracy – english version] Categories: News
Dwolla low cost transfer system to take on bank, credit card feesDWOLLA (https://www.dwolla.com/) bills itself as a peer to peer payment platform which allows any user to exchange money with another user quickly, safely, at a lower cost. For now, the system is operational in the US only, and so far it covers, I believe, Iowa and California. On the system’s blog, users are encouraged to vote to extend the service to their state. The start-up payment company is rigorously linked to US dollars, no complementary currencies and no foreign currencies. It aims at tackling what they call the $48 billion elephant in the room: the swipe fee attached to all credit cards. The interesting feature is that transfer fees on the Dwolla system are kept to an absolute minimum: a flat 25 cents per transfer, no matter how small or large it is. Dwolla links to your bank account in a similar way as PayPal. It is primarily a money transfer tool. There is no need to keep a positive balance in a Dwolla account and it is possible to set the account to automatically transfer all incoming money into your standard bank account. A video explaining the basic idea of the Dwolla system is on this page. A series of videos on the Dwolla site explains the features of the system. Dwolla’s relatively very simple user interface is explained in this video. It will be interesting to see how fast they manage to grow and whether web based transfers will be able to make a dent in the billion-dollar credit card business. Banks should have made such a system long ago, but it seems complexity is their preferred method of maintaining user dependence, in addition to making money on slow transfers. Categories: News
Links for 2010-03-11 [del.icio.us]
Categories: News
Smartmobbing a beat frequencyHere’s an idea for a smart-mob phone app. It occurs to me that - with the help of a simple p2p application that may run on networked hand-held devices - it would be possible to produce, in the manner of a smart mob, any desired frequency in almost limitless strength. Here’s how: The frequency could be produced by any desired means. It could be a song, achant, a clapping of hands, a beating of sticks on some object or something more technical like claxons or machines that produce a loud clap, the possibilities here are limitless, but they do not necessarily require any other technical means than linked-up smart devices in each participant’s hands. Even thoughts or directed intentions could be smartmobbed. The size of the mob so linked would be limited only by the technical feasibility of co-ordinating an increasingly widely dispersed group of people. There would be no difficulty making a whole city, a nation or a continent part of such an action. At the level of each individual participant, the application would only have to show two signals for each beat: a preparatory signal and - after a small interval that remains constant - the signal for the agreed action. This would make sure that the actual action forms an exactly co-ordinated beat and produces the desired frequency effectively. If the frequency were chosen to produce a certain effect and it were desirable that the effect should only be produced at a target group, but not at the individuals participating in the frequency-producing smart mob, the networked application could smartly choose to let individuals participate in “the beat” at a safe, lower frequency by for instance only requiring each individual to produce every second or third beat, or it could randomize the frequency for the participants without affecting the output frequency. It would even be possible, in this way, to produce a higher frequency - say a frequency in the brain wave range that produces healing - which any single individual could not efficiently produce by themselves, but which could be produced by the co-ordinated smart mob. The application would do the co-ordinating to achieve the higher desired frequency. The applications for something like this seem almost endless and I would think that a whole range of effects - from damaging to highly beneficial - is possible. Since the smartmobbing of frequencies requires the participation of a large number of individuals, it is hoped that the technology would be used predominantly for positive ends. In any case, better for this to be public knowledge than restricted to military and covert intelligence applications. I am putting this in the public domain. Developers and smart mobs may do with it as they wish. Categories: News
Special issue on the microbial commonsThe latest issue of the International Journal of the Commons contains a special collection of articles on the microbial commons, edited by Tom Dedeurwaerdere of the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. From the introduction: “vast amounts of plant and animal genetic material are collected and microorganisms isolated throughout the world from various habitats and sources, and exchanged in collaborative research networks for the improvement of global food security, public health and climate change mitigation” but “the relatively frictionless exchange of biological materials within a global commons, which prevailed during the early days of modern life sciences, now seems to be reversed. More and more biological materials are enclosed behind national and privatized fences, or only accessible under very restrictive license conditions”. On the other hand, “due to the dual nature of genetic resources (as a biophysical resource used in current applications and as a living and evolving informational resource which provides basic input for the development of future applications and uses) the line between the market and non-market