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Re: [P2P-F] An update on BIBO, financial stability standards, and the debt-virus hypothesis
by Michel Bauwens 08 Feb '11

08 Feb '11

thanks a lot Olivier, if you hear from the english translation at some point, thanks for letting me know! On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 12:19 PM, olivier auber <olivierauber2(a)gmail.com>wrote: > Bonjour matinal Michel, > > Sur ce sujet, j'attire ton attention sur un auteur français à l'origine > d'une très intéressante "théorie relative de la monnaie" qui permet de > calculer très exactement différentes choses, notamment l'expansion de la > masse monétaire conduisant à une économie durable, ainsi que le montant du > Dividende Universel qui serait le vecteur de cette expansion. > > Il s'appelle Stéphane Laborde. > > Le livre est ici : > http://www.creationmonetaire.info/2010/11/theorie-relative-de-la-monnaie-10… > Le blog là : http://www.creationmonetaire.info/ > > Malheureusement, tout cela n'existe qu'en français pour le moment. > Un traduction en anglais est en cours, je crois. > > Amicalement > > Olivier > > > > > > 2011/2/8 Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> > >> >> Dear Sepp, >> >> because the discussion is largely technical, this is all I can do, but >> perhaps you can add an extra comment? >> >> also, if you are in contact with Marc, please give him a chance to say >> something about the evolution of the bibo project since december 2009, >> >> Michel >> >> >> <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/understanding-the-logic-of-intervallic-period…> >> >> >> <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=13869> >> [image: photo of Michel Bauwens] >> Michel Bauwens >> 16th February 2011 >> >> In December 2009, Sepp Hasslberger introduced to us Bibo, a proposed >> standard for stable currencies, that would replace the current inherently >> unstable banking money system. >> >> This article has become our most comment rich article, in particular >> through a recurring debate between one of the Bibo co-authors Marc, and >> Ardeshir Mehta. >> >> Ardeshir has written an article that challenges one of the main points of >> monetary reformers, i.e. that the current system leads to the infinite >> creation of debt through compound interest. >> >> You can find it here<http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/DebunkingTheDebt-VirusHypothesis.html> >> . >> >> The context: >> >> *“Currently, most if not all money is loaned into existence by banks, and >> is thus based on interest-bearing debt. There is no question that neither >> interest nor debt-based money are good for society, and I have written >> denouncing both debt and interest elsewhere. However, there is a fairly >> common thesis, based on the fact that money is loaned into existence as >> interest-bearing debt, that if new loans are not continually being issued in >> ever-increasing amounts, enough money will not be created to pay the >> interest on existing loans; and as a result, at least some those loans will >> be defaulted upon, resulting in inevitable foreclosures. “* >> >> >> -- >> 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 >> >> Commons Strategies Group, http://www.commonsstrategies.org/ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> P2P Foundation - Mailing list >> http://www.p2pfoundation.net >> https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation >> >> > > > -- > Olivier Auber > 0675038880 > -- 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 Commons Strategies Group, http://www.commonsstrategies.org/

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PhD in "Open Source" Urbanism Solutions for Bucharest (Romania)
by Geo Scripcariu 08 Feb '11

08 Feb '11

Hi All, Considerably influenced by the work "Situated Technologies Pamphlets 2: Urban Versioning System 1.0", I started a PhD last Autumn (2010) at the "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest (UAIUM), Romania, concentrating on the concept of "Open Source" Urbanism and its potential practical solutions to the various problems of Bucharest, the capital city of my country. Let me briefly introduce myself: I graduated Software Engineering at the Computer Science faculty of the Politehnica University of Bucharest, and I studied Japanese language and Culture at The Jesuit School in Tokyo, Japan. I hold a MA in the Management of Cultural Assets from the Faculty of History at the University of Bucharest, and in 2009 I was accepted by the EMBA program in Creative Leadership with Steinbeis University in Berlin. To my surprise my research topic was accepted, but I realized I need more guidance from the true visionaries of the field, persons like you. My intention is to start very practical applications of the theory of "Open Source" Urbanism as soon as possible, in parallel with the theoretical work. Moreover, if you will be interested to participate I would be most glad to arrange either your attendance to specialized functions dealing with "New" Urbanism and scheduled to take place in Bucharest or elsewhere in Romania, or even stand alone events on "Open Source" Urbanism where you could be the main speakers. If you allow, I have right now one urgent question, if I may: what architecture research methods are relevant for "Open Source" Urbanism? I discovered recently an academic paper dealing with this issue, but not specifically with Open Surce / P2P Urbanism ( http://api.ning.com/files/dOPtu7qbGChsnM--aFoeTEckKuRQs3JhqURFuQhG4xMTx1kQl… ). At my school there is a preference for philosophy as main research tool, with a lot of phenomenology (mostly Heidegger), hermeneutics, aesthetics and semiotics (with a clear accent on U. Eco). Would you kindly accept to provide me some advice and / or feedback? Sincerely, Geo Scripcariu -- Geo Scripcariu PhD Student / "Open Source" Urbanism "Ion Mincu" Architecture and Urbanism University of Bucharest Mobile: +40745-09.61.91 Direct: +4031-401.29.42 Phone/Fax: +4021-410.54.15 E-mail: geo.scripcariu(a)gmail.com Str.Sabinelor 123 Bl. 119 Suite 16 Bucuresti-5 050854

