P2P Politics

Here’s the original description of the project.

Warning: It’s a rant, i.e. continuous use of the kind of language we never use here, showing a particular dislike of MBA and business types, and framed as a desire to go back to the original values and ideals of the hacking community.

(here’s a comprehensive list of open and free movements)

continue reading "Zed Shaw launches Freehacker’s Union"

Below are excerpts from Eric Hunting in a recent email discussion. I think this is a valuable insight that transcends any critique of transhumanism, but can be applied to similar cultural memes, like the expectation of a fundamental spiritual transformation of the world by 2012. Utopian or apocalyptic visions can actually demobilize because of their stress on inevitability.

Eric Hunting:

continue reading "What’s wrong with the Singularity as political strategy"

A great speech for the Personal Democracy Forum, which you should read in full.

Key message: the digital rennaissance is not about blogging and expressing yourself, but about reprogramming social and political processes.

Via Edge.

continue reading "Douglas Rushkoff on the promise of a digital renaissance, and what may derail it"

Felix Stadler has an interesting essay in First Monday, unfortunately titled Bourgeois Anarchism and Authoritarian Democracies.

It describes two countervailing tendencies: self-aggregating publics that are challenging traditional politics centered around a public sphere, and the tendency by authoritarian state forces to use data capture as an enforcement and control mechanism. Midway, he also has a nice overview of theorizers of networked individualism.

continue reading "Recursive Publics as a challenge to the State"

Whether you life in the United States or anywhere else you probably can’t escape the mainstream news machinery bringing you the latest, too often one sided information about what is going on in American politics - and this of course is news that affects all of us in one way or another….

continue reading "Real independent news from the United States: Democracy Now!"

Interesting contribution by David Eaves:

He starts his argument by stressing that the Open Web is not just a desirable physical infrastructure but a social value:

continue reading "What kind of movement is the open movement?"

Intriguing story from a Taiwanese newspaper about the conditions in Southern China.

Excerpt:

“The factory closure last November was a scenario that has been repeated across southern China, where more than 1,000 shoe factories — about a fifth of the total — have closed down in the past year. The majority were in Houjie, a concrete sprawl on the outskirts of Dongguan known as China’s “Shoe Town.”