March 2011 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Time for revolution?
by Kevin Carson 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

Sent to you by Kevin Carson via Google Reader: Time for revolution? via Stumbling and Mumbling by chris dillow on 3/13/11 To what extent are the conditions in place for a Marxian revolution? I’m prompted to ask by Miljenko: Whilst the rich lever evermore power for themselves, the rest of us who were looking to do all sorts of open source-type things in both virtual and offline communities…suddenly find ourselves back in an awful rat-race of laboratory rodent-like relationships. This echoes the standard Marxian view of how capitalism will be supplanted by socialism. This will happen, Marx said, when capitalist relations of production, instead of stimulating growth, actually retard technical progress, and when discontent with living standards creates a revolutionary working class. As Jon Elster put it in the standard interpretation of Marx*: The capitalist relations of production become suboptimal for the development of the productive forces at the very moment when they also become increasingly suboptimal with respect to their human use. The former guarantees the viability of communism, the latter provides the motivation for the communist revolution. (Making Sense of Marx, p294). In some respects, as Miljenko points out, this is happening. On the one hand, hierarchical profit-oriented capitalism is incapable of maximizing the development and use of IT, as its opportunities cannot easily be monetized; for this reason, the “IT revolution“ has not significantly altered GDP growth. And yet on the other hand, ordinary workers in the UK face not only lower real wages as they bear the cost of the financial crisis, but also (for those who keep their jobs**) a reversal of the long-term reduction in life-time working hours; the debt bondage imposed upon future graduates, plus the “pensions crisis” threaten to lengthen the working lifetimes of millions of workers. These worsening working conditions, however, co-exist alongside the increasing enrichment of a small minority. So far, so Marxist. There are, though, some unMarxian features of our current predicament. I don’t mean that the tendency for the rate of profit to fall hasn’t operated. The low rate of business investment suggests that there has been a decline in profitable opportunities - a fact related to capitalism’s inability to monetize and therefore develop the new technologies. Instead, I’m thinking of a lack of class consciousness. One manifestation of this is an ignorance of the source of inequality. Bankers' bonuses are routinely ascribed to greed. Such moralizing misses the point - that they arise from power. Whilst anti-Marxists sometimes like to snark that it is workers rather than shareholders who are appropriating wealth, this exemplifies Marx’s more general point - that the powerful exploit the powerless, and that the capitalist economy is only superficially “a very Eden of the innate rights of man.” Related to this, there is almost no thinking on the mainstream left about what an alternative to capitalism would look like. All we get are campaigns for banks and companies to pay more tax - oblivious to the fact that they have the power not only to resist such demands, but to shift the burden of such taxes onto other even in the unlikely event of such demands being met. What’s not being asked is: what (if any) forms of economic organization would both develop productive forces/technology and at least ameliorate “the awful rat-race of laboratory rodent-like relationships“? Herein, though, lies an awkward question. Could it be that there is (so far) no answer to this - because two of the things that compel us to work longer are not artefacts of capitalism and thus remediable by revolution, but an inevitable fact of any form of economic organization? Take pensions. The fact is that if we are living longer then we must either save more, or work longer, or suffer a fall in living standards in our old age. This is a problem of fact, unrelated to the capitalist mode of production or mere conjunctural facts such as the budget deficit and low gilt yields which are contributing to low annuity rates. Or take the cost of education. This would rise over time simply because of Baumol’s cost disease; the productivity of teaching doesn’t grow much and so its relative cost would increase. Someone must pay for this. My point here is not to argue for or against revolution. Instead, it is to ask what could and could not be achieved by alternative forms of economic organization. My problem is that this question is not even being asked. And I for one lament Marx’s lack of influence in this sense. * Standard in my house anyway. ** As Joan Robinson said, in capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited is being not exploited. Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Stumbling and Mumbling using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

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Distributed stakeholder ownership?
by Michel Bauwens 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

I find this a very pregnant concept by Sepp, and I'm proposing to use this as the central idea behind 'physical' peer property, I wonder if someone can help me develop a wiki entry on this< see: Perhaps we could consider both users and producers to be stakeholders. In each type of enterprise, some of us hold a greater stake in consumption, some of us are predominantly producers. But all of us have an interest in the activity to continue. So perhaps ownership should be with those who have an interest, be it the producers, be it the consumers. Distributed stakeholder ownership? -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Michigan: The Transformation Manifesto
by Samuel Rose 18 Mar '11

