The Energy Efficiency of Trust & Vulnerability: A Conversation | Switch and Shift - 0 views
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When we don’t trust, we exert a lot of energy to keep up our guard, to continually assess and verify. This uses a lot of energy and time.
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As we let ourselves be vulnerable, we also leave ourselves more open to new ideas, new ways of thinking which leads to empathy and innovation.
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It lets us reallocate our resources to what matters and utilize our skills and those around us to increase effectiveness…impact.
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If we are working together, we need to agree on the meaning of ‘done’. When are we done, what does that look like?
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As the ability to replicate something has become more of a commodity, we are increasingly seeing that complex interactions are the way to create ‘value from difference’ (as opposed to ‘value from sameness’).
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Efficient systems are great at dealing with complicated things – things that have many parts and sequences, but they fall flat dealing with complex systems, which is most of world today.
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When we never do the same thing or have the same conversation twice, it becomes much more important to figure out why and what we do than how we do it (process, which is a given)
JOATU - The Online Community Marketplace - 0 views
PowToon, free business presentation software animated video maker and PowerPoint altern... - 2 views
The Foundation for P2P Alternatives - P2P Foundation - 3 views
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Are you ready for 3-D printing? | McKinsey & Company - 0 views
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But patent expirations and new entrants in Asia should apply downward pressure over the next ten years
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The cost of materials ought to drop in the long term as third-party firms become credible alternative powder suppliers and as increased demand for powder enhances scale efficiencies more generally
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Throughput rates are expected to increase on the back of growing laser power, higher numbers of lasers, and better projection technology. All of that will serve to reduce expensive machine time
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Overly focused on additive 3d printing (the ecosystem of automated fabrication (ie fablab scale) and its exponential cost decreases are far more interesting). The expiration of patents in the space is also a key feature of the current transformation, and should prompt discussions of dysfunctional IPR. Comments on costs trends are also supportive. No mention of the next big thing which is cradle to cradle desktop manufacturing.
Alternative dispute resolution - Wikipedia - 0 views
AltFinLab | Alternative Finance Lab (AltFin Lab) - 0 views
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Can help with: - Partnership referral - Prototype / Project development - Niche support: Crowd-Funding / Lending / Investment http://altfinlab.org/what-we-do
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What do we need corporations for and how does Valve's management structure fit into tod... - 0 views
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Valve’s management model; one in which there are no bosses, no delegation, no commands, no attempt by anyone to tell someone what to do
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Every social order, including that of ants and bees, must allocate its scarce resources between different productive activities and processes, as well as establish patterns of distribution among individuals and groups of output collectively produced.
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the allocation of resources, as well as the distribution of the produce, is based on a decentralised mechanism functioning by means of price signals:
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Interestingly, however, there is one last bastion of economic activity that proved remarkably resistant to the triumph of the market: firms, companies and, later, corporations. Think about it: market-societies, or capitalism, are synonymous with firms, companies, corporations. And yet, quite paradoxically, firms can be thought of as market-free zones. Within their realm, firms (like societies) allocate scarce resources (between different productive activities and processes). Nevertheless they do so by means of some non-price, more often than not hierarchical, mechanism!
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Hayek’s argument was predicated upon the premise that knowledge is always ‘local’ and all attempts to aggregate it are bound to fail. The world, in his eyes, is too complex for its essence to be distilled in some central node; e.g. the state.
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The idea of spontaneous order comes from the Scottish Enlightenment, and in particular David Hume who, famously, argued against Thomas Hobbes’ assumption that, without some Leviathan ruling over us (keeping us “all in awe”), we would end up in a hideous State of Nature in which life would be “nasty, brutish and short”
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Hume’s counter-argument was that, in the absence of a system of centralised command, conventions emerge that minimise conflict and organise social activities (including production) in a manner that is most conducive to the Good Life
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The miracle of the market, according to Hayek, was that it managed to signal to each what activity is best for herself and for society as a whole without first aggregating all the disparate and local pieces of knowledge that lived in the minds and subconscious of each consumer, each designer, each producer. How does this signalling happen? Hayek’s answer (borrowed from Smith) was devastatingly simple: through the movement of prices
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The idea here is that, through this ever-evolving process, people’s capacities, talents and ideas are given the best chance possible to develop and produce synergies that promote the Common Good. It is as if an invisible hand guides Valve’s individual members to decisions that both unleash each person’s potential and serve the company’s collective interest (which does not necessarily coincide with profit maximisation).
