“The global economy treats nature and material resources as if they were infinite, and knowledge as if it was scarce. We have to swap those two around”. (Michel Bauwens). Audio interview below the fold. Having enshrined the rights of nature in its constitution (*) Ecuador is now exploring how this principle, and the principle of open knowledge, […]
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Ecuador, Open Knowledge, and ‘Buen Vivir’: Interview With Michel Bauwens
Desert of the Real
http://www.doorsofperception.com/?attachment_id=5172
Speed? What Speed? Prisoners of Speed, by Ivan Illich (Part 3 of 3)
In 1996, Ivan Illich (above) agreed to speak at Doors of Perception in Amsterdam on the theme of ‘speed’. The philosopher-educator surprised us by bringing along two fellow speakers: Sebastian Trapp, a field biologist, and Matthias Rieger, a musicologist. Their contributions are as fresh today as when we heard them in Amsterdam – so we are running […]
Ten Ways To Redesign Design Competitions
Exhibits and competitions should be a means to an end, not the end itself. What would be a worthwhile end?
Green Tourism: Why It Failed And How It Can Succeed
Packaged mass tours account for 80 percent of journeys to so-called developing countries, but destination regions receive five percent or less of the amount paid by the traveller. For local people on the ground, the injustice is absurd: if I were to pay e1,200 for a week long trek in Morocco’s Atlas mountains, just e50 […]
Trust Is Not An Algorithm: Big Data Are Hot, But They Also Miss A Lot
[Illustration from http://www.hhs.gov/open/initiatives/hdi/] By some accounts the world’s information is doubling every two years. This impressive if unprovable fact has got many people wondering: what to do with it? Many big brands hope that the analysis of Big Data will give them a ‘360 degree view’ of customers: Who they’re interacting with, where they shop, how […]
Cycle Commerce As An Ecosystem
(Illustration: Sameer Kulavoor Ghoda Bicycle Project) At a workshop in Delhi a few weeks back, during the UnBox Festival, Arjun Mehta and myself posed the following question to a group of 20 professionals from diverse backgrounds: What new products, services or ingredients are needed to help a cycle commerce ecosystem flourish in India’s cities, towns and […]
What Makes A Change Lab Successful?
The UK government’s digital services platform, gov.uk, has won the Design of the Year award – and if I were running a big IT consulting firm grown fat on big government contracts, I’d be worried. Gov.uk is a revolutionary web operation that governments around the world are beginning to notice. Twenty four UK government departments […]
The Dementia Care Economy
Yesterday’s G8 Dementia Summit made much of the fact that millions will now be spent in a race to identify a cure or a ‘disease-modifying therapy’ for dementia. The likely outcome will be the creation of a Dementia Industrial Complex – and the mass production of un-met expectations.A better way for nation states to spend money […]