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Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Boundaryless - 3 views

boundaryless.io

IoPA consultancy value value networks legal level organization

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 11 Jan 23 - No Cached
  • Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 09 Feb 23
     
    Dig this source, Simone Cicero is involved, must be full of info !
  • mayssamd on 09 Feb 23
     
    They work under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. it says everywhere that their material is OS but I can't seem to bae able to find it.
  • mayssamd on 09 Feb 23
     
    Create open-source frameworks for platform design and entrepreneurial organization development: we support a global community of organizations, institutions, and individuals through workshops, training, and consulting services.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

AfricaOSH - 0 views

www.africaosh.com

IoPA ecosystem ecosystem level organization legal level

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 11 Jan 23 - No Cached
  • mayssamd on 12 Jan 23
     
    Works under GOSH (above) Check accountability within AfricaOSH and vertically with GOSH. They look interesting for Sensorica
Kurt Laitner

Leveling the Playing Field for Worker Cooperatives - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...-field-for-worker-cooperatives

ccops fight poverty New York community collaboration paper

shared by Kurt Laitner on 23 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Kurt Laitner on 23 Jun 14
     
    I think SENSORICA had looked at working with Gov of Quebec or the feds to blend welfare / EI / new immigrants into an OVN model
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Open Collaboration - The Next Economic Paradigm - 0 views

www.chaoticripple.com/...open-collaboration-paradigm

collaboration economy blog paper Joe Brewer

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 30 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • we’re in the midst of a collapsing paradigm
  • to be replaced by something new
  • I will explain what the new paradigm
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • business
  • government
  • education
  • research
  • The old economic paradigm was a service economy built on the digital communications revolution that began in the early 1970′s.
  • financial capital has decoupled from productive capital
  • financial meltdown
  • major societal institutions have stalled
  • the funding models
  • no longer work properly
  • The new model is the Open Collaboration Paradigm
  • we will see a radical departure from old institutional models.
  • social capital is increasingly recognized
  • generating wealth for society
  • This will be a profoundly social economy, built on unprecedented capabilities to self-organize people and resources in the crowd.
  • Social media
  • connect ideas, people, and institutions
  • blur the inside/outside distinctions
  • Network connections
  • radical transparency will be the new norm
  • Another profound shift will occur in the realm of ownership
  • No longer
  • viable
  • to horde intellectual property
  •  Collaborative consumption will arise as a more robust business paradigm,
  • risk is distributed
  • implications for business
  •  Those who can leverage the wisdom of crowds for market research, product development, and efficient resource allocation will be more adept and agile in the face of rapid change.
  • Those who build walls around themselves will fail to tap into the flow of knowledge and resources running rampant in the crowd
  • governments will have to become more transparent and responsive to their citizens
  • information becomes more immersive and dynamic
  • Research has already begun to use open collaboration that goes beyond the halls of academia.
  • collaborative approach to research will become the norm,
  • The era of “user generated content” and “prosumption” — where consumers of goods and services co-create what they will consume — is now a decade along in its evolution.  We will increasingly see collaborative design and production of consumables across society.
  • In the education arena, we will see more curricula as shareware and an increased emphasis on multi-perspective teamwork as the necessary skills for engaging in collaborative projects.
  • Expert/amateur boundaries have already blurred to the point where individuals can acquire graduate-level knowledge through self-directed learning on the internet.
  • distance learning
  •  Lifetime learning
  • active pedagogy
  • So get ready for the new economic paradigm.
Francois Bergeron

Whose Capitalism is it Anyway? | Management Innovation eXchange - 1 views

www.managementexchange.com/...whose-capitalism-it-anyway

new economy collaboration commons paper blog

shared by Francois Bergeron on 06 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • So what replaces competition—what drives growth today? We already know the answer: the kind of innovation that comes from collaboration, not competition.
  • How do you encourage the invention of something entirely new that serves both the profit motive and provides social benefit—even without access to Jeff Immelt’s special fund? You “build a lifeboat,” says Chris. Create a protected space, permission, and some funding “for the people who believe in the new thing and just can’t help themselves but to follow that belief.”
  • At the individual level, “that’s what they pay me to do,” is not enough of a reason to do something, argues Chris. “If you could, as a leader at any level, say ‘I’m only going to do things I believe in’ and if you can’t find work that overlaps with that, then ‘I’m in the wrong place.’” That’s a non-trivial moral stance—there just aren’t that many jobs out there that match up personal beliefs and values to everyday work. There is a way beyond this conundrum (though it’s not for the faint of heart), says Chris, “standing on the sun, it’s worth remembering that jobs are a relatively new phenomenon. Before there were large industrial organizations, everybody was an entrepreneur. And what we’re going to return to is a form of people finding their own work.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • winning is more often the result of the alignment of different interests than of a battle between them.
  • Francois Bergeron on 06 Apr 12
     
    new economy and the importance of collaboration - worldwide. See the example of GE in India
Kurt Laitner

Forget the Foundations - In These Times - 0 views

inthesetimes.com/...forget_the_foundations

Madonna Thunderhawk financing foundation activism paper

shared by Kurt Laitner on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Their “actions” didn’t involve writing grant proposals, discussing their concerns with a board of directors or contacting state agencies. They tested water samples themselves, and, in 1979, produced a study revealing high levels of radioactive contamination, a high percentage of pregnancies complicated by excessive bleeding or terminated in abortion and large numbers of children born with birth defects. Despite their work, the Centers for Disease Control and Indian Health Services discredited the study, and WARN wasn’t vindicated until the South Dakota School of Mines substantiated their claims that same year.
  • But unlike Erin Brockovich, this tale of local activists fighting against faceless institutions doesn’t have a happy ending: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission simply raised the level of “acceptable contamination,” and Indian Health Services started providing bottled water in one area. Congress authorized a new water pipeline to the reservation in 2002–only to have the funding diverted by the financial demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • who defer responsibility onto do-nothing organizations, only later to complain about their lack of agency
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • that foundations perpetuate First World interests and free-market capitalism, thus preserving many of the problems radical activists wish to eradicate, such as the unregulated concentration of wealth.
  • Foundations were created in the early 20th century by multimillionaire robber barons, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, to evade corporate and estate taxes.
  • foundations divert money away from the collective tax base
  • who are more interested in supporting milquetoast reformers than social-justice organizations
  • federal and state funding for education and healthcare has shrunk
  • This is a culture of noblesse oblige, Ahn writes, where the “privileged are obliged to help those less fortunate, without examining how that wealth was created or the dangerous implications of conceding such power to the wealthy.”
  • is the power those with money wield over community leaders.
  • consequently realigning their interests (i.e., maintaining their jobs) with maintaining the system
  • This allegiance keeps community leaders from challenging the root causes of social inequities–the social-change work–at the same time that they pedal to keep up by providing for the needs of individuals devastated by institutional exploitation.
  • Kivel concedes this is valuable work, but points out the inherent injustice of this paradigm: “When temporary shelter becomes a substitute for permanent housing, emergency food a substitute for a decent job … we have shifted our attention from the redistribution of wealth to the temporary provision of social services to keep people alive.”
  • University of Southern California Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore urges contemporary grassroots activists to stop seeking a “pure way of doing things.” “Many are looking for an organizational structure and a resource capability that will somehow be impervious to co-optation,”
  • transitioning from foundation support to a volunteer collective reliant solely on grassroots dollars
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Welcome to the Mediterranean Sea - Welcome on Reef Check Mediterranean Sea! - 0 views

www.reefcheckmed.org

GoodLabs_mapping open science citizen science platform

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 31 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 31 Oct 20
     
    "This website is about the monitoring protocols for the Mediterranean Sea developed by the Reef Check organizations working in this geographic area since 2008"
sebastianklemm

FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - 0 views

www.fao.org/en

organisation food agriculture potential partner greens_for_good

shared by sebastianklemm on 25 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • sebastianklemm on 25 Apr 21
     
    The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Our goal is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. With over 194 member states, FAO works in over 130 countries worldwide. We believe that everyone can play a part in ending hunger. Join us in creating a #ZeroHunger world.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