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Hume thought that humans are prone to all sorts of incommensurable passions (e.g. the passion for a video game, the passion for chocolate, the passion for social justice) the pursuit of which leads to many different types of conventions that, eventually, make up our jointly produced spontaneous order
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In contrast, Smith and Hayek concentrate their analysis on a single passion: the passion for profit-making
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Hume also believed in a variety of signals, as opposed to Hayek’s exclusive reliance on price signalling
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One which, instead of price signals, is based on the signals Valve employees emit to one another by selecting how to allocate their labour time, a decision that is bound up with where to wheel their tables to (i.e. whom to work with and on what)
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He pointed out simply and convincingly that the cost of subcontracting a good or service, through some market, may be much larger than the cost of producing that good or service internally. He attributed this difference to transactions costs and explained that they were due to the costs of bargaining (with contractors), of enforcing incomplete contracts (whose incompleteness is due to the fact that some activities and qualities cannot be fully described in a written contract), of imperfect monitoring and asymmetrically distributed information, of keeping trade secrets… secret, etc. In short, contractual obligations can never be perfectly stipulated or enforced, especially when information is scarce and unequally distributed, and this gives rise to transaction costs which can become debilitating unless joint production takes place within the hierarchically structured firm. Optimal corporation size corresponds, in Coase’s scheme of things, to a ‘point’ where the net marginal cost of contracting out a service or good (including transaction costs) tends to zero
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As Coase et al explained in the previous section, the whole point about a corporation is that its internal organisation cannot turn on price signals (for if it could, it would not exist as a corporation but would, instead, contract out all the goods and services internally produced)
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Each employee chooses (a) her partners (or team with which she wants to work) and (b) how much time she wants to devote to various competing projects. In making this decision, each Valve employee takes into account not only the attractiveness of projects and teams competing for their time but, also, the decisions of others.
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Valve differs in that it insists that its employees allocate 100% of their time on projects of their choosing
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Valve is, at least in one way, more radical than a traditional co-operative firm. Co-ops are companies whose ownership is shared equally among its members. Nonetheless, co-ops are usually hierarchical organisations. Democratic perhaps, but hierarchical nonetheless. Managers may be selected through some democratic or consultative process involving members but, once selected, they delegate and command their ‘underlings’ in a manner not at all dissimilar to a standard corporation. At Valve, by contrast, each person manages herself while teams operate on the basis of voluntarism, with collective activities regulated and coordinated spontaneously via the operations of the time allocation-based spontaneous order mechanism described above.
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In contrast, co-ops and Valve feature peer-based systems for determining the distribution of a firm’s surplus among employees.
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There is one important aspect of Valve that I did not focus on: the link between its horizontal management structure and its ‘vertical’ ownership structure. Valve is a private company owned mostly by few individuals. In that sense, it is an enlightened oligarchy: an oligarchy in that it is owned by a few and enlightened in that those few are not using their property rights to boss people around. The question arises: what happens to the alternative spontaneous order within Valve if some or all of the owners decide to sell up?
Partner State - P2P Foundation - 0 views
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So here we have it, the new triarchy: - The state, with its public property and representative mechanisms of governance (in the best scenario) - The private sector, with the corporation and private property - The commons, with the Trust (or the for-benefit association), and which is the ‘property’ of all its members (not the right word in the context of the commons, since it has a different philosophy of ownership)
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At its core would be a collection of commons, represented by trusts and for-benefit associations, which protect their common assets for the benefit of present and future generations
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The commons ‘rents out’ the use of its resources to entrepreneurs. In other words, business still exists, though infinite growth-based capitalism does not.
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More likely is that the corporate forms will be influenced by the commons and that profit will be subsumed to other goals, that are congruent with the maintenance of the commons.
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Much of its functions will have been taken over by commons institutions, but since these institutions care primarily about their commons, and not the general common good, we will still need public authorities that are the guarantor of the system as a whole, and can regulate the various commons, and protect the commoners against possible abuses. So in our scenario, the state does not disappear, but is transformed, though it may greatly diminish in scope, and with its remaining functions thoroughly democratized and based on citizen participation.
