COMMONS MAGAZINE
A few weeks ago, researchers reported that drug use had increased “dramatically” among children in the U.S. These researchers weren’t talking about illicit drugs, but rather prescription medications for such conditions as obesity, asthma, depression and restlessness in school.
Another study found that American children are showing up in doctors’ offices with arteries that look like those of 45 year olds.
Newspapers may be going the way of the horse-and-buggy.
Major dailies like Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have crumpled into extinction. Philadelphia’s two papers are both on the ropes. And Ann Arbor, Michigan has won the distinction of being the first U.S. city with no traditional daily newspaper.
Friday September 19 was PARK Day, an exercise in creative thinking about the commons in which citizens transform parking spaces into parks.
A huge swath of American cities and suburbs is reserved solely for parked cars. Yet the land occupied by on-street parking actually belongs to all of us, and some of it could be used to bring some much needed green and public space to our communities.
And that’s what happened, at least for a while, on PARK Day this year.
It may seem odd to celebrate a day known as One Web Day. which is this Tuesday, September 22. Isn’t this a bit like National Mustard Day (August 3) or National Bubble Gum Week (in March)?
Not at all! We have very few devoted to our shared, commons interests — and the World Wide Web surely must rank as one of our most important shared interests. In fact, the Web must be considered one of the most amazing, historic, disruptive, democratic and surprising creations in human history.
It’s a great victory for the commoners that our tax monies for student loans may soon go directly to students, via a U.S. Education Department program, rather than through banks. Yesterday, by a 253 to 171 margin, the House of Representatives voted to shift billions of dollars in college student loans to the Education Department. The move prevents Sallie Mae (the largest private corporation providing student loans) and banks from continuing to act as parasites on public resources and as predators of needy students.
Spurred by the recession, the revolt against processed foods and a desire to help one’s neighbors, the movement to “buy local” is gaining some serious ground. The evidence: mega-corporations from Wal-mart to Barnes & Noble to Starbucks are trying to shed their images as purveyors of mass-marketed commodities and associate themselves with the credibility enjoyed by local businesses. Will it work?
In a rare setback for McDonald’s, a court has ruled that the fast-food chain does NOT have a trademark monopoly on the prefix “Mc.” Congratulations are in order for McCurry Restaurant of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (“Home Food, Away From Home, Tasty and So Goood….”) The eatery spent eight years trying to establish that the San Diego-based purveyor of fast food, with over 30,000 outlets in 100 countries, does not legally own the Irish prefix “Mc.”
With the relentless blare of commercial media, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate that lots of hopeful initiatives for social change are actually underway around the world. The problem is, most of them are too small or obscure for the mainstream media to care.
Is it possible to scale a small group discussion into a conversation among hundreds or even thousands of people? One of the more interesting new software tools for online collaboration is MixedInk, a platform that enables large numbers of people to work together to develop a single document. “Many people, one voice,” is the site’s tagline. The software is a fascinating new vehicle for forming and governing online commons.
Benjamin Barber, the long-time critic of market culture and champion of democratic renewal, has a thoughtful meditation on “the art of public space” in the most recent issue of The Nation.
I went to the movies last Saturday evening, and I discovered just how truly degrading and repugnant the experience can be. I’m not talking about the movie itself (the delightful Julie and Julia) nor the audience, which was well-mannered to a fault.
When it comes to Internet software and websites, there is a lot of confusion about the meaning of the words “free” and “open.” “Free” can mean “no cost” or “politically and legally free.” In using the term “free software,” Richard Stallman famously distinguished between the two meanings in his immortal phrase, “free as in freedom, not free as in free beer.”
So…assuming that we are using this latter definition of “free,” is there a difference between “free” and “open”? Isn’t an open Internet the same as a (politically) “free” Internet?
Writing in The New Scientist, Mark van Vugt of the VU University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands examines the social psychology of successful commons. His piece, “Triumph of the Commons: Helping the World to Share,” proposes “four key conditions for the successful management of shared environmental resources: information, identity, institutions and incentives,” or what he calls the 4i framework. (Thanks to Silke Helfrich of commonsblog.de for passing this along!)
In earlier guerilla raids on inaccessible government information, public-interest crusader Carl Malamud has “scraped” public-domain documents from poorly designed and fee-based government websites and re-published them on his own servers. It’s proven to be a highly effective tactic. It embarrasses the government agencies by exposing how non-transparent and citizen-unfriendly they really are.
This is the third of a three-part installment of a report on the future of the commons, which is based on conversations at a retreat held at Crottorf Castle in Germany, in June 2009.
9. Hermann Hatzfeldt on Sustainable Forestry
This blog post continues the one started yesterday — a report on the future of the commons as discussed by the commoners who met at Crottorf Castle in Germany, in June 2009.
5. A Developmental Theory of the Commons
Twenty-one thinkers and activists from around the world gathered at Crottorf Castle near Cologne, Germany, on June 25-27, 2009, to discuss their shared interest in the commons as a new paradigm of politics, economics and culture. We were the guests of Hermann Hatzfeldt, whose family has lived in the castle since the 1600s, and who, ironies aside, is a keen supporter of the commons.
Will free-market economies ever pay due respect to the non-market resources that enable them to function? The atmosphere’s role in making life possible; the ocean’s role in generating fish and biodiversity; the role of bees in pollinating crops; the role of stay-at-home parents in raising the next generation — all of these “services” are invaluable, but because they exist outside of the market, and thus have no price tags associated with them, they have no value in market theory. They are treated as “off the books” — leading companies to regard them as infinite and free.
One reason that I love the exotic, eclectic neighborhoods of the free culture world is because of the playful tricksters who live there. You just never know what surprise will startle you with a blast of brilliant creative zest. The latest evidence of this came tumbling through my (figurative) transom today in the form of a web link. A J. Sandoz suggested that I might be interested in a beguiling literary work that he (she?) had discovered at the Internet Archive — a mashup of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita with Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas.
The participatory ethic of open source software has become so widespread these days that it is migrating into some unexpected places… like musical instruments, tractors and ecological technology.