If not Global Captalism - then What? - 0 views

www.moq.org/...ifnotglobal.html

paper nondominium Chris Cook

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Jun 11 - Cached
  • I posit an optimistic view of the potential for Society from the emergence of a new and “Open” form of Capitalism.
  • Open Capital
  • the concept of “Open” Capital is “so simple…. it repels the mind".
  • ...162 more annotations...
  • Open Capital is defined as “a proportional share in an enterprise for an indeterminate time”
  • ‘Enterprise’ is defined as ‘any entity within which two or more individuals create, accumulate or exchange Value”.
  • Value is to Economics as Energy and Matter are to Physics.
  • The Metaphysics Of Value
  • division between “subject” and “object”.
  • primary reality is “Quality”
  • formless and indefinable
  • not a “thing”
  • a non-intellectual awareness or “pre-intellectual reality”
  • but an event at which the subject becomes aware of the object and before he distinguishes it
  • Quality is the basis of both subject and object
  • distinguish between “Static” and “Dynamic” Quality
  • treating Value as a form of “Quality” as envisioned by Pirsig.
  • Riegel
  • defined “Value” as “ the Relativity of Desire” again implying indeterminacy.
  • Pirsig’s approach Capital may be viewed as “Static” Value and Money as “Dynamic” Value. “Transactions” are the “events” at which individuals (Subjects) interact with each other or with Capital (both as Objects) to create forms of Value and at which “Value judgments” are made based upon a “Value Unit”.
  • The result of these Value Events /Transactions is to create subject/object pairings in the form of data ie Who “owns” or has rights of use in What,
  • at what Price
  • accounting data
  • Neo-Classical” Economics confuses indeterminate Value with a market– determined Price –
  • Data may be static
  • This Data identifies the subject with objects such as tangible ‘Material Value’
  • Data may itself constitute ‘Intellectual Value’
  • It, too, may then be defined in a subject/object pairing through the concept of “intellectual property”.
  • Other forms of Value are however not definable by data:
  • “sentimental” Value
  • Emotional Value’
  • 'Spiritual Value’
  • We may therefore look at the “transaction” or “value event” in a new light.
  • The creation and circulation of Value essentially comprises the concept we know of as “Money”.
  • Money / Dynamic Value
  • “The purpose of money is to facilitate barter by splitting the transaction into two parts, the acceptor of money reserving the power to requisition value from any trader at any time
  • money
  • value unit dissociated from any object
  • monetary unit
  • the basis relative to which other values may be expressed
  • The monetary process is a dynamic one involving the creation and recording of obligations as between individuals and the later fulfilment of these obligations
  • The monetary “Value Event”/ Transaction involves the creation of “Credit”
  • obligation to provide something of equivalent Value at a future point in time.
  • These obligations may be recorded on transferable documents
  • database of “Credit”/obligations is not Money, but temporary “Capital”
  • “Working Capital”
  • Static Value – which only becomes “Money”/ Dynamic Value when exchanged in the transitory Monetary process.
  • what we think of as Money is in fact not tangible “cash” but rather
  • the flow of data between databases of obligations maintained by Credit Institutions
  • or dynamic
  • Banks literally “loan” Money into existence
  • In exchange for an obligation by an Individual to provide to the Bank something of Value
  • Bank’s obligation is merely to provide another obligation at some future time
  • These Bank-issued obligations are therefore
  • claim upon a claim upon Value
  • The true source of Credit is the Individual, not the intermediary Bank
  • this Money they create from nothing despite the fact that it is literally Value-less
  • Thus there is no true sharing of Risk and Reward involved in Lending
  • issue in relation to Credit/Debt and this relates to the nature of Lending itself.
  • the practice of Lending involves an incomplete exchange in terms of risk and reward: a Lender, as opposed to an Investor, has no interest in the outcome of the Loan, and requires the repayment of Principal no matter the ability of the Borrower to repay.
  • Ethical problem
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Jun 11
       
      "The Lender has no interest in the outcome of the loan", i.e doesn't care what happens in the end. The Lender ins not interested in the economical outcome of the Lender-Loner relation. So in fact there is no real risk sharing. the only risk for the Lender is when the Loner doesn't pay back, which is not really a risk... In fact it is a risk for the small bank, who has to buy money from the central bank, but not for the central bank. 
  • Money is not
  • an “Object” circulating but rather a dynamic process of Value creation and exchange by reference to a “Value Unit”.
  • Capital/ Static Value
  • Capital represents the static accumulation of Value
  • Some forms of Capital are “productive”
  • An ethical question
  • in relation to Productive Capital relates to the extent of “property rights” which may be held over it thereby allowing individuals to assert “absolute” permanent and exclusive ownership - in particular in relation to Land
  • our current financial system is based not upon Value but rather a claim upon Value
  • Financial Capital consists of two types:
  • “Debt”
  • “Equity”
  • Interest
  • obligations of finite/temporary duration but with no participation in the assets or revenues
  • absolute and permanent ownership/participation (without obligation) in assets and revenues
  • discontinuity between Debt and Equity
  • at the heart of our current problems as a Society
  • The Enterprise
  • ‘Charitable’ Enterprise
  • ‘Social’ Enterprise
  • Value
  • exchanged in agreed proportions;
  • Value is exchanged for the Spiritual and Emotional Value
  • ‘Commercial’ Enterprise
  • ‘closed’
  • Value are exchanged between a limited number of individuals
  • Early enterprises were partnerships and unincorporated associations
  • need for institutions which outlived the lives of the Members led to the development of the Corporate body with a legal existence independent of its Members
  • The key development in the history of Capitalism was the creation of the ‘Joint Stock’ Corporate with liability limited by shares of a ‘Nominal’ or ‘Par’ value
  • over the next 150 years the Limited Liability Corporate evolved into the Public Limited Liability Corporate
  • Such “Closed” Shares of “fixed” value constitute an absolute and permanent claim over the assets and revenues of the Enterprise to the exclusion of all other “stakeholders” such as Suppliers, Customers, Staff, and Debt Financiers.
  • The latter are essentially ‘costs’ external to the
  • owners of the Enterprise
  • maximise ‘Shareholder Value’
  • There is a discontinuity/ fault-line within the ‘Closed’ Corporate
  • It has the characteristics of what biologists call a ‘semi-permeable membrane’ in the way that it allows Economic Value to be extracted from other stakeholders but not to pass the other way.
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Jun 11
       
      It is a way to extract value from productive systems. It is a system of exploitation. 
  • Capital most certainly is and always has been - through the discontinuity (see diagram) between:‘Fixed’ Capital in the form of shares ie Equity; and ‘Working’ Capital in the form of debt finance, credit from suppliers, pre-payments by customers and obligations to staff and management.
  • irreconcilable conflict between Equity and Debt
  • xchange of Economic Value in a Closed Corporate is made difficult and true sharing of Risk and Reward is simply not possible
  • No Enterprise Model has been capable of resolving this dilemma. Until now.
  • Corporate Partnerships with unlimited liability
  • mandatory for partnerships with more than 20 partners to be incorporated
  • in the USA
  • it is the normal structure for professional partnerships
  • Limited Liability Partnerships
  • In the late 1990's
  • litigation
  • The UK LLP is supremely simple and remarkably flexible.
  • All that is needed is a simple ‘Member Agreement’ – a legal protocol which sets out the Aims, Objectives. Principles of Governance, Revenue Sharing, Dispute Resolution, Transparency and any other matters that Members agree should be included. Amazingly enough, this Agreement need not even be in writing, since in the absence of a written agreement Partnership Law is applied by way of default.
  • The ease of use and total flexibility enables the UK LLP to be utilised in a way never intended – as an ‘Open’ Corporate partnership.
  • ‘Open’ Corporate Partnership
  • concepts which characterise the ‘Open’ Corporate Partnership
  • it is now possible for any stakeholder to become a Member of a UK LLP simply through signing a suitably drafted Member Agreement
  • ‘Open’
  • supplier
  • employee
  • may instead become true Partners in the Enterprise with their interests aligned with other stakeholders.
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Jun 11
       
      Can SENSORICA be a UK LLP?
  • no profit or loss in an Open Corporate Partnership, merely Value creation and exchange between members in conformance with the Member Agreement.
  • Proportional shares
  • in an Enterprise constitute an infinitely divisible, flexible and scaleable form of Capital capable of distributing or accumulating Value organically as the Enterprise itself grows in Value or chooses to distribute it.
  • Emergence of “Open” Capital
  • example of how ‘Temporary Equity’ may operate in practice
  • The Open Capital Partnership (“OCP”)
  • Within the OCP Capital and Revenue are continuous: to the extent that an Investee pays Rental in advance of the due date he becomes an Investor.
  • Open Capital – a new Asset Class
  • create a new asset class of proportional “shares”/partnership interests
  • in Capital holding OCP’s
  • Property Investment Partnerships (“PIP’s”)
  • Open Corporate Partnerships as a Co-operative Enterprise model
  • A Co-operative is not an enterprise structure: it is a set of Principles that may be applied to different types of enterprise structure.
  • Within a Partnership there is no “Profit” and no “Loss”.
  • Partnerships
  • mutual pursuit of the creation and exchange of Value
  • Partners do not compete with each othe
  • the crippling factors in practical terms have been, inter alia: the liability to which Member partners are exposed from the actions of their co-partners on their behalf; limited ability to raise capital.
  • they favour the interests of other stakeholders, are relatively restricted in accessing investment; are arguably deficient in incentivising innovation.
  • The ‘new’ LLP was expressly created to solve the former problem by limiting the liability of Member partners to those assets which they choose to place within its protective ‘semi-permeable membrane’
  • However, the ability to configure the LLP as an “Open” Corporate permits a new and superior form of Enterprise.
  • it is possible to re-organise any existing enterprise as either a partnership or as a partnership of partnerships.
  • the revenues
  • would be divided among Members in accordance with the LLP Agreement. This means that all Members share a common interest in collaborating/co-operating to maximise the Value generated by the LLP collectively as opposed to competing with other stakeholders to maximise their individual share at the other stakeholders’ expense.
  • facilitate the creation of LLP’s as “Co-operatives of Co-operatives”.
  • he ‘Commercial’ Enterprise LLP – where the object is for a closed group of individuals to maximise the value generated in their partnership. There are already over 7,000 of these.
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 02 Jun 11
       
