Category: #OSE Open Source Everything

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SchwartzReport: All Positive Today, Mind-Expanders

Innovation, Knowledge

This is the sort of story that gives you hope. Click through and go to the bottom to see the video.

18-year-old’s Breakthrough Invention can Recharge Phones in Seconds
Stephen C. Webster – The Raw Story

Here is an extraordinary physics story, moving us just a little closer to the nonlocal. I think the last five hundred years will one day be seen in one important sense as the evolution from materiality to the nonlocal.

Particle vs. Antiparticle
LISA GROSSMAN – New Scientist/Slate

Why does humanity consensually measure seven days to a week? We use the model so universally that it is invisible as a shared intention. Breaking up time this way is entirely arbitrary. Here's why we do it. It is a perfect illustration of how nonlocal information architectures are created, and come to constitute reality.

The Power of Seven
The Economist (U.K.)

Here is an extraordinary physics story, moving us just a little closer to the nonlocal. I think the last five hundred years will one day be seen in one important sense as the evolution from materiality to the nonlocal.

Particle vs. Antiparticle
LISA GROSSMAN – New Scientist/Slate

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Berto Jongman & Jan Rappoport: Question Authority? You Must Be Crazy.

Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Culture, Government, Offbeat Fun
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

In the Dutch media there wqs a discussion today about an opinion poll about support for conspiracy theories organized by a Dutch university research group. The researchers used the same arguments as in the NYT piece. If you ask sensible questions and don't believe the official narrative you must be crazy and have low self worth.

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER

New York Times, May 21, 2013

Phi Beta Iota:  The only useful part of the NYT article is this first comment by a sane person:

  • Pat  Nyack, NY. Part of the conspiracy cohort is made up of those of us who grew up during Watergate; the lies told about the number of enemy deaths during the Viet Nam war; the actions of major corporations in places like Chile in the 70's and 80's. Some of us stood in public spaces in the heart of our universities with the guns of the National Guard trained on us. These were all factual happenings, many uncovered and reported on by this very paper. Our childhood was built upon the illusion that America was mostly just a large Mayberry. These revelations shook our basic beliefs right to the ground.  It's hard to step back from that cliff once you've been pushed to the edge of it.
Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport

Authorities Never Have “Issues with Authority”

May 21, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

It’s simple. Authorities invented the idea that other people have issues with authority.

Psychiatrists rank right up there among the elitists setting the standards. They, for example, have concocted a little fictional doodad called Oppositional Defiance Disorder. And magically, they never accuse their professional colleagues of having it. No.

Why should they? They amuse themselves by deciding when civilians are overly defiant and need pacification (drugs).

But we’re also talking about character structure here, because psychiatrists turn out to be exactly the people who want to slap labels like ODD on others. They like that. So they labor in universities and hospitals and earn their degrees and state-issued licenses, knowing that soon they will have that power.

Having gained it, there is nothing to be defiant about. They’re sitting on top of the heap, which they call science.

It’s quite a racket.

Full post below the line — both humorous and frightening.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman & Jan Rappoport: Question Authority? You Must Be Crazy.”

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Tom Atlee: Doing Democracy Differently

Civil Society, Culture, Ethics, Government
Tom Atlee
Tom Atlee

Doing democracy differently

In Is Democracy in Trouble? E.J. Dionne describes major studies suggesting that “Across most of the democratic world, there is an impatience bordering on exhaustion with electoral systems and political classes” because governments don’t follow the will of “the people”.

It would be one thing if governments made wiser decisions than what “the people” want. But they so seldom do. Usually they make decisions that favor special interests regardless of the common good.

It saddens me that this is framed as people losing faith in democracy. I don’t think governments that act this way are good examples of democracy. I’m also not sure that such a system can be fixed within a corrupted democratic process.

There are other ways to do democracy. Most people don’t realize that ancient Athenians – our alleged democratic forebears – were radically in favor of random selection and opposed to voting for representatives. They figured that aristocrats would dominate any electoral system. (Sound familiar?) Aristotle summarized their view, saying “It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot [random selection]; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.”

Although John Adams and James Madison (the first and fourth US Presidents) may not have been aware of the use of random selection in democracy, they did make statements that sound like it. Adams said that a legislature “should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large, as it should think, feel, reason, and act like them.” And Madison added that “The government ought to possess… the mind or sense of the people at large. The legislature ought to be the most exact transcript of the whole society.”