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Fwd: Automenta : How to Develop Automatic Intelligence (AI)
by Michel Bauwens 08 Feb '11

08 Feb '11

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 8:51 AM Subject: Fwd: Automenta : How to Develop Automatic Intelligence (AI) To: econowmix(a)googlegroups.com, sustainable_solidarity(a)yahoogroups.com, hc_ecology(a)yahoogroups.com http://blog.automenta.com/2011/02/how-to-develop-automatic-intelligence.html <http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mWGkAr1Xo5Y/TVCK9OiJX7I/AAAAAAAAAzU/MHgvCcX19sM/s…> Consider and improve the human-computer interaction ergonomics of all software tools involved in development, in order to result in a completely integrated code/data editor and visualizer, rendering the entire system reflectively transparent to both humans and software agents within itself for maximally productive development processes. <http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mWGkAr1Xo5Y/TVCLuCW67cI/AAAAAAAAAzY/PEXoDjiCvVM/s…> It consists of, and can access a representation of its design as a virtual semantic graph, which interlinks and cross-references: - a syntactical abstraction of the project’s source code syntax - documentation - relevant Wikipedia material - up-to-date metadata about the project’s development and developers <http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mWGkAr1Xo5Y/TVCLxXVkaZI/AAAAAAAAAzc/q1ufCKK_W7o/s…> It utilizes and analyzes a software library and its dependencies, to an arbitrary stack depth, including: - all available “AI” algorithms, including but not limited to: - streaming graph data structures and graph algorithms, including interfaces that expose peripheral data sources and sensors as graph data - evolutionary search - high-dimensional and spatiotemporal learning and belief networks - probabilistic logic and inference - graph and N-dimensional pathfinding - dimensional embedding and graph drawing - natural language parsing and generation - user-interface systems - and other components and utilities <http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mWGkAr1Xo5Y/TVCL4MhN4rI/AAAAAAAAAzg/xhz_0CluCiE/s…> A networked 2D/3D zooming user-interface with 3D physics simulation features interactively represents arbitrary information detail in seamless virtual environments containing embodied agents that operate independently of humans. It can embody itself within representations of its own structure, allowing it to fluidly enter its own imagined reality models. The resulting “operating system” simultaneously serves as a web browser, communication tool, software development tool, simulation modeler, videogame engine, and controller for arbitrary real-world machines and devices -- within a spectrum between fully automatic, semi-automatic, or manual modes. <http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mWGkAr1Xo5Y/TVCMiJ2denI/AAAAAAAAAzk/_HAgifgcBXI/s…> Distribute the software and its source-code with an open-source license allowing anyone to freely experiment with it and share results with the system. Since the system is fully self reflective, any improvements that an individual contributes can potentially improve everyone else’s instances of it. Each instance of each system component will have multiple configuration options and parameter, maximizing design diversity across the planetary software eco-system. The system implements a global feedback and education system, allowing users to suggest improvements, report problems, ask questions, and receive answers about the software. <http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mWGkAr1Xo5Y/TVCMyx3BrVI/AAAAAAAAAzo/eLF7upkoN3w/s…> Developing intelligent cognitive agents will primarily involve 3D physics simulation of a virtual body operating in a virtual world. Simulated agents have precise control of robotic body parts and sensors that perceive, among other signals, streams of virtual optical and acoustic phenomena. This constitutes a robot design system that simultaneously evolves both hardware and software aspects of virtual and real robots (resulting in potentially unusual designs, for example: embedding cameras in robot finger-tips) - including instructions for manufacturing them. Also remember that nanomachines, vehicles, and buildings, can also be thought of as robots in this same way. This is also capable of developing virtual machinery that operates as intelligent “avatars” or “cursors” inside the virtual reality user-interface, actively operating in cooperation with human-computer interaction. *seeAlso:* - http://wiki.syncleus.com/index.php/dANN - http://critterding.sourceforge.net - http://wiki.opencog.org - http://www.opengl.org - http://bulletphysics.org - http://sites.google.com/site/narswang/home/nars-introduction - http://neuroph.sourceforge.net/ -- 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 Commons Strategies Group, http://www.commonsstrategies.org/

