A new NGO called A Human Right is campaigning “Buy this Satellite” to raise $150K in a bid to buy one of the world’s highest capacity communications satellites from its bankrupt owners in order to re-task it to supply Internet access to the world’s poorest people. They plan on building their own super-cheap satellite modems as well. Read more
IASC2011, the 13th (!) Biennial Conference of the International Association for Study of the Commons, taking place on january 10th to 14th in Hyderabad, India, will take a critical look at the interface between human and natural systems, Commons in particular, to build on our understanding on the elements and interconnectedness that sustain life, collective action and our future. The Conference will contribute rich lessons and principles for managing local, complex, as well as Global Commons such as international arrangements to respond to climate change. Read more
Diaspora is an open-source Facebook alternative. The idea got so much buzz on the crowdsourced micro-funding site Kickstarter, that they were able to turn a goal of raising $10,000 in 39 days into $200,000 from 6,500 backers in the same timeframe. But with such high expectations, you have to deliver. And many expressed doubts that the small team of college students could do that. Read more
The animated video clip titled “The Commons” provides a short introduction into the idea of the commons, as well as a critical review of the so called “tragedy of the commons”.
The International Commons Conference connected about 150 leading figures in commons-based studies and activism for a multidisciplinary, international conference in Berlin, Heinrich Böll Foundation. The general objective was to emerge with a set of principles and long-term goals that can foster the planning and development of commons based organisations and policy as well as their networking capacity. Read more about the outcomes of the conference.
See also: Workshop report: Commoning through the Crisis: creating commons power and resisting enclosures and cooptation
Online file sharing too dangerous? Dead Drops is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. Anyone can access a Dead Drop and everyone may install a Dead Drop in their neighborhood/city. A Dead Drop must be public accessible. Read more or check the dead drop database
The Right to Health is easily proclaimed, signed by all valid Human Rights packages or defined as unavoidable in progressive constitutions, such as in Brazil or South Africa. But one third of the human population dies due to poverty related diseases. Human Rights are foreseeable not fulfilled under the current global economical rules. Under the umbrella of those rules an enormous shift of wealth, from the bottom to the top, took place. 1.125 Billionaires possess three times more of the world’s capital than the poorer half of the world population. Since 1988 the richest twentieth of the population gained eight percent of the world’s capital, whereas the poorest quarter lost thirty percent. Read more
The RMI’s oil import map interactively shows how much oil the U.S. has imported, from where, and how much the US have spent every month since 1973. The NYT oil prices chart tells how oil consumption and prize intermingle.
Science 3.0 is a meta-blog that combines the hypothesis based inquiry of laboratory science with the methods of social science research to understand and improve the use of new human networks made possible by today’s digital connectivity. This website is a community where those interested in the advancement of research can share ideas, tools and build connections. With Science 3.0 it is easier to find net pearls like Maitri Erwin’s always entertaining ‘A Pirate Scientist’s Life For Me’ focusing on public access to science education and open publishing.
Somali pirates are about to face trial in Germany for the first time since the EU launched its operation against piracy off the Somali coast in 2008. It’s a clear-cut case — the 10 men were caught red-handed. But it poses a legal and diplomatic headache for the German authorities. Will this be the first trial of many? Read more
In the film series, “Another World is Plantable!”, community gardens in different parts of the world are presented. At the core of the film series are the activists from the community gardens, the gardens themselves, and the visions the activists have of them. They recount how and why their gardens are not just green oases in the middle of the city, but much more than that projects that bring into being ‘another world’. The documentary film series takes up these ideas and connects them to emancipatory projects in different parts of the world.
Source: The Beauty of Infographics
The Document Foundation released the beta of LibreOffice, to speed up the rate of changes to the notoriously slow OpenOffice office suite software project under the lead of the software corporation Oracle. This suggestion received support from all the major open-source and Linux powers: Red Hat, Novell, and Ubuntu. Even Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, announced that they’d place LibreOffice in next spring’s update of Ubuntu. Only Oracle does not like the fork and insists of keeping the name OpenOffice for its own free office suit. Read more
In the subway, there’s no longer any trace of the screen of embarrassment that normally impedes the gestures of the passengers. Strangers make conversation without making passes. A band of comrades conferring on a street corner. Much larger assemblies on the boulevards, absorbed in discussions. Surprise attacks mounted in city after city, day after day. A new military barracks has been sacked and burned to the ground. The evicted residents of a building have stopped negotiating with the mayor’s office; they settle in. A company manager is inspired to blow away a handful of his colleagues in the middle of a meeting. There’s been a leak of files containing the personal addresses of all the cops, together with those of prison officials, causing an unprecedented wave of sudden relocations. We carry our surplus goods into the old village bar and grocery store, and take what we lack. Some of us stay long enough to discuss the general situation and figure out the hardware we need for the machine shop. The radio keeps the insurgents informed of the retreat of the government forces. A rocket has just breached a wall of the Clairvaux prison. Impossible to say if it has been months or years since the “events” began. And the prime minister seems very alone in his appeals for calm. Read more
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