value of genetic resources is very difficult to draw.” The special issue is devoted to investigating a new or stronger role of governance to design principles for building the microbial commons. The main argument of this collection of articles mainly coming from international law scholars is that commons governance is based on a variety of governance modes. Namely, “self-governance in global science communities, participatory modes of governance in international non-profit organizations, and conventional intergovernmental negotiation forums.” In fact, specific governance problems are the biophysical characteristics of the resources: “goods that are more efficiently provided through non-market means (such as open-source collaborations and public provision). Genetic resources are complex goods with both a biophysical and an informational component.” But apart from the long tradition of international cooperation amongst culture collections, the impact of free riding is threat for the long-term sustainability of the commons. That is why the global community of scientits working on microbes needs formal intergovernmental arrangements. But another important point is the role of self-governance and “the need to go beyond the dissociation between users and producers of knowledge within the commons.” The need to involve the user communities has led to a set of interesting institutional innovations, such as “public genome databases, open source bioinformatics software, and viral licensing by culture collections through so-called legitimate exchange.” And these institutional innovations were not established through governmental or intergovernmental legal or policy arrangements. They were the result of self-governance by the science and microbial culture-collection communities.” We need a legal infrastructure for the commons, as well as a culture rooted in sharing and openess practices. Dedeurwaerdere concludes that “a mutually supportive relationship between various governance activities is an important feature of a successful genetic resource commons. This can be thought of as an organization with multiple layers of nested enterprises, which has been recognized as an important characteristic of large-scale and robust common pool resource systems”. Categories: News
Links for 2010-03-10 [del.icio.us]
Categories: News
Peer to peer cinema at Clip Kino“‘Clip Kino’ events are self-organised screening events of short video clips & documentaries found online. It aims to drag aspects of normalised ‘private’ activity - of viewing downloaded content on one’s own computer - into public space for screening, appreciation and debate. ‘Media-environmental awareness’ applies to include the social ecology of one’s interests, desires, and attentions in one’s peer-group and community” Our friend Andrew Paterson has written an extensive report on a important cultural experiment involving video-sharing practices, see the full article published on SQUIDproject here and downloadable as PDF. “The roll-down screen, the fold-up chairs, the sound-system, laptop, projector and popcorn were all prepared in the public underground passageway to coax people out of their pathway, to sit down and watch video clips they might have or never seen before. The billboard proclaiming ‘Jii Hutikka’s Clip Karavaani!’ was the beginning of ‘Clip Kino’ in Helsinki and beyond: a self-organised social event platform consisting of screening events in public spaces, featuring not full, or even short, film screenings but video clips and documentaries found online. Since this event in late 2007, I have initiated and facilitated similar events. This activity was and is motivated by my interest in participatory and social processes as an artist-organiser, and as a pedagogue in online and digital media culture. Over the years, I maintain a belief that such a platform can explore in corporeal public space what you, I, them and we are watching or find interesting online; opening up discussions related to online media, copy and remix culture; but also in the process, create space for different groups to meet, reflect and encounter each other. The text elaborates the development of the Clip Kino platform as it emerged from that roll-down screen onwards, including reference to the surrounding contexts which the process and events have been situated within.” “My desire was also to explore the peer-to-peer theme in collaboration with young people, using metaphors from BitTorrent protocol. The slang terms for key roles in P2P file sharing—seeder and leecher—refer to the original uploader who provides the original file to ’seed’, and the downloader who ‘leeches’ the content from the network. The BitTorrent protocol is also a form of encoded cooperation: When you start downloading the file you wish for, you are also, by default in the protocol, helping others, by making the file more available for them. I hoped the workshop, exploring and sharing of video-clips between us as a group, would give us the roles of being ’seeders’ and ‘leechers’ of content—face-to-face—sharing content in presence of each other, gradually helping each other understand one another’s interests.” Categories: News
