P2P / Panarchy – Page 26 – Public Intelligence Blog

Dear friends,

An invitation to speak has brought me back to some roots of my work I haven't revisited in some time – the Iroquois Confederacy and its recognition of the intimate tie between democracy and peace – collective wisdom and collective tranquility. Peace between people requires their respectful, insight-seeking conversation. It requires, as Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Iroquois tells us, that “we meet and just keep talking until there's nothing left but the obvious truth.”

Lyons also notes – to us self-proclaimed modern people – that “The Earth has all the time in the world. We don't.” I strongly recommend his brief, vivid and moving video:
http://vimeo.com/50460060 (note for those who have trouble with online videos: in the lower right it give the option to use Flash or HTML5 video players).

Few Americans or people in other modern “democracies” realize how much our government structures owe to the Iroquois. We talk about ancient Greece giving us democracy. True, ancient Athens gave us the idea of “one man one vote” when adopting laws. But some scholars suggest that the Iroquois gave us our federal system (an alliance of free states under one greater power), the idea of “balance of powers”, and much of our sense of personal privacy and liberty from government interference, as well as the idea of taking turns while speaking in an assembly.
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_IndiansOrigDemoc.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: 17 April 2013 Democracy, Peace, & the Iriquois Teleconference”

2013/04/032013/04/03

Jean Lievens: What is a BitCoin?

Design, Economics/True Cost, P2P / Panarchy

What is Bitcoin?

Monedial.com

To answer this question, we need to clarify specifically what is being asked. Almost everywhere you look when searching for the answer to this question, you won't find the answer to what a Bitcoin is, but rather what it does, or otherwise how bitcoins work in conjunction with one another as a system. What most people are asking however when first introduced to Bitcoin, is really what Bitcoin is at its most granular level. Most often, it is this step of the explanation that is missed resulting in a stumpling block to understand how bitcoins work together as a system. So what is a bitcoin? The answer to this question is that, at its most basic fundamental level, an individual bitcoin is simply a computer record. You can think of a bitcoin as a computer file such as a word document, an email, or a photo image. What makes a bitcoin file special, and makes it different from any other files that you might have on your computer, is that once a bitcoin file is created, the original record can always identified within the bitcoin user community.

So why does everywhere else I look say that Bitcoin is a new kind of money?

When you generally attempt to find the answer to what bitcoin is, you often find answers such as “Bitcoin is a decentralized Crypto-currency”, “It's a peer-to-peer virtual money”, or “It's a open-source revolutionary digital comodity.” Rather than identifying what an individual bitcoin is however, such answers are describing how bitcoins are used. These descriptions are not describing what an individual bitcoin is, but rather how the bitcoin network or system is used to create a digital currency. Of course, the purpose for the creation of bitcoins was, in fact, to create such a monetary system, however to properly understand Bitcoin as a system, it is necessary to first understand what bitcoin is at it's most basic level.

Learn more.

2013/04/022013/04/03

Owl: Mexican Revolution Begins — Pilot for US Revolution?

Crowd-Sourcing, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Security

Uprisings Taking Place “All Over Guerrero” in Mexico

Utterly pervasive and deep police and political corruption always leads to rebellion, and it's happening in Mexico now, according to Raimondo:

“The people of Tierra Colorada, in Mexico’s Guerrero province, have had enough. On March 28, 1,500 armed citizens took to the streets, set up roadblocks, and arrested local officials. Tierra Colorada sits on a major road which runs from the popular tourist city of Acapulco, less than 40 miles away, to Mexico City. Armed citizens have set up checkpoints along the road, stopping cars, taxis, and other vehicles, as well as searching homes for known criminals. They have also arrested the former mayor, the chief of police, and 12 officers. The charges: murder, and collusion with criminals. The force’s spokesman, Bruno Placido Valerio, said: “We have besieged the municipality, because here criminals operate with impunity in broad daylight, in view of municipal authorities.”

Continue reading “Owl: Mexican Revolution Begins — Pilot for US Revolution?”