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In our vision, it is civil-society based peer production, through the Commons, which is the guarantor of value creation by the private sector, and the role of the state, as Partner State, is to enable and empower the creation of common value. The new peer to peer state then, though some may see that as a contradictio in terminis, is a state which is subsumed under the Commons, just as it is now under the private sector. Such a peer to peer state, if we are correct, will have a much more modest role than the state under a classic state society, with many of its functions taken over by civil society associations, interlinked in processes of global governance. The above then, this triarchy, is the institutional core which replaces the dual private-public binary system that is characteristic of the capitalist system that is presently the dominant format.
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fundamental mission is to empower direct social-value creation, and to focus on the protection of the Commons sphere as well as on the promotion of sustainable models of entrepreneurship and participatory politics
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trigger the production/construction of new commons by - (co-) management of complexe resource systems which are not limited to local boundaries or specific communities (as manager and partner) - survey of rules (chartas) to care for the commons (mediator or judge) - kicking of or providing incentives for commoners governing their commons - here the point is to design intelligent rules which automatically protect the commons, like the GPL does (facilitator)"
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retreating from the binary state/privatization dilemma to the triarchical choice of an optimal mix amongst government regulation, private-market freedom and autonomous civil-society projects
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the state does exist, and I believe that we can’t just imagine that we live in a future state-less society
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the emergence of the digital commons. It is the experience of creating knowledge, culture, software and design commons, by a combination of voluntary contributions, entrepreneurial coalitions and infrastructure-protecting for-benefit associations, that has most tangibly re-introduced the idea of commons, for all to use without discrimination, and where all can contribute. It has drastically reduced the production, distribution, transaction and coordination costs for the immaterial value that is at the core also of all what we produce physically, since that needs to be made, needs to be designed. It has re-introduced communing as a mainstream experience for at least one billion internet users, and has come with proven benefits and robustness that has outcompeted and outcooperated its private rivals. It also of course offers new ways to re-imagine, create and protect physical commons.
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communal shareholding, i.e. the non-reciprocal exchange of an individual with a totality. It is totality that we call the commons.
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It is customary to divide society into three sectors, and what we want to show is how the new peer to peer dynamic unleashed by networked infrastructures, changes the inter-relationship between these three sectors.
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In the current ‘cognitive capitalist’ system, it is the private sector consisting of enterprises and businesses which is the primary factor, and it is engaged in competitive capital accumulation. The state is entrusted with the protection of this process. Though civil society, through the citizen, is in theory ‘sovereign’, and chooses the state; in practice, both civil society and the state are under the domination of the private sector.
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Under fascism, the state achieves great independence from the private sector , which may become subservient to the state. Under the welfare state, the state becomes a protector of the social balance of power and manages the achievements of the social movement; and finally, under the neoliberal corporate welfare state, or ‘market state’, it serves most directly the interests of the financial sector.
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The private sector , under a regime of private ownership, is geared to profit, discounts social and natural externalities, both positive and negative, and uses its dominance in society to use and dominate the state.
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civil society has a relative power as well, through its capability of creating social movements and associations
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the endangerment of the biosphere through the workings of ‘selfish’ market players; the second is the role of the new digital commons.
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Peer production gives us an advance picture of how a commons-oriented society would look like. At its core is a commons and a community contributing to it, either voluntarily, or as paid entrepreneurial employees. It does this through collaborative platforms using open standards. Around the commons emerges enterprises that create added value to operate on the marketplace, but also help the maintenance and the expansion of the commons they rely on. A third partner are the for-benefit associations that maintain the infrastructure of cooperation. Public authorities could play a role if they wanted to support existing commons or the creation of new commons, for the value they bring to society.
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if a commons is not created as in the case of the digital commons, it is something that is inherited from nature or former generations, given in trust and usufruct, so that it can be transmitted to our descendents. The proper institution for such commons is therefore the trust, which is a corporate form that cannot touch its principal capital, but has to maintain it.