Hillary Wainwright: profile of a commonerHillary Wainwright is one of the finest people I have met over the last few years, so I’m happy to share this profile, written by my friend David Bollier: “If you want to learn the nitty-gritty about social transformation in our times — What works and what doesn’t? How exactly does market culture subvert change? What are the promising new models of democratic participation? — one of your first stops should be the London office of Hillary Wainwright, the British feminist, sometime-academic, magazine editor and activist. 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. Wainwright was born to a politically active family in the 1940s (her father, Richard Wainwright, was a Liberal Member of Parliament), and attended Oxford University in the late 1960s, graduating in 1970. She came of age with the women’s movement, worked with trade unionists and socialists, founded the influential independent left magazine, Red Pepper, and has written a number of acclaimed books that probe the deep dynamics of democratic change. Wainwright has effectively been a commoner for decades, mostly in the guise of an academic sociologist and activist-journalist. But she is no ideologue or policy wonk; Wainwright prefers to nose around the messy frontiers of movement politics to learn what is animating new democratic possibilities. Theory has its place in her world, but only if firmly grounded on closely observed, empirical realities. A classic in Wainwright’s oeuvre of political journalism and commentary is her account of the “participatory budgeting” process pioneered by the City of Porto Alegre, Brazil. In a lengthy chapter her 2004 book Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (updated and re-issued in paperback this month), Wainwright describes in great detail how Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT), under the leadership of the city’s mayor, Olivio Dutra, opened up the budgetary process to all citizens. At one point, some 40,000 people in Porto Alegre participated in plenary sessions to help decide how municipal revenues would be spent. While Wainwright clearly applauds the participatory-budgeting experiment, she is also willing to ask the hard questions, like, Why did the participatory budgeting process decline in the years since 2004, when the Workers’ Party in Porto Alegre lost the mayorship? Why did he lose the mayorship and what does this experience tell us about the relation of political parties to particpatory democracy? How can a “non-state public sphere” such as citizen assemblies continue to be taken seriously and share power with the state? She offers a variety of complex and subtle explanations, but aptly compares the challenge of participatory budgeting to “riding a bike over difficult terrain — you have to keep pedaling simply to stay upright and maintain your sense of direction.” Wainwright is no armchair pundit. She expends a lot of shoe leather in studying innovations in social change. She has ventured to the smaller towns of Britain, for example, to learn how ex-squatters joined with local vicars and residents to gain control of public resources. She went to Italy and Spain to explore modest experiments in popular democracy there. She has studied how trade unionists in Norway and the city of Newcastle in the North of England successfully fought privatization and put forward their own innovative models for social services. Although primarily an activist, Wainwright keeps a foothold in academic institutions, recognizing their potential importance in building the commons. For example, the International Center for Participatory Studies at Peace Studies and Department at Bradford University, in West Yorkshire, provided an important sounding board as Wainwright updated Reclaim the State. She also has a pantheon of academic heroes, including the sociologist C. Wright Mills, and Ralph Miliband, a Marxist political theorist and sociologist who was once her mentor. Unlike many academics, Wainwright is not shy about plunging into the rough-and-tumble of politics and government. In 1982, she headed up the ‘popular planning unit’ part of the Economic Policy Department of the Greater London Council, a government body that managed a number of critical London-wide services, from roads, housing and public transportation to fire-fighting, emergency planning and waste disposal. When left-wingers in the Labor Party took control of the GLC in 1982, propelling Ken Livingstone into its leadership, the GLC initiated a series of policies to push power outward to localities as much as possible. For the next five years, the GLC also made its documents and budgets highly transparent, and invited citizens to participate in the GLC through local and citywide public assemblies and other more direct forms of participation. The Council was a robust experiment in re-inventing the delivery of public services. To Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was then pushing her savage laissez-faire agenda of privatization and deregulation, however, the GLC’s popularity was a threat.. Its new and attractive democratic model of local government and its institutional transparency and openness stood for everything she was against and showed that marketization was not the only route to reform. Ken Livingstone went out of his way to be a magnet for the idea that there was an alternatives to the Tories, by highlighting the unemployment and social strife they were causing. Prime Minister Thatcher responded by abruptly abolishing the GLC in 1985. Thus began a new chapter for Wainwright, who returned to academia and wrote first about the Labor Party. Then after a visit to Czechoslovakia in 1989 she worked on a stirring rebuttal to the free-market right published in 1993 as the book Arguments for a New Left. Following the collapse of a political newspaper called Socialist, which had brought together environmentalists, socialists and trade unionists, Wainwright and others decided that the left-of-center needed a new publication that would be independent of any party and aligned with an eclectic array of progressive political factions — feminists, environmentalists, socialists, trade unionists, consumer advocates, and others. The result was Red Pepper, a feisty