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Re: [P2P-F] New release Zeitgeist movie big success
by Eric Hunting 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

I generally agree with you but would offer some suggestions as to possible reasons for the state of things with the Venus Project. As I've gathered in following his work myself, Fresco considers himself chiefly a designer and inventor and has long had this notion that the role of the designer/inventor is no more than to design and invent while implementation is someone else's department. But he's never had partners that could assume that implementation role. As brilliant as he is, most of his inventions have never gotten past concept stages because he's never been willing to get his own hands dirty in implementation and business development when no one else would. And this same thinking is reflected in the history of the Venus Project. For most of the, possibly, 50 years Fresco has been cultivating the Venus Project, he's been evangelizing its concepts through his designs. In other words, he has been trying to sell its concepts to a general public that is not sophisticated enough to comprehend them directly by using an idyllic visual image of the future that contrasts the squalor of contemporary life and cultivates a desire for a higher standard of living only this new cultural paradigm can deliver. The basic idea here is to cultivate collective desire through the appeal of a design such that people will be compelled to pick up the tools -intellectual and physical- to make it real. This is exactly the strategy you would expect from an industrial designer. That's how they normally sell ideas. But can you actually sell a whole society on a whole new cultural paradigm using pictures of its possible artifacts and visual impressions of its lifestyle? That's basically what the Venus Project has been trying to do for decades -before Zeitgeist. (which is now more directly trying to sell the theory, in the context of an explanation for why everything now sucks, because the middle-class zeitgeist itself has changed. They were very comfortable and complacent when Fresco started. Now they are under threat worldwide and looking for answers) I think you can usefully communicate many things this way, but it's got limits. It can only be part of a larger strategy that seems to have eluded Fresco for much of his life. We certainly live in a visual culture and you can communicate a great deal about the nature of a culture through architecture and industrial design. Though a lot of contemporary designers seem oblivious to this, any given design is a reflection of production technology, economic paradigms, and common community aesthetics, which in turn are reflections of culture. You don't have to be an anthropologist to get this. Humans have an innate ability to reverse engineer things, relative to their inherent understanding of physics and materials, by looking at, touching, and using them. This is how we perceive the value of many goods -and which corporations often try to trick through aspects of design to create a false perception of value. So we can, potentially, come to understand certain aspects of a proposed new culture through the nature of speculative designs of artifacts suggested to be products of it. This is the purpose of futurist visualization. When I've tried to find artists/illustrators to collaborate with -and this is often the point where I scare the hell out of them...- I will say to them that, in the real world, there are very specific reasons why anything looks the way it it does. And when you're doing futurist or technical visualization, as opposed to just SciFi, you are very deliberately trying to showcase those reasons through design because its those things that communicate the plausibility of the ideas you're trying to get across. For instance, if you understand that the overriding logistical limitation of manufacturing on orbit is that you can't precision-fabricate anything that can't fit through a pressure hatch of some kind, well, suddenly 90% of all the spacecraft and space stations you've ever seen portrayed in the media look like nonsense! So we see in Fresco's design work an attempt to communicate through it an impression of how his imagined future culture works. How it makes things and the aspects of design that reflect its culture's values. (there is no chrome, fishtails, and Swarovski crystals in the Fresco future) Unfortunately, his understanding of technology and design theory seems to have gotten stuck somewhere in the late 1960s or early 1970s, making some of his designs both stylistically anachronistic and also contradictory to how to we commonly envision many current and near-future 21st century production technologies to work. His concepts for things like space structures and nanotechnology in particular remain way off the mark and his greatest anachronism is Big Machine fabrication. My guess is that, due to an assumption that he