Pierre Terre's blog

Essay of the Day: Peer-Producing Alternative Futures

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 17, 2013 - 19:35

* Article: Foresight in a network era: peer-producing alternative futures. By Jose Ramos, Tim Mansfield, and Gareth Priday. Journal of Futures Studies, September 2012, 17(1): 71-90.

This essay is part of the special edition of the Journal of Futures Studies on the Communication of Foresight.

A summary from the abstract:

A status update on the advancement of the Bitcoin ecology

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 17, 2013 - 12:16

Excerpted from Nicolas Mendoza:

(the original has many interesting links)

“The context in 2013 looks dramatically different to the one during the huge rally-and-crash of 2011. During the last year, the pace of development and adoption by merchants and the NGO sector has steadily accelerated, and the Bitcoin ecosystem in general advanced in many fronts. Recent events in the Bitcoin world announce that a qualitative shift is taking place.

* Celebrating protocol

An overview of the collaborative economy (in French)

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 17, 2013 - 09:58

An French-language interview conducted while I was invited by Communautique last year to speak in Montreal, produced by the great video production team of Remixthecommons. It is entitled “Vue d’ensemble de l’économie collaborative avec Michel Bauwens”

Watch the video here:

Who cares of Google Reader? Let’s use the P2P alternatives

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 17, 2013 - 01:30

These days half the Internet is upset because Google Reader is about to quit. I am not. I am really happy about these news, because this is a wonderful occasion for everybody to consider again something that I have been suggesting for a while now.

There are open alternatives to services like Google Reader, Gmail, Del.icio.us, Blogspot etc… that:

Research on Co-working: Making Space For Others

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 16, 2013 - 19:23

“This report tries to understand how the socio-economic factors that spawned coworking will continue to affect our workspaces for the better – and with this create tools to make it happen.”

This is well done Master’s thesis on Coworking by Kathy Jackson.

Here are a few excerpts.

* From the introduction:

“The purpose of this report is to discuss the spaces in which we work with others, specifically, coworking spaces.

There is no doubt that we are entering a new phase of society, aren’t we always? This particular time sees a set of circumstances that are having a positive affect on the spaces we work in.

A Critique of 3D Printing as a Critical Technology

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 16, 2013 - 13:45

Republished from Johan Söderberg:

“The third industrial revolution might come with personal or digital manufacturing, when what used to be bought in a shop could be made at home with such tools as laser cutters, 3D printers and computer numerical control (CNC) milling machines. They are all based on the same principle, using software to help guide the movements of a machine tool, and the one that has attracted the most media attention is a printer that prints three-dimensional objects, with a nozzle that lays down a plastic material layer by layer. Designs for the printer of such objects as doorknobs or bicycles can be downloaded from the net.

Book of the Day: Green Governance, Human Rights, and the Commons

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 16, 2013 - 10:33

* Book: Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Commons. By Weston H. Burns and David Bollier. Cambridge University Press, 2013

The case for green governance, an excerpt from the introduction:

“If the human species is to overcome the many interconnected ecological catastrophes now confronting us, this moment in history requires that we entertain some bold modifications of our legal structures and political culture. We must find the means to introduce new ideas for effective and just environmental protection?locally, nationally, regionally, globally and points in between.

What monetary reform for the post-growth era?

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 16, 2013 - 01:06

Excerpted from Jem Bendell:

“While more politicians promote new measures of progress, they remain fixated on increasing economic growth. Why this obsession? Do they simply prefer it to other measures of progress? Clearly that can’t be the reason. The answer lies in our current monetary system, which requires economic growth, as otherwise our money supply disappears and we experience recession. To understand how that is the case, we must first understand the origin of the money we use. So let us take a couple of moments to recap on our monetary system.

Meeting P2P/Openness advocates in Minneapolis?

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 15, 2013 - 15:08

Next month I will be in Minneapolis to speak about the relationships between p2p/Open(standards, software, education, manufacturing…) and Catholic Social Doctrine at this symposium. I will present a paper titled “Catholic Social Thought and the Openness Revolution: natural travel companions”.