      Can SENSORICA be one of these?
  • the Profit generated in a competitive economy based upon shareholder value and unsustainable growth results from a transfer of risks outwards, and the transfer of reward inwards, leading to a one way transfer of Economic Value.
  • This,
  • will very often impoverish one or more constituency of stakeholders
  • A partnership, however, involves an exchange of value through the sharing of risk and reward.
  • Whether its assets are protected within a corporate entity with limited liability or not, it will always operate co-operatively – for mutual profit.
  • Open Capital, Economics and Politics
  • continuity between Capital as Static Value and Money as Dynamic Value which has never before been possible due to the dichotomy between the absolute/infinite and the absolute/finite durations of the competing claims over assets – “Equity” and “Debt”
  • Open Capital Partnership gives rise to a new form of Financial Capital of indeterminate duration. It enables the Capitalisation of assets and the monetisation of revenue streams in an entirely new way.
  • It is possible to envisage a Society within which individuals are members of a portfolio of Enterprises constituted as partnerships, whether limited in liability or otherwise.
  • Some will be charitable
  • Others will be ‘social’
  • ‘Commercial’ enterprises of all kinds aimed at co-operatively working together to maximise value for the Members.
  • the process has already begun
  • Capitalism
  • superior
  • to all other models, such as Socialism.
  • It can only be replaced by another ‘emergent’ phenomenon, which is adopted ‘virally’ because any Enterprise which does not utilise it will be at a disadvantage to an Enterprise which does.
  • The ‘Open’ Corporate Partnership is: capable of linking any individuals anywhere in respect of collective ownership of assets anywhere; extremely cheap and simple to operate; and because one LLP may be a Member of another it is organically flexible and ‘scaleable’. The phenomenon of “Open Capital” – which is already visible in the form of significant commercial transactions - enables an extremely simple and continuous relationship between those who wish to participate indefinitely in an Enterprise and those who wish to participate for a defined period of time.
  • Moreover, the infinitely divisible proportionate “shares” which constitute ‘Open’ Capital allow stakeholder interests to grow flexibly and organically with the growth in Value of the Enterprise. In legal terms, the LLP agreement is essentially consensual and ‘pre-distributive’: it is demonstrably superior to prescriptive complex contractual relationships negotiated adversarially and subject to subsequent re-distributive legal action. Above all, the ‘Open’ Corporate Partnership is a Co-operative phenomenon which is capable, the author believes, of unleashing the “Co-operative Advantage” based upon the absence of a requirement to pay returns to “rentier” Capitalists.
Kurt Laitner

Owning Together Is the New Sharing by Nathan Schneider - YES! Magazine - 0 views

www.yesmagazine.org/...ng-together-is-the-new-sharing

ouishare sensorica loomio enspiral cobudget ethereum sovolve swarm ownership sharing paper

shared by Kurt Laitner on 05 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • 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
  • Their main contribution to society has been facilitating new kinds of transactions
  • 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.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • Whoever owns the platforms that help us share decides who accumulates wealth from them, and how
  • 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.
  • 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
  • once the VC-backed sharing companies clear away regulatory hurdles, local co-ops will be poised to swoop in and spread the wealth
  • People are recognizing that doing business differently will require changing who gets to own what.
  • “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.”
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • a companion tool, CoBudget, to help them allocate resources together
  • 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.”
  • 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.
  • Loconomics is a San Francisco-based startup designed, like TaskRabbit, to manage short-term freelance jobs
  • “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.”
  • As Loconomics prepares to begin operations this winter, it’s running out of the pocket of the founder, Josh Danielson
  • 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 
  • 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.”
  • 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
  • Loomio’s members use a similar system, which they call Loomio Points. But Sovolve is no cooperative; contributors are not in charge.
  • 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
  • It makes possible decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, which exist entirely on a shared network
  • The most ambitious successor to Bitcoin, Ethereum, has raised more than $15 million in crowdfunding on the promise of creating such a network.
  • all with technology that makes collective ownership a lot easier than a conventional legal structure
  • 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.
  • For now, the burden of reinventing every wheel at once makes it hard for companies like Sensorica and Loomio to compete
  • 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.
  • Venture funding may be in competition with Dietz’s cryptoequity vision, but it provides a fearsome head start
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Co-Creating as Disruption to the Dominant Cultural Framework » Wirearchy - 0 views

wirearchy.com/...he-dominant-cultural-framework

paper Wirearchy John Husband

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 18 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • more open people processes
  • Participative processes like Open Space, World Cafes, Unconferences, Peer Circles
  • Barcamps, Wordcamps, Govcamps, Foo Camps, Unconferences, high-end celebrity-and-marketing-and venture-capital ‘experience’ markets, new cultural and artistic festivals with technology-and-culture-making themes
  • ...45 more annotations...
  • maker faires
  • community-and-consensus building, organizing for activism and fundraising
  • The impetus behind this explosion is both technological and sociological
  • Technological
  • information technology and the creation and evolution of the Internet and the Web
  • appearance, development and evolution of social tools, web services, massive storage, and the ongoing development of computer-and-smart-devices development
  • Sociological
  • People are searching for ways to find others with similar interests and motivations so that they can engage in activities that help them learn, find work, grow capabilities and skills, and tackle vexing social and economic problems
  • get informed and take action
  • Developing familiarity and practice with open and collaborative processes
  • play and work together
  • rules about self-management, operate democratically, and produce results grounded in ownership and the responsibilities that have been agreed upon by the ‘community’
  • The relationships and flows of information can be transferred to online spaces and often benefit from wider connectivity.
  • Today, our culture-making activities are well engaged in the early stages of cultural mutation
  • What’s coming along next ?  “Smart” devices and Internet everywhere in our lives ?  Deep(er) changes to the way things are conceived, carried out, managed and used ?  New mental models ?  Or, will we discover real societal limits to what can be done given the current framework of laws, institutions and established practices with which people are familiar and comfortable ?
  • Shorter cycle-based development and release
  • Agile development
  • It is clear evidence that the developmental and learning dynamics generated by continuous or regular feedback loops are becoming the norm in areas of activity in which change and short cycles of product development are constants.
  • The Internet of Things (IoT)
  • clothes, homes, cars, buildings, roads, and a wide range of other objects that have a place in peoples’ daily life activities
  • experiencing major growth, equally in terms of hardware, software and with respect to the way the capabilities are configured and used
  • The IoT concept is being combined with the new-ish concepts of Open Data and Big Data
  • ethical, political and social impact policy decisions
  • that key opportunities associated with widespread uptake of the IoT are derived from the impact upon peoples’ activities and lives
  • ‘we’ are on our way towards more integrated eco-systems of issues, people and technologies
  • participation and inclusion enabled by interconnectedness are quickly becoming the ‘new rules’
  • What the Future May Hold
  • the ‘scenario planning’ approach
  • world’s politics, economics, anthropology, technology, psychology, sociology and philosophy
  • A scenario planning exercise carried out by the Rockefeller Foundation
  • Clearly these early (and now not-so-weak) signals and patterns tell us that the core assumptions and principles that have underpinned organized human activities for most of the past century
  • are being changed by the combinations and permutations of new, powerful, inexpensive and widely accessible information-processing technologies
  • The short description of each scenario reinforces the perception that we are both individually and collectively in transition from a linear, specialized, efficiency-driven paradigm towards a paradigm based on continuous feedback loops and principles of participation, both large and small in scope.
  • cultural ‘mutation’
  • Wirearchy
  • a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.
  • the role of social media and smart mobile devices in the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East
  • The roots of organizational development (OD) are in humanistic psychology and sociology action and ethnographic and cybernetic/ socio-technical systems theory.  It’s a domain that emerged essentially as a counter-balance to the mechanistic and machine-metaphor-based core assumptions about the organized activities in our society.
  • Organizational development principles are built upon some basic assumptions about human motivations, engagement and activities.
  • Participative Work Design – The Six Criteria
  • in recent years created models that help clarify how to evaluate and respond to the continuous turbulence and ambiguity generated by participating in interconnected flows of information.
  • contexts characterized by either Simple, Complicated or Chaotic dynamics (from complexity theory fundamentals). Increasingly, Complexity is emerging as a key definer of the issues, problems and opportunities faced by our societies.
  • peer-to-peer movement(s) unfolding around the world
  • Co-creating in a wide range of forms, processes and purpose may become an effective and important antidote to the spreading enclosure of human creative activity.
  • But .. the dominant models of governance, commercial ownership and the use and re-use of that which is co-created by people are going to have to undergo much more deep change in order to disrupt the existing paradigm of proprietary commercial creation and the model of socio-economic power that this paradigm enables and carries today.
Kurt Laitner

