Pierre Terre's blog

According to a post on Harper’s the Free Network Foundation’s Isaac Wilder had Google’s fiberoptic cable network in his sights when rolling out a neighborhood wireless network that provides access for a fraction of the cost.

“The one clear rule,” Wilder says of FNF’s philosophy, “is that the Internet should be treated as a commons, the same way that we treat our sidewalks or our air or our water. Everybody’s got a right to use it on the same terms.”

Excerpted from a report by
Alexandra Topping:

“Jón Gnarr, the city mayor, is not a typical politician.

The self-described anarchic clown came to power after Iceland’s financial crash, promising nothing but to break his promises and procure a polar bear for the local zoo.

But three years later, his zeal for direct – and digital – democracy is exciting reformers, who are looking to Iceland for a glimpse of how democracy might work for the Facebook generation.

With two-thirds of its 320,000 population on Facebook, Iceland can be a petri dish for democratic ideas, according to the mayor.

“Community-supported enterprise + cooperatives + local investing + social enterprise + local currencies + micro-enterprise + sharing ….these all adds up to LOCAL, RESILIENT ECONOMIES.”

Watch the video here:

Here is a tale of how connecting and communicating through social media to reunite lost dogs and their owners created something unexpected, and how it can apply to developing communities for sustainability.

Wonderful story republished from Sharon Ede:

My border collie, Maggie – the original ‘face’ of Lost Dogs of Adelaide

Here is a tale of how connecting and communicating through social media to reunite lost dogs and their owners created something unexpected, and how it can apply to developing communities for sustainability (or communities for anything else).

Selected citations; you can find the sources here.

* Keith Curtis: The corporations won’t do it

“Given currently available technology, we should all have cars that drive us around in absolute safety, leaving us to lounge in the back and sip champagne.

Republished from Stanton McCandlish:

“A clearer discussion needs to happen about the 15 April 2013 “martial law”-style Watertown search, warrantless and house-by-house, for the surviving suspect after the Boston Marathon bombing. Without any more “the authorities colluded with the terrorists!” conspiracy theories, please.

At least one early source, the UK’s ‘Daily Mail’, was not reliable, and wrote with what seems to be intentional alarmist exaggeration that people in Boston’s Watertown borough had largely been ordered out of their homes unwillingly and at gunpoint, when in fact it turns out that many say they willingly cooperated.

There still really are some serious issues here, both an overstepping of governmental authority, and a stark, obvious warning that more ominous plans may already be laid down.

“Open Tech Forever (OTF) is dedicated to developing new and improved, open source versions of modern and cutting-edge technologies. In the open source spirit, we create free, online, high quality educational resources demonstrating how to understand, redesign, and replicate our products. We cover not only the skills, designs and the train of thought behind the development process but also the facilities, tools, and materials that it takes to really make a variety of technologies. We develop and document open hardware, manufacture products for sale, and host public workshops to provide a hands-on learning experience for improved skill development and retention.”

Open Tech Forever – Indiegogo Video from OpenTech Forever on Vimeo.

Zenman Energy is working on developing and prototyping an open source concentrated solar thermal/steam power generation application.

Our first major project is to produce an affordable solar steam engine. On paper (well… on computer screen) our first design is a fraction of the cost of current photovoltaic solutions. It may even compete with the cost of coal power. When the prototype is complete, we will release detailed construction plans for free.

This may sound strange, but we WANT you to copy our designs. First, we need help to improve the implementations but more importantly we need YOU or your business to make money from solar power production. Zenman Energy can’t create enough power plants to make a dent in how the world creates energy, it will take lots of people to make this happen.

We are not doing this for the money…

Excerpted from Kurt Eichenwald:

“Bitcoins are not an investment. They are an investment fad that someday could be a real digital currency, but if they continue to behave as they have, they will instead be nothing. This is not hard to understand. The fact is that real investments—outside of manias—do not quadruple or sextuple, much less gain 20 times their value so quickly.
Add to that the reality that Bitcoins have no true method of underlying valuation. You want to buy a stock? Pull up its filings with the S.E.C. and assess its financial structure and business strategy. A municipal bond? Same thing. A national currency? Assess the present economic conditions of the issuing country and check relative interest rates, etc., to determine which currency is the most valuable at that time.

John Robb of Resilient Communities says the days of having one job all your life are over. Resiliency requires that we diversify.

In “I Have Seven Jobs and I Love It. Here’s Why You Will Too.” John explains how, by networking and by also taking care of the local aspect of our lives, we can easily hold down several jobs and live a better life than we can now …

“My dad had one job his whole life, I’ll have seven, and my kids will have seven jobs at the same time.” via Henry Mason/Seth Godin

That quote is spot on. I’ve said pretty much the same thing at least a dozen times, but never so concisely.

To understand this quote a bit better, here are two examples of how it may be possible to hold seven jobs and enjoy life.

Some examples from the article:

Republished travelogue from Shane Hughes of the REconomy project:

When it comes to the great global transition to a better world some places are completely fascinating to observe. For example, Bhutan and its policies of Gross National Happiness or Germany and their spread of community renewables. Brazil’s story of community banks and currencies is also absolutely fascinating.
This article is linked to another article titled The new economy in Brazil: Through the eyes of a REconomist.

When I heard a rumour that there were as many as 300 community currencies functioning, or being set up in Brazil, I just had to know more. I have family in Brazil and so while visiting I did some research and interviewed Rafael Misquita of Banco Comunitário União Sampaio (BCUS).

After three centuries of forest policy that put the interests of the state above locals, the French are realizing that a more inclusive policy is better for both people and forests.

Excerpted from Kieko Matteson:

(read the whole article here)