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September 25 2011
Global Dashboard -- What is resilience? [Three-dimensional (3D) wellbeing]
'...wellbeing is a dynamic process with #material (what people have), #relational (what people are able to do) and #subjective (how people feel) dimensions. These dimensions are interlinked, co-evolving and fluid. The review is largely an individual/household level analysis but potentially could be applied to community/country-level resilience too. #Material dimension: ...households suffer asset loss; people’s health deteriorates; families go hungry. And attempts to minimise vulnerability in the present can have material consequences in the longer term... #Relational dimension: Social networks are important in enabling migration towards areas of relative safety and opportunity, even when restrictive policies are in place to limit movement. #Subjective dimension: The way in which an individual feels vulnerable is ultimately shaped by the culture and environment in which they grew up, by their position in society, by gender, and by a whole other range of contextually specific factors.'July 01 2011
Miiu.org -- Dayton
'The town of Dayton (pop. 1400), located less than seven miles from the center of Harrisonburg (pop. 44,000) in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, has a number of qualities for success in an era of restricted access to oil and/or increasingly fragile global supply chains.'
Tags:
resilience
June 28 2011
MiiU.org
'MiiU (pronounced me-you) is an open venture that hopes to do three simple things: #1. We create valuable community services. #2. We attempt to provide everybody that joins us with a way to make an income. #3. We will do whatever we can to start more ventures based on the open venture model.
Tags:
resilience
April 06 2011
YouTube -- Peter Fein: Hacking For Freedom - Pycon 2011
'Presentation on Anonymous, Telecomix & Egypt.' -- "Do-ocracy"
'Presentation on Anonymous, Telecomix & Egypt.' -- "Do-ocracy"
March 08 2011
Shareable -- The Gen Y Guide to Collaborative Consumption
'American youth are slowly realizing that the old system is broken, and no longer holds the answer to all their dreams and desires. Together, we’re learning that instead of waiting for politicians and corporations to fix the system, it’s possible to create a better one of our own, right under their noses. A new way of living, in which access is valued over ownership, experience is valued over material possessions, and "mine" becomes “ours” so everyone's needs are met without waste. Consumption is no longer an asymmetrical activity of endless acquisition but a dynamic push and pull of giving and collaborating in order to get what you want. Along the way, the acts of collaboration and giving become an end in itself.' -- Long list of schemes and services. Also: http://www.shareable.net/how-to-shareFebruary 02 2011
YouTube -- TED: Dale Dougherty: We are makers
'America was built by makers – curious, enthusiastic amateur inventors whose tinkering habit sparked whole new industries. At TED@MotorCity, MAKE magazine publisher Dale Dougherty says we're all makers at heart, and shows cool new tools to tinker with, like Arduinos, affordable 3D printers, even DIY satellites.'
'America was built by makers – curious, enthusiastic amateur inventors whose tinkering habit sparked whole new industries. At TED@MotorCity, MAKE magazine publisher Dale Dougherty says we're all makers at heart, and shows cool new tools to tinker with, like Arduinos, affordable 3D printers, even DIY satellites.'
January 29 2011
Computerworld -- Without Internet, Egyptians find new ways to get online
'Egyptians with dial-up modems get no Internet connection when they call into their local ISP, but calling an international number to reach a modem in another country gives them a connection to the outside world. We Rebuild is looking to expand those dial-up options. It has set up a dial-up phone number in Sweden and is compiling a list of other numbers Egyptians can call. It is also distributing information about its activities on a Wiki page. [We Rebuild] has set up an IRC for people who can help with ham radio transmissions from Egypt. They are trying to spread the word about the radio band they are monitoring so that people in Egypt know where to transmit. Some ham enthusiasts are setting up an FTP site where people can record what they hear and post the recordings. So far, they say they've picked up Morse code messages...' -- Internet doesn't afraid of anything!January 22 2011
Project Shrink -- Three Balances For Resilient Groups. Why Every Group Will Collapse.
'The balances are unstable. You can only make it last a little longer. You cannot create it forever. It is temporary. Always. The three balances are: #Diversity [vs] Homogeneity #Open Mind [vs] Closed Mind #Public Information Flow [vs] Private Information Flow (or Transparency [vs] Secretiveness)'October 30 2010
YouTube -- ReMade: The Rebirth of the Maker Movement (1st Trailer)
"Instead of thinking, 'Where am I going to go buy that?' they think, 'Oh, I wonder if I can build that?'"