political monthly magazine launched in 1995. Wainwright once told a reporter that she had discovered an archival copy of an Estonian magazine with the tagline, “We will throw pepper at bureaucrats and capitalists the world over!” — which inspired her to suggest the name Red Pepper. The magazine’s original tagline, “Spicing Up the Left,” has morphed to “Raising the Political Temperature” and now “Spicing Up Politics.” Red Pepper’s editorial charter declares its commitment to “internationalism; sustainable, socially useful production; welfare not warfare; and self-determination and democracy.” It holds itself forth as “a resource for all those who imagine and work to create another world ? a world based on equality, solidarity and democracy.” “We want to stimulate new forms of political agency,” Wainwright once told a reporter, “—first by providing a forum or cauldron of debate. But a forum with a purpose. We campaign as well as debate..” Red Pepper has always been a volunteer-based effort with a precarious budget. But it has also attracted many big-name political and cultural figures, such as Billy Bragg, Harold Pinter, Tony Benn and David Hare and leading academics, which, at times, has given it an outsized influence in mainstream political circles. A recent issue of the attractive, well-designed magazine, which is also available online, includes articles that take stock of the global justice movement since Seattle; the need for a shift of power and wealth from the global North to the global South in order to avert climate catastrophe; and an account of popular democracy in the barrios of Venezuela. The magazine’s website is a rare, non-aligned political forum for all the progressive voices that may not get a fair hearing in party politics, but which inspire the passions of ordinary citizens. Wainwright now spends time raising money to try to stabilize the future finances of the magazine and attract a new generation of readers. Her other major commitment is the New Politics Project at the Transnational Institute, based in Amsterdam. Working with a collaborator, Italian activist-researcher-writer Marco Berlinguer, Wainwright is now doing research responding to “the exhaustion of our existing institutions, including many of those on the Left.” There is ever-more curiosity about collective and social organization, she said, and a political backlash against trickle-down economics and neoliberalism. But, she adds, “There is also insufficient thinking about the principles, forms and problmes of alternative institutions.” Wainwright and Berlinguer, an expert on networked politics, are now talking to economists, political and cultural theorists and activists in many different spheres of change, hoping to find some new answers. One avenue that clearly intrigues them is the promise of the commons — a theme that was much in evidence at the Barcelona Free Culture Forum, which Wainwright and Berlinguer attended in November 2009. At the event, activists from diverse digital tribes readily embraced the commons as a way to describe their many collaborative communities — free software, Wikipedia, open-access publishing, music remixes and video mashups, among other forms of shared creativity. “The commons is a good concept for a foundation of a more systematic sort. But we need to give it greater institutional form so that it’s not just rhetorical and vague. It has to catch the imagination.” She added, “We also have to distinguish between different kinds of commons that require different kinds of institutions. Some commons involve everyone, such as money, the environment and knowledge, while other commons are more self-defined and self-selected..” Wainwright is impressed by the “naturalness with which free culture movement treats information as a commons. It is self-evidently the right thing to do, and establishing the commons in practice is infectious and self-reinforcing.” Free culture, she points out, “has revived the aspiration for the socialization or “common-ization” of basic resources” — an aspiration that is under siege in instances of public services, health and education and natural resources like water and energy. “The commons offers a rich but non-domineering framework of options for institutionalizing forms that are in the interests of everyone,” Wainwright said. The great value of free culture, she said, is that it serves as “a type of social imaginary” for entertaining a broader political vision. Wainwright is quick to caution, however: “We need to think about the role of government and political institutions as framers of these commons. We have to address material institutions and the political economy of virtual institutions. How can people earn lifelihoods? How do we safeguard virtual commons?” As we confront the implosion of the free-market fundamentalism and the crisis of legitimacy that it has spawned, and ponder the promise of the commons paradigm, we should be grateful that Wainwright is on the case: a seasoned political analyst, sociologist and frontline activist whose self-assigned role is “to explore experiments in social transformation that can go beyond existing institutions.” Wainwright’s flinty realism is a tonic: “The institutions that are supposed to reproduce daily life and incapable of acting on behalf of the people any more,” she says, “so we need to produce our own institutional alternatives based on micro-experiments and universal values.” It is fortunate that, as new forms of commons emerge from so many quarters, there will be an astute chronicler and critic with pen in hand.” Categories: News