was very far ahead of the curve to begin with and because at that point he started being more concerned with cultural theory, he hasn't kept up with the industrial and technological trends so his general design theory has not evolved -or, as with many architects, he just assumed he had achieved some kind of perfection and just never reviewed it later. But there's a more critical missing piece here; functional example. It's quite logical for the Venus Project to be very concerned with building a research city. That's the next step. Our society is so disillusioned, so hard-boiled, that we're now compulsively skeptical about any notion of the future that isn't dystopian. The best production value visuals can't make a strong argument for the future when, culturally, we just don't believe in the future anymore. (every spin-off of Star Trek ended in total war. Every other recent SciFi TV series has been about war. Every current SciFi computer game is a war game. Says a lot about what the culture thinks of the future) So, like flat earthers, we need to be led by the hand one way around the globe and then the other before we can get it. And the logical approach to that is to try to compete with the dominant cultural paradigms where it counts; a direct competition in demonstrable standard of living and quality of life based on actual working systems. This really may call for a Colonial Williamsburg of Tomorrow. Unfortunately, Fresco has left his followers with no functional plans for how to do this -because, again, implementation was someone else's department. His model city cannot be bootstrapped. Its monolithic design doesn't account for it to be built in the absence of the new systems it embodies, and there just aren't enough guilt-ridden trillionaires in the world. It's a catch-22 by design. They are going to have to move beyond Fresco to figure out how to do this. It's like building the first RepRap. You can't actually do it literally. You have to start with a 'RepStrap' built using other tools. Then that builds true RepRaps as its children. That's where we all are, strategically, in the larger general Post-Industrial/P2P cultural movement. The future can only be developed in-situ. But the Venus Project movement may not yet be attracting people with the wherewithal for that since, as you pointed out, it's picking up a lot of young people with more aspiration than knowledge and skills and who get frustrated when there are no plans at-hand to build anything specific right now. I would agree that Fresco and the Venus project have been operating in a vacuum to some degree, which may have a lot to do with coming out of the US where this field of study has been, sort of, underground since the 70s and where you do have to account for the Great American Reality Distortion Field. I'm hoping this movie is some sign of change in all this, but we'll see. Eric Hunting erichunting(a)gmail.com > From: Karl Robillard <krobillard(a)san.rr.com> > Date: February 6, 2011 2:43:34 AM MST > To: P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation(a)lists.ourproject.org> > Subject: Re: [P2P-F] New release Zeitgeist movie big success > Reply-To: P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation(a)lists.ourproject.org> > > > On Saturday, February 05, 2011 12:07:43 pm Eric Hunting wrote: >> Still, overall this movie seems like real progress for this movement. > > > I've watched this movement for a couple years now. It has no legs because > they are entirely committed to the specific goal of building a research city. > > Mr. Fresco repeatedly makes the point that the Venus Project is about changing > culture more than building cities, but he then goes and places his designs > front and center in all of their media. During a talk in Slovenia > (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TwVs2nlUb0) Jacque told his audience to go > solicit corporations for the means to build his city. I have never once heard > him make reference to any of the existing commons movements, and Peter Merola > only talks about them dismissively. > > There are a lot of younger males attracted to the movement. When they find the > leadership unreceptive to thier ideas, they start their own organizations > (http://rbose.org/, http://rbefoundation.com/, > http://www.atlasinitiativegroup.org/) where they flounder about looking for > direction. > > It would be great if we could organize to build some of these cool arcologies, > but I suspect this will only be possible after a few generations of people > have lived immersed in an open, P2P world. > > > -Karl

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R: PhD in "Open Source" Urbanism Solutions for Bucharest (Romania)
by Bertram Maria Niessen 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

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Re: [P2P-F] [P2P Foundation] New Comment On: BIBO - A Standard for Stable Currencies
by Roberto Verzola 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