Ethereum whitepaper - 0 views

www.ethereum.org/ethereum.html

paper Ethereum

shared by Kurt Laitner on 11 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The general concept of a "decentralized autonomous organization" is that of a virtual entity that has a certain set of members or shareholders which, perhaps with a 67% majority, have the right to spend the entity's funds and modify its code. The members would collectively decide on how the organization should allocate its funds. Methods for allocating a DAO's funds could range from bounties, salaries to even more exotic mechanisms such as an internal currency to reward work. This essentially replicates the legal trappings of a traditional company or nonprofit but using only cryptographic blockchain technology for enforcement. So far much of the talk around DAOs has been around the "capitalist" model of a "decentralized autonomous corporation" (DAC) with dividend-receiving shareholders and tradable shared; an alternative, perhaps described as a "decentralized autonomous community", would have all members have an equal share in the decision making and require 67% of existing members to agree to add or remove a member. The requirement that one person can only have one membership would then need to be enforced collectively by the group.
    • Kurt Laitner
      Kurt Laitner on 11 Feb 14
       
      key application for OVNs
  • Note that the design relies on the randomness of addresses and hashes for data integrity; the contract will likely get corrupted in some fashion after about 2^128 uses
  • This implements the "egalitarian" DAO model where members have equal shares. One can easily extend it to a shareholder model by also storing how many shares each owner holds and providing a simple way to transfer shares.
    • Kurt Laitner
      Kurt Laitner on 11 Feb 14
       
      interesting...
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • DAOs and DACs have already been the topic of a large amount of interest among cryptocurrency users as a future form of economic organization, and we are very excited about the potential that DAOs can offer. In the long term, the Ethereum fund itself intends to transition into being a fully self-sustaining DAO.
  • In Bitcoin, there are no mandatory transaction fees.
  • In Ethereum, because of its Turing-completeness, a purely voluntary fee system would be catastrophic. Instead, Ethereum will have a system of mandatory fees, including a transaction fee and six fees for contract computations.
  • The coefficients will be revised as more hard data on the relative computational cost of each operation becomes available. The hardest part will be setting the value of
  • There are currently two main solutions that we are considering: Make x inversely proportional to the square root of the difficulty, so x = floor(10^21 / floor(difficulty ^ 0.5)). This automatically adjusts fees down as the value of ether goes up, and adjusts fees down as computers get more powerful due to Moore's Law. Use proof of stake voting to determine the fees. In theory, stakeholders do not benefit directly from fees going up or down, so their incentives would be to make the decision that would maximize the value of the network.
Kurt Laitner

Towards a Material Commons | Guerrilla Translation! - 0 views

guerrillatranslation.com/...towards-a-material-commons

Michel Bauwens interview flok society

shared by Kurt Laitner on 31 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • the modes of communication we use are very tightly coupled with the modes of production that finance them
  • I’m focused on the policy formation around this transition to a new, open knowledge and commons-based economy, and that’s the research work I’m doing here
  • The problem is I can only make a living by still working for capital.
  • ...88 more annotations...
  • We now have a technology which allows us to globally scale small group dynamics, and to create huge productive communities, self-organized around the collaborative production of knowledge, code, and design. But the key issue is that we are not able to live from that, right
  • A lot of co-ops have been neo-liberalizing, as it were, have become competitive enterprises competing against other companies but also against other co-ops, and they don’t share their knowledge
  • We cannot create our own livelihood within that sphere
  • instead of having a totally open commons, which allows multinationals to use our commons and reinforce the system of capital, the idea is to keep the accumulation within the sphere of the commons.
  • The result would be a type of open cooperative-ism, a kind of synthesis or convergence between peer production and cooperative modes of production
  • then the material work, the work of working for clients and making a livelihood, would be done through co-ops
  • But it hasn’t had much of a direct connection to this emerging commons movement, which shares so many of the values and  principles of the traditional cooperative movement.
  • There’s also a lot of peer-to-peer work going on, but it’s not very well versed around issues like cooperative organization, formal or legal forms of ownership, which are based on reciprocity and cooperation, and how to interpret the commons vision with a structure, an organizational structure and a legal structure that actually gives it economic power, market influence, and a means of connecting it to organizational forms that have durability over the long-term.
  • The young people, the developers in open source or free software, the people who are in co-working centers, hacker spaces, maker spaces. When they are thinking of making a living, they think startups
  • They have a kind of generic reaction, “oh, let’s do a startup”, and then they look for venture funds. But this is a very dangerous path to take
  • Typically, the venture capital will ask for a controlling stake, they have the right to close down your start up whenever they feel like it, when they feel that they’re not going to make enough money
  • Don’t forget that with venture capital, only 1 out of 10 companies will actually make it, and they may be very rich, but it’s a winner-take-all system
  • we don’t have what Marx used to call social reproduction
  • I would like John to talk about the solidarity co-ops, and how that integrates the notion of the commons or the common good in the very structure of the co-op
  • They don’t have a commons of design or code, they privatize and patent, just like private competitive enterprise, their knowledge
  • Cooperatives, which are basically a democratic and collective form of enterprise where members have control rights and democratically direct the operations of the co-op, have been the primary stakeholders in any given co-op – whether it’s a consumer co-op, or a credit union, or a worker co-op.
  • Primarily, the co-op is in the service of its immediate members
  • What was really fascinating about the social co-ops was that, although they had members, their mission was not only to serve the members but also to provide service to the broader community
  • In the city of Bologna, for example, over 87% of the social services provided in that city are provided through contract with social co-ops
  • democratically run
  • much more participatory, and a much more engaged model
  • The difference, however, is that the structure of social co-ops is still very much around control rights, in other words, members have rights of control and decision-making within how that organization operates
  • And it is an incorporated legal structure that has formal recognition by the legislation of government of the state, and it has the power, through this incorporated power, to negotiate with and contract with government for the provision of these public services
  • In Québec they’re called Solidarity co-ops
  • So, the social economy, meaning organizations that have a mutual aim in their purpose, based on the principles of reciprocity, collective benefit, social benefit, is emerging as an important player for the design and delivery of public services
  • This, too, is in reaction to the failure of the public market for provision of services like affordable housing or health care or education services
  • This is a crisis in the role of the state as a provider of public services. So the question has emerged: what happens when the state fails to provide or fulfill its mandate as a provider or steward of public goods and services, and what’s the role of civil society and the social economy in response?
  • we have commonses of knowledge, code and design. They’re more easily created, because as a knowledge worker, if you have access to the network and some means, however meager, of subsistence, through effort and connection you can actually create knowledge. However, this is not the case if you move to direct physical production, like the open hardware movement
  • I originally encountered Michel after seeing some talks by Benkler and Lessig at the Wizard of OS 4, in 2006, and I wrote an essay criticizing that from a materialist perspective, it was called “The creative anti-commons and the poverty of networks”, playing on the terms that both those people used.
  • In hardware, we don’t see that, because you need to buy material, machines, plastic, metal.
  • Some people have called the open hardware community a “candy” economy, because if you’re not part of these open hardware startups, you’re basically not getting anything for your efforts
  • democratic foundations like the Apache foundation
  • They conceive of peer production, especially Benkler, as being something inherently immaterial, a form of production that can only exist in the production of immaterial wealth
  • From my materialist point of view, that’s not a mode of production, because a mode of production must, in the first place, reproduce its productive inputs, its capital, its labor, and whatever natural wealth it consumes
  • From a materialist point of view, it becomes  obvious that the entire exchange value produced in these immaterial forms would be captured by the same old owners of materialist wealth
  • different definition of peer production
  • independent producers collectively sharing a commons of productive assets
  • I wanted to create something like a protocol for the formation and allocation of physical goods, the same way we have TCP/IP and so forth, as a way to allocate immaterial goods
  • share and distribute and collectively create immaterial wealth, and become independent producers based on this collective commons.
  • One was the Georgist idea of using rent, economic rent, as a fundamental mutualizing source of wealth
  • Mutualizing unearned income
  • So, the unearned income, the portion of income derived from ownership of productive assets is evenly distributed
  • This protocol would seek to normalize that, but in a way that doesn’t require administration
  • typical statist communist reaction to the cooperative movement is saying that cooperatives can exclude and exploit one another
  • But then, as we’ve seen in history, there’s something that develops called an administrative class,  which governs over the collective of cooperatives or the socialist state, and can become just as counterproductive and often exploitive as capitalist class
  • So, how do we create cooperation among cooperatives, and distribution of wealth among cooperatives, without creating this administrative class?
  • This is why I borrowed from the work of Henry George and Silvio Gesell in created this idea of rent sharing.
  • This is not done administratively, this is simply done as a protocol
  • The idea is that if a cooperative wants an asset, like, an example is if one of the communes would like to have a tractor, then essentially the central commune is like a bond market. They float a bond, they say I want a tractor, I am willing to pay $200 a month for this tractor in rent, and other members of the cooperative can say, hey, yeah, that’s a good idea,we think that’s a really good allocation of these productive assets, so we are going to buy these bonds. The bond sale clears, the person gets the tractor, the money from the rent of the tractor goes back to clear the bonds, and  after that, whatever further money is collected through the rent on this tractor – and I don’t only mean tractors, same would be applied to buildings, to land, to any other productive assets – all this rent that’s collected is then distributed equally among all of the workers.
  • The idea is that people earn income not only by producing things, but by owning the means of production, owning productive assets, and our society is unequal because the distribution of productive assets is unequal
  • This means that if you use your exact per capita share of property, no more no less than what you pay in rent and what you received in social dividend, will be equal
  • But if you’re not working at that time, because you’re old, or otherwise unemployed, then obviously the the productive assets that you will be using will be much less than the mean and the median, so what you’ll receive as dividend will be much more than what you pay in rent, essentially providing a basic income
  • venture communism doesn’t seek to control the product of the cooperatives
  • It doesn’t seek to limit, control, or even tell them how they should distribute it, or under what means; what they produce is entirely theirs, it’s only the collective management of the commons of productive assets
  • On paper this would seem to work, but the problem is that this assumes that we have capital to allocate in this way, and that is not the case for most of the world workers
  • how do we get to that stage?
  • other two being counter politics and insurrectionary finance
  • do we express our activism through the state, or do we try to achieve our goals by creating the alternative society outside
  • pre-figurative politics, versus statist politics
  • My materialist background tells me that when you sell your labor on the market, you have nothing more than your subsistence costs at the end of it, so where is this wealth meant to come from
  • I believe that the only reason that we have any extra wealth beyond subsistence is because of organized social political struggle; because we have organized in labor movements, in the co-op movement, and in other social forms
  • To create the space for prefiguring presupposes engagement with the state, and struggle within parliaments, and struggle within the public social forum
  • Instead, we should think that no, we must engage in the state in order to protect our ability to have alternative societies
  • We can only get rid of the state in these areas once we have alternative, distributed, cooperative means to provide those same functions
  • We can only eliminate the state from these areas once they actually exist, which means we actually have to build them
  • What I mean by insurrectionary finance is that we have to acknowledge that it’s not only forming capital and distributing capital, it’s also important how intensively we use capital
  • I’m not proposing that the cooperative movement needs to engage in the kind of derivative speculative madness that led to the financial crisis, but at the same time we can’t… it can’t be earn a dollar, spend a dollar
  • We have to find ways to create liquidity
  • to deal with economic cycles
  • they did things the organized left hasn’t been able to do, which is takeover industrial means of production
  • if they can take over these industrial facilities, just in order to shut them down and asset strip them, why can’t we take them over and mutualize them?
  • more ironic once you understand that the source of investment that Milken and his colleagues were working with were largely workers pension funds
  • idea of venture communism
  • pooling, based on the capture of unearned income
  • in Québec, there is a particular form of co-op that’s been developed that allows small or medium producers to pool their capital to purchase machinery and to use it jointly
  • The other idea I liked was trying to minimize a management class
  • much more lean and accountable because they are accountable to boards of directors that represent the interests of the members
  • I’ve run into this repeatedly among social change activists who immediately recoil at the notion of thinking about markets and capital, as part of their change agenda
  • I had thought previously, like so many, that economics is basically a bought discipline, and that it serves the interests of existing elites. I really had a kind of reaction against that
  • complete rethinking of economics
  • recapture the initiative around vocabulary, and vision, with respect to economics
  • reimagining and reinterpreting, for a popular and common good, the notion of market and capital
  • advocating for a vision of social change that isn’t just about politics, and isn’t just about protest, it has to be around how do we reimagine and reclaim economics
  • markets actually belong to communities and people
  • capital wasn’t just an accumulated wealth for the rich
  • I think what we’re potentially  talking about here is to make the social economy hyper-productive, hyper-competitive, hyper-cooperative
  • The paradox is that capital already knows this. Capital is investing in these peer production projects
  • Part of the proposal of the FLOK society project in Ecuador will be to get that strategic reorganization to make the social economy strategic
  • Kurt Laitner on 31 Jan 14
     