"Instead of thinking, 'Where am I going to go buy that?' they think, 'Oh, I wonder if I can build that?'"
October 29 2010
The Automatic Earth presents: Stoneleigh's A Century of Challenges
Pay-walled. Recommended. -- When a pyramid scheme nears its inevitable end... "...the public insist on being handed the empty bag because they think they're going to make money, they want in on the game, everyone else has been making money, they feel left out so they insist on buying these things at the peak, and they are the ones who lose everything."
Tags:
* civilization plutocracy wealth money economics oil energy finance reflexivity markets herd consensusreality pyramid ponzi bubble greaterfool peakoil credit inflation realestate speculation debt hologram deflation biflation negativeequity crackupboom greatestdepression collapse systems resilience communities localisation retribalisation socialnetworking darknets NicoleFoss
October 25 2010
ClubOrlov -- Interview on PRN's The Lifeboat Hour with Mike Ruppert
'...the ultimate commodity in which to invest is not gold or shotgun shells but people you can trust.'July 21 2010
P2P Foundation -- New Online Local Currency System With Ecommerce, Mobile Phone Capability
'Despite much recent favorable publicity, local currencies have not been very successful, with the great majority of them failing, while the surviving ones have accounted for but a very small portion of their local economic activity. The primary reason for this is that they are up against a simple economic reality that we call The Law of Local Currencies: In a given community, the level of economic activity using local currency cannot exceed the level of economic self sufficiency of that community. It follows that since most communities don’t even approach self sufficiency, a local currency therefore can’t even approach significant economic penetration or impact. There are two solutions: #Support and assist the development, creation and production of new, locally based sustainable products and services in order to increase local self sufficiency. #Expand the realm of the local currency to a sufficiently large area such that economic self sufficiency is approached within that area.'July 11 2010
YouTube -- Warren Pollock: Malthus or the Fuller Model
'The Fuller model offers solutions to the current condition along the critical path. Presently we work within the framework of Thomas Malthus whereby we live in the context of resource shortage. The philosophy of Malthus adversely influences both our economic models, our accounting, and allocation systems. Comprehensive anticipatory design science works around the perception of chronic shortage. We have to look at the entire human system and preempt our future needs rather than be constrained. We can design our society to scientific principles thus find the same efficiencies we now enjoy through the geometric efficiency of technological progression. Our survival depends on a rethink of how we use resources, what we consider to be wealth, and how we bring that wealth in the form of life support to more and more people worldwide.'
'The Fuller model offers solutions to the current condition along the critical path. Presently we work within the framework of Thomas Malthus whereby we live in the context of resource shortage. The philosophy of Malthus adversely influences both our economic models, our accounting, and allocation systems. Comprehensive anticipatory design science works around the perception of chronic shortage. We have to look at the entire human system and preempt our future needs rather than be constrained. We can design our society to scientific principles thus find the same efficiencies we now enjoy through the geometric efficiency of technological progression. Our survival depends on a rethink of how we use resources, what we consider to be wealth, and how we bring that wealth in the form of life support to more and more people worldwide.'
