Michel Bauwens

Money that always works always available and inflation free - Michel Bauwens

‘Digital Revolution’ is an experiment in collaboration. We want to hear the opinions, thoughts and experiences from the populace of the web - you. Add your comments to our blog posts. Tell us the stories you think we should be covering. Your input will help shape our documentary. - Michel Bauwens

Is it overrated? Leland Teschler, editor of Machine Design, believes it is. In his July 30, 2009 column, Teschler said, “Development teams are often an obstacle to creativity rather than a vehicle for truly elegant solutions.” My experience has been similar. Teams are needed for many product development projects, but it’s the individual that often comes up with the really innovative solutions. Individual productivity typically declines as the size of a team expands, Teschler points out. - Michel Bauwens

Permaculture is a design science. It can be studied, and thus internalized. When done so successfully, our thinking is transformed. The world is a garden, with potentially infinite yields. This is the basis for radical changes in human behavior. - Michel Bauwens

The reason we’re not getting the copyright reforms we deserve, the environmental policies we need or the public healthcare option most Americans want is the same: Institutional Corruption. We know this, but Lawrence Lessig’s latest presentation does an incredible job of bringing the issue sharply into focus. The is as amazing as his presentations on copyright reform and free culture, but the issue is bigger. Take a minute and watch this. Some of the finest work from one of the world’s finest minds. - Michel Bauwens

Microsoft is negotiating with News Corp to pay it to remove its content from Google's index. Uh-oh: the Empire — industrial-era business as usual — is striking back. Will the rebels be crushed? Not a chance. Blocking Google is about as smart as eating a pound of plutonium. Here's why MicroFox is making a big mistake. - Michel Bauwens

How can inhabitants interact with urban planners and affect the way their city evolves? How can they think, and propose, better solutions for urban problems in a horizontal way, adapted to the particularities of a district or neighboorhood, or building, instead of having an elite deciding what’s best for everyone? - Michel Bauwens

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HBOS were secretly kept afloat with £62 billion of emergency Government support at the height of the credit crisis last year, it was revealed today. The Bank of England kept the massive liquidity injections secret until today, when it judged calm had been restored and there was no longer any need for secrecy. - Michel Bauwens

What we are underutilising is the potential for crafts to express our rage at the stupidity of the world, demonstrate our vision for how to do things better and at the same time honour our mothers, grandmothers and great-great-great grandmothers. Women (and men) are rarely getting together to create community based craft projects designed to express a creative vision for a better world. - Michel Bauwens

One of the things that has becomes very clear in doing and talking to other people about radical craft is that political and radical craft is far from a new idea. What is also clear is that this amazing herstory is way too absent from history books. It seems that even feminist political action herstory books marginalise the art and creative responses to political issues. So we have started this wiki as a public archive of profiles of activists who use(d) craft as a way of communicating their ideas, resistance and vision. - Michel Bauwens

The problem is that what we helped usher in is now creating a bottleneck. So many people are making work and the production costs have been reduced so much, that the volume of work being made can't fit the current release structure. It's overburdening festivals, there's not enough shelf space in retail or rental outlets, and the promise of digital distribution just isn't quite there yet. You have a flood of work, but not enough outlets. - Michel Bauwens

The problem is that what we helped usher in is now creating a bottleneck. So many people are making work and the production costs have been reduced so much, that the volume of work being made can't fit the current release structure. It's overburdening festivals, there's not enough shelf space in retail or rental outlets, and the promise of digital distribution just isn't quite there yet. You have a flood of work, but not enough outlets. - Michel Bauwens

The problem is that what we helped usher in is now creating a bottleneck. So many people are making work and the production costs have been reduced so much, that the volume of work being made can't fit the current release structure. It's overburdening festivals, there's not enough shelf space in retail or rental outlets, and the promise of digital distribution just isn't quite there yet. You have a flood of work, but not enough outlets. - Michel Bauwens

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a simple model for how to engage people in an online community? There are a number of concepts out there, but none of them are tailored to the social sector. We thought it would be worth sharing our approach: ‘The Community Engagement Pyramid’. Does it strike a chord? - Michel Bauwens

David Kappos, the new Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), has taken on a tough mission that is critically important for the future of American innovation: fix our broken patent system and reduce the USPTO’s backlog of applications in order to foster job creation and economic growth. Mobilizing the skills and expertise of the USPTO’s staff, he has already begun to make noticeable progress towards reform. On the open government front, we’re particularly excited to see Director Kappos’s new blog. - Michel Bauwens

] "Between Craigslist and eBay, the Internet is well established as a marketplace where one person’s trash is transformed into another’s treasure. Now, thousands of teachers are cashing in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare. While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms. - Michel Bauwens

] "Between Craigslist and eBay, the Internet is well established as a marketplace where one person’s trash is transformed into another’s treasure. Now, thousands of teachers are cashing in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare. While some of this extra money is going to buy books and... more... - Michel Bauwens

This Nano-Virtual-Sit-In is being performed on the 5th anniversary of the war on Iraq. We have chosen biotech and nanotech corporations and organizations as our targets, because their science is driven by the war and drives the war. - Michel Bauwens

This Nano-Virtual-Sit-In is being performed on the 5th anniversary of the war on Iraq. We have chosen biotech and nanotech corporations and organizations as our targets, because their science is driven by the war and drives the war. - Michel Bauwens

with the rise of multiple distributed geospatial information systems (such as the Goggle Earth Project for example), GPS (Global Positioning System) and the developing Virtual Hiker Algorithm by artist Brett Stalbaum it is now possible to develop useful Transborder Tools for Immigrants – and allow virtual geography to mark new trails and potentially safer routes across this desert of the real. - Michel Bauwens

with the rise of multiple distributed geospatial information systems (such as the Goggle Earth Project for example), GPS (Global Positioning System) and the developing Virtual Hiker Algorithm by artist Brett Stalbaum it is now possible to develop useful Transborder Tools for Immigrants – and allow virtual geography to mark new trails and potentially safer routes across this desert of the real. - Michel Bauwens

If a community is too small you'll often have insufficient critical mass to sustain it. Conversely, if it's too large you can end up with a community that's too noisy, too cliquey, or otherwise problematic. These optimal and sub-optimal community sizes appear in strata, like discrete layers of rock. For a community to advance from one strata to the next often takes immense energy. - Michel Bauwens

If a community is too small you'll often have insufficient critical mass to sustain it. Conversely, if it's too large you can end up with a community that's too noisy, too cliquey, or otherwise problematic. These optimal and sub-optimal community sizes appear in strata, like discrete layers of rock. For a community to advance from one strata to the next often takes immense energy. - Michel Bauwens

He also spends quite a bit of time criticizing earlier military thought. He rejects Clausewitz, or at least the followers of Clausewitz, whose mistaken understandings he holds responsible for the horrors of the First World War. Liddell Hart further rejects “geometric” and “mathematical” military thinkers such as Jomini. The mechanization of war, as witnessed in World War One, invalidates many of their theories. Weapons like the machine gun give defensive strategies the edge, rendering concentrated attacks ill-advised. Military forces must turn to fast-paced mobile operations to search out weakpoints for attack. In other words, take the “indirect approach”. - Michel Bauwens