Access control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
en.wikipedia.org/...Access_control
shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 09 Jun 16
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blockchainaccess_project wikipedia paper access passport IoPA tech
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Geographical access control may be enforced by personnel (e.g., border guard, bouncer, ticket checker)
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n alternative of access control in the strict sense (physically controlling access itself) is a system of checking authorized presence, see e.g. Ticket controller (transportation). A variant is exit control, e.g. of a shop (checkout) or a country
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access control refers to the practice of restricting entrance to a property, a building, or a room to authorized persons
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can be achieved by a human (a guard, bouncer, or receptionist), through mechanical means such as locks and keys, or through technological means such as access control systems like the mantrap.
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Historically, this was partially accomplished through keys and locks. When a door is locked, only someone with a key can enter through the door, depending on how the lock is configured. Mechanical locks and keys do not allow restriction of the key holder to specific times or dates. Mechanical locks and keys do not provide records of the key used on any specific door, and the keys can be easily copied or transferred to an unauthorized person. When a mechanical key is lost or the key holder is no longer authorized to use the protected area, the locks must be re-keyed.[citation needed] Electronic access control uses computers to solve the limitations of mechanical locks and keys. A wide range of credentials can be used to replace mechanical keys. The electronic access control system grants access based on the credential presented. When access is granted, the door is unlocked for a predetermined time and the transaction is recorded. When access is refused, the door remains locked and the attempted access is recorded. The system will also monitor the door and alarm if the door is forced open or held open too long after being unlocked
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The above description illustrates a single factor transaction. Credentials can be passed around, thus subverting the access control list. For example, Alice has access rights to the server room, but Bob does not. Alice either gives Bob her credential, or Bob takes it; he now has access to the server room. To prevent this, two-factor authentication can be used. In a two factor transaction, the presented credential and a second factor are needed for access to be granted; another factor can be a PIN, a second credential, operator intervention, or a biometric input
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There are three types (factors) of authenticating information:[2] something the user knows, e.g. a password, pass-phrase or PIN something the user has, such as smart card or a key fob something the user is, such as fingerprint, verified by biometric measurement
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Passwords are a common means of verifying a user's identity before access is given to information systems. In addition, a fourth factor of authentication is now recognized: someone you know, whereby another person who knows you can provide a human element of authentication in situations where systems have been set up to allow for such scenarios
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When a credential is presented to a reader, the reader sends the credential’s information, usually a number, to a control panel, a highly reliable processor. The control panel compares the credential's number to an access control list, grants or denies the presented request, and sends a transaction log to a database. When access is denied based on the access control list, the door remains locked.
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A credential is a physical/tangible object, a piece of knowledge, or a facet of a person's physical being, that enables an individual access to a given physical facility or computer-based information system. Typically, credentials can be something a person knows (such as a number or PIN), something they have (such as an access badge), something they are (such as a biometric feature) or some combination of these items. This is known as multi-factor authentication. The typical credential is an access card or key-fob, and newer software can also turn users' smartphones into access devices.
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An access control point, which can be a door, turnstile, parking gate, elevator, or other physical barrier, where granting access can be electronically controlled. Typically, the access point is a door. An electronic access control door can contain several elements. At its most basic, there is a stand-alone electric lock. The lock is unlocked by an operator with a switch. To automate this, operator intervention is replaced by a reader. The reader could be a keypad where a code is entered, it could be a card reader, or it could be a biometric reader. Readers do not usually make an access decision, but send a card number to an access control panel that verifies the number against an access list
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Generally only entry is controlled, and exit is uncontrolled. In cases where exit is also controlled, a second reader is used on the opposite side of the door. In cases where exit is not controlled, free exit, a device called a request-to-exit (REX) is used. Request-to-exit devices can be a push-button or a motion detector. When the button is pushed, or the motion detector detects motion at the door, the door alarm is temporarily ignored while the door is opened. Exiting a door without having to electrically unlock the door is called mechanical free egress. This is an important safety feature. In cases where the lock must be electrically unlocked on exit, the request-to-exit device also unlocks the doo
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Access control decisions are made by comparing the credential to an access control list. This look-up can be done by a host or server, by an access control panel, or by a reader. The development of access control systems has seen a steady push of the look-up out from a central host to the edge of the system, or the reader. The predominant topology circa 2009 is hub and spoke with a control panel as the hub, and the readers as the spokes. The look-up and control functions are by the control panel. The spokes communicate through a serial connection; usually RS-485. Some manufactures are pushing the decision making to the edge by placing a controller at the door. The controllers are IP enabled, and connect to a host and database using standard networks
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Semi-intelligent readers: have all inputs and outputs necessary to control door hardware (lock, door contact, exit button), but do not make any access decisions. When a user presents a card or enters a PIN, the reader sends information to the main controller, and waits for its response. If the connection to the main controller is interrupted, such readers stop working, or function in a degraded mode. Usually semi-intelligent readers are connected to a control panel via an RS-485 bus.
