A very interesting interview on the state of the p2p production method, conducted by the ever excellent interviewer from Rome, Simone Cicero.
The original interview is also available in Italian here.
A must read:
“Simone Cicero: First of all, we would like to know from you directly what’s the status of Wikispeed, and get some info about the collaboration with Open Source Ecology. Also, in this framework, how’s the Extreme Manufacturing platform and process growing these days.
Joe Justice: These are three questions back to back, let’s see if I can answer in an clear way. First of all, let me introduce Wikispeed in a one minute and a half version.
Wikispeed builds ultra efficient cars and we do this with seven days development cycles using agile methodologies. Those methodologies include several aspects, for example about managing distributed teams – like with SCRUM – or methods to ensure an high quality bar and focused work – much like Extreme programming and Test Driven Development as part of XP – that we reworked for the manufacturing process labeling it Extreme Manufacturing.
Traditional manufacturing runs in 3 to 25 years long development cycles: this means you can go to a Porsche dealer and buy a brand… Continue reading »
“Practices like ‘open source nano-innovation’ offer game-changing avenues for bypassing inhibitive start-up costs and ensuring scientific knowledge is freely shared,” said Dr Maclurcan, an Honorary Research Fellow with UTS’s Institute for Nanoscale Technology.
“For the first time in modern history, the right ingredients have surfaced for us to seriously consider innovating without economic growth,” he said.
A US $254 billion market in 2009, recent data – outlined in the books – shows an expected rise to $2.5 trillion by 2015. More than 60 countries are engaging with nanotechnology research and development at a national level, including 16 ‘developing’ countries.
“Nanotechnology research around the world is largely focussed on creating unnecessary products that ensure big gains for multinational corporations and bigger losses for our ecosystems,” Dr Maclurcan said.
“In a world with biophysical limits and vast injustices, our survival depends on the redirection of science towards human need, not human greed.”
The books were officially launched last week by Dr Vijoleta… Continue reading »
The government has drafted in the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it.
The initiative, which has the backing of No 10 and should be up and running in two years, will be announced by the universities and science minister, David Willetts, in a speech to the Publishers Association on Wednesday.
The move will embolden what has been dubbed the “academic spring” – a growing campaign among academics and research funders for open access in academic publishing. They want to unlock the results of research from behind the lucrative paywalls of journals controlled by publishing companies.
Almost 11,000 researchers have signed up to a boycott of journals owned by the huge academic publisher Elsevier. Subscriptions to the thousands of research journals can cost a big university library millions of pounds each year – costs that have started to bite as budgets are squeezed. Harvard University, frustrated by the rising costs of journal subscriptions, recently encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and… Continue reading »
This special issue of the peer-reviewed, open access journal Culture Machine on the concept of ‘Platform Politics’ will explore how digital platforms can be understood, leveraged and contested in an age when the ‘platform’ is coming to supplant the open Web as the default digital environment.
