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Continue reading Links for the week of May 8th, 2010
Tag: lessig
Shared Links for Jun 16th
- Is There a Better Word for Doom? – Six disparate views on the value and ethics of actively re-framing the public discussion surrounding climate change. (tagged: politics policy environment communication propaganda climate change science )
- Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history – A talk given by Clay Shirky to the State Dept. a month or so ago, on the global, social, ubiquitous and cheap media landscape of the 21st century. Especially relevant in light of Iran's elections and protests at the moment. (tagged: web2.0 media propaganda technology social twitter politics transparency )
- Iran's Disputed Election | A Revolution in Pictures – Images are streaming out of Iran. Hundreds of thousands of people marching. Guns, fires, roads blocked by burning busses, riots and blood in the streets. The para-military storming the University. Protesters improbably evacuating an injured riot cop. Tear-gas ping pong. All revolutions look the same on the ground. They are not in practice ideological affairs. (tagged: iran politics election 2009 photos protest police )
- Gadget Teardowns – How to completely and utterly disassemble… just about anything, from a banana to your brand new Macbook Pro. Unclear whether you can put it all back together again! (tagged: technology design maker )
- The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online – An essay by Wired editor and Long Now pundit Kevin Kelly, making analogies between the "socialism" of the 20th century, and the open collaborative systems which have taken hold of the Internet. Larry Lessig hates the fact that he used the S-word, since it's got such a black name in the US, but I'm not so sure it was a bad idea. Actually I think that more than anywhere else, "socialist" ideas can probably work in the world of pure information. We're certainly nowhere near the limits of sharing online yet. (tagged: technology economics politics internet web2.0 socialism lessig longnow )
Shared Links for May 29th
- Post-Scarcity Prophet: Economist Paul Romer on growth, technological change, and an unlimited human future. – Reason Magazine – An excellent interview with Paul Romer from Stanford, who has apparently been thinking along the same lines as I have about the deep differences between material and informational goods (he calls them "things" and "ideas"). I don't think he's skeptical enough about the motives and powers of large "market" players to subvert the markets they participate in, but he certainly gets that all growth, in the fullness of time, must be based on knowledge and not stuff. Malthus and Erlich aren't wrong, they just haven't been right yet. Will have to look up much more of his writing! (tagged: economics science history capitalism technology growth non-linear wto corporations interview )
- This is not "socialism" – Semantic arguments are both catastrophically boring, and necessary. What does "socialism" mean? Is the Wikipedia socialist? Is the Internet inherently socialist? Do the ideas associated with "socialism" even have meaning when considered in the context of informational goods that once produced, are non-rivalrous and non-excludable? Why are so many people unwilling (unable?) to try and understand what a speaker or writer actually means, instead tending to just attach all their own cultural baggage to the words they use. All important words subtly change their meaning… (tagged: economics capitalism politics internet socialism copyright technology lessig )
- bikewise – Hooray!!! Somebody implemented basically exactly what I wanted in a bicycle issue reporting system, and licensed under Creative Commons to boot! It lets you report hazards, crashes, and thefts, register your bike, subscribe by e-mail or RSS to changes in your area, etc. Absolutely fantastic, clean, and easy to use. I'll populate it single handedly for Pasadena if I have to! (tagged: bicycle transportation maps wiki google planning policy )
- Housing and Transportation Affordability Index – a nice little application that allows you to browse geographically through several interesting slices of census tract data, looking at transit and housing affordability in various big metro areas in the US. (tagged: maps economics transportation economy urban )
- A Low Impact Woodland Home – A beautiful hobbit hole in wales. Left alone for a century, it would just melt back into the hillside, like many well-designed things. (tagged: sustainability green design architecture )
Shared Links for Mar 9th
- Tent City Rapidly Growing in Sacramento – Wow, a tent city forming within Sacramento? What proportion of people ended up living in shantytowns and similar impromptu dwellings and communities during the Great Depression I wonder. Ironic and sad, given the absurd oversupply of housing is what in large part triggered this economic mess. (tagged: homeless economy depression sacramento california shanty )
- Wikileaks cracks NATO's Master Narrative for Afghanistan – For the love of god, even the Pentagon can't get its users to pick decent passwords? Classified messaging (propaganda) documents regarding Afghanistan posted on publicly accessible website, encrypted with the super-secret ultra-secure key: 'progress'. (tagged: propaganda transparency war pentagon military security internet )
- Nationalization for Beginners – A nice short readable set of the possible definitions of "Nationalization" in the context of the banking crisis. Opponents usually mean Soviet style State Banks, proponents generally mean FDIC style conservatorship. What we've got now is a horribly opaque mishmash. (tagged: bailout crisis finance fdic economics )
- Rep. John Conyers: A Reply to Larry Lessig – Conyers replies to Lessig's fairly aggressive critique of HR801 in public. Not convincing. (tagged: politics science openaccess hr801 lessig conyers publishing )
- Talk on China and the Global Internet at Harvard – Rebecca MacKinnon gave a talk on the future of China within the context of the global Internet. Haven't watched it yet, but downloaded to my iTunes, and her blog is good. Ethan Zuckerman blogged it. Interesting to see how different cultures evolve their relationship with the machines independently (and how it mediates our interactions with each other) (tagged: china internet technology transparency censorship harvard )