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Intelligent readers: have all inputs and outputs necessary to control door hardware; they also have memory and processing power necessary to make access decisions independently. Like semi-intelligent readers, they are connected to a control panel via an RS-485 bus. The control panel sends configuration updates, and retrieves events from the readers.
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Systems with IP readers usually do not have traditional control panels, and readers communicate directly to a PC that acts as a host
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Some readers may have additional features such as an LCD and function buttons for data collection purposes (i.e. clock-in/clock-out events for attendance reports), camera/speaker/microphone for intercom, and smart card read/write support
The New Sacred « Dynamics of Myth - 0 views
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We have to both overcome the hold of the old mythology and gain adoption of the new. What drives adoption of a meaningful cultural phenomenon?
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largely driven by the church and government institutions which we don’t necessarily want to recreate, right?
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The Authority establishes a values framework, a ruling hierarchy directs and stewards the sacred content, and a host of intermediaries that carry it out to the faithful consumers.
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All around us there’s a collapse of the legitimacy of authorities, with much cynicism from the population. There’s never been a greater need for sacred content that can be trusted and deemed legitimate. How to achieve it without authorities? This is where we have to pivot our minds. We have to replace the dynamics of its creation within the authority with something else. This slide suggests an alternative:
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We can create a values framework using collaborative culture techniques like community mythology projects. Out of these come sacred content that is legitimate because we created it according to shared values and a collective conscience. We have to put in place processes and rituals to establish, enshrine and communicate it.
James Grier Miller, Living Systems (1978) - 0 views
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My presentation of a general theory of living systems will employ two sorts of spaces in which they may exist, physical or geographical space and conceptual or abstracted spaces
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The characteristics and constraints of physical space affect the action of all concrete systems, living and nonliving.
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These conceptual and abstracted spaces do not have the same characteristics and are not subject to the same constraints as physical space
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Social and some biological scientists find conceptual or abstracted spaces useful because they recognize that physical space is not a major determinant of certain processes in the living systems they study
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one cannot measure comparable processes at different levels of systems, to confirm or disconfirm cross-level hypotheses, unless one can measure different levels of systems or dimensions in the same spaces or in different spaces with known transformations among them
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It must be possible, moreover, to make such measurements precisely enough to demonstrate whether or not there is a formal identity across levels
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Any change of state of matter-energy or its movement over space, from one point to another, I shall call action.
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Meaning is the significance of information to a system which processes it: it constitutes a change in that system's processes elicited by the information, often resulting from associations made to it on previous experience with it
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Information is a simpler concept: the degrees of freedom that exist in a given situation to choose among signals, symbols, messages, or patterns to be transmitted.
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. The amount of information is measured as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number of alternate patterns
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Signals convey information to the receiving system only if they do not duplicate information already in the receiver. As Gabor says:
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[The information of a message can] be defined as the 'minimum number of binary decisions which enable the receiver to construct the message, on the basis of the data already available to him.'
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The term marker was used by von Neumann to refer to those observable bundles, units, or changes of matter-energy whose patterning bears or conveys the informational symbols from the ensemble or repertoire.
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If a marker can assume n different states of which only one is present at any given time, it can represent at most log2n bits of information. The marker may be static, as in a book or in a computer's memory
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Communication of almost every sort requires that the marker move in space, from the transmitting system to the receiving system, and this movement follows the same physical laws as the movement of any other sort of matter-energy. The advance of communication technology over the years has been in the direction of decreasing the matter-energy costs of storing and transmitting the markers which bear information.
