Group items tagged

"E-democracy is a combination of the words electronic and democracy. In an evolving political and technological landscape here on Earth, many are fighting over the definition of this term. But a logical definition adheres to the word itself: a democracy that has "electronic" characteristics. E-democracy does not equal e-government, but is a form of it. It does not equal "wikigovernment" but is a form of it. Of course, defining "e-democracy" can be just as difficult as defining democracy when you get down to brass tacks. But because the Internet connects millions of people and can be a tool for governance, e-democracy has the potential to become one of the first forms of large-scale direct democracy on Earth. Canada and Sweden are now both trying to enact forms of this system of government, by working within the traditional political process to elect e-democracy friendly politicians, with the ultimate goal of overhauling the entire system of their nations' governments. Sweden's party Aktiv Demokrati aims to build a genuine direct democracy; Canada's Online Party has taken a milder approach with citizens in a more advisory capacity."

AGRIXCHANGE
A common data exchange system for agricultural systems

"Scientific coordination of the FIRE EU Large-scale integrating project (IP) CONFINE on "Community Networks Testbed for the Future Internet" (10/2011-9/2015) Scientific coordination of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate in Distributed Computing EMJD-DC (a 5 year contract starting in 2011/2012) Scientific coordination of the national research project Delfin: Self-adapting distributed systems for the Future Internet (TIN2010-20140-C03-01) Principal Investigator (PI) for Planetlab at UPC."

"Consensus democracy is the application of consensus decision-making to the process of legislation in a democracy. It is characterised by a decision-making structure which involves and takes into account as broad a range of opinions as possible, as opposed to systems where minority opinions can potentially be ignored by vote-winning majorities.[1]"

"Sociocracy is a system of governance, using consent-based decision making among equivalent individuals and an organizational structure based on cybernetic principles.[1] The most recent implementation of sociocracy by Gerard Endenburg,[2] also known as Circular Organizing, was developed as a new tool for governance of private enterprise, but has been adopted in many different kinds of organizations including public, private, non-profit and community organizations as well as professional associations."

"What is Sociocracy? Sociocracy is a method of designing harmonious organizations, workplaces and associations in which each member is valued equally. It is based on creating self-optimizing systems that are effective and productive. The principles and practices were developed by Gerard Endenburg based on: Modern management theory and practices Quaker traditions of peace education and the valuing of each person Cybernetics, the science of communications and control"

"Consensus Democracy focuses on the need to reengineer the approach to local decision making in the 21st Century. It assumes the present system which emphasizes political parties and simple ideology is unable to be effective in a fast-paced age in which constant change creates a new level of interdependency and complexity. It assumes that the old idea of checks and balances will create tremendous gridlock in a society increasingly diverse. "

"Meritocracy, in the first, most administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration (such as business administration) wherein appointments and responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals based upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and education,[1] determined through evaluations or examinations. The "most common definition of meritocracy conceptualizes merit in terms of tested competency and ability, and most likely as measured by IQ or standardized achievement tests."[2] Supporters of meritocracies do not necessarily agree on the nature of "merit", however they tend to agree that "merit" itself should be a primary consideration during evaluation. In a more general sense, meritocracy can refer to any form of government based on achievement. Like "utilitarian" and "pragmatic", the word "meritocratic" has also developed a broader definition, and can be used to refer to any government run by "a ruling or influential class of educated or able people.""

Here is 10 Free and useful computer-aided design software. Computer-aided design (CAD) is a combination of computer programs and systems that allow engineers and architects to design detailed two- or three-dimensional models of physical objects, such as mechanical parts, buildings, and molecules. It specially used to design curves and figures in two-dimensional ("2D") space; or curves, surfaces, and solids in three-dimensional ("3D") objects. There are so many "free" CAD programs out there but only a handful are either really free or useful. 

"From Kostas: Hi Marcin, I see there is now some active discussion on CAD/CAM so I would like to give you some hints about the status of FreeCAD: 1. after my work on the sketcher mostly been finished, we can draw all parts of a 3D printer: https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1867 2. jriegel (project founder/manager) is actively working on the assembly module, multidocument support: http://free-cad.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=free-cad/free-cad;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/jriegel/dev-assembly after this step FreeCAD will be ready for real applications. 3. Collaborative modelling, a revision system and an online parts library are further objectives of the project. e.g. https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/free-cad/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1378 "

Aaron from OSE headquarters writes : "as far as current research, we recently interviewed a man to help with our agriculture, and his current farm includes a methane digester designed by 'Biogas Bob':http://www.omega-alpharecycling.com/ "

FUTUREFARM
Integration of farm management information systems to support real-time management decisions and compliance of management standards

CORE ORGANIC II
Coordination of European Transnational Research in Organic Food and Farming Systems

Here we can see that Opensource Hardware" is a n expression mostly used for computer-related hardware. It is intersting to evaluate if OSE and wikispeed should relate to other branches of opensources, non-computerized ones ?