"HONOLULU, Hawaii, U.S., May 26, 2011 (IPS) - For the past quarter century, the United States' relations with Pacific island nations were framed by the South Pacific Tuna Treaty, which combines foreign aid, subsidies to the U.S. fleet of purse-seine fishing vessels and their largely unfettered access to the islands' waters, which contain the world's last major stocks of tuna."

"Resonant City is an interdisciplinary writing and research collaborative exploring the intersections of art, architecture, technology, the immediate past, enduring present, and possible futures. In the course of our explorations we hope to illuminate a subtle yet critical discourse underlying the construction of nature, landscape, the city, and cultural modes of production. We write anonymously because it is not a single author that is important, but rather ideas."

"Thousands of museum professionals gathered Sunday in Houston to mull their futures and contemplate ways to recast their missions and audiences. Participants at the American Association of Museums' annual conference pondered possibilities that included a multiple-voucher system in which museums compete to meet certain components of a public school child's education. They even discussed a "Facebook update from hell" that would simultaneously publish everyone's personal data - including information museums have gathered in order to personalize visitor experiences."

"Global Foresight Associates is a futures research and consulting firm that offers ideas and insights about the future to help our clients determine the strategic implications of change for their business and industry. Our uninhibited thinking offers a unique perspective - a big picture view of the future that explores the current trends and emerging issues reverberating throughout society and business. This view from the "outside in" helps clients innovate existing products, identify new areas and markets for growth and explore the possible, probable and preferable futures for their business."

"The world's largest emerging economies on Tuesday slammed Europe's push to lock up the International Monetary Fund's top job, calling its hold on the managing director position "obsolete.""

"The Metaverse Assembled issue features the best papers from the SLACTIONS 2009 conference, as well as, peer reviewed articles sumbitted directly to the Journal. The metaverse is emerging, through the increasing use of virtual world technologies that act as platforms for end-users to create, develop, and interact, expanding the realm of human cooperation, interaction, and creativity. This issue focuses on applications and developments of metaverse platforms, including: Second Life, OpenSim, Open Croquet, Activeworlds, Open Source Metaverse, Project Wonderland, among others., and seeks the best papers examining the integration of metaverse platforms with external systems, integration of platforms, GIS/metaverse mash-ups, and using metaverse platforms for cooperation. "

"The phenomenon of consumer co-creation is often framed in terms of whether either economic market forces or socio-cultural non-market forces ultimately dominate. We propose an alternate model of consumer co-creation in terms of co-evolution between markets and non-markets. Our model is based on a recent ethnographic study of a massively multiplayer online game through its development, release and ultimate failure, and is cast in terms of two explanatory models: multiple games and social network markets. We conclude that consumer co-creation is indeed complex, but in ways that relate to both emergent market expectations and the evolution of markets, not to the transcendence of markets. "

"Whether you're raising money, organizing people, or trying to influence change: if you can't do it alone, you can do it on The Point."

"People sense the world is passing through a Technology Revolution but they lack good information. We pool the knowledge of 100 experts to forecast breakthroughs for corporations, governments and others in real time. TechCast was cited by the National Academies, featured in Newsweek and the Washington Post, and recognized as possibly the best forecasting system in the world. "

"It's a remarkable bit of future artifact creation, as much of the forecast ended up playing out in the subsequent 17 years much as the IDL described. As predictions go, it was usefully on-target. At least, it could have been useful had anyone been paying attention. The IDL was closed the next year, its forecasts essentially forgotten. Knight-Ridder itself was bought out in 2006."

"The current energy landscape is rife with contradictions: Gas prices are shooting up, renewables are being implemented at a seemingly rapid pace, natural gas is being simultaneously demonized and hailed as an energy savior, and electric cars are finally starting to roll off production lines. Fortunately, your tax dollars fund a government agency devoted to making sense of energy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration explains the gritty details of our energy future in its Annual Energy Outlook 2011, which has tracked our projected energy use all the way to 2035. Don't have the time to slog through its myriad charts and tables? We do. Read on for our abbreviated look at the report's most important findings."

"Business-as-usual in the financial sector is blowing up a bubble even bigger than the real estate bubble which burst in the 1930s. "

"Increasingly, the energy we consume to heat and power our communities, will be produced locally. Unfortunately, many of the strategies we use to produce energy are vulnerable due to specialization. We are too dependent on specific forms of energy and the dedicated equipment used to utilize it. "

"For most of my life I owned very little. Until I was 30 I was a vagabond. I wandered remote parts of Asia in cheap sneakers and worn jeans. The cities I knew best brimmed in medieval richness; the lands were green in agricultural outlook. When I reached for something in those days it was almost surely made of wood, fiber or stone. I ate with my hands, trekked on foot through mountain valleys, and slept wherever. I carried very little money and even less stuff. My personal possessions totaled up to a sleeping bag and some cameras."

"Another perspective that I believe is missing from Bruce Nussbaum's critique of the design thinking movement is a deeper analysis of why design thinking was believed to be a compelling process in the first place. If we think about its popularity as a design solution to a societal problem, we can critique it as we would a prototype. I believe design thinking attempts to respond to a series of current societal aspirations. This week's blog will look at aspirations on a collective basis and part two will look at those on an individual basis. "

" Verbalizing visceral feelings about technology, whether attraction or repulