Archive for January, 2007

Undermining Democracy

January 7th, 2007

Bush wants to send $83 million to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. These funds are intended to build up “responsible security forces” to support Abbas.
Violence has broken out between Hamas and the PA after Abbas announced plans for early elections. The confrontation is quickly threatening to escalate into a civil war. […]

Citizen Journalism

January 4th, 2007

Although framed here as a popularity contest, some of the articles in the collaborative newspaper, BrooWaha (hate the name), are actually fairly decent:

BrooWaha is a collaborative online newspaper that gives ordinary readers a chance to participate and share their knowledge! We publish your articles and give you feedback to let you know how popular you […]

P2P Foundation: Social Innovation

January 1st, 2007

P2P Foundation posted some thoughts similar to my earlier post.
Michel Bauwens lays out three scenarios for social innovation:

Allow some user innovation to externalize costs (Dell, Ikea)
Profit off a platform for cooperation and user-created content (Amazon, Ebay)
“Autonomous Product” minus the corporation (Wikipedia)

The third group, the only one that means a significant change from status quo, will […]

P2P for People Not Profit

January 1st, 2007

Howard Rheingold of Smart Mobs expresses his optimism over many-to-many communication:

My optimism about the potential of the generation of digital natives is neither technological determinism nor naive utopianism. Many-to-many communication enables but does not compel or guarantee widespread civic engagement by populations who never before had a chance to express their public voices…

Big corporations are […]