2013/03/282013/03/29

Rickard Falkvinge: Swarm Economy and BitCoin, Plus Pirate (People’s) Parties Rising in Iceland & Croatia

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Money, P2P / Panarchy

Why Expensify Endorsing Bitcoin Is A Really Big Deal: Social Virality

Swarm Economy: Yesterday, news broke that the Expensify service has enabled bitcoin payments. With the rapidly expanding number of businesses accepting bitcoin as payment method, one could think that this was merely another player in the pool of bitcoin’s expanding economy (which just broke the one-billion-USD barrier, by the way). But Expensify is something much more than that.

Let’s first discuss the concept of expense reports to understand Expensify’s important role in the subsurface payments ecosystem. On all companies I’ve worked for lately, you don’t ask the company to buy something you need for your work – it’s just too much paperwork, too much red tape to make it happen. Instead, you get a small budget for discretionary stuff you need to do your job, and you just buy stuff as you need it with your private credit card, send in the receipts to your employer, and get reimbursed on the next paycheck, which arrives before the credit card bill is due.

This system is pervasive and ubiquitous. Sending in receipts for payment like this is known as submitting an expense report. It’s still bureaucracy and red tape and it still sucks, but it sucks considerably less than asking for approval in advance.

Enter Expensify, a service that markets itself straightforwardly as “Expense reports that don’t suck”. I’ve been using Expensify through its development for the past couple of years and have also contributed my use case (frequent travel outside of internet coverage), which led them to implement important new features – meaning, they’re a responsive bunch, too.

Read full article.

2013/03/252013/03/26

Michel Bauwens: Cuidad P2P Encuentro con Michel Bauwens en Madrid

P2P / Panarchy

Madrid, Ciudad P2P. Encuentro con Michel Bowuens

2013/03/232013/03/26

Michel Bauwens: Peer Governance and Wikipedia (interview with Bauwens & Bruns)

P2P / Panarchy

Peer Governance and Wikipedia (interview with Bauwens & Bruns)

This week the interviews with experts and (ex-)Wikipedians, on which parts of my paper “Peer Governance and Wikipedia: Identifying and Understanding the Problems of Wikipedia’s Governance (2009)” were based, are going to be presented in a series of separate posts. This first post contains the short interviews with Michel Bauwens and Axel Bruns who are answering the same questions.

Read full interview.

Phi Beta Iota: Strongly recommended. Wikipedia lacks integrity. It has been taken over by various cabals including Zionists, the various industrial complexes, and our very own CIA. Wikipedia is a classic example of a “controlled” asset used to misinform the public at great convenience. Across the sciences and the humanities, across most public issue areas, and certainly with respect to Open Source Intelligence, WIkipedia is a disinformation source that is very convenient for the loosely educated to embrace. It is a form of “soft” propaganda and therefore toxic.

2013/03/202013/03/26

Patrick Meier: A Research Framework for Next Generation Humanitarian Technology and Innovation

Architecture, Crowd-Sourcing, Data, Geospatial, P2P / Panarchy

A Research Framework for Next Generation Humanitarian Technology and Innovation

Humanitarian donors and organizations are increasingly championing innovation and the use of new technologies for humanitarian response. DfID, for example, is committed to using “innovative techniques and technologies more routinely in humanitarian response” (2011). In a more recent strategy paper, DfID confirmed that it would “continue to invest in new technologies” (2012). ALNAP’s important report on “The State of the Humanitarian System” documents the shift towards greater innovation, “with new funds and mechanisms designed to study and support innovation in humanitarian programming” (2012). A forthcoming land-mark study by OCHA makes the strongest case yet for the use and early adoption of new technologies for humanitarian response (2013).

These strategic policy documents are game-changers and pivotal to ushering in the next wave of humanitarian technology and innovation. That said, the reports are limited by the very fact that the authors are humanitarian professionals and thus not necessarily familiar with the field of advanced computing. The purpose of this post is therefore to set out a more detailed research framework for next generation humanitarian technology and innovation—one with a strong focus on information systems for crisis response and management.

Read full article with many links.