    A lot of really interesting points of discussion in here.
Kurt Laitner

Asia Times Online :: Nondominium - the Caspian solution - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...MI24Dj01.html

nondominium caspian sea Chris Cook description

shared by Kurt Laitner on 20 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • A Caspian partnership The proposal is that the littoral states should form a Caspian Foundation legal entity, and commit to that entity all existing rights in respect of the use, and the fruits of use (usufruct), of the Caspian Sea, and everything on it, in it, or under it. The Caspian Foundation would act as custodian or steward and the nations would have agreed governance rights of veto. This negative or passive veto right of stewardship is very different from conventional property rights of absolute ownership and temporary use under condominium. Moreover, it does not have the active power of control held under common law by a trustee on behalf of beneficiaries, and the legal complexities and management conflicts which go with it. The Caspian Foundation would be a subscriber to a Caspian Partnership framework agreement between the nations, investors of money or money's worth, and a consortium of service providers. This Caspian Partnership would not be yet another international organization, with everything that goes with that. It would not own anything, employ anyone or contract with anyone: it would simply be an associative framework agreement within which Caspian nations self-organize to the common purpose of the sustainable development of the Caspian Sea.
  • Nondominium - the Caspian solution By Chris Cook Twenty-first century problems cannot be solved with 20th century solutions. Nowhere is that saying so true as in territorial disputes where oil and gas are involved. The riches of the Caspian Sea have been the subject of dispute for years, and relatively simple - but still intractable - binary issues between Iran and Russia are now multiplied by the conflicting claims of what are now five littoral Caspian nations: Azerbaijan, Iran; Kazakhstan; Russia and Turkmenistan. Their claims relate not just to rights on the Caspian Sea surface, but to rights in the sea, and above all to the rights to the treasures that lie under it. There are two 20th century legal approaches: international law //ad information var tf_adModel = "FEV"; var tf_adType = "InBannerVideo"; var tf_commonLocation = "http://cdnx.tribalfusion.com/media/common/expand/"; //leave this variable as it is var tf_cookieFlash = "http://cdnx.tribalfusion.com/media/common/TFSObj_v2s"; var tf_isExpansionHandle = true; var tf_floatAdScriptPath = "http://cdnx.tribalfusion.com/media/common/floating/TF_FloatAdLibrary.js"; var tf_zoomFlash = "http://cdnx.tribalfusion.com/media/common/floating/TFScale_v1"; var tf_banner = { "flag" : "inBanner", "width" : 300, "height" : 250, "widthExpanded" : 600, "heightExpanded" : 450, "widthFloating" : 950, "heightFloating" : 570, "iWin" : [ ], "flashFile" : "http://cdnx.tribalfusion.com/media/4523336/Glow_Banner_Square_Template_V201", extraFlashVars:"tf_showPanelonLoad=true&tf_phase2=false", "video_expand" : "http://cdnx.tribalfusion.com/media/4523336/video.flv", "imageFile" : 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  • A Caspian partnership The proposal is that the littoral states should form a Caspian Foundation legal entity, and commit to that entity all existing rights in respect of the use, and the fruits of use (usufruct), of the Caspian Sea, and everything on it, in it, or under it. The Caspian Foundation would act as custodian or steward and the nations would have agreed governance rights of veto. This negative or passive veto right of stewardship is very different from conventional property rights of absolute ownership and temporary use under condominium. Moreover, it does not have the active power of control held under common law by a trustee on behalf of beneficiaries, and the legal complexities and management conflicts which go with it. The Caspian Foundation would be a subscriber to a Caspian Partnership framework agreement between the nations, investors of money or money's worth, and a consortium of service providers. This Caspian Partnership would not be yet another international organization, with everything that goes with that. It would not own anything, employ anyone or contract with anyone: it would simply be an associative framework agreement within which Caspian nations self-organize to the common purpose of the sustainable development of the Caspian Sea.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • A Caspian partnership The proposal is that the littoral states should form a Caspian Foundation legal entity, and commit to that entity all existing rights in respect of the use, and the fruits of use (usufruct), of the Caspian Sea, and everything on it, in it, or under it. The Caspian Foundation would act as custodian or steward and the nations would have agreed governance rights of veto. This negative or passive veto right of stewardship is very different from conventional property rights of absolute ownership and temporary use under condominium. Moreover, it does not have the active power of control held under common law by a trustee on behalf of beneficiaries, and the legal complexities and management conflicts which go with it. The Caspian Foundation would be a subscriber to a Caspian Partnership framework agreement between the nations, investors of money or money's worth, and a consortium of service providers. This Caspian Partnership would not be yet another international organization, with everything that goes with that. It would not own anything, employ anyone or contract with anyone: it would simply be an associative framework agreement within which Caspian nations self-organize to the common purpose of the sustainable development of the Caspian Sea.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