There seems to be a flaw is Marc's argument below ("leave an interest-bearing loan device on its own and debt will grow towards infinity"): Interest must be paid regularly or the loan will be called in. The monetary system's design does NOT include allowing interest due to grow indefinitely. So, any model that simulates the process should assume either regular interest repayments (to ensure that interest due does not grow indefinitely) or a loan termination process kicks in. While it is true that fixed interest payments, over an infinite period of time, appears to accumulate to infinity, the accumulated total will be actually be a finite value if one takes into account the time value of money (1 dollar a year from now is worth less than 1 dollar today). If the discounting rate is 1%, for example, , then an infinite stream of $1 a year is actually equivalent to a finite $100 today (i.e., $100 deposited at 1% interest will give an infinite stream of $1 a year). Roberto P2P Foundation wrote: > There is a new comment on the post "BIBO - A Standard for Stable Currencies". > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/bibo-a-standard-for-stable-currencies/2009/12… > > Author: Marc > Comment: > A typo correction in upper case > > Ardeshir wrote: > > “My argument against Marc’s position is that current lending practices, even WITH INTEREST, are not inherently unstable in PRACTICE, because in PRACTICE, even according to common lending practices, loans are NEVER issued for unlimited amounts of time; and thus the interest on them never grows towards infinity” > > Our argument is not that loans must grow to infinity to be unbounded, which is what Ardeshir’s argument necessarily implies. But rather our argument has always been that whatever amount of growth that takes place if it is towards infinity it is unstable. Common lending practices do grow towards infinity by definition, so by definition they are unstable period. > > If we take Ardeshir’s statement that because loans do not go on forever they are not unbounded, therefore they are stable. it then implies that in order for INSTABILITY to manifest loans must go on forever. But that is not the definition of instability. The definition is that any growth TOWARDS infinity is unstable no matter how limited that growth is! > > The test is quite trivial, leave an interest bearing loan device on its own and debt will grow towards infinity, leave an interest free loan on its own and debt will remains constant. The former exhibits instability and the latter does not i.e. is stable. > > Marc > > See all comments on this post here: > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/bibo-a-standard-for-stable-currencies/2009/12… > > To manage your subscriptions or to block all notifications from this site, click the link below: > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?wp-subscription-manager=1&email=rverzola%40g… > >

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Re: [P2P-F] [P2P Foundation] New Comment On: BIBO - A Standard for Stable Currencies
by Roberto Verzola 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

On the BIBO debate: In addition to the sustainability issue, may I also point out a social justice issue: a privileged section of the population (bankers) are allowed to create *money out of nothing* temporarily, and then, from that conjured fund, earn interest which is permanently theirs. An ordinary citizen like me is not allowed to conjure such money, lend it to a bank as deposit, then close the deposit after a year, destroy the conjured money, but keep the interest for myself as real cash. (Indeed, why should I destroy it? I would deposit it again!). That is why bankers who resort to fraud to make even *more* money are truly greedy -- they are not satisfied with this super-special privilege they already have to earn interest out of conjured money. On Ardeshir's point that "loans are NEVER issued for unlimited amounts of time": Banks do open credit lines to favored/established customers, who do not have to apply for new loans, pay them fully over time, reapply again, etc. Since these credit lines do not have a fixed time period, they are in effect loans for indefinite duration, and as long as the bank is in business, and the borrower remains in good standing, the latter will be paying interest indefinitely on the average level of credit that he is using. Roberto P2P Foundation wrote: > There is a new comment on the post "BIBO - A Standard for Stable Currencies". > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/bibo-a-standard-for-stable-currencies/2009/12… > > Author: Ardeshir Mehta > Comment: > Sepp writes, on January 29th, 2011 at 10:18 am: > > [QUOTE] > > Ardeshir wrote: > > <i>"Don’t get me wrong: I am against interest. But the argumentthat interest NECESSARILY and INEVITABLY causes instability is clearly incorrect."</i> > > What causes instability in the current system, in my view, is the fact that a large part of all extant money (up to 90 %) is being created on anongoing basis by commercial banks as they grant loans to customers. Those loans are burdened with interest, and thus the majority of the money weuse to mediate economic interactions is by the nature of its creation burdened with interest. Thus the majority of our economic interactions are only made possible if we consent to pay interest for the money needed to mediate them. THAT is the source of instability in the current financial/economic system, not the mere fact that interest exists. > > As a matter of fact, Marc argues in his paper that CURRENT LENDING PRACTICES are unstable, and he proves that statement by calculating the interest on money loaned. He never said – as far as I know – that interest NECESSARILY and INEVITABLY causes instability. > > Ardeshir seems to be attempting to shoot down a strawman’s argument that he himself put up. > > [END QUOTE] > > I should have been more clear. Marc claims that current lending practices are inherently unstable, AND that they are unstable due to the presence of INTEREST (for, as I understand Marc's argument, if interest were abolished, even current lending practices would not be unstable). And he claims that the instability results from the fact that INTEREST is unbounded: that is, approaches infinity. My argument against Marc's position is that current lending practices, even WITH INTEREST, are not inherently unstable in PRACTICE, because in PRACTICE, even according to common lending practices, loans are NEVER issued for unlimited amounts of time; and thus the interest on them never grows towards infinity. In other words, there is a limit after which, in PRACTICE, interest does NOT grow. Thus what I am saying is that Marc's thesis is altogether theoretical; it does not apply to what happens in PRACTICE. > > Also, as I understand Marc's thesis, the problem he identifies has nothing to do with debt *per se*. As I understand Marc's thesis, as long as interest is abolished, growing debt would not be a problem; nor would money created exclusively as debt be a problem. I myself don't agree that debt is not a problem as long as interest is abolished, nor that money created exclusively as debt is not a problem; and I have written a paper on the subject which can be found on line at > > http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/Debt-FreeMoneyIsBetterThanDebt-BasedMoney.… > > Best wishes. > > See all comments on this post here: > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/bibo-a-standard-for-stable-currencies/2009/12… > > To manage your subscriptions or to block all notifications from this site, click the link below: > http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?wp-subscription-manager=1&email=rverzola%40g… > >