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There are, therefore, important practical matter-energy constraints upon the information processing of all living systems exerted by the nature of the matter-energy which composes their markers.
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If two parts are interrelated either quantitatively or qualitatively, knowledge of the state of one must yield some information about the state of the other. Information measures can demonstrate when such relationships exist
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The disorder, disorganization, lack of patterning, or randomness of organization of a system is known as its entropy (S)
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Increase of entropy was thus interpreted as the passage of a system from less probable to more probable states.
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according to the second law, a system tends to increase in entropy over time, it must tend to decrease in negentropy or information.
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. Making one or more copies of a given informational pattern does not increase information overall, though it may increase the information in the system which receives the copied information.
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the concept of Prigogine that in an open system (that is one in which both matter and energy can be exchanged with the environment) the rate of entropy production within the system, which is always positive, is minimized when the system is in a steady state.
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in systems with internal feedbacks, internal entropy production is not always minimized when the system is in a stationary state. In other words, feedback couplings between the system parameters may cause marked changes in the rate of development of entropy. Thus it may be concluded that the "information flow" which is essential for this feedback markedly alters energy utilization and the rate of development of entropy, at least in some such special cases which involve feedback control. While the explanation of this is not clear, it suggests an important relationship between information and entropy
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amount of energy actually required to transmit the information in the channel is a minute part of the total energy in the system, the "housekeeping energy" being by far the largest part of it
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In recent years systems theorists have been fascinated by the new ways to study and measure information flows, but matter-energy flows are equally important. Systems theory is more than information theory, since it must also deal with energetics - such matters as
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Only a minute fraction of the energy used by most living systems is employed for information processing
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I have noted above that the movement of matter-energy over space, action, is one form of process. Another form of process is information processing or communication, which is the change of information from one state to another or its movement from one point to another over space
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Communications, while being processed, are often shifted from one matter-energy state to another, from one sort of marker to another
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One basic reason why communication is of fundamental importance is that informational patterns can be processed over space and the local matter-energy at the receiving point can be organized to conform to, or comply with, this information
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. Conversely there is no regular movement in a system unless there is a difference in potential between two points, which is negative entropy or information
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If the receiver responds primarily to the material or energic aspect, I shall call it, for brevity, a matter-energy transmission; if the response is primarily to the information, I shall call it an information transmission
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Moreover, just as living systems must have specific forms of matter-energy, so they must have specific patterns of information
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.The word "set" implies that the units have some common properties. These common properties are essential if the units are to interact or have relationships. The state of each unit is constrained by, conditioned by, or dependent on the state of other units. The units are coupled. Moreover, there is at least one measure of the sum of its units which is larger than the sum of that measure of its units.
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a correspondence between two variables, x and y, such that for each value of x there is a definite value of y, and no two y's have the same x, and this correspondence is: determined by some rule
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the set of values on some scale, numerical or otherwise, which its variables have at a given instant
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If these comparable variations are so similar that they can be expressed by the same function, a formal identity exists between the two systems
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Science advances as the formal identity or isomorphism increases between a theoretical conceptual system and objective findings about concrete or abstracted systems
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A conceptual system may be purely logical or mathematical, or its terms and relationships may be intended to have some sort of formal identity or isomorphism with units and relationships empirically determinable by some operation carried out by an observer
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a nonrandom accumulation of matter-energy, in a region in physical space-time, which is organized into interacting interrelated subsystems or components.
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Both units and relationships in concrete systems are empirically determinable by some operation carried out by an observer
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distinguishes a concrete system from unorganized entities in its environment by the following criteria
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Their boundaries are discovered by empirical operations available to the general scientific community rather than set conceptually by a single observer
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which can potentially change over time, and whose change can potentially be measured by specific operations, is a variable of a concrete system
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number of its subsystems or components, its size, its rate of movement in space, its rate of growth, the number of bits of information it can process per second, or the intensity of a sound to which it responds
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not to be confused with intersystemic variations which may be observed among individual systems, types, or levels.
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Most concrete systems have boundaries which are at least partially permeable, permitting sizable magnitudes of at least certain sorts of matter-energy or information transmissions to pass them. Such a system is an open system. In open systems entropy may increase, remain in steady state, or decrease.