I will have some time both before and after the event, so it would be great to meet other people interested in the same topic in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, or maybe even in other parts of USA. Please send an email to mfioretti@nexaima.net if interested, or to share any link/resource/thought you may have on the topic of my paper. Thanks!

The sharing economy and the new class warfare

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 15, 2013 - 10:19

It’s easy to think that if this trend continues, it might lead to a division of people into two classes: those who use the sharing economy services to live more comfortably, and those who are enabling this lifestyle because their income depends on it. Is this the future we want?

Excerpted from Juho Makkonen, who asks: Is Free for the Rich?

“Many people have recently shared this inspirational TED talk by Amanda Palmer. In it she describes an ideal of the collaborative economy: a meritocracy in which people do not demand to be paid, but are instead simply voluntarily rewarded for their efforts by those for whom they provide value.

Lionel Maurel: Free Culture vs. Commons Culture (in French)

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 15, 2013 - 09:49

When I was invited by Communautique last year to speak in Montreal, the most impressive contribution was by Lionel Maurel, a young French legal expert on cultural rights and restrictions (free culture, IP, Creative Commons, copyleft, etc…).

Here is a very interesting French-language interview concocted by the great video production team of Remixthecommons, and entitled: “Le P2P, la culture libre et le mouvement des Communs, avec Lionel Maurel.”

Watch the video here:

The Spanish P2P Wikisprint on March 20

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 15, 2013 - 06:46

This is our first P2P Foundation Wikisprint and we are really excited about your participation in mapping and expanding Spanish language P2P resources. So please get involved and help spread the word.

David Bolier has written a great overview which we reproduce for you here.

Originally posted – bollier.org/blog/spanish-p2p-wikisprint-march-20

“Next Wednesday, March 20, a fascinating new stage in transnational cooperation will arrive when scores of commoners in twenty countries take part in a Spanish P2P Wikisprint, a coordinated effort to document and map the myriad peer to peer initiatives that exist in Latin America and Spain.

Revolutionary Plots: Key citations on P2P in Agriculture and Food

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 15, 2013 - 00:35

Find the sources here:

…everything old is new again. The resurgent interest in local foods and home-scale preservation—from canning, jamming, freezing, brewing, fermenting, and otherwise experimenting with food—is happening coast to coast. Taking up the pot and the pan, the cheesecloth and strainer, the canning jar and the wine bottle, homesteaders are beginning to reweave the web of culture lost in the toxic downdrift of the industrial food supply. Food preservation is hooked into all the values of homesteading—self-sufficiency, community resilience, DIY for fun and pleasure—a reminder that food is not something that’s done for us, but something that we do with one another. Remaking our relationship to food is one of the central homesteading pleasures and practices, a radical act that can go a long way toward growing into our role as producers rather than consumers.

New Italian book on peer-producing society through common good enterpreneurship: Societing Reloaded

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 14, 2013 - 10:22

“We at AOS have contributed a chapter about the emergence of ubiquitous, peer-to-peer, forms of intelligence in the city, and on its effects and transformations on how people learn, work, express, collaborate, communicate, relate and perceive their environment: the co-creation of the city.”

* Book: Societing Reloaded. Pubblici produttivi e innovazione sociale. Curated by Adam Arvidsson and Alex Giordano. EGEA, 2013 (with contributions from Salvatore Iaconesi, Penelope Di Pixel, Michel Bauwens, Bertram Niessen and others)

The editors write:

On the necessary “value revolution”

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 14, 2013 - 07:08

“By attaching too much emphasis on self-interest and personal gain in relation to the concept of sharing, the altruistic aspects of sharing could be undermined and the more benevolent motivations of those who share could be increasingly ignored … the evidence suggests that those who share because they are told it will save them money are less likely to engage in other environmentally beneficial activities.”

Excerpted from Rajesh Makwana, in Shareable magazine:

Distributed financing for distributed energy: the 3 models

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 14, 2013 - 04:47

Excerpted from David Roberts:

(the original has many links)

“The biggest barrier to spreading renewable energy is its high up-front costs. Some of that is helped by state and federal financial incentives, but those are expected to decline sharply in coming years. However, there is a positive countervailing trend: innovations in the financing and ownership of solar projects that are opening distributed solar PV to a wider and wider market. Here are three financial models that are helping to drive this solar expansion.

