“Production with small-scale, free-standing, electrically powered machinery was the defining feature of what Lewis Mumford called the neotechnic era, which in his periodization of technological history followed the paleotechnic era of steam, coal and Dark Satanic Mills.”

Kevin Carson’s latest essay which we mentioned yesterday, contains an important argument about which form of technology is most adapted to current possibilities. In short: the availability of distributed electric power leads to the superiority of a distributed model, which has been historically derailed by the industrial model, but can no longer be stopped.

To understand it, one needs to know a little bit of Lewis Mumford’s periodization of technological history, which I have to present first. This will be followed by Carson’s argument, so please, do read on.

1. The three stages of technological history

Kevin Carson, summarizing Lewis Mumford:

“The idea of resurrecting old technologies in a modern context is also suggested by Mumford’s periodization of technological history in Technics and Civilization. Mumford divided late medieval and modern technological development into three considerably overlapping periods: the eotechnic, the paleotechnic, and the neotechnic.

To put it another way, if the object is to have the highest quality flour with bran and germ intact, at a reasonable cost, as opposed to nutritionally dead wallpaper paste, the small mill is the most efficient means available. The larger mills are only more “efficient” if the consumer is subordinated to the needs of large-scale production.”

2. The two phases of derailment

As it is cleary that this neotechnic age has not been fully carried out, one must ask the question why this is so.

Kevin Carson:

1. Earlier Mis-adaptation of neotechnic potential

“The fulfillment of this potential, unfortunately, has been delayed. Mumford argued that the neotechnic technologies developed from the late nineteenth century on, based on the decentralizing potential of small-scale electrically powered machinery, have not been used to their full potential as the building blocks of a fundamentally new kind of economy; they have, rather, been incorporated into the preexisting paleotechnic framework. Neotechnic had not “displaced the older regime” with “speed and decisiveness,” and had not yet “developed its own form and organization.” He explained the phenomenon with reference to Spengler’s idea of the “cultural pseudomorph” (a fancy version of path dependency):

…in geology… a rock may retain its structure after certain elements have been leached out of it and been replaced by an entirely different kind of material. Since the apparent structure of the old rock remains, the new product is called a pseudomorph. A similar metamorphosis is possible in culture: new forces, activities, institutions, instead of crystallizing independently into their own appropriate forms, may creep into the structure of an existing civilization…. As a civilization, we have not yet entered the neotechnic phase…. [W]e are still living, in Matthew Arnold’s words, between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.

…Emerging from the paleotechnic order, the neotechnic institutions have nevertheless in many cases compromised with it, given way before it, lost their identity by reason of the weight of vested interests that continued to support the obsolete instruments and the anti- social aims of the middle industrial era. Paleotechnic ideals still largely dominate the industry and the politics of the Western World…. To the extent that neotechnic industry has failed to transform the coal-and-iron complex, to the extent that it has failed to secure an adequate foundation for its humaner technology in the community as a whole, to the extent that it has lent its heightened powers to the miner, the financier, the militarist, the possibilities of disruption and chaos have increased.

The new machines followed, not their own pattern, but the pattern laid down by previous economic and technical structures.

We have merely used our new machines and energies to further processes which were begun under the auspices of capitalist and military enterprise: we have not yet utilized them to conquer these forms of enterprise and subdue them to more vital and humane purposes…. Not alone have the older forms of technics served to constrain the development of the neotechnic economy: but the new inventions and devices have been frequently used to maintain, renew, stabilize the structure of the old social order….

The present pseudomorph is, socially and technically, third-rate. It has only a fraction of the efficiency that the neotechnic civilization as a whole may possess, provided it finally produces its own institutional forms and controls and directions and patterns. At present, instead of finding these forms, we have applied our skill and invention in such a manner as to give a fresh lease of life to many of the obsolete capitalist and militarist institutions of the older period. Paleotechnic purposes with neotechnic means: that is the most obvious characteristic of the present order.”

2, Current Misuse of Neotechnic Potential

“But the cultural pseudomorph is unsustainable and riddled with contradictions, in ways that Mumford did not anticipate in the pessimism of his later years. In the earlier stage of the cultural pseudomorph that Mumford remarked on, neotechnic methods were integrated into a mass-production framework fundamentally opposed to the technology’s real potential. Rather than integrating electrically powered machinery into craft production, despite the chief rationale for the large factory being gone, Sloanist production instead integrated the new machinery into the Dark Satanic Mill. As Waddell and Bodek observed, the layout of the machinery in a Sloanist factory followed the same exact pattern as if it all had to be hooked to belts running off the drive shaft from a central steam engine or water-wheel.

So long as the state successfully manages to prop up the centralized corporate economic order, libertarian and decentralist technologies and organizational forms will be incorporated into the old corporate framework. As the system approaches its limits of sustainability, those elements become increasingly destabilizing forces within the present system, and prefigure the successor system. When the system finally reaches that limit, those elements will (to paraphrase Marx) break out of their state capitalist integument and become the building blocks of a fundamentally different free market society.”

(the citation in block-quote is from: Lewis Mumford. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1934)

• Online Eviction - a new challenge in this recession? | Identity Woman
  those who host Web content should be required to provide notice and access to data for a year, and be held strictly accountable the way landlords are before they can evict a tenant.
• Network Civilization: Peer-to-Peer and the Rise of Gree... - Eventbrite
  Just as the three quarters of oil engineers now agree that Peak Oil is in sight within the next decade (after that, oil production can only decline), can we also posit that we may have reached a moment of Peak Hierarchy, a moment in history in which it is no longer large centralized organizations that are most efficient or productive, but rather those that are organized as distributed networks and can draw on peer production communities?
• jcbronsted: Distributed Peer-to-Peer Viruses and Evolving an AI
  What if one were to create a distributed Neural Network throughout the internet, perhaps with peer-to-peer technology, and then allow it to "learn" over time: what would happen?
• IGNITER » Peer-producing a for-profit startup.
  I’ve been experimenting with peer-producing the first for-profit property coming out of the social venture commons.
• Peer Production and the Future of the Republican Party: An Open Letter to the Next RNC Chairman | The Next Right
  . At a macro level, this means that we must democratize the Republican Party by opening it to mass collaboration. If the Republican Party wants to be the party of the future, it must adopt this sort of collaboration driven, peer production based model.
• boilingspot: Technological alternatives
  I think that social change will also emerge from a new structure of desire in contemporary youth. Once you have tasted ‘non-alienated’ voluntary participation in an online productive community, you are strongly motivated to extend it to the whole of life, and this drives the emergence of a powerful global movement that embraces three new paradigms of social organisation
• Technological alternatives - Red Pepper
  Michel Bauwens points to the importance of the possibilities for co-operative, peer-to-peer production opened up by new technologies
• Online Collaboration And Learning: The Best Resources Of 2008 From MasterNewMedia - Robin Good's Latest News
  If your goal is to improve the ways and tools with which you collaborate with your team, as well as the resources and approaches to to learn, discover and share more of what you know, here are the best 2008 MasterNewMedia articles about online collaboration.
• Peak Energy: Where Did The Peak Go ?
  "On the Commons" is linking peak oil to "peak hierarchy", asking if "the economic crisis be traced to large, hierarchical institutions that are dysfunctional in an open, networked environment ?"
• Network Civilization: Peer-to-Peer and the Rise of Green Capitalism at NYU
• Social Media Search Tool | WhosTalkin?
  researches blogs mostly
• The Hub Amsterdam: Events @ The Hub Amsterdam | December 2008
  - how can p2p approaches and tools help entrepreneurs boost their business?
• Social Web: An Empirical Analysis of Networked Political Protests « iRevolution
  running large-scale econometric models to observe how Internet access is correlated with political instability. Meier has found that an increase in cell-phone availability increases the likelihood (at least perceived by the public) that the government might be overthrown by violent means.
• The Alternative's alternative | open Democracy News Analysis
  In today's ultra-networked world, an unaffiliated individual with a laptop and an Internet connection is often more influential and resourceful than an organization with a staff of twenty and a fax machine was only twenty years ago. This is a truly strange period of institutional change when an organization's vast assets also look like its greatest liabilities.

Phlow Magazine has a number of compilations of the best ‘netlabel’ music out there.

As Netlabelism wrote already quite a while ago:

“The goal is to bring every month an anthology of the best tunes around the world. The title of the series is “Their Finest Hour”. We are very happy with this initiative, because there’s tons and tons of music on the internet and netlabels, and we welcome every effort to filter and organise this stuff. Thanks Phlow! The releases are made with much care, love and respect. There’s streaming, download per tune, zip-file and a nice cover.”

These netcompilations are freely available.

Second,…copyright is a time-limited right. Copyright expires so that the public may ultimately gain unlimited access and use rights. This also is definitional….

Therefore, by design, all copyrighted works are destined for the public domain….”

Michael Carroll makes a strong case that we need a specifically defined ‘digital’ public domain, which needs to be actively digitized, made accessible, and tagged and marked for easy usage by the authors and producers of the material, as a matter of public duty, in particular by the research community and universities who receive public money.

The following excerpts contains the definition of the digital public domain and his call to the research community.

1. On the need for a digital public domain:

Michael Carroll:

“In the age of the Internet, we need to reconceive the public domain as the Digital Public Domain. In the Digital Public Domain, it is not enough that a work is free from copyright restrictions. A positive commitment to universal access to the public domain requires first that public domain works be digitized or at least be subject to a protocol that enables digitization when cost effective.

Consequently, those public and private bodies that laudably have been investing in efforts to digitize public domain works should increase the returns on their investment by marking and tagging public domain works as such. Creative Commons provides a metadata standard for digitally marking works with their use rights, the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL). Specifically, Creative Commons provides a means of marking a public domain work as such. Creative Commons requires support to implement plans to update this protocol to provide more robust information about public domain works.”

2. The role of the research community

“Faculty authors and other professional researchers have a responsibility to manage their copyrights in a way that ensures public access to the scholarly record well before copyright expires in these works. Why? Because the standard justification for granting author’s rights does not neatly apply to these scholarly authors. They are motivated by the desire to be read and are not remunerated by journal publishers for publishing their work.

Faculty authors are coming to the realization that the way they manage their publishing rights should reflect their core values and the university’s core commitment to disseminating knowledge. A number of faculties have adopted resolutions recommending open access, but these have led to very few results. Just as was the case when the NIH policy was voluntary, authors at these institutions generally continue to sign away their rights to make their work available on the Internet or fail to use such rights when they have them by depositing manuscripts in an open access repository.”

3. In conclusion:

“In sum, the initiatives to digitize public domain works and to provide open access to contemporary learning share the common goal of making the Internet a repository for human knowledge and a more powerful resource for researchers, students, teachers, and learners of all kinds around the world. Three principles derived from the purposes of copyright law, should guide these efforts: (1) the works should be freely available; (2) public domain works should be free from any contractual restrictions on use; and (3) the works should be marked with their use rights.”

The two blockquoted citations are followed by a important and inspiring reflection on the role of optimism by Alex Steffen. Really worth reading.

“Pessimism is a luxury we can only afford in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence. This insight, to me, is real Realism or real Realpolitik, far from blue-eyed Idealism. We have to courageously resist the current tendency to suspect those who work for a better world to be hopeless idealists. This would mean Realpolitik letting disaster happen (by deepening fault lines instead of transcending them), and us not at least attempting to prevent this. Strange real Realpolitik!” (Evelin Lindner, 2004.)

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” (Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, 2004, p. 208)

Full article is here .

Excerpts from a text by Alex Steffen:

1.

“Optimism is a political act.

Great movements for social change always begin with statements of great optimism.”

2.

“Consider, instead, the politics of optimism:

Ultimately, though, we need something more than better answers. We need millions of people who are willing to teach the teachable, comfort the disheartened and confront the scoundrels. We need to take our politics public and take on the whole culture of cynical defeatism. On some days, I think we need an optimism uprising.”

The Peer-to-Peer Research Institute gives a review of technological developments. Go here for the full articles and the links.

Excerpt:

“As we have written about before on this blog, BitTorrent is not good for streaming video due to its rarest-first download ordering policy. In order to stream video, or music, or whatever - you want it to arrive in a predictable order. Typically that order is linear, starting at the start. This way data arrives in the order of consumption. But BitTorrent does not provide this. In fact, it almost explicitly guarantees that it will not order data in a linear fashion. BitTorrent trades predictable ordering for replication increases. Under BitTorrent, the rarest pieces of data will be replicated the most, and so become less rare.