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impermeable boundaries through which no matter-energy or information transmissions of any sort can occur is a closed system
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In closed systems, entropy generally increases, exceptions being when certain reversible processes are carried on which do not increase it. It can never decrease.
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the general case of concrete systems, of which living systems are a very special case. Nonliving systems need not have the same critical subsystems as living systems, though they often have some of them
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maintain a steady state of negentropy even though entropic changes occur in them as they do everywhere else
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The difference permits them to restore their own energy and repair breakdowns in their own organized structure.
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They have a decider, the essential critical sub-system which controls the entire system, causing its subsystems and components to interact. Without such interaction under decider control there is no system.
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other specific critical sub-systems or they have symbiotic or parasitic relationships with other living or nonliving systems
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Their subsystems are integrated together to form actively self-regulating, developing, unitary systems with purposes and goals
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A partipotential system must interact with other systems that can carry out the processes which it does not, or it will not survive
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relationships abstracted or selected by an observer in the light of his interests, theoretical viewpoint, or philosophical bias.
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Some relationships may be empirically determinable by some operation carried out by the observer, but others are not, being only his concepts
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The relationships mentioned above are observed to inhere and interact in concrete, usually living, systems
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The verbal usages of theoretical statements concerning abstracted systems are often the reverse of those concerning concrete systems
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representing a class of phenomena all of which are considered to have some similar "class characteristic." The members of such a class are not thought to interact or be interrelated, as are the relationships in an abstracted system
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their physical limits often do not coincide spatially with the boundaries of any concrete system, although they may.
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important difference between the physical and biological hierarchies, on the one hand, and social hierarchies, on the other
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we propose to identify social hierarchies not by observing who lives close to whom but by observing who interacts with whom
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in most biological and physical systems relatively intense interaction implies relative spatial propinquity
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To the extent that interactions are channeled through specialized communications and transportation systems, spatial propinquity becomes less determinative of structure.
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cumulative body of knowledge of the past, contained in memories and assumptions of people who express this knowledge in definite ways
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On the other hand, the society is an aggregate of social subsystems, and as a limiting case it is that social system which comprises all the roles of all the individuals who participate.
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What Ruesch calls the social system is something concrete in space-time, observable and presumably measurable by techniques like those of natural science
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To Parsons the system is abstracted from this, being the set of relationships which are the form of organization. To him the important units are classes of input-output relationships of subsystems rather than the subsystems themselves
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system is a system of relationship in action, it is neither a physical organism nor an object of physical perception
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[action] is not concerned with the internal structure of processes of the organism, but is concerned with the organism as a unit in a set of relationships and the other terms of that relationship, which he calls situation
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One fundamental distinction between abstracted and concrete systems is that the boundaries of abstracted systems may at times be conceptually established at regions which cut through the units and relationships in the physical space occupied by concrete systems, but the boundaries of these latter systems are always set at regions which include within them all the units and internal relationships of each system
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If the diverse fields of science are to be unified, it would be helpful if all disciplines were oriented either to concrete or to abstracted systems.
Owning Together Is the New Sharing by Nathan Schneider - YES! Magazine - 0 views
www.yesmagazine.org/...ng-together-is-the-new-sharing
shared by Kurt Laitner on 05 Jan 15
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ouishare sensorica loomio enspiral cobudget ethereum sovolve swarm ownership sharing paper
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VC-backed sharing economy companies like Airbnb and Uber have caused trouble for legacy industries, but gone is the illusion that they are doing it with actual sharing
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The notion that sharing would do away with the need for owning has been one of the mantras of sharing economy promoters. We could share cars, houses, and labor, trusting in the platforms to provide. But it’s becoming clear that ownership matters as much as ever.
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Léonard and his collaborators are part of a widespread effort to make new kinds of ownership the new norm. There are cooperatives, networks of freelancers, cryptocurrencies, and countless hacks in between. Plans are being made for a driver-owned Lyft, a cooperative version of eBay, and Amazon Mechanical Turk workers are scheming to build a crowdsourcing platform they can run themselves. Each idea has its prospects and shortcomings, but together they aspire toward an economy, and an Internet, that is more fully ours.