James Grier Miller, Living Systems (1978) - 0 views

www.panarchy.org/...livingsystems.html

Grier Miller living systems theory concepts paper

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 23 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • reality as an integrated hierarchy of organizations of matter and energy
  • General living systems theory is concerned with a special subset of all systems, the living ones
  • a space is a set of elements which conform to certain postulate
  • ...266 more annotations...
  • s. Euclidean space
  • metric space
  • topological space
  • Physical space is the extension surrounding a point
  • 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
  • Physical or geographical space
  • Euclidean space
  • distance
  • moving
  • maximum speed
  • objects moving in such space cannot pass through one another
  • friction
  • The characteristics and constraints of physical space affect the action of all concrete systems, living and nonliving.
  • information can flow worldwide almost instantly
  • Physical space is a common space
  • Most people learn that physical space exists, which is not true of many spaces
  • They can give the location of objects in it
  • Conceptual or abstracted spaces
  • Peck order
  • Social class space
  • Social distance
  • Political distance
  • life space
  • semantic space
  • Sociometric space
  • A space of time costs of various modes of transportation
  • space of frequency of trade relations among nations.
  • A space of frequency of intermarriage among ethnic groups.
  • These conceptual and abstracted spaces do not have the same characteristics and are not subject to the same constraints as physical space
  • 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
  • interpersonal relations
  • 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
  • It must be possible, moreover, to make such measurements precisely enough to demonstrate whether or not there is a formal identity across levels
  • fundamental "fourth dimension" of the physical space-time continuum
  • is the particular instant at which a structure exists or a process occurs
  • or the measured or measurable period over which a structure endures or a process continues.
  • durations
  • speeds
  • rates
  • accelerations
  • irreversible unidirectionality of time
  • thermodynamics
  • negentropy
  • "time's arrow."
  • Matter and energy
  • Matter is anything which has mass (m) and occupies physical space.
  • Energy (E) is defined in physics as the ability to do work.
  • kinetic energy
  • potential energy
  • rest mass energy
  • Mass and energy are equivalent
  • Living systems need specific types of matter-energy in adequate amounts
  • Energy for the processes of living systems is derived from the breakdown of molecules
  • Any change of state of matter-energy or its movement over space, from one point to another, I shall call action.
  • It is one form of process.
  • information (H)
  • Transmission of Information
  • 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
  • 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.
  • The set of all these possible categories (the alphabet) is called the ensemble or repertoire
  • .) The unit is the binary digit, or bit of information
  • . The amount of information is measured as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number of alternate patterns
  • Signals convey information to the receiving system only if they do not duplicate information already in the receiver. As Gabor says:
  • [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.'
  • meaning cannot be precisely measured
  • Information is the negative of uncertainty.
  • information is the amount of formal patterning or complexity in any system.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • organization is based upon the interrelations among parts.
  • 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
  • The disorder, disorganization, lack of patterning, or randomness of organization of a system is known as its entropy (S)
  • the statistical measure for the negative of entropy is the same as that for information
  • entropy becomes a measure of the probability
  • Increase of entropy was thus interpreted as the passage of a system from less probable to more probable states.
  • according to the second law, a system tends to increase in entropy over time, it must tend to decrease in negentropy or information.
  • therefore no principle of the conservation of information
  • The total information can be decreased in any system without increasing it elsewhere
  • but it cannot be increased without decreasing it elsewhere
  • . 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.
  • transforms information into negative entropy
  • smallest possible amount of energy used in observing one bit of information
  • calculations of the amount of information accumulated by living systems throughout growth.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • the flow of raw materials through societies
  • Only a minute fraction of the energy used by most living systems is employed for information processing
  • 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
  • Communications, while being processed, are often shifted from one matter-energy state to another, from one sort of marker to another
  • transformations go on in living systems
  • 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
  • the delivery of "flowers by telegraph."
  • Matter-energy and information always flow together
  • Information is always borne on a marker
  • . 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
  • 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
  • Moreover, just as living systems must have specific forms of matter-energy, so they must have specific patterns of information
  • example
  • example
  • develop normally
  • have appropriate information inputs in infancy
  • pairs of antonyms
  • one member of which is associated with the concept of information (H)
  • the other member of which is associated with its negative, entropy (S)
  • System
  • A system is a set of interacting units with relationships among them
  • .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.
  • Conceptual system
  • Units
  • terms
  • Relationships
  • a set of pairs of units, each pair being ordered in a similar way
  • expressed by words
  • or by logical or mathematical symbols
  • operations
  • The conceptual systems of science
  • observer
  • selects
  • particular sets to study
  • Variable
  • Each member of such a set becomes a variable of the observer's conceptual system
  • conceptual system may be loose or precise, simple or elaborate
  • Indicator
  • an instrument or technique used to measure fluctuations of variables in concrete systems
  • Function
  • 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
  • Any function is a simple conceptual system
  • Parameter
  • An independent variable through functions of which other functions may be expressed
  • The state of a conceptual system
  • the set of values on some scale, numerical or otherwise, which its variables have at a given instant
  • Formal identity
  • variables
  • varies comparably to a variable in another system
  • If these comparable variations are so similar that they can be expressed by the same function, a formal identity exists between the two systems
  • Relationships between conceptual and other sorts of systems
  • Science advances as the formal identity or isomorphism increases between a theoretical conceptual system and objective findings about concrete or abstracted systems
  • 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
  • Concrete system
  • a nonrandom accumulation of matter-energy, in a region in physical space-time, which is organized into interacting interrelated subsystems or components.
  • Units
  • are also concrete systems
  • Relationships
  • spatial
  • temporal
  • spatiotemporal
  • causal
  • Both units and relationships in concrete systems are empirically determinable by some operation carried out by an observer
  • patterns of relationships or processes
  • The observer of a concrete system
  • distinguishes a concrete system from unorganized entities in its environment by the following criteria
  • physical proximity of its units
  • similarity of its units
  • common fate of its units
  • distinct or recognizable patterning of its units.
  • Their boundaries are discovered by empirical operations available to the general scientific community rather than set conceptually by a single observer
  • Variable of a concrete system
  • Any property of a unit or relationship within a system which can be recognized by an observer
  • which can potentially change over time, and whose change can potentially be measured by specific operations, is a variable of a concrete system
  • Examples
  • 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
  • A variable is intrasystemic
  • not to be confused with intersystemic variations which may be observed among individual systems, types, or levels.
  • The state of a concrete system
  • its structure
  • represented by the set of values on some scale which its variables have at that instant
  • Open system
  • 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.
  • Closed system
  • impermeable boundaries through which no matter-energy or information transmissions of any sort can occur is a closed system
  • special case
  • No actual concrete system is completely closed
  • In closed systems, entropy generally increases, exceptions being when certain reversible processes are carried on which do not increase it. It can never decrease.
  • Nonliving system
  • 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
  • Living system
  • a special subset of the set of all possible concrete systems
  • They all have the following characteristics:
  • open systems
  • inputs
  • throughputs
  • outputs
  • of various sorts of matter-energy and information.
  • maintain a steady state of negentropy even though entropic changes occur in them as they do everywhere else
  • by taking in inputs
  • higher in complexity or organization or negentropy
  • than their outputs
  • The difference permits them to restore their own energy and repair breakdowns in their own organized structure.
  • In living systems many substances are produced as well as broken down
  • To do this such systems must be open and have continual inputs of matter-energy and information
  • entropy will always increase in walled-off living systems
  • They have more than a certain minimum degree of complexity
  • They either contain genetic material composed of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
  • or have a charter
  • blueprint
  • program
  • of their structure and process from the moment of their origin
  • may also include nonliving components.
  • 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.
  • other specific critical sub-systems or they have symbiotic or parasitic relationships with other living or nonliving systems
  • Their subsystems are integrated together to form actively self-regulating, developing, unitary systems with purposes and goals
  • They can exist only in a certain environment
  • change in their environment
  • produces stresses
  • Totipotential system
  • capable of carrying out all critical subsystem processes necessary for life is totipotential
  • Partipotential system
  • does not itself carry out all critical subsystem processes is partipotential
  • A partipotential system must interact with other systems that can carry out the processes which it does not, or it will not survive
  • parasitic
  • symbiotic
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 25 Jun 11
       
      The Exchange fime is a symbiotic system to SENSORICA
  • Fully functioning system
  • when it
  • Partially functioning system
  • it must do its own deciding, or it is not a system
  • Abstracted system
  • Units
  • relationships abstracted or selected by an observer in the light of his interests, theoretical viewpoint, or philosophical bias.
  • Some relationships may be empirically determinable by some operation carried out by the observer, but others are not, being only his concepts
  • Relationships
  • The relationships mentioned above are observed to inhere and interact in concrete, usually living, systems
  • these concrete systems are the relationships of abstracted systems.
  • The verbal usages of theoretical statements concerning abstracted systems are often the reverse of those concerning concrete systems
  • An abstracted system differs from an abstraction, which is a concept
  • 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
  • Abstracted systems are much more common in social science theory than in natural science.
  • are oriented toward relationships rather than toward the concrete systems
  • spatial arrangements are not usually emphasized
  • their physical limits often do not coincide spatially with the boundaries of any concrete system, although they may.
  • important difference between the physical and biological hierarchies, on the one hand, and social hierarchies, on the other
  • Most physical and biological hierarchies are described in spatial terms
  • we propose to identify social hierarchies not by observing who lives close to whom but by observing who interacts with whom
  • intensity of interaction
  • in most biological and physical systems relatively intense interaction implies relative spatial propinquity
  • To the extent that interactions are channeled through specialized communications and transportation systems, spatial propinquity becomes less determinative of structure.
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 25 Jun 11
       
      This is the case of SENSORICA, built on web-based communication and coordination tools. 
  • PARSONS
  • the unit of a partial social system is a role and not the individual.
  • culture
  • cumulative body of knowledge of the past, contained in memories and assumptions of people who express this knowledge in definite ways
  • The social system is the actual habitual network of communication between people.
  • RUESCH
  • A social system is a behavioral system
  • It is an organized set of behaviors of persons interacting with each other: a pattern of roles.
  • The roles are the units of a social system
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 25 Jun 11
       