18 Mar '11

What do you all think?: http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto Michigan: The Transformation Manifesto >From P2P Foundation Contents - 1 Contributors<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 2 "Michigan is Screwed"<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 3 Energy<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 4 Education<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 5 Manufacturing<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 6 Research and Development<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 7 Food systems<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 8 Jobs<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 9 Government<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 10 Your additions here<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> - 11 References<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> Contributors - I'm Sam Rose, from the Foundation or Peer To Peer Alternatives http://p2pfoundation.net/ and co-founder http://futureforwardinstitute.com/ I am a Michigan native, former blue collar worker and now independent business person. "Michigan is Screwed" See: http://www.youtube.com/embed/AUpO1QFMDtM It's likely you are highly aware of the current political situation that people in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and other struggling industrial states are facing. In Michigan in particular it looks to me like the goal of Rick Snyder and the legislators that control the Michigan House/Senate is to tear down 20th century community infrastructures, starting from the bottom up. The reality is that if the people in power in Michigan now fully succeed, private mega corporations will queue up to enclose property, extract wealth and resources at lightning speed, further impoverish our community's most vulnerable members, push out those willing to fight by making their lives and communities miserable, and put whomever is left on their knees. They want our money flowing out of our pockets and communities, and their cheaply made worthless crap flowing in. They want to grab our land, our trees, frack out our natural gas and deplete our water, and run our soil down to clay. They want to push people out of the largest cities, fence of the empty land, bulldoze the buildings and sit on the land waiting for a future day when it's value increases. They want to do all of this while paying next to no taxes, employing none of the people of Michigan, and investing nothing back into the communities. They already got a huge amount of the money out of our communities by way of fraudulant mortgage scams that destroyed the economies of several countries around the world. They can make it more miserable for any of us that don't pick up and leave by: increasing our taxes (the elderly and retired, the poor, etc). Making our schools so deplorable that no one will want to move to our communities. And, whenever possible, declaring an "emergency" and dissolving local government, installing private corporations in their place with license to do whatever they want without any oversight. I am willing to bet that most of you that voted for Rick Snyder and the people in Michigan Congress probably did not vote for what I describe above. I'll bet that your ancestors didn't fight to get you to where you are now, just to see us all start to slip back towards whatever they came here to get away from. However, the sad fact is that what I describe above is now upon you, and all of us. Fortunately for us, we don't have to accept this reality. We currently have all of the building blocks we need to turn things around for ourselves here in a relatively short amount of time. A clue comes to us from our own state's past. At the turn of the 19th-20th century, automobiles were prohibitively expensive for all but a few people. One of the reasons was a monopoly on the designs of automotive technology by George B. Selden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden Selden and associate's efforts to protect their patents led to a battle with Henry Ford, which resulted in a decision by courts to open up automotive technology for those that were not using the Selden engine design. >From Open Source - History and Development Adrienne Walker San Jose State University http://infosherpas.com/ojs/index.php/openandlibraries/article/view/43/65: *Free sharing and open source are not 21st century ideas, we tend to think of open source as a way of being connected to the Internet as software but open source was in existence early in the 20th century although it took a different form. That form was automobile manufacturing. For those of you familiar with early automotive history, Henry Ford challenged the patent of George Selden. Selden had a chokehold on the automobile industry but Ford won a challenge to Selden's patent (The history of free and open source, 2009). Henry Fords breakthrough initiated the beginning of open source in the modern age and coupled with the formation of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association was influential in creating cross-licensing agreements. Cross-licensing agreements existed between the United States automobile manufacturers of the day. Each automobile manufacturing company modified the technology and filed patents, these patents were shared, and no exchange of money, no lawsuits and an industry thrived (The history of free and open source, 2009).* [1]<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> We can do this again in Michigan. We can start in our own communities, re-building our economies around sharing not just technology, but also production of food, energy, and knowledge. Energy *There's enough wind and solar power across the state of Michigan to run the whole state on wind and solar energy alone.* Open sourcing the technology for wind, solar, and batteries for hybrid/electric cars would create an explosion of innovation across the state and in the region, and eventually worldwide. If we really want to get into manufacturing green energy in the state of Michigan, the fastest route will be by way of creating sound design cores for small wind generators and solar collectors/solar and releasing them under an open license (like TAPR for instance http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html ) Our first step can be to install hybrid solar/wind in as many individua locations as possible (some neighbrhoods can team up and group buy for a whole block), and install them in a way that turns the current electrical grid into a "Net metering" grid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering We can also start processing our plant and animal waste in open source biodigesters to produce electricity (example http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Biogas ) and our agricultural and surburban landscaping refuse into new soil and biofuel. Much of this new infrastructure can be managed by user-owned cooperatives where needed. Education It's time to create cooperatives where parents and teachers are the owners of school systems. Most cirricular development can be released under creative commons licenses (as seen withhttp://wikieducator.org/OERF:Home http://ftacademy.org/ http://www.oercommons.org/ etc etc ) Parents can work with teachers and their students to adaptively shape learning over time. *No more showing up in cinderblock buildings and being trained to be told what to do at the expense of truly learning how and why to do it. We teach children CRITICAL THINKING and skills to solve problems on their own with little or nothing to work with except their minds. Children are no longer raw material to be shaped into employees for big business. They are now taught to invent, build, experiment, create and destroy, co-manage and co-govern anywhere anytime with anything. They are taught actual history and left to decide for themselves. They are taught to produce their *own* food, energy, information systems as needed. They are taught to be programmers, not users. Makers, not consumers. Independent problem solvers, not employees. This is 21st century education in Michigan.* Manufacturing Manufacturing in Michigan will become small, distributed, diverse and massively adaptable and interoperable. Designs are shared and improved constantly. Technology cooperatives not only design and produce physhical hardware and software technology for people, but they also teach people how to do this themselves, and how to effectively use technology. Existing manufacturing labor unions will help create these new technology cooperatives by taking their pension fund monies out of greedy wall street companies and re-investing in Local Economic Development. Tens of thousands of people who are laid off from jobs will also pool resources to create these Technology Cooperatives throughout the state. This could happen here in Michigan within one year. Research and Development Michigan Technology Cooperatives can invest their surplus resources in ongoing open source research and development, driven by the needs of people in Michigan and throughout the US and world. Students learn to participate in this activity at as early an age as possible. Food systems Food cooperatives and community supported agriculture have proven themselves in places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and elsewhere. As our world spirals into a collapse of global commercial energy and resource distribution, leading to increasing costs for imported goods, we can sidestep that problem and produce food locally and regionally. We can create enough food locally in Michigan to make imports a luxury-only source of food (instead of the majority of food source for our state). We can create community owned food cooperatives in every city in the state, while simultaneously bolstering the *hundreds of thousands of LOCAL food producers and retailers that already exist in this state*. Jobs *NO. No more jobs.* It is ALREADY fact that over 98% of businesses in Michigan are now small businesses[2]<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…>. This is in part because most of those who are left actually participating in economic activity stopped looking for a job about 5-6 years ago and started a business. So this is what we do, we start businesses, and we connect them together. Go pay the $10 and register a DBA with your name on it at the county clerk. You are now ready to do businesses. Team up with other people in your community to share what you are learning about starting and running your own collaborative business/enterprise. In some cases we start cooperatives, credit unions, and ways for people to invest and receive return on investment in their local community (and not just monetary investment). We stop saving our retirement savings in 401k and other Wall Street scams and we invest that money locally and receive a robust and healthy return on investment. Government When we're not busy having our faces shoved to the grindstone at a job, we're going to have some time to engage in Local, State, and Federal governments. However, we are also going to make them increasingly obsolete in the process. We are going to be able to come up with rules together via connective technologies like the internet. We're going to also be able to team up on government when we're not being listened to. *We can do it without political parties* following The Political Principles of Peer-to-Peer Advocacy<http://p2pfoundation.net/The_Political_Principles_of_Peer-to-Peer_Advocacy> . *No advocate of peer-to-peer politics wants all communications or activity routed through them. Bottlenecks are weaknesses.* Your additions here This is what transformation in Michigan means to me. What does it mean to you? I want to know. I'll faithfully incorporate whatever any of you contribute, and I will spread it around. It's time to get real, dig in and change this place, now. References 1. ↑<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> Special thanks to Nathan Oostendorp who made me aware of this part of Michigan industrial history when he presented this at http://igniteannarbor.com see http://ingenuitas.com/ 2. ↑<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michi…> http://levin.senate.gov/senate/smallbusiness/index.html Retrieved from " http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto" Category <http://p2pfoundation.net/Special:Categories>: P2P Politics<http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Politics> - This page was last modified on 18 March 2011, at 02:19. - Copyright Information<http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Foundation:Copyright> -- -- Sam Rose Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation Tel:+1(517) 639-1552 Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451 skype: samuelrose email: samuel.rose(a)gmail.com http://futureforwardinstitute.com http://forwardfound.org http://hollymeadcapital.com http://p2pfoundation.net http://socialmediaclassroom.com "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." - Carl Sagan

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Re: [P2P-F] feasible - legally - to set up an alternative government body in Wisconsin ?
by Mark Janssen 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 5:27 AM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks Mark. > Can I use your reply , in a reply to the p2pf list ? Absolutely, I thought I had CC'd them. > I am interested in building on the thought of "legitimacy", > and on "awareness by the public" regarding such processes of legitimacy. There is always some kind of legitimacy, the issue that ultimately has to be faced though is whether it scales without eventually just reproducing old battles. > In relation to governance, laws, and also monetary systems. > I also want to ask you and other people on the list, > if they know about further cases of "Temporary Autonomous Zones" in the form > of legally, constitutionally, validated events with a temporary > complementary government. The local Hawaiians have something similar to this. No U.S. representative is going to have the balls to take such a movement to court, I can guarantee you that. They have extremely little basis in which to fight. But best not to press the issue too much, less the special interests turn under-handed. Marcos

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4 yrs of factor e farm
by Michel Bauwens 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Dear Eli, I'm embedding this video on the 28th, see http://vimeo.com/19950597 ( http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/four-years-of-open-source-ecology-at-the-fact… ) if you want to add a text on the evolution of the project so far, that would be great, Michel -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Fwd: Article - Truthout : "Assault on Collective Bargaining Illegal, Says International Labor Rights Group"
by Michel Bauwens 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 8:01 PM Subject: Article - Truthout : "Assault on Collective Bargaining Illegal, Says International Labor Rights Group" To: econowmix(a)googlegroups.com, hc_ecology(a)yahoogroups.com, sustainable_solidarity(a)yahoogroups.com Assault on Collective Bargaining Illegal, Says International Labor Rights Group Sunday 13 March 2011 by: Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis <http://www.truth-out.org/assault-collective-bargaining-illegal-says-interna…> http://www.truth-out.org/assault-collective-bargaining-illegal-says-interna… http://www.nlg-laboremploy-comm.org/index.php?pr=HOME * The opening paragraph of the ICLR statement reads: As workers in the thousands and hundreds of thousands in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio and around the country demonstrate to protect the right of public sector workers to collective bargaining, the political battle has overshadowed any reference to the legal rights to collective bargaining. The political battle to prevent the loss of collective bargaining is reinforced by the fact that stripping any collective bargaining rights is blatantly illegal. Courts and agencies around the world have uniformly held the right of collective bargaining in the public sector is an essential element of the right of Freedom of Association, which is a fundamental right under both International law and the United States Constitution. * -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Re: [P2P-F] prince of networks and grid group theory
by Michel Bauwens 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Hi Andy, thanks for this genealogy!, would be nice to see this in an essay form one day <g> so the difference between CS and ER (gift economy), is that in CR, you have a general exchange with the whole, and indeed, you gain reputation by contributing the most, but there is no 'individual' expectation of any precise return to that whole, as long as enough individuals contribute enough to maintain the system going; in physical systems, this is regulated since the resource is scarce and needs replenishing; in 'immaterial systems', this is usually not so regulated (however any online CS system is predicated on a physical cooperation infrastructure which is predicated on scarcity rules and managed differentially from the online polarity) in the gift exchange you are exchanging between individuals, families, clans, tribes; in the case of potlach, the chief, representing a clan or tribe, 'gives' to the other tribe, thereby creating a clear debt to that other clan/tribe I don't see Linux as a gift chief giving to other clans/tribes, but rather as somebody seen as contributing the most to a particular commons, and thus, it's a CS and not a gift logic I think the psychology is different, i.e. Linux people would feel gratitude and respect to Linux for his contributions, and support him as a key asset, but would not feel to obligated to give back to the individual LInux as a competitive gift I see an ethical growth between authoritiy ranking, market pricing, gift economy, and communal shareholding, each one has a greater degree of gifting/sharing than the other; and therfore, I see CS dominance as part of an ethical growth ; of course, historically, the logic is rather CS / ER/ AR/ MP / CS This would mean a core of society governed by communal sharing, through commons for open knowledge, software and design; surrounded by a level of gift economy; surrounded by a level of market mechanisms; and finally surrounded by a level of hierarchical distribution, with the different levels in a level of 'subsidiarity' in other words, do whatever you can as communal shareholding (giving without direct expectation of return); if that doesn't work, what can work through gifting exchange (giving with indirect expectation of return), if that doesn't work, what can work through equivalent market exchange (giving with direct expectation of immediate return of same value), and if that doesn't work, what can work through some form of centrally decided allocation/distribution (centrally regulated obligated giving/receiving) This is the 'ethical' logic, I see, though in practice, a centrally allocated basic income, may actually be necessary for CS to work in a sustainable manner in the first place, Michel On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 8:19 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hiya, > > Well, the