July 05 2010
The Archdruid Report -- Merlin's Time
'According to Picatrix, the compleat wizard in training needed to get a thorough education in agriculture; navigation; political science; military science; grammar, languages, and rhetoric; commerce, all the mathematics known at the time, including arithmetic, geometry, music theory, and astronomy; logic; medicine, including a good knowledge of herbal pharmaceuticals; the natural sciences, including meteorology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology; and Aristotle’s metaphysics: in effect, the sum total of the scientific learning that had survived from the classical world. -- I have come to think one of the things the soon-to-be-deindustrializing world most needs just now is green wizards. By this I mean individuals who are willing to take on the responsibility to learn, practice, and thoroughly master a set of unpopular but valuable skills – the skills of the old appropriate tech movement – and share them with their neighbors when the day comes that their neighbors are willing to learn.'June 21 2010
Boing Boing -- John Robb interview: Open Source Warfare & Resilience
Robb: "MEND's (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) disruption campaign, yielded tens of trillions of dollars in global economic damage for tens of thousands of dollars spent on making the attacks. That's a return on investment (ROI) of 1,000,000,000%. How do nation-states survive when an unknown guerrilla group in a remote corner of the world can generate returns on that magnitude? They don't. -- What are the global drivers that make resiliency important? Simply: stability, prosperity, and security is going away. You will soon find you are on your own, if you haven't already. If you do nothing, you will suffer the predations of gangs, militias, and corrupt bureaucracies that will fill the void left by retreating nation-states. If you want to avoid this fate, you can build resilient communities... Produce everything you can locally. Virtualize everything else. Think in terms of vibrant local economic ecosystems that are exceedingly efficient, productive, and bountiful."June 13 2010
Wikipedia -- Panarchy (Panarchy in systems theory)
'Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal. ...the emerging complexity of our social and political structures, composed of many interacting agents, combined with the increasing importance of network forms of organization, enabled by technologies that increase connectivity, propels the world system towards a transformation that culminates in a global political environment that is made up of a diversity of spheres of governance, the whole of which is called panarchy. To clarify, global linkages between individuals and groups create transnational networks consisting of shared norms and goals.'June 12 2010
COLLAPSENET -- ZOMBIE-FREE ZONE
'Zombies are living dead. When faced with shortages of anything, zombies frequently revert to cannibalism by eating the lives of other humans to satisfy their insatiable hunger and arrogant and belligerent stupidity. Zombies cannot hear and do not listen to simple scientific laws or do simple arithmetic. Zombies are known for their ability to ask extremely stupid questions and to try and engage in futile arguments with the living, thus paralyzing or retarding useful debate and discussion. Zombies are closely related to vampires in that they exist to suck life and energy out of anything that has life and energy. The zombie paradigm is one of infinite growth in that zombies always need to create more zombies. Zombies can revert back to living status but this usually happens only when zombies are faced with imminent death. Collapsenet will always welcome former-zombies who have become human again. Current zombies are not welcome here.'May 23 2010
YouTube -- TEDxBrussels: Michel Bauwens
"We are seeing the seeds of a new society within the old and this is what I call 'open everything'. Peer-production, peer-governance, and peer-property are the new modalities that are emerging from this open world." -- Models: #Commons (strong-ties, production), #Share (weak-ties, aggregation), #Crowdsourced (seek sustainable collaboration). -- Tensions: Institutions vs Communities -- Solutions: Community Charters (GPL, CC, etc) that embed the principles of peer production in cultural value systems.
"We are seeing the seeds of a new society within the old and this is what I call 'open everything'. Peer-production, peer-governance, and peer-property are the new modalities that are emerging from this open world." -- Models: #Commons (strong-ties, production), #Share (weak-ties, aggregation), #Crowdsourced (seek sustainable collaboration). -- Tensions: Institutions vs Communities -- Solutions: Community Charters (GPL, CC, etc) that embed the principles of peer production in cultural value systems.
May 22 2010
Broader Perspective -- Daemon's bot-mediated reality
'#New world order in our hands: Daemon is laudable for taking on the grand challenge of envisioning how a new world order could evolve though a mediated narrowly intelligent botnet and artificial reality gaming overlay to the physical world. The key point is that we are already steps away from this world and that the building block pieces are in place now (e.g.; GPS networks, pervasive botnets); it is up to us to determine whether the future incarnation is positive or negative, whether it reinforces or destabilizes current interests and influences and how societal and individual actions are motivated and executed.'April 24 2010
io9 -- 10 Weirdest Urban Ecosystems On Earth
'Stray dogs in Moscow are nothing new — they've been around since the 19th century. But around 500 dogs have started living in the Metro (subway) stations, begging for scraps from passengers. The dogs have developed a keen instinct for which Muscovites are likely to feed them and which ones to avoid — an important survival trait since one Moscow woman stabbed a Metro dog a few years ago. And instead of the strongest or fiercest dog being the Alpha dog of the Metro dog packs, the smartest one generally is, according to experts who've studied them. Not only that, but some of the Metro dogs have learned to ride the subway on their own, apparently recognizing stations based on the conductor calling out their names, plus sense of smell — and this lets them add multiple stations to their territories. They even have their own website.'
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