      That is why we need a role system in SENSORICA
  • 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.
  • What Ruesch calls the social system is something concrete in space-time, observable and presumably measurable by techniques like those of natural science
  • 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
  • system is a system of relationship in action, it is neither a physical organism nor an object of physical perception
  • evolution
  • differentiation
  • growth
  • from earlier and simpler forms and functions
  • capacities for specializations and gradients
  • [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
  • Abstracted versus concrete systems
  • 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
  • A science of abstracted systems certainly is possible and under some conditions may be useful.
  • 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.
  • It is of paramount importance for scientists to distinguish clearly between them
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Designing the Void | Management Innovation eXchange - 0 views

www.managementexchange.com/...40941

OVNi infrastructure OVN contribution accounting

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      This is about self-organization, putting in place bounderies and internal mechanisms to make the the system self-organize into something desirable.  You can see this from a game theory perspective - how to set a game which will drive a specific human behavior. 
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      This is about self-organization, putting in place bounderies and internal mechanisms to make the the system self-organize into something desirable.  You can see this from a game theory perspective - how to set a game which will drive a specific human behavior. 
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      Very similar to SENSORICA, an environment of entrepreneurs. The argument against this is that not everyone is a risk taker or has initiative. The answer to it is that not every role in the organization requires that. 
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      Very similar to SENSORICA, an environment of entrepreneurs. The argument against this is that not everyone is a risk taker or has initiative. The answer to it is that not every role in the organization requires that. 
  • The system is not made up of artifacts but rather an elegantly designed void. He says “I prefer to use the analogy of rescuing an endangered species from extinction, rather than engaging in an invasive breeding program the focus should be on the habitat that supports the species. Careful crafting of the habitat by identifying the influential factors; removing those that are detrimental, together with reinforcing those that are encouraging, the species will naturally re-establish itself. Crafting the habitat is what I mean by designing the void.”
  • ...75 more annotations...
  • It is essential that autonomy is combined with responsibility.
  • staff typically manage the whole work process from making sales, manufacture, accounts, to dispatch
  • they are also responsible for managing their own capitalization; a form of virtual ownership develops. Everything they need for their work, from office furniture to high-end machinery will appear on their individual balance sheet; or it will need to be bought in from somewhere else in the company on a pay-as-you go or lease basis. All aspects of the capital deployed in their activities must be accounted for and are therefore treated with the respect one accords one’s own property.
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      So they have a value accounting system, like SENSORICA, where they log "uses" and "consumes". 
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      ...
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      So they have a value accounting system, like SENSORICA, where they log "uses" and "consumes".  
  • The result is not simply a disparate set of individuals doing their own thing under the same roof. Together they benefit from an economy of scale as well as their combined resources to tackle large projects; they are an interconnected whole. They have in common a brand, which they jointly represent, and also a business management system (the Say-Do-Prove system) - consisting not only of system-wide boundaries but also proprietary business management software which helps each take care of the back-end accounting and administrative processing. The effect is a balance between freedom and constraint, individualism and social process.
  • embodiment of meaning
  • But culture is a much more personal phenomenon
  • Culture is like climate- it does not exist in and of itself- it cannot exist in a vacuum, it must exist within a medium.
  • underlying culture
  • Incompatibility between the presenting culture and the underlying one provide a great source of tension
  • The truth of course is that when tension builds to a critical level it takes just a small perturbation to burst the bubble and the hidden culture reveals itself powered by the considerable pent-up energy.
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      SENSORICA had this problem of different cultures, and it caused the 2 crisis in 2014. 
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      SENSORICA had this problem of different cultures, and it caused the 2 crisis in 2014. 
  • Consider again the idea that for the health of an endangered species; the conditions in their habitat must be just right. In business, the work environment can be considered analogous to this idea of habitat.
  • A healthy environment is one that provides a blank canvas; it should be invisible in that it allows culture to be expressed without taint
  • The over-arching, high-level obligations are applied to the organization via contractual and legal terms.
  • But it is these obligations that the traditional corporate model separates out into functions and then parcels off to distinct groups. The effect is that a clear sight of these ‘higher’ obligations by the people at the front-end is obstructed. The overall sense of responsibility is not transmitted but gets lost in the distortions, discontinuities and contradictions inherent in the corporate systems of hierarchy and functionalization.
  • employees are individually rewarded for their contribution to each product. They are not “compensated” for the hours spent at work. If an employee wants to calculate their hourly rate, then they are free to do so however, they are only rewarded for the outcome not the duration of their endeavors.
  • Another simplification is the application of virtual accounts (Profit and Loss (P&L) account and Balance Sheet) on each person within the business.
  • The company systems simply provide a mechanism for cheaply measuring the success of each individual’s choices. For quality the measure is customer returns, for delivery it is an on-time-and-in-full metric and profit is expressed in terms of both pounds sterling and ROI (return on investment).
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      They have a value accounting system. 
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 08 Jan 15
       
      They have a value accounting system. 
  • The innumerable direct links back to an external reality -like the fragile ties that bound giant Gulliver, seem much more effective at aligning the presenting culture and the underlying embodied culture, and in doing so work to remove the existing tension.
  • With a culture that responds directly to reality, the rules in the environment can be “bounding” rather than “binding”- limiting rather than instructive; this way individual behavior need not be directed at all. The goal is to free the individual to express himself fully through his work, bounded only by the limits of the law. With clever feedback (self-referencing feedback loops) integrated into the design, the individuals can themselves grow to collectively take charge of the system boundaries, culture and even the environment itself, always minded of the inherent risks they are balancing, leaving the law of the land as the sole artificial boundary.
  • the conventional company, which, instead of rewarding enterprise, trains compliance by suppressing individual initiative under layer upon layer of translation tools.
  • apply accountability to the individual not command-and-control.
  • without the divisive and overbearing management cabal the natural reaction of humans is to combine their efforts
  • a new member of staff at Matt Black Systems
  • recruited by another staff member (sponsor) and they will help you learn the basics of the business management system- they will help you get to know the ropes.
  • jobs are passed to new staff members, a royalty payment can be established on the work passed over.
  • Along with that job you will be given a cash float (risk capital), P&L Account, a Balance Sheet and computer software to help plan and record your activities. Your operation is monitored by your sponsor to see if you increase the margin or volume, and so establish a sustainable operation. Training and mentoring is provided to support the steep learning curve - but without removing the responsibility of producing a return on the sponsor’s risk capital.
  • You will, in the meantime be looking to establish some of your own work for which you will not have to pay a commission or royalty to your sponsor and this will provide you with more profitable operations such that eventually you might pass back to the sponsor the original operation, as it has become your lowest margin activity. It will then find its way to a new employee (along with the associated Balance Sheet risk capital) where the process is repeated by the sponsor.[4]
  • Remuneration for staff is calibrated in a way that reflects the balance of different forces around ‘pay’
  • there is an obligation upon the company to pay a minimum wage even if the profitability of the operation does not support this
  • there are therefore two aspects of the basic pay structure: one is “absolute” and reflects the entrepreneurial skill level of the employee according to a sophisticated grading scale
  • A further 20% of the original profit will be paid into his risk capital account, which will be his responsibility to deploy in any way he sees fit as part of his Balance Sheet. Of the three remaining 20% slices of the original profit, one is paid out as corporation tax, another as a dividend to the shareholders and the last retained as collective risk capital on the company’s balance sheet- a war chest so to speak.
  • Julian Wilson and Andrew Holm sell products / services to their staff (such as office space and software) they have an identical customer/supplier relationship with the other employees.
  • Naturally there are some people that can’t generate a profit. The sponsor’s risk capital will eventually be consumed through pay. After a process of rescue and recovery- where their shortcomings are identified and they are given the opportunity to put them right, they either improve or leave, albeit with a sizeable increase in their skills.
  • there is a gradual process of accustomisation; the void of the new employee is surrounded by others dealing with their particular activities, offering both role models and operations they may wish to relinquish. One step at a time the new employee acquires the skills to become completely self-managing, to increase their margins, to make investments, to find new business, to become a creator of their own success. Ultimately, they learn to be an entrepreneur.
  • responsible autonomy as an alternative vision to traditional hierarchy
  • Matt Black Systems it is not simply commitment that they targeted in their employees, rather they aim for the specific human qualities they sum up as magic- those of curiosity, imagination, creativity, cooperation, self-discipline and realization (bringing ideas to reality).
  • a new form of association of individuals working together under the umbrella of a company structure: a kind of collective autonomy
  • The business is called Matt Black Systems, based in Poole in dorset
  • Turning an organisation on its head- removing all management, establishing a P&L account and Balance Sheet on everyone in the organisation and having customers payment go first into the respective persons P&L account has revolutionised this company. 
  • This innovative company’s approach views business success as wholly reliant upon human agency, and its wellspring at the individual level.
  • problem (of unnecessarily high overheads placed on production) that arguably is behind the decline in western manufacturing
  • over-managed business
  • Autonomy Enables Productivity
  • organizational design brings to light the unconscious socio-philosophical paradigm of the society in which it exists, organizational development points to how change occurs.
  • a mechanistic approach to organization
  • scientific management employs rationalism and determinism in pursuit of efficiency, but leaves no place for self-determination for most people within the system.
  • Command and Control
  • today, a really “modern” view of an organization is more likely to be depicted in terms that are akin to an organism.
  • When it comes to getting work done, the simple question is: are people the problem or the solution?
  • the Taylorist approach may be more real in theory than in practice: its instrumentalist view of the workforce is cursed by unintended consequences. When workers have no space for their own creative expression, when they are treated like automata not unique individuals, when they become demotivated and surly, when they treat their work as a necessary evil; this is no recipe for a functional organization.
  • The natural, human reaction to this is unionization, defiance and even outright rebellion; to counter this, management grows larger and more rigid in pursuit of compliance, organizations become top heavy with staff who do not contribute directly to the process of value creation but wield power over those who do.
  • voluntary slavery of ‘wagery’
  • Even when disgruntled employees strike free and start their own businesses they seem unable to resist the hegemony of the conventional command-and-control approach
  • Making the transition involves adherence to a whole new sociology of work with all the challenging social and psychological implications that brings.
  • first principal that people in the business have the ability to provide the solution
  • In the “theory of constraints” the goal is to align front-line staff into a neat, compact line for maximum efficiency. Surely the most considered approach is to have front-line staff self-align in pursuit of their individual goals?
  • The removal of hierarchy and specialization is key to a massive improvement in both profitability and productivity. In summary: there are no managers in the company, or foremen, or sales staff, or finance departments; the company is not functionally compartmentalized and there is no hierarchy of command. In fact every member of staff operates as a virtual micro-business with their own Profit & Loss account and Balance Sheet, they manage their own work and see processes through from end to end
  • Formal interaction between colleagues takes place via “customer and supplier” relationships.
  • autonomy enables productivity
  • if one creates a space in which staff pursue their own goals and are not paid by the hour, they will focus on their activities not the clock; if they are not told what to do, they will need to develop their own initiative; if they are free to develop their own processes, they will discover through their own creative faculties how to work more productively- in pursuit of their goals
  • The human qualities which are of greatest potential value to the business are: curiosity, imagination, creativity, cooperation, self-discipline and realization (bringing ideas to reality)
  • These qualities are the very ones most likely to be withheld by an individual when the environment is ‘wrong’.
  • Any elements in the business environment that undermine the autonomy and purpose of the individual will see the above qualities withheld
  • High on the list of undermining elements come power-hierarchy and over-specialization
  • the responsibility of the individual is formalized, specified and restricted. An improved system is not one where responsibility is distributed perfectly but rather one where there is simply no opportunity for responsibility to be lost (via the divisions between the chunks). Systems must be reorganized so responsibility -the most essential of qualities -is protected and wholly preserved.
  • Matt Black Systems believe this can only be done by containing the whole responsibility within an individual, holding them both responsible and giving them ‘response-ability’
  • The experience of Matt Black Systems demonstrates that radical change is possible
  • productivity is up 300%, the profit margin is up 10%[3], customer perception has shifted from poor to outstanding, product returns are at less than 1%, “on time and in full” delivery is greater than 96%, pay has increased 100%.
  • staff develop broader and deeper skills and feel greater job security; they get direct feedback from their customers which all go to fuel self-confidence and self-esteem.
  • the staff manage themselves
  • “only variety can absorb variety”.
  • What is particular about their story is that behind it is a very consciously crafted design that surrounds the individualism of each person with hard boundaries of the customer, the law and the business. It is these boundaries rather than the instructive persona of ‘the boss’ that gives rise to the discipline in which individuals can develop. Autonomy is not the same as freedom, at least not in the loose sense of ‘do as you please’. An autonomous person is a person who has become self-governing, who has developed a capacity for self-regulation, quite a different notion from the absence of boundaries. Indeed, it is with establishing the right boundaries that the business philosophy is most concerned. The company provides the crucible in which the individual can develop self-expression but the container itself is bounded. Wilson calls this “designing the void”. This crucible is carefully constructed from an all-encompassing, interconnecting set of boundaries that provide an ultimate limit to behaviours (where they would fall foul of the law or take risks with catastrophic potential). It is an illusion to think, as a director of a company, that you are not engaged in a process of social conditioning; the basis of the culture is both your responsibility and the result of your influence. The trick is to know what needs to be defined and what needs to be left open. The traditional authoritarian, controlling characters that often dominate business are the antithesis of this in their drive to fill this void with process, persona and instruction. Alternatively, creating an environment that fosters enterprise, individuals discover how to be enterprising.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here's How To Argue Productively - 0 views