And of course BitTorrent, Inc have been working to develop their own video streaming version of their protocol.”

• Public wants taxes that hurt the rich | Politics | The Observer
  Two-thirds of Britons want the rich to face punitive tax rates not seen since the 1980s, according to a new poll which suggests that the recession has hardened attitudes towards the wealthy.
• Wireless energy transfer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  the process that takes place in any system where electrical energy is transmitted from a power source to an electrical load, without interconnecting wires in an electrical grid. Wireless transmission is ideal in cases where instantaneous or continuous energy transfer is needed, but interconnecting wires are inconvenient, hazardous, or impossible.
• MAKE: television site has videos of first episode - Boing Boing
  The first episode of MAKE: television debuts on public television today.
• SarahLacy.com: Louis Gray Nails the FriendFeed Dilemma
  What needs to happen is that FriendFeed must tier their offering, for "small", "medium" and "large" consumption. The Lite version would probably start out with blog postings, Flickr photos, and native FriendFeed entries
• Social Media: Can it Raise Just 5000.00 Dollars to Help 5 Year Olds? - Emerging Communications Blog
• Origins of the Family-- Chapter 3 - the iroquois gens
  before the introduction of the state
• Ancient Society by Lewis H. Morgan 1877
  more details about the iroquois - Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family
• Carrollogos: The Digital Public Domain
  In sum, the initiatives to digitize public domain works and to provide open access to contemporary learning share the common goal of making the Internet a repository for human knowledge and a more powerful resource for researchers, students, teachers, and learners of all kinds around the world.
• Items | Online Communities of Practice (CoPs) | Twine
  Collection of resources on online communities of practice, many in Spanish
• " Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments incorporated subversion
  In light of this, the degree to which a successful community of inquiry can be facilitated through the use of discussion boards is examined and compared to the possibilities afforded by weblogs in the same role.
• CoP: Best Practices
  Communities of practice develop around things that matter to people.
• 21st Century Learning: The Art of Building Virtual Communities
  The burning question for many of us trying to establish educational CoPs is how to design a VLC that is compelling enough that it will compete successfully for the attention of busy educators? Because communities of practice are voluntary, to be successful over time they need the ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value to attract and engage members. This is easier said than done.
• netlabelism.net | sharing music
• Best Of Netlabels | netlabelism.net
  Phlow magazine has released a "Best of Netlabels" vol. 1 in january already, and now there's a vol. 2 peeping at their website. The goal is to bring every month an anthology of the best tunes around the world.

One of my sparring partners is Kevin Carson of Mutualist.org. We do not agree on everything, I guess I’m still a social-democrat at heart, but I always find his thinking to be open and clear, and we find ourselves in our mutual preference for peer to peer dynamics, including on the level of economic transactions.

I guess the commonality is: if we control our own means of production, we are more able to voluntarily aggregate them in common production projects (or do it individually and exchange those goods).

Kevin’s particular perspective, as I understand it, is this: there is a strong connection between the current form of state-maintained, subsidized and protected ‘capitalism’ (which Kevin holds is the opposite of a true free market), and the size of the state. If it because the current system is so fundamentally flawed and crisis-ridden, that we need such a big state in the first place.

In this vision, stopping subsidies to unsustainable ‘bigness’, would be the best strategy not just for a more sustainable society and economy, but for achieving a more moderate state size.

Kevin Carson has explained this argument in detail, in a latest essay, available here.

It is entitled: Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles

Excerpt:

“Their vision of how to restore “the economy,” naturally, amounts to a return to an economic “normalcy” defined by giant corporations and mass consumer society. The problem is, the present model of industrial production is about as sustainable as the Titanic. It came into existence only through government policies to subsidize the operating costs and inefficiencies of big business, and a regulatory framework (including “intellectual property”) to protect it from competition. And that industrial model is hitting a wall, a systemic crisis, in which government will no longer have the resources to subsidize inputs at the level at which they are demanded. The present industrial model, identified with GM’s Alfred Sloan and celebrated by Alfred Chandler, is based on enormous market areas and costly, product-specific machinery. The only way to keep the unit costs of such machinery down is large-batch production to utilize full capacity, and then worrying about making people buy it only afterward (commonly known as “supply-push distribution.”2 So Sloanist industry, under “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,” produces goods to sell to inventory, regardless of whether there are orders for it or even of whether the product works, and has an astronomical recall rate.3 It follows a business model based on consumer credit and planned obsolescence to keep the wheels running. As Ralph Borsodi described it, the push distribution system required by Sloan-style mass production amounted to making water run uphill.”

