Schlagwort: globale dörfer

Brief an Genevieve Vaughan

I share this letter with the Keimform community because I think it is a part of necessary and fruitful dialogues that we have to start. In a different colour (blue)  I also included Genevieves answer which came rather swiftly and hopefully shows that dialogue is not only possible but also might lead to results.

genevieve

Genevieve,

we met up shortly after your Friday evening speech at the „Matriarchy-Gift Economy – Subsistence“ seminar at the Vienna University of Agriculture and we had the opportunity to have a little chat afterwards at the buffet generously offered by Gerda Schneiders Institute of Landscape Planning. I talked to you about the feelings that I had as a strong advocate of non-monetary economics about your speech. And I announced that I would make them more precise in a letter. I share this letter with some friends that are at the heart of the matter.

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ox4 Notes III: Money and Patterns

Franz Nahrada (photo by Phoebe)This post continued my coverage of the ox4 conference (part 1, part 2). The topic of Raoul Victor’s talk was Money and Peer Production. He pointed out that money as a dominant social relation emerged only with capitalism. In pre-capitalist societies, most social relations weren’t based on money and symmetric exchange. That’s an important reminder since people often believe that money and markets are more or less neutral tools which can be used for non-capitalist purposes, since they are far older than capitalism. They forget that money and markets have never been the primary means of organizing production in any non-capitalist society, they only played minor, supporting roles. Money cannot become the dominant social form outside of capitalism, and capitalism cannot exist without money.

Raoul also explained that money is just the incorporation of symmetric exchange; you cannot abolish money without abolishing exchange, and vice versa. Money emerges spontaneously when it is needed, e.g. cigarettes were used as a substitute money in times of war. When markets are forbidden but there is no other adequate way of organizing production and distribution, black markets appear—markets in their worst form. So money can only be abandoned by getting rid of its root cause: exchange.

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ox4 Notes II: Open Hardware Challenges and Ambitions

A RonjaThis post continues my coverage of the Fourth Oekonux Conference. Johan Söderberg talked about the Czech open hardware project Ronja. RONJA was developed to provide a cheap, easily producible alternative to Wi-Fi, allowing wireless data transmission between computers. Amazingly, Ronjas use visible light for data transmission, but they are quite fast (10 MBit/s) and allow reliable point-to-point data transmissions, except in case of fog.

The goal of the Ronja project was not only to build affordable open hardware for data transmission, but also to allow the creation of anonymous, censorship-proof networks that can’t be controlled by companies or the state. All design information has been published under the GNU Free Documentation License. The Ronja hardware was sufficiently successful to be employed not only by private people, but also by companies.

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Open Source Jahrbuch: Das erste Kapitel

Der Untertitel des aktuellen Open Source Jahrbuch ist mir erst beim Ansehen der Print-Version aufgefallen: Zwischen freier Software und Gesellschaftsmodell. „Gesellschaftsmodell“ klingt ja viel versprechend 🙂 — leider allerdings ist im Buch außer dem Artikel von Franz Nahrada und vielleicht dem von Gundolf S. Freyermuth (dazu je unten mehr) nicht viel zu finden, was diesem Anspruch gerecht werden könnte.

Überhaupt kann ich allen, die das Buch nicht bestellen wollen oder können, nur den Download der PDF-Version empfehlen, da die inhaltliche Gliederung des Buchs in der Online-Übersichtsseite völlig verloren geht. Insgesamt hat das Buch 7 Kapitel, die für uns interessantesten Artikel dürften wohl v.a. in Kapitel 1 („Das Prinzip Open Source“) und 2 („Open-Source-Ökonomie“) zu finden.

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Das neue Open Source Jahrbuch ist da

Vor ein paar Tagen ist das neue Open Source Jahrbuch erschienen. Das Buch gibt es zum Komplett-Download als PDF; wer den Autor- bzw. Herausgeber/innen oder den eigenen Augen etwas gutes tun will, kann aber auch die gedruckte Version bestellen. Außerdem gibt es eine Übersichtsseite mit Titeln und Abstract der einzelnen Artikel, über die die Artikel jeweils auch separat downloadbar sind. Insgesamt sind es 49 Artikel — wow, eine Menge Stoff 🙂

Zu den Autoren gehört Richard Stallman, der — nach dem Titel zu urteilen –, allerdings nur mit seiner üblichen Litanei aufwartet: „Why ‚Open Source‘ Misses the Point of Free Software“ („Warum ‚Open Source‘ das Wesentliche von ‚Freier Software‘ verdeckt“). Schade, wär interessant gewesen, mal wieder was Neues vom ihm zu lesen…

Aus der keimförmigeren Ecke ist zumindest Franz Nahrada vertreten, mit einem Artikel über „Piazze telematiche, Video Bridges, Open Coops – der mühsame Weg zu den Globalen Dörfern“.

Hab mir das Buch jedenfalls mal runtergeladen und werd demnächst mal anfangen, zu schmökern 🙂