www.fastcodesign.com/...-doesnt-work-what-does-arguing

innovation paper

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 07 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Science shows that brainstorms can activate a neurological fear of rejection and that groups are not necessarily more creative than individuals.
  • To innovate, we need environments that support imaginative thinking, where we can go through many crazy, tangential, and even bad ideas to come up with good ones.
  • work both collaboratively and individually
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • healthy amount of heated discussion, even arguing.
  • not feel so judged
  • become defensive and shut down
  • deliberative discourse
  • “Argue. Discuss. Argue. Discuss.”
  • It refers to participative and collaborative (but not critique-free) communication.
  • Multiple positions and views are expressed with a shared understanding that everyone is focused on a common goal. There is no hierarchy. It’s not debate because there are no opposing sides trying to “win.” Rather, it’s about working together to solve a problem and create new ideas.
  • Here are five key rules of engagement that we’ve found to yield fruitful sessions and ultimately lead to meaningful ideas.
  • creating a space where everyone can truly contribute.
  • “Yes, AND”
  • “no, BECAUSE.”
  • if you’re going to say no, you better be able to say why.
    • Tiberius Brastaviceanu
      Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 07 Apr 12
       
      inter-subjectivity as a criteria for objectivity  
  • We conduct ethnographic research to inform our intuition, so we can understand people’s needs, problems, and values.
  • accountable to something other than our own opinions, and it means we can push back on colleagues’ ideas without getting personal.
  • We curate teams to create diversity
  • bring different ways of looking at the world and solving problems to the table.
  • Argument is productive for us because everyone knows that we’re working toward a shared goal.
  • The statement of purpose establishes the rules: It reminds us that we are working together to move the ball down the field. As much as we may argue and disagree, anything that happens in the room counts toward our shared goal. This enables us to argue and discuss without hurting one another.
  • Deliberative discourse is a form of play, and for play to yield great ideas, we have to take it seriously.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Key (lock) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/Key_(lock)

blockchainaccess_project paper access

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 09 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Key systems
  • Individually keyed system (KD)[edit] With an individually keyed system, each cylinder can be opened by its unique key
  • Keyed alike (KA)[edit] This system allows for a number of cylinders to be operated by the same key. It is ideally suited to residential and commercial applications such as front and back doors.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Common entrance suite / Maison keying (CES)[edit] This system is widely used in apartments, office blocks and hotels. Each apartment (for example) has its own individual key which will not open the doors to any other apartments, but will open common entrance doors and communal service areas. It is often combined with a master-keyed system in which the key is kept by the landlord.
  • Master keyed (MK)
  • A master key operates a set of several locks. Usually, there is nothing special about the key itself, but rather the locks into which it will fit.
  • A practical attack exists to create a working master key for an entire system given only access to a single master-keyed lock, its associated change key, a supply of appropriate key blanks, and the ability to cut new keys. This is described in Cryptology and Physical Security: Rights Amplification in Master-Keyed Mechanical Locks.[36] However, for systems with many levels of master keys, it may be necessary to collect information from locks in different "subsystems" in order to deduce the master key. Locksmiths may also determine cuts for a replacement master key, when given several different key examples from a given system.
  • Control key
  • A control key is a special key used in removable core locking systems. The control key enables a user, who has very little skill, to remove from the core, with a specific combination, and replace it with a core that has a different combination.
  • Do not duplicate key
  • A "do not duplicate" key (or DND key, for short) is one that has been stamped "do not duplicate", "duplication prohibited
  • Restricted key
  • A restricted keyblank has a keyway for which a manufacturer has set up a restricted level of sales and distribution. Restricted keys are often protected by patent, which prohibits other manufacturers from making unauthorized productions of the key blank. In many cases, customers must provide proof of ID before a locksmith will cut additional keys using restricted blanks. Some companies, such as Medeco High Security Locks, have keyways that are restricted to having keys cut in the factory only. This is done to ensure the highest amount of security. These days, many restricted keys have special in-laid features, such as magnets, different types of metal, or even small computer chips to prevent duplication.
Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Smart key - Wikipedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/Smart_key

blockchainaccess_project paper access

shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 09 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Keyless Go
  • The system works by having a series of LF (low frequency 125 kHz) transmitting antennas both inside and outside the vehicle. The external antennas are located in the door handles. When the vehicle is triggered, either by pulling the handle or touching the handle, an LF signal is transmitted from the antennas to the key. The key becomes activated if it is sufficiently close and it transmits its ID back to the vehicle via RF (Radio frequency >300 MHz) to a receiver located in the vehicle. If the key has the correct ID, the PASE module unlocks the vehicle.
  • transmitting low frequency LF signals via the 125 kHz power amplifier block receiving radio frequency RF signals (> 300 MHz) from the built-in ISM receiver block encrypting and decrypting all relevant data signals (security) communicating relevant interface signals with other electronic control units microcontroller
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