From an essay by Ran Prieur, on “How to Save Civilization“.

In this intro, he argues that stability can be achieved only if we keep complexity, but abandon growth.

Ran Prieur:

“To save civilization, we must redefine it with a sharp knife. I’m going to separate it into two things, which have historically gone together but don’t have to: complexity and growth. Or, to be more precise, relatively high complexity and ratcheting increase, where the numbers keep getting bigger because there’s no way built into the system for them to get smaller, except collapse.

I don’t think this civilization is going to make it. But civilization in general, defined simply as a highly complex society, is almost certain to persist. In the following sections, I explain why I think so, and what we would have to do to keep it stable, instead of suffering repeated rises and falls. Stable does not mean static — nature itself is stable without being static. The future of human society, like its past, will be dynamic, but it need not be catastrophic.”

• Outgrowing Copyright - The Technology Liberation Front
• The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies
  Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies.
• A Look At Some Of The Best iPhone Apps Of 2008
• Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day: My predictions for Top Tools in 2009
  Good list of emerging technologies.
• 25c3: Hackerspaces - Treffpunkte für Hacker als neue Bewegung " NEWS " Linux-Magazin Online
  Angehörige so genannter Hackerspaces warben beim 25. Chaos Communication Congress (25c3) in Berlin für die Gründung weiterer lokaler Treffpunkte von und für Computervernarrte. Die Initiative nahm im vergangenen Jahr ihren Anfang. Mit Hackerspaces.org gibt es seit Juli 2008 eine gemeinsame Online-Plattform.
• heise online - 29.12.08 - 25C3: Mit dem 3D-Drucker zurück zur Heimindustrie
  "Ihr könnt alle digitale Designer werden, wenn ihr nur wollt", warb Pettis weiter für die schier unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten der Computermanufaktur
• Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Freesouls, Creative Commons, Participative Pedagogy
  It was my honor and privilege to write an essay for this book, “Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies.” Other essays are by Lawrence Liang, Cory Doctorow, Yochai Benkler, Isaac Mao and Marko Ahtisaari.
• Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Sharing events in Gaza via cellphones
  Allvoices.com has set up a page called The Events in Gaza — to which you can contribute via your cellphone. The page provide a place for sharing experiences from the ground in Gaza.
• Andy Burnham and Internet site classification | Tom Watson MP
  I’ve just read this story that says that Internet sites might be given “cinema-style age ratings”. I’d be very interested to know your views - supportive or not. Internet regulation is not in my policy area but I promise you I will forward your views to Andy Burnham and Lord Carter.
• Law & Life: Silicon Valley » Top Ten Open Source Legal Developments: 2008
  This year, 2008, has seen a continuation of important legal developments for FOSS. My list of the top ten FOSS legal developments in 2008 follows
• GNOME Foundation: Open Source Collaboration at Work!
  The GNOME Foundation after welcoming on board the Mozilla Foundation, and more recently Motorola and Google, keeps bringing on board third parties.
• Commercial Open Source 2009: Challenges and Opportunities
  Open Source thought leaders have expressed opinions and discussed the state of open source, here are my takes on some challenges and opportunities for the new year.
• Open Source Business Models: Opinions and Predictions from few Thought Leaders
  Open Source thought leaders have expressed opinions and discussed the state of open source, here are my takes on some challenges and opportunities for the new year.

The Internet is specifically like reality television. Much has been made of the “transparency” of Change.gov — but it actually is to real transparency what reality TV is to reality.

A Republican consultant for online strategy, Patrick Ruffini, offers a critique of the Obama approach to open government being promoted via Change.org.