way you're talking about communal sharing reminds me a lot of the > fused-group in Sartre, its descendant the subject-group in Guattari, and its > close relative the bund/band/sect in Peterson, which is traced back to > Toennies. Communal ownership has been theorised by people like Owen J. > Lynch as underpinning traditional land-use rights in relation to CBNRM, > although i think it's being stretched a bit. There's other precedents in > anarcho-mutualism and utopian socialism (Fourier, Morris). Fourier's idea > of 'harmonisation' is intriguing, basically turning all problems of need > into common problems and seeking to solve them by systemic rearrangements > which turn problems into assets. Illich talks about certain > tools/technologies as 'convivial', implying something like CR, in various > works including Deschooling Society and Tools for Conviviality: something > like the phone system and the postal system would be a convivial tool > (roughly speaking, use-neutral and user-led), whereas the road system and > the school system would not be (because it imposes particular uses, has a > scarcity structure and is oriented to individualised/competitive use). He > talks about using low-tech alternatives, such as 2-way radios and > audiocassette networks instead of TV and radio, and electronic mules instead > of cars, as appropriate technologies in the South, in similar terms; ditto > his 'learning webs' as alternatives to school. His work actually reads > nowadays as proto-internet. Something else to look at might be > autoreduction, the idea of making services (public transport, electricity, > etc) free/common by refusing to pay, which emerged in Italy from autonomia: > http://libcom.org/history/autoreduction-movements-turin-1974 > > I can see why you'd make the move from gift economy to CR. But how would > this fit with the authority/status which accrues to people like Linus > Torvalds and Assange? This would fit very well with gift economy (the > cyber-chief accumulates status by means of disproportionately large > contributions, as in potlatch, Big Man systems etc) and not so well with CR > (why would contributions be recognised if contributions count as if from a > single body?) > > bw > Andy > > > > On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 7:53 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com>wrote: > >> Hi Andy, >> >> thanks a lot for this, >> >> defining all the characteristics of p2p would take some time, >> >> but in a nutshell, from >> http://p2pfoundation.net/Relational_Model_Typology_-_Fiske >> >> Communal Sharing (CS) is a relationship in which people treat some dyad or >> group as equivalent and undifferentiated with respect to the social domain >> in question. Examples are people using a commons (CS with respect to >> utilization of the particular resource), people intensely in love (CS with >> respect to their social selves), people who "ask not for whom the bell >> tolls, for it tolls for thee" (CS with respect to shared suffering and >> common well-being), or people who kill any member of an enemy group >> indiscriminately in retaliation for an attack (CS with respect to collective >> responsibility). >> >> >> >> I'm starting to list the essential concepts here as well: >> http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Companion_Concepts >> >> >> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Hiya, >>> >>> Actor-network theory (ANT) which Latour is associated with, views >>> everything which exists (people, animals, objects) as 'actors', these actors >>> as arranged more-or-less horizontally in networks, and seeks to analyse the >>> composition of particular networks (e.g. science as an interaction of >>> scientists with one another, with their equipment, with whatever they're >>> studying, etc). It's a bit different from peer-to-peer in that, while it's >>> an anti-authoritarian view, it doesn't really distinguish horizontal and >>> vertical organisations, and the actors can co-constitute in different ways - >>> in a sense, peer-to-peer would lose its specificity when everyone and >>> everything is a peer. Also, it would imply that something like open-source >>> programming is not simply a network of programmers, or even programmers and >>> users, but also of computers, peripherals, bits of code and so on, which are >>> all actors in their own right. It's certainly similar to peer-to-peer >>> approaches but it would be hard to unpack its influence from other >>> horizontalist theories, e.g. Deleuze and Situationism, which precede it by a >>> long way (ANT really took off in the 80s, horizontalism has been around >>> since the 60s), and contempotaries such as Hakim Bey. If I was tracing a >>> genealogy for peer-to-peer ideas it would probably go from Situationism to >>> culture-jamming (things like subvertising, subway graffiti, street theatre), >>> to DIY activism in the techno field (such as phone phreaking, rave and >>> pirate radio), to early hacker culture, to peer-to-peer, but I might be >>> wrong. (Also, weren't some of the early hacktivists rather >>> techno-progressivist? This would sit badly with perspectives such as ANT). >>> ANT is mostly used in Science and Technology Studies, but has become a >>> significant force in sociology too. Certainly worth reading up on if you're >>> interested in networks more broadly than in the computer setting. I think >>> Latour has written his own introduction to ANT as well. Latour declares his >>> own inspiration to be Gabriel Tarde, who would arguably be a further >>> 'original' a long time before - though I think some variety of peer-to-peer >>> production has been around since time immemorial. >>> >>> What would you take to be the defining characteristics/ideas of p2p? I >>> can probably tell you when they first popped-up in theory. >>> >>> bw >>> Andy >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net >> >> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: >> http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation >> >> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; >> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens >> >> >> >> >> >> > -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Re: [P2P-F] dialoguecafe.org
by Michel Bauwens 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

