Category: Economics/True Cost

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Jean Lievens: Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures – Entropy and Societal Change

Design, Economics/True Cost, Resilience
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

Entropy calculation to help understand societal change

Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, The University of Sheffield

A missing ingredient in our understanding of human influence on global environmental change is the quantitative measure of the energy interactions of societies operating under varied technological and geographical conditions. This project seeks to employ the archaeological and historical data for the comparative investigation of energy use in different societies.

The project lies at the interfaces between physics, archaeology and ecology and it will be addressed by developing models to calculate entropy generation rates within the case study systems. Entropy generation (as opposed to energy use) allows the “quality” or “usefulness” of different energy resources to be measured. Learn more.

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Antechinus: Spain activists, whistleblower creating digital pay system

Access, Economics/True Cost, Money, Politics
Antechinus
Antechinus

Spain activists, whistleblower creating digital pay system

The French whistleblower and Spanish anti-corruption activists who triggered an investigation of a former International Monetary Fund chief announced Thursday they are designing a digital payment system aimed at excluding middlemen companies that make money from online purchases. Herve Falciani and the Xnet group say their nonprofit, peer-to-peer payment system would work like PayPal on a local basis within European cities for citizen payments to participating businesses and governments.
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Jason Livesay: Tiny Villages – Horizontally Scaling Society

Architecture, Design, Economics/True Cost, Innovation, Manufacturing
Jason Livesay
Jason Livesay

Tiny Villages: Horizontally Scaling Society

Cloud computing is about horizontally (as opposed to vertically) scaling systems. Instead of building one super-powerful server, you create many inexpensive servers that each contain a small part of the system. There are multiple advantages to “scaling out” rather than “scaling up”, such as incrementally improved capacity with little or no downtime and less expensive, more maintainable servers.

Continue reading “Jason Livesay: Tiny Villages – Horizontally Scaling Society”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Silicon Valley Testing Basic Income

Economics/True Cost, Money
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

Basic Income is getting more and more serious consideration. Can't have a society where work is the passport to life and then there is no work to be found…

Why a bunch of Silicon Valley investors are suddenly interested in universal basic income

Basic income is having a moment. First Finland announced it would launch an ambitious experiment to see if it would work to give everyone in a given area is given a set amount of cash every year from the government, no strings attached. Now the Silicon Valley seed investment firm Y Combinator has announced it wants to fund a basic income experiment in the US.1

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Brian Butler: GE Seeks to Own All Cars, Use Software as Barrier to Generic Repairs and After-Market Parts

Economics/True Cost, Software
Brian Butler
Brian Butler

GM says you don't own your car, you just license it

GM has joined with John Deere in asking the government to confirm that you literally cannot own your car because of the software in its engine. Like Deere, GM wants to stop the Copyright Office from granting an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would allow you to jailbreak the code in your car's engine so that you can take it to a non-GM mechanic for service, or fix it yourself. By controlling who can service your car, GM can force you to buy only official, expensive parts, protecting its bottom line.

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Jean Leavins: Blockchain Will Decentralize Everything!

Advanced Cyber/IO, Design, Economics/True Cost
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

How Blockchain Technology Might Decentralise Everything (Not Just Currency!)

Do you know that blockchain technology could decentralise everything and not just currency? Do you even know what Blockchain is? One example that you just might have heard of is Bitcoin, the online currency. That in itself may not enlighten you to what blockchain is, however. According to Pearl Chan (2015) reporting for Venture Beat, a blockchain is:

“A transaction database shared by all nodes participating in a system. In essence it is a distributed method of tracking and transferring assets online without need for a trusted party.”