First, he makes an important point about the coming of age of internet in terms of politics:

“The Internet is now a mass medium. More people watched the Sarah Palin SNL skits on Hulu than live on television. Obama videos were watched for 1 billion minutes on YouTube. That works out to about 7 minutes for every American that voted on November 4th, or the equivalent of 14 thirty second spots.

The Internet has become television. Or, at least, there is now a powerful streak within the Internet that allows broadly popular candidates with mass (not niche) appeal to survive. This has coincided with the rise of web video, which allows the pecking order of celebrity in the offline world to be recreated online.”

And here is the crux of the critique:

“The Internet is specifically like reality television. Much has been made of the “transparency” of Change.gov — but it actually is to real transparency what reality TV is to reality. Submitting your story on why the health system sucks does not allow you to discuss alternatives to some sort of nationalization of the health system under Obama. It’s using Web 2.0 and the illusion of openness to support an existing policy position which is unlikely to change. The politicians are using the Internet to justify what they were going to do anyway. This is very shrewd on their part, but a far cry from what transparency advocates say they are for.”

Via Springwise:

“Unreliable electricity and spotty internet access are a fact of life in many parts of the developing world—and part of the reason the digital divide still persists today. A new, solar-powered innovation from Florida-based GNUveau Networks, however, is bringing computers and the internet to places that have no connectivity, no phone service and no electricity.

Functioning as a sort of “ISP in a box,” SolarNetOne is a terminal network system that uses photovoltaic solar electrical systems and a variety of open source technologies to make internet access a reality in the remotest areas. Included in the system are a small-footprint server and five terminals (expandable to as many as 48) that come loaded with web browsing, email, office, multimedia, software development and web development capabilities, with more than 15,000 other applications—including VoIP—to choose from as well. SolarNetOne’s terminals operate as thin clients—meaning that the majority of the workload is handled by the server—and the system’s Ethernet hub provides both network connection and electrical power to the terminals and their LCD monitors over a single wire. A power subsystem including an array of photovoltaic solar panels, an advanced charge controller and ample battery storage, meanwhile, provides for all of the electrical needs associated with 24/7 server operation and 8 hours per day of terminal access. Wifi coverage spans a 2-mile radius, with no fuel costs, no polluting emissions and a long lifespan of up to 20 years with proper maintenance. The entire system, in fact, operates on about the same amount of power as a 100-watt light bulb, GNUveau says. “

Ran Prieur nicely explains the logic behind a demurrage-based currency alternative.

Ran Prieur:

“It’s hard to explain demurrage currency, because it works by creating an economic system fundamentally different from the one we’re used to. I’m going to call these two systems fire economies and water economies. (Coincidentally, there is already an acronym FIRE for “finance, insurance, and real estate”, the main elements of the speculative bubble economy that replaced the manufacturing economy in America after domestic oil peaked in the early 1970’s.)

We can build a water economy simply by setting up rules that make concentrations of money shrink over time. If this is the normal behavior of the system, and if everyone knows it, then people who find themselves with extra money will not hoard it, but spend it buying goods and services from people with less money, and then those people will spend it instead of hoarding it, and the wave will keep moving. And because negative feedback is built in, the system has equilibrium, and economic collapse is not necessary.”