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Doing Democracy Differently”

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Patrick Meier: China Case Study in Disaster Response from Government versus Crowd-Sourced

Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial
Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier

How Crowdsourced Disaster Response in China Threatens the Government
In 2010, Russian volunteers used social media and a live crisis map to crowdsource their own disaster relief efforts as massive forest fires ravaged the country. These efforts were seen by many as both more effective and visible than the government’s response. In 2011, Egyptian volunteers used social media to crowdsource their own humanitarian convoy to provide relief to Libyans affected by the fighting. In 2012, Iranians used social media to crowdsource and coordinate grassroots disaster relief operations following a series of earthquakes in the north of the country. Just weeks earlier, volunteers in Beijing crowd-sourced a crisis map of the massive flooding in the city. That map was immediately available and far more useful than the government’s crisis map. In early 2013, a magnitude 7  earthquake struck Southwest China, killing close to 200 and injuring more than 13,000. The response, which was also crowdsourced by volunteers using social media and mobile phones, actually posed a threat to the Chinese Government.

. . . . . . .

Aided by social media and mobile phones, grassroots disaster response efforts present a new and more poignant “Dictator’s Dilemma” for repressive regimes. The original Dictator’s Dilemma refers to an authoritarian government’s competing interest in using information communication technology by expanding access to said technology while seeking to control the democratizing influences of this technology. In contrast, the “Dictator’s Disaster Lemma” refers to a repressive regime confronted with effectively networked humanitarian response at the grassroots level, which improves collective action and activism in political contexts as well. But said regime cannot prevent people from helping each other during natural disasters as this could backfire against the regime.

Read full post.

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Howard Rheingold: 19 June – 26 July Think-Know Tools Webinar

Culture, Knowledge
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold

I'm offering Think-Know Tools again June 19 -July 26. All the details about what we'll co-learn, the schedule, missions, how we go about participative and collaborative learning, can be found at http://socialmediaclassroom.com/host/think2/  Price is $300 via PayPal. $250 if you've taken a Rheingold U course before ($200 if you've taken two courses, etc.). $500 if your company reimburses.

It's all about the theory and practice of personal knowledge management. We'll look at the theory and conceptual frameworks around intellect augmentation and the extended mind. We'll also actively practice social bookmarking as a collective intelligence activity, concept mapping, and building knowledge-plexes with Personal Brain (you can see the web-brain version of the syllabus at http://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/EB72D74A-199F-8994-4938-88ACDA8049EF )

Feel free to contact me about questions. Participation is limited to 30 co-learners, so let me know soon if you want me to reserve a place for you.

Please feel free to forward to anyone who might be interested.

Regards,

Howard Rheingold
http://www.rheingold.com
what it is —> is —>up to us

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Kalani Kirk Hausman: Quentin Harley released SCARA based “RepRap Morgan” 3D printer and its design

Manufacturing
Kalani Kirk Hausman
Kalani Kirk Hausman

Quentin Harley released SCARA based “RepRap Morgan” 3D printer and its design

Reprap Morgan is a concentric dual arm SCARA FDM 3D printer, designed and built by Quentin Harley. The SCARA stands for Selective Compliant Assembly Robot Arm or Selective Compliant Articulated Robot Arm. Harley has been working on this project for a couple of years, and in February Harley released pictures showing off the build. The extruder of this Reprap Morgan 3D printer moves along the x and y axes and the bed itself moves along the Z axis. Its major parts, such as the arms, driving gears, pipe adapters are printed on a 3D printer.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

. . . . . . . .

“RepRAP Morgan is all about a dream. A dream to make it easy for anyone in South Africa, or anywhere else in the world to build a 3D printer without needing exceedingly expensive materials, hard to find components, stuff that has to be shipped at sometimes more than the cost of the components, requiring advanced tools.” Notes Harley. “Morgan is to be a tool for creation, not a toy or end product. It should be used in education, and must be affordable and safe enough for school kids to use.” adds Harley.

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Jean Lievens: Money, Markets, Value and the Commons – detailed stream description (DRAFT)

Design, Money, P2P / Panarchy
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

From the P2P Foundation.

Money, Markets, Value and the Commons – detailed stream description (DRAFT)

Working page for the money, markets and value stream of the Economics and the Commons Conference.

Please read, view, and feel free to edit, comment, add to the list of stream recommended readings and viewings (at the end of this page), or contact the stream coordinator (Ludwig Schuster) as appropriate.

A stream forum for real time discussions is available on the conference communications site.

Introduction

Money, markets, and value are some of the core-categories of today's capitalist societies. They come with specific meanings, forms and interpretations which are reflected in and at the same time give shape to socio-economic and cultural contexts.

This stream shall deal with the question what happens if these specific forms are (deliberately) changed. Do we need money in an economy of the Commons? If yes, how would that money need to be designed and who should control it? If no, how could a demonitised society look like? And perhaps most importantly, how can the phase of transition be envisioned? In this stream light shall be shed on the different standpoints and the reasonings behind them in order to reach a more clear-cut view and to find some common route in this extremely wide and controversial, yet highly important field.

Linked Table of Contents Below the Line.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Money, Markets, Value and the Commons – detailed stream description (DRAFT)”