gift economies

At the Seva Cafe, you are gifted a free meal, and you in turn gift a meal to others.

continue reading "The pay-it-forward Seva Cafe in Ahmedabad"

My computer finished downloading the Graffiti Research Lab Movie Sunday morning. I stuck it on for a quick look and ended up watching the whole thing. The film is a testament to the cultural value of the hacker ethic and a free and open source approach in cultural production. GRL are an art group dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers, artists and protesters with open source technologies for urban communication. After quiting their ‘proper jobs’ Evan Roth and James Powderly founded The Graffiti Research Lab while working together at the Eyebeam OpenLab.

continue reading "Graffiti Research Lab - The Movie"

In these essays, Max Weber explains the historical, religious and social roots of Capitalism and its ties to Protestant pietism and work ethic. The purpose of this weblink is that these essays are, or will be, cited and quoted in the blook to be written here about Faith as a Commons.

It's important to establish developmental changes in ethics because they inform our faith. We are a product of the word in which we live, which is in turn, a product of our hopes and desires, as well as our mistakes and greed.

What Weber describes here was true and current at the time of his research in the very early twentieth century. But times were to quickly begin a change starting with World War I, the Great Depression followed by World War II and the shift of power out of Europe to the stand-off between the USSR and the USA. Communications and travel technologies have greatly changed our lives over the past 100 years since Max Weber wrote. While seemingly whole continents today strive to "industrialize," which in many ways includes taking on many of those same Protestant Ethics, other areas are moving into an Information Age that will have a new ethics.

This new ethics is easily seen in the Open Source software movement and in self publishing like this very site.

A contrast and comparison between Max Weber's Industrial strength Protestant Work Ethic and the Hacker Ethic and the overall Gift Economy that are growing out the late twentieth and into the twenty first centuries is an important part our Conjunctive Commons of Faith.

continue reading "Online eBook of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"