• if:book: the economics of video games
  As the tools of filmmaking have got cheaper, those for game making have got more expensive; this might mean that the game industry never gets to move on from the need to create blockbuster equivalents. Already the industry suffers from an excessive proliferation of sequels – always a sign that the moneymen are in charge.
• LRB · John Lanchester: Is it Art?
  From the economic point of view, this was the year video games overtook music and video, combined, in the UK.
• Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
  It’s an experiment in close-reading in which seven women are reading the book and conducting a conversation in the margins.
• Steven Clif -How I would change Change.Gov, Pew survey on American’s great expectations for Obama online
  How will the next Administration use the Internet to listen to people and involve them in meeting public challenges? In this era, it is clear that government alone won’t have the resources to fix things for us, but it can play a vital convening role of citizen capacity from the local up to national level.
• http://www.fragmentstore.de/
  versteht sich als “Labor für individuell kombinierbare Produktfragmente”. Die Idee dabei ist, dass die Kund/innen aus flexibel kombinierbaren Komponenten auswählen und sich daraus dann selbst die gewünschten Produkte zusammenbauen können:
• Pamoyo * Green Fashion | Home
  ein Open-Source-Modelabel, dass Kleidung verkauft und die dazugehörigen Schnittmuster im Internet frei zur Verfügung stellt (unter der CC-BY-SA-Lizenz, allerdings im PDF-Format, was die weitere Bearbeitung etwas erschwert.)
• Auslaufmodell GEMA — keimform.de
  Dennoch gibt es zunehmend auch GEMA-freie Musik, darunter auch freie GEMA-freie Musik, also solche, die unter einer freien Lizenz steht (meist Creative Commons).
• bootlab
  a non-profit organisation for the advancement of independent projects. Founded in 2000 and located in the historic Telegrafenamt in Berlin-Mitte, bootlab provides studio, production and office space for groups and individuals (activists, artists, curators, engineers, filmmakers, programmers, publishers, writers etc.) working with old and/or new media technology.
• Alles wird offen (Teil 2) — keimform.de
  Interessant fand ich hierbei vor allem die Projekte aus dem Bereich Freies Design:
• Industrial Policy: New Wine in Old Bottles
  In this study, Kevin Carson asserts that the existing capitalist economic system is a result of State industrial policy suppressing libertarian alternatives. That status quo, however, is unsustainable according to Carson. Getting government out of the way would unleash market forces to birth a “neotechnic” economy of previously unmatched prosperity.
• Disruptive Conversations: Twitory, Twithority and the quest to rank Twitter search results by authority
  Do we need a tool that ranks Twitter search results by number of followers? That's been one of the big debates circulating through the Twittersphere / blogosphere since Loic LeMeur kicked off the conversation over the weekend. I haven't had the time to weigh in, but Neville Hobson put up a good post about two search sites: Twitority and Twithority.
• Twitority fires a first shot at authority search on Twitter — NevilleHobson.com
  Twitority is a search tool that lets you search Twitter posts and then filter the search results by authority.
• Comment Systems Review Redux | Jangro.com
  It’s going on a year since I began my tests with blog comment sytsems. After my first evaluation of Disqus and IntenseDebate, I chose to go with Disqus because they had an API and would serve up comments server-side and make that content available to search engines.
• Evaluating Blog Comment Systems | Jangro.com
  I’ve been evaluating some of the blog comment systems out there.
• Disruptive Conversations: Is a "blog comment system" from Disqus and IntenseDebate really necessary?
  Which blog comment system is better - Disqus or IntenseDebate? That's the subject in Scott Jangro's great post: "Comment Systems Review Redux" as well as his earlier post about evaluating such systems.

A status report on this important initiative by founder Tim Barker:

See also here for more details.

“The mission of DIYNGO is to take renewable energy powered information communications technologies to the people who really need them. This mostly includes people in Developing Countries but will also include any area of economic deprivation. Currently we have a prototype home made wind turbine and solar array which are used to power an Asus Eee PC. The Asus is a low powered Linux netbook ideally suited for work in the field. We are now focussing on more mobile devices which will ultimately prove to be more transportable. This kit is also about to be tested in the field. The intention with this technology is to provide access to healthcare, governance and education. As such a portal has been developed at www.thirdspace.mobi which offers online courses.

We are using the social networking software Webjam to loosely maintain the core DIYNGO team together with email and chat. The team is composed of members from a variety of backgrounds and includes the informal involvement of UN-GAID (www.un-gaid.org) which we hope to strengthen once this feasability stage is complete and DIYNGO is further concretised. A trip to Lake Naivasha will take place in April which, if successful, will be the catalyst for formally establishing DIYNGO. Overall, progress has been steady but with the help of untold parties has so far proven to be highly fruitful. The future therefore looks interesting and full of hope for the success of DIYNGO in terms of acheiving its mission.”

The December 2008 /January 2009 issue of the progressive Scottish magazine “Red Pepper” is dedicated to the opportunities and challenges of Obama’s victory, but also contains a special section with interviews on ‘alternatives to neoliberalism’.

Next to Leo Panitch, Robin Blackburn, Martin Ryle, Kate Soper, I’m also interviewed on the P2P Alternative.