Platforms can be characterized as resting on already existing networked communication systems, but also as developing discreet spaces and affordances, often using ‘apps’ to circumvent any need to access them via the Internet or Web. For this issue of Culture Machine we are seeking papers that explore the nature and distinctive aspects of the ‘platform’: as something that can be positioned as more than just a neutral space of communication; and as a complex technology with distinct affordances that have powerful political, economic and social interests at stake. In this respect the platform constitutes a zone of contestation between, for example, different formations and configurations of capital; social movements; new kinds of activist networks; open source and proprietary software design. Platforms also constitute spaces of struggle between mass movements and governments, users and the extractors of value, visibility and invisibility: witness the various debates over the role of ‘social media’ in the Arab… Continue reading »
“The pursuit of common welfare will not only become the new legal goal of all (private) business, but also the new meaning of entrepreneurial success. The CWE places the human being and all living entities as well as fulfilling interpersonal relationships at the center of economic activity. It transposes standards that bolster human relationships as well as constitutional values to an economic context, rewarding economic stakeholders for acting in a humane, cooperative, ecologically sound, and democratic way; as well as for demonstrating solidarity. A new key balance sheet complementing the traditional balance sheet based on financial data and figures will therefore be established in order to measure the success of every company: the Common Welfare Balance. Instead of measuring success in monetary terms, it employs indicators that measure the contribution of a business to the common welfare. “Common welfare” as well as the set of values and indicators measuring a company’s success will be defined in a broad democratic process. Actively engaged entrepreneurs have already adopted five core values that embody the key elements of the common welfare economy, and should be measured. These values are human dignity, solidarity, ecological sustainability, social justice, and democracy. A company that… Continue reading »
Excerpted from Jay Walljasper, who warns that slashing government budgets and making people precarious, is NOT good for encouraging the commons and volunteering:
The Tea Party, libertarians and other so-called conservatives devoted to slashing all government spending not related to the military, prisons and highways have an easy answer when asked what happens to people whose lives and livelihoods depend on public programs. They point to volunteerism—the tradition of people taking care of each other which has sustained human civilization for millennia. It’s a compelling idea, which evokes the spirit of the commons (the growing movement to protect and expand the whole sphere of cultural and economic assets belonging to all of us together). Volunteers working largely outside the realm of government—neighborhood organizations, fire brigades, blood banks and other civic initiatives—are obvious examples of commons-based sharing and caring. So that means Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann and Mitt Romney qualify as commoners (people working to improve the state of our commons)? Even with their adamant skepticism about Medicare, environmental regulations and campaign finance limits? Not so fast! Volunteerism never rises above a convenient smokescreen, which right-of-center politicians use to justify shredding the social safety net. Increased support for the people… Continue reading »
Networked organization is based on a principle known as stigmergy. “Stigmergy” is a term coined by biologist Pierre-Paul Grasse in the 1950s to describe the process by which termites coordinate their activity. Social insects like termites and ants coordinate their efforts through the independent responses of individuals to environmental triggers like chemical markers, without any need for a central coordinating authority.
Applied by way of analogy to human society, stigmergy refers primarily to the kinds of networked organization associated with wikis, group blogs, and “leaderless” organizations configured along the lines of networked cells.
Mark Elliott, whose doctoral dissertation is probably the most thorough and comprehensive treatment of stigmergy to date, contrasts stigmergic coordination with social negotiation. Social negotiation is the traditional method of organizing collaborative group efforts, through agreements and compromise mediated by discussions between individuals. The exponential growth in the number of communications with the size of the group, obviously, imposes constraints on the feasible size of a collaborative group, before coordination must be achieved by hierarchy and top-down authority. Stigmergy,… Continue reading »
Responding to the current wave of privatisations, European Alternatives together with the International University College and its Institute for the Study of Political Economy and Law together with the Municipality of Naples, and the Institut international D’etudes et recherches sur les biens communsare launching a process of forums and metings throughout Europe to draft a European Charter of the Commons. (more…)
Misunderstanding the Internet. James Curran, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman. Routledge. 2012
Overview
The growth of the internet has been spectacular. There are now more 1.5 billion internet users across the globe, about one quarter of the world’s population. This is certainly a new phenomenon that is of enormous significance for the economic, political and social life of contemporary societies.
However, much popular and academic writing about the internet takes a technologically deterministic view, assuming that the internet’s potential will be realised in essentially transformative ways. This was especially true in the euphoric moment of the mid-1990s, when many commentators wrote about the internet with awe and wonderment. While this moment may be over, its underlying technocentrism – the belief that technology determines outcomes – lingers on, and with it, a failure to understand the internet in its social, economic and political context.
Misunderstanding the Internet is a short introduction, encompassing the history, sociology, politics and economics of the internet and its impact on society. The book has a simple three part structure:
Part 1 looks at the history of the internet, and offers an overview of the internet’s place in society
Part 2 focuses on the control and economics of the internet