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Jeremy Rifkin, a futurist to CEOs and governments, contends that the Internet-of-things and 3-D printers are ushering in a “ zero marginal cost society“ in which the “collaborative commons” will be more competitive than extractive corporations
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once the VC-backed sharing companies clear away regulatory hurdles, local co-ops will be poised to swoop in and spread the wealth
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“We’re moving into a new economic age,” says Marjorie Kelly, who spent two decades at the helm of Business Ethics magazine and now advises social entrepreneurs. “It needs to be sustainable. It needs to be inclusive. And the foundation of what defines an economic age is its form of ownership.”
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It’s a worker-owned cooperative that produces open-source software to help people practice consensus—though they prefer the term “collaboration”—about decisions that affect their lives.
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From the start Loomio was part of Enspiral, an “open value network“ of freelancers and social enterprises devoted to mutual support and the common good.
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The team members recently had to come to terms with the fact that, for the time being, only some of them could be paid for full-time work They called the process “participatory downsizing.”
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And they can take many forms. Loomio and other tech companies, for instance, are aspiring toward the model of a multi-stakeholder cooperative—one in which not just workers or consumers are voting members, but several such groups at once.
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Loconomics is a San Francisco-based startup designed, like TaskRabbit, to manage short-term freelance jobs
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“People who have been without for a long time,” she says, “often operate with a mindset that they can’t share what they have, because they don’t know when that resource will come along again.”
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As Loconomics prepares to begin operations this winter, it’s running out of the pocket of the founder, Josh Danielson
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The ambition of a cooperative Facebook or Uber—competitive, widespread, and owned by its community—still seems out of reach for enterprises not willing to sell large parts of themselves to investors. Organizations like
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His fellow OuiShare founder Benjamin Tincq is concerned that too much fixation on a particular model will make it hard for well-meaning ventures to be successful. “I like the idea that we don’t need to have a specific legal status,” he says. “It’s more about hacking an existing legal status and making these hacks work.”
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Fenton’s new undertaking, Sovolve, proposes to “create innovative solutions to accelerate social change,” much as CouchSurfing did, but it’s doing the innovating cautiously. All work is done by worker-owners located around the world. Sovolve uses an internal platform—soon to become a product in its own right—through which contributors decide how much they want to be paid in cash and how much in equity. They can see how much others are earning. Their virtual workplace is gamified, with everyone working to nudge their first product, WonderApp, into virality
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Loomio’s members use a similar system, which they call Loomio Points. But Sovolve is no cooperative; contributors are not in charge.
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Open-source software and share-alike licenses have revived the ancient idea of the commons for an Internet age. But the “ commons-based peer production“ that Sensorica seeks to practice doesn’t arise overnight. Just as today’s business culture rests on generations of accumulated law, habit, and training, learning to manage a commons successfully takes time
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It makes possible decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, which exist entirely on a shared network
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The most ambitious successor to Bitcoin, Ethereum, has raised more than $15 million in crowdfunding on the promise of creating such a network.
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all with technology that makes collective ownership a lot easier than a conventional legal structure
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A project called Eris is developing a collective decision-making tool designed to govern DAOs on Ethereum, though the platform may still be months from release.
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For now, the burden of reinventing every wheel at once makes it hard for companies like Sensorica and Loomio to compete
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For instance, Cutting Edge Capital specializes in helping companies raise money through a long-standing mechanism called the direct public investment, or DPO, which allows for small, non-accredited investors.
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Venture funding may be in competition with Dietz’s cryptoequity vision, but it provides a fearsome head start
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Co-ops help ensure that the people who contribute to and depend on an enterprise keep control and keep profits, so they’re a possible remedy for worsening economic inequality
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Sooner or later, transforming a system of gross inequality and concentrated wealth will require more than isolated experiments at the fringes—it will require capturing that wealth and redirecting its flows
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A less consensual strategy was employed to fund the Catalan Integral Cooperative in Spain; over the course of a few years, one activist borrowed around $600,000 from Spanish banks without paying any of it back.
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In Jackson, Mississippi, Chokwe Lumumba was elected mayor in 2013 on a platform of fostering worker-owned cooperatives, although much of the momentum was lost when Lumumba died just a few months later.