The issue’s articles are not available online, but I have posted the draft of my conversation with Hilary Wrainwright here.

Here’s the background to this issue, explained by editor Hilary Wrainwright:

“This interview is part of an exploration into the question: ‘if not capitalism, what? ‘ It is a question posed in a very practical way by the present crisis. It’s not that capitalism is in death throes from which it cannot recover. In some, partially altered form there’s no doubt it will recover - depending on how strong are the pressures and actualities of alternatives. The point is that the crisis is leading millions of people to question the legitimacy and social viability of the economic system that has produced this mess, often they are questioning it without knowing the alternatives, or even the direction and path to or means of creating alternatives. So I’m interviewing several people who have been putting forward frameworks for an alternative mode of production/economic and political system or key elements of such, based on alternatives they perceive to be already emerging. I’m asking them how their ideas offer a different economic logic to that which has produced the present crisis and what proposals they would now make - using this moment of collapse of the old order , when it is appropriate to think boldly about the possibilities of the new - to strengthen the emergent alternatives.”

For once, an italian title.

Cosma Orsi informs us that a new book of interviews, on what comes next after the welfare state and the neoliberal meltdown, “AI CONFINI DEL WELFARE”, has just been published by the Manifesto publishing house in Italy and is reportedly already in the bookshops.

I’m glad the p2p ideas are out, but unfortunately my last name seems misspelled into Michel Bawens …

The Italian translation of the extensive version of my interview is available via our wiki.

An english version is available here.

A few of the other contributions are:

* Virtù perdute di una società «low cost» 37 Stefano Zamagni

* Elogio dell’utopia 53 Colin Lyes e Leo Panitch

* L’equivalente della buona vita 71 Philippe van Parijs

* Il futuro dello Stato nel caos della globalizzazione 91 Bob Jessop

* La vita messa a lavoro: scenari di capitalismo cognitivo 121 Andrea Fumagalli

* Moltitudine e welfare del Comune 133 Toni Negri

This is from an extensive interview with a politically literate participant in the recent Greek riots.

The gist of the interview is that the basis of the quick and generalized action was the inter-relationship of pre-existing anarchist organising, a at least 30-year old tradition of 20,000 (semi-) organized sympathisers, and the spontaneous self-organisation of previously apolitical youth. The pre-existing places such as squats, 50 social centers, and university assemblies were critical, as was Indymedia and the role of mobile phones.

Here are 2 of the key quesitons that are dealt with in the interview:

1. How were the actions coordinated within cities? How about between cities?

e.) . . . And also, one especially influential federation was organized by the friends of Alexis, to organize the students’ demonstrations and actions, the squatting of schools, and to publish general announcements from the students’ struggle.

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“Technocracy is a proposal for a steady-state, post-scarcity economic system. It is intended for industrialized nations with sufficient natural, technological, and human resources to produce an economic abundance.”

Technocracy is a US movement born in the previous Depression of the 1930’s, and seems to undergo a mini-revival, with a European network being launched.

One of the articles on the site gives some interesting insight on the nature of scarcity under a market system as well as on the different effects of ownership vs. usership schemes.

Here are some excerpts:

1. Scarcity under a price system

“The reason why there is inherent scarcity is not because of physical restraints in the territorial base, according to the economist, but has more to do with the consumer demand. The assumption is that all demands are equal, that for example the needs of a single mother in a favela in Saõ Paolo in Brazil, is equal to Jay Leno’s wants of a 611th Chrysler with gold plates from year 1958.

Thus, relative scarcity according to the economist will always be absolute.”

2. Ownership vs. Usership

“Ownership is by its very nature exclusive. It means that you, granted by society or by your own strength (given if you live in an area plagued by social chaos) holds a physical object, a bit of land or a privilege, and that you have the right to interfere and punish people who also are trying to use that property.

Of course, there is a gray zone between usership and ownership. Sport clubs do not for example allow people who are not members of the group use their equipment. It is therefore sane to speak about a grade-scale characterised by exclusivity. We are not implying that exclusivity is inherently bad either, even though it could be used to discriminate against people (the discrimination is inherently unacceptable if based on factors which the person herself could not affect, like ethnic origin or gender).”