John Robb: extending the law of asymmetric competition to the whole economyWould it be possible for a community of small groups and/or a plethora of individuals within an open source economy to decisively outcompete the dominant global system? I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is an unqualified yes. An open source economy, a place where ideas are free from ownership, would gain a decisive competitive advantage over a traditional economy very quickly. In my three laws of asymmetric competition, a standard slide in my presentation, I claim that the open source business model outflanks pure for-profit plays for a number of reasons. John Robb applies the same idea to the whole economy, and explains why the new system of open source economies necessarily outcooperates its rivals: 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. Let’s use an extreme and idealized example of a near term future to demonstrate the point. There are one million people in the open source economy. Each person has a desktop manufacturing device and a high speed connection to everyone else in the community. A couple people develop an idea , or more specifically a design, for a simple set of devices (circuit boards + housing + wireless comms) that intelligently manages a home’s electricity usage for a savings of 25%. In the open source economy, that idea is freely shared. It is then copied, in a growing cascade, by nearly everyone that can use it. They all print the device and deploy it into their home. Within weeks/months of the idea’s release nearly all 1 million homes of the economy’s network are saving 25% off of their electricity bill for only the cost of the smattering of materials required to build it. Within a month or two of that initial release, another innovation on the innovation arrives, that shaves 35% off of the cost of the electricity. The wave continues, on and on. Each step results in full societal benefit, since the full savings for each member that installs it can be applied to other activities (all boats rise).” Categories: News
Links for 2010-03-09 [del.icio.us]
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Future Internet and Society: A Complex Systems PerspectiveThe 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:
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
The preliminary programme will be published in February. For more information please visit the ESF Research Conferences website: http://www.esf.org/conferences/10341 Categories: News
Tribes vs. P2PDavid 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. To quote P2P blog author Michel Bauwens: “Ignacio de Castro has written a fine trilogy on medieval p2p-like practices, that is somehow framed as a challenge to our p2p approach. It describes the practices of jewish maghrebi traders in the Middle Ages and their international support network, and wonders why they ultimately lost against their Genovese more ‘capitalist’ competitors. Ignacio asks: could the same defeat happen to contemporary P2P practices and communities?” Bauwens voiced his doubts, and so did I. 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. Categories: News
Links for 2010-03-08 [del.icio.us]
Categories: News
Dominic Muren on the three pillars of HumblefactureClear 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. In order to be free to make what is appropriate for them, people must have appropriate knowledge, agency, and resources. The three pillars of Humblefacture address these needs: 1) Tools for making should be high information, not high energy. By far the most common response to someone who says we need to remake manufacturing is “but we can already make anything we want”. Modern industry may be able to make anything, but only with huge, expensive, proprietary, and specialized machinery. To illustrate what I mean, let’s do a little thought experiment, using Humblefacture’s Robot ally, Makerbot (for those of you not in the know yet, Makerbot is a low cost, open source machine which can fabricate plastic parts using 3d digital files). If we made three objects — one made by Makerbot, one made by injection molding, and one made by hand carving — what would the costs be? Injection molding is cheap, but high initial cost(giant metal molds and machinery) and relatively inflexible, design-wise. Hand carving is flexible(it takes just as much effort to carve any old shape), but expensive, and requires a high degree of skill not available to most makers. Makerbot is more expensive than molding, but cheaper than carving(because of automation and reduced need for skill), and as flexible as carving. Most importantly, sharing the descriptions of objects is easier than either molding or hand carving (which bolsters pillar 3). Ideally, a semi-skilled Humblefactory will use high data, flexible machines like Makerbot. However, plastic extrusion is only one type of fabrication we should be exploring, especially given plastic’s dubious compatibility with pillar number 2. We need computer controlled sewing machines, computer controlled composite layup machines, and other machines we haven’t even thought of!! Any making technology can be made more useful through the use of computer numeric control. 2) Language should be a commons, therefore, the vocabulary of making must be a commons. Imagine what it would be like if you had free speech, but only within the narrow confines of a few select words and phrases. You might be allowed to say anything you wanted, but you wouldn’t be able to. Similarly, makers today suffer very few explicit restrictions on what we can or cannot make (some types of firearms and explosives are restricted). This does not mean we are able to make anything. Take the example of Thomas Thwaites, who for his graduate thesis endeavored to make a toaster from scratch. Don’t laugh, it’s not as easy as it looks. Indeed, it’s not as easy as it looks to make nearly anything, because we rely so much on far away, high energy, toxic, dangerous, or rare materials which through the magic of the global market economy become affordable at some hidden expense. Instead, Humblefactories will need to resurrect, discover, and develop materials, processes and tools which can be made we need to use tools, materials, and techniques that are available to local populations without large infrastructure development. 