indeed seems similar to video-bridging, On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Dante-Gabryell Monson < dante.monson(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Although it is possible to do this with relatively affordable webcams, > the "dialogue cafe" mentioned below reminds me of video conferencing room > approaches promoted by Franz N. in the past ? > > http://dialoguecafe.org/ > * > * > * <http://dialoguecafe.org/>excerpt : > * > * <http://dialoguecafe.org/> > * > * <http://dialoguecafe.org/>"Dialogue Cafe enables face to face > conversations between diverse groups of people from around the world so that > they can share experiences, learn from each other and work together to make > the world a better place. Dialogue Cafes are now open in Rio de Janeiro, > Lisbon and Amsterdam."* > -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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self-publishing
by Michel Bauwens 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

can someone in the coop keep track of this for our publishing projects, see: http://clive-shepherd.blogspot.com/2011/03/adventures-in-self-publishing-i.… -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Re: [P2P-F] From Dictatorship to Democracy
by Michel Bauwens 17 Mar '11

17 Mar '11

Hi Zbig, I learned about gene sharp back in my university days (1977-81) in my courses on polemology, but never studied his work in detail, I've read a few similar articles about this linkage, but it's true, no material so far in our own pages, but this is perhaps we are less activist/resistance/uprising oriented and more about constructing a counter-economy, it's the combination of both mass action and constructive alternatives and policy reforms, that will ultimately win the day, otherwise, if they just achieve liberal plutocratic democracy, they will have just achieved to be in the same mess as we are in, it beats dictatorships, but doesn't solve any fundamental problem apart from that, Michel On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Zbigniew Lukasiak <zzbbyy(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/02/23/f-carol-off-gene-sharp-middle… > > I don't find anything on Gene Sharp on the p2p foundation web pages - but > if what they write is true - this is a major insight into the nature of > recent events. > > Cheers, > Zbigniew > > -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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