* Solar Leasing Financial Model

Video of the Day: Alan Watts on Passionate Production

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 13, 2013 - 04:00

Intrinsic motivation and passionate production are key to participation in P2P projects. In this wonderful short video spiritual teacher and zen master Alan Watts discusses the importance of living life to it’s full potential.

Feeding the 3D printer – how open source solution helps save on costs

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 13, 2013 - 03:25

3D printers need 3D ‘ink’. Mostly, that’s plastic that can be melted by the print nozzles and be deposited to produce the part being printed. The plastic comes in the form of a plastic wire – a filament that is quite costly: $ 40 to 50 per kilogram.

John Robb’s Resilient Communities blog has a report on how a retired business owner turned inventor figured out a way to save big on that printer feedstock.

How a Retiree Invented a Way to Save Big $$ on 3D Printing

Hugh Lyman invented a device that melts low-cost plastic pellets and extrudes a filament capable of feeding 3D printers, lowering the cost to about one tenth. The invention is open source and is available from thingiverse.

Replacing profit maximization and extractive ownership with living enterprises and generative ownership?

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 13, 2013 - 01:57

Excerpted from Majorie Kelly:

“Dominant ownership designs of today are built around profit maximization, central to that imperative is the need to grow. As Herman Daly and others have so eloquently articulated, the growth imperative threatens the living system of the Earth. When we take apart the system to see where this imperative resides, we find that what keeps it in overdrive are the demands of Wall Street for ever-higher profits and stock price. Corporations, and the capital markets where their ownership shares trade, are the internal combustion engine of the capitalist economy. They are where it hits the ground and goes. And where it spins out of control. As Fritjof Capra put it, “It’s an alarming thought that organizational systems are now the main driving force of ecological systems.”

Living the peer-funded musical life: Amanda Palmer’s moving testimony

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 12, 2013 - 13:39

Rock artist Amanda Palmer, who collected $1.2 million from her fans through crowdfunding, movingly describes her experiences, from crowdsurfing via couchsurfing, to crowdfunding:

Tom Atlee on the rebirth of a p2p-based democratic journalism

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 12, 2013 - 11:09

Republished from Tom Atlee:

“Below are two mind-bending stories about journalism, with profound implications for the functioning of democracy – including its death and potential rebirth.

* 1: Mainstream Media Meltdown! ROBERT W. MCCHESNEY – Salon: This report is excerpted from ‘Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy” –

* 2. Bob Woodward and the Rules of Washington Morality. MICHAEL TOMASKY – The Daily Beast.

Movement of the Day: The “International Student Movement”

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 12, 2013 - 01:07

Excerpted from Zachary Bell:

“On Nov. 14, 2012, tens of thousands of students flooded the streets of Montreal to express opposition to the proposed tuition hikes. Iain Brannigan, one of approximately 65,000 participants, often took part in the city’s frequent, massive student protests — but this day was uniquely exciting for him. As the University of Ottawa international-development student marched to the tune of “À qui la rue?” (Whose streets? ) “À nous la rue!” (Our streets!), he knew that the words were being chanted simultaneously — in a dozen different languages — by students around the globe.

GitHub is making peer production more peer-produced!

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 11, 2013 - 12:42

“GitHub, I believe, is doing to open source what the internet did to the publishing industry: It’s creating a culture gap between the previous, big-project generation of open source and a newer, more amateurized generation of open source today.”

Excerpted from Mikeal Rogers in Wired, who argues that:

This isn’t just a tool: We’re witnessing the birth of a new culture.

Movement of the Day: The Embassy of the Commons in Poland

Submitted by Pierre Terre on March 11, 2013 - 01:01

An information hub for everyone interested in spreading the Commons and P2P paradigms in Poland.

An introduction by Petros of Freelab:

“It is time to bring on some good. Some common good. Welcome to the Embassy of the Commons.

The Commons is the methodology in which people organise around resources, to fulfill human needs in the sustainable, participatory and non-market way.

The commons movement is now thriving around the world. And FreeLab wants to bring this springtime also to Poland.

Thus, in cooperation with P2P Foundation and the Commons Strategies Group we decided to open The Embassy of the Commons in Poland.

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