3) Objects should be composed of modular, interoperable components. Forget design for recycling, or disassembly. Think more about design for co-opting, hacking, reintegration, etc. Think about how object oriented programming enabled the open source software movement. Great communities like SourceForge are made possible because participants can share not only knowledge and assistance, but packets of code which can be dropped into new programs. Just as with programming, where libraries for graphics, sound, I/O, or printing allow quick generation of new programs, modular power supplies, drive trains, displays, wheels, and other parts would relieve the need for everyone to design everything. Instead, each designer creates what they are best at, and the group benefits from many exceptional components to combine however they see fit. This is perhaps the most complex of the pillars, because it requires standards to be set across many different disciplines — electronics, software, mechanisms, and power systems. But, ad-hoc groups have created pretty amazing standard-sets before (think of TCP, IP, HTTP, FTP, not to mention standardized bolt threads, battery sizes, and others). By combining Flexible Fabricators, Appropriate Materials, and Shareable Modules, a humblefactory will be able to make an almost infinite variety of objects to respond to whatever new problems arise to confront it. More importantly, because the makers using these techniques are empowered to make more choices and control more material and part fabrication themselves, they will have more input on what social, toxicological, and environmental costs are reasonable for their local situation. Just as in nature when local populations evolve to better use their resources and work within their ecology, so will humblefactory-equipped communities be better able to provide for their needs from their local capacity. Humblefacture’s mission is to work bring together as much information as possible on the progress toward making these three pillars a reality.” Categories: News
Al Jazeera on the Icelandic Modern Media InitiativeAl 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 Categories: News
Links for 2010-03-07 [del.icio.us]
Categories: News
Bolivia’s position about life forms patentabilityRecently 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: Here you can read the full review. Really interesting reading. ——————————————————————— 26 February 2010 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 _______________ I. INTRODUCTION 1. The purpose of this submission is to contribute to the work programme of 2. Article 27.3(b) allows Members to exclude from patentability plants and 3. The review of Article 27.3(b) is an issue within the mandate of the Doha 4. The review is also an issue within the mandate of the Doha Work Programme 5. The “Compilation of Outstanding Implementation Issues Raised by Members” “Tiret 91: The period given for implementation of the provisions of Article “Tiret 95: …[Article 27.3(b) to be amended (...) The amendments should “Proposal by Least-Developed Countries 22 October 2001: The General Council II. PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE OF REVIEW OF ARTICLE 27.3(B) 6. Over the years, various submissions and proposals have been made on the 7. Meanwhile various developments have taken place at different national, 8. First, and for us most importantly, in January 2009 the people of Bolivia Article 255 paragraph II: Negotiation, signature and ratification of * Respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and peasants. * Harmony with nature, protection of biodiversity and prohibition of private 9. Another important development is the adoption of the United Nations 10. Further Article 31 of the Declaration recognises that “indigenous 11. Furthermore extensive patenting of life forms, misappropriation of III. ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION 12. This communication is a brief introduction to some of the issues that A. PATENTING OF LIFE FORMS 13. The rationale behind Article 27.3(b) is not clear. This relates to the 14. There is no reason why “micro-organisms”, “micro-biological processes” 15. Moreover, by giving Members the option whether or not to exclude the 16. Consequently, since the adoption of the TRIPS Agreement, there has been 17. Firstly, most of the patent holders and applicants are from developed 18. The resulting effect is concentration of ownership of patents in a few 19. Patenting of life forms promotes an imbalance in the current 20. There is also an ethical dimension to the issue. The patenting of life B. PROTECTION OF PLANT VARIETIES 21. The issue of protection of plant varieties is also of concern to the 22. Firstly, in several developed countries, patenting of plants is already 23. Fourthly, pressures are often placed on countries to accept a certain 24. In this sense, the new Constitution of Bolivia is a step towards C. TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES 25. The process of review of Article 27.3(b) should take into account the 26. One of the cornerstones of Bolivia’s new Constitution is full respect 27. The indigenous peoples’ cosmovision has been a structural element in the 28. In addition, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous 29. Therefore, the Plurinational State of Bolivia shall prevent the IV. CONCLUSION 30. Following the above, we conclude on the need to urgently review Article (a) prohibit the patenting of all life forms, including plants and animals (b) ensure the protection of the innovations of indigenous and local farming (c) prevent anti-competitive practices which threaten food sovereignty of (d) to protect the rights of indigenous communities and prevent any private 31. The above-mentioned issues are long outstanding and thus the delegation __________ 1 “Cosmovision” denotes a set of concepts and beliefs related to the Categories: News
Peter Linebaugh on the principles of commoningVia 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. The activity of commoning is conducted through labor with other resources; it does not make a division between “labor” and “natural resources.” On the contrary, it is labor which creates something as a resource, and it is by resources that the collectivity of labor comes to pass. As an action it is thus best understood as a verb rather than as a “common pool resource.” Both Lovelock’s ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ and the environmentalism of Rachel Carson were attempts to restore this perspective. Commoning is primary to human life. Scholars used to write of ‘primitive communism’. ‘The primary commons’ renders the experience more clearly. Scarcely a society has existed on the face of the earth which has not had at its heart the commons; the commodity with its individualism and privatization was strictly confined to the margins of the community where severe regulations punished violators. Commoning begins in the family. The kitchen where production and reproduction meet, and the energies of the day between genders and between generations are negotiated. The momentous decisions in the sharing of tasks, in the distribution of product, in the creation of desire, and in sustaining health are first made here. Commoning is historic. The ‘village commons’ of English heritage or the ‘French commune’ of the revolutionary past are remnants from this history, reminding us that despite stages of destruction parts have survived, though often in distorted fashion as in welfare systems, or even as their opposite as in the realtor’s gated community or the retailer’s mall. Commoning has always had a spiritual significance expressed as sharing a meal or a drink, in archaic uses derived from monastic practices, in recognition of the sacred habitus. Theophany, or the appearance of the divine principle, is apprehended in the physical world and its creatures. In north America (“turtle island”) this principle is maintained by indigenous people. Commons is antithetical to capital. Commmoners are quarrelsome (no doubt), yet the commons is without class struggle. To be sure, capital can arise from the commons, as part is sequestrated off and used against the rest. This begins with inegalitarian relations, among the Have Lesses and the Have Mores. The means of production become the way of destruction, and expropriation leads to exploitation, the Haves and Have Nots. Capital derides commoning by ideological uses of philosophy, logic, and economics which say the commons is impossible or tragic. The figures of speech in these arguments depend on fantasies of destruction – the desert, the life-boat, the prison. They always assume as axiomatic that concept expressive of capital’s bid for eternity, the a-historical ‘Human Nature.’ Communal values must be taught, and renewed, continuously. The ancient court leet resolved quarrels of over-use; the panchayat in India did – and sometimes still does — the same, like the way a factory grievance committee is supposed to be; the jury of peers is a vestigial remnant which determines what a crime is as well as who’s a criminal. The “neighbor” must be put back into the “hood,” as they say in Detroit, like the people’s assemblies in Oaxaca. Commoning has always been local. It depends on custom, memory, and oral transmission for the maintenance of its norms rather than law, police, and media. Closely associated with this is the independence of the commons from government or state authority. The centralized state was built upon it. It is, as it were, ‘the pre-existing condition.’ Therefore, commoning is not the same as the communism of the USSR. The commons is invisible until it is lost. Water, air, earth, fire – these were the historic substances of subsistence. They were the archaic physics upon which metaphysics was built. Even after land began to be commodified during English Middle Ages it was written, But to buy water or wind or wit or fire the fourth, We distinguish ‘the common’ from ‘the public’. We understand the public in contrast to the private, and we understand common solidarity in contrast to individual egotism. The commons has always been an element in human production even when capitalism acquired the hoard or laid down the law. The boss might ‘mean business’ but nothing gets done without respect. Otherwise, sabotage and the shoddy result. Commoning is exclusive inasmuch as it requires participation. It must be entered into. Whether on the high pastures for the flock or the light of the computer screen for the data, the wealth of knowledge, or the real good of hand and brain, requires the posture and attitude of working alongside, shoulder to shoulder. This is why we speak neither of rights nor obligations separately. Human thought cannot flourish without the intercourse of the commons. Hence, the first amendment linking the rights of speech, assembly, and petition. “ Categories: News
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