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Re: [P2P-F] weak vs strong ties as wrong dilemma
by Samuel Rose 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamilton(a)acm.org> wrote: > I am fascinated by the current explorations concerning social media and how community formation and spontaneity are enabled. I find a great deal to digest, and much thoughtful analysis in the recent threads. > > Although it is not material to the clarification of weak and strong ties as a false dichotomy, this one passage brought me up short: > > " ...what is destroying our opportunities for individuality and creativity, subverting us from realizing our human potential is not that we are tweeting about trivialities, but that the governance of our planet has been taken away from us." > > The hyperbole is appealing, but I wonder if there is something more important here. When, if ever, have "we" possessed the governance of our planet? Indeed, what can it possibly mean to give ontological standing to the notion of planetary governance and suggest that it has ever existed? > > I ask this because is it perhaps more the case that we have before us the opportunity to gain something, not that we ever lost it. > > - Dennis > > I see you point and it is a good one. There are some ways in which we lost at least some freedom over our environments over time as the industrial revolution emerged. I can think of the example of a farmer in Canada, who's ancestors came to Canada generations ago to seek freedom from tyranny in Europe, and who is now subject to legal system manipulations from companies like Monsanto that threaten to take away his livelihood and force him to buy and use products he never wanted to use in his operations (because their patented strains of corn contaminated his and Monsanto came out and discovered this) For me, the meat of the article is the idea that weak ties and strong ties is the wrong dilemma to focus on. I think this is true. I think we need ties that are geo-physical local *and* "network" local (people around the world that have any degree of connection with you that you at least become aware of them). Fracturing and isolation weaken the value people can get out of all of their connections. > -----Original Message----- > From: p2p-foundation-bounces(a)lists.ourproject.org [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michel Bauwens > <https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/2011-February/000401.…> > Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 07:01 > To: p2p-foundation > Subject: [P2P-F] weak vs strong ties as wrong dilemma > > > -- > 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 - Mailing list > http://www.p2pfoundation.net > https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation > -- -- 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://forwardfound.org http://futureforwardinstitute.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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mondragon exploits workers, polish strike
by Michel Bauwens 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

http://trustcurrency.blogspot.com/2011/01/mondragon-cooperative-built-on.ht… Nicholas, Kevin, or others, a commentary for publication in the p2p blog would be appreciated, 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: [Commoning] The Communism of Zeitgeist: Science or Science Fiction?
by Michel Bauwens 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Andreas Exner <andreas.exner(a)chello.at> Date: Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:00 AM Subject: [Commoning] The Communism of Zeitgeist: Science or Science Fiction? To: commoning(a)lists.wissensallmende.de *http://www.social-innovation.org/?p=1800*<http://www.social-innovation.org/?p=1800> _______________________________________________ Commoning mailing list Commoning(a)lists.wissensallmende.de http://lists.wissensallmende.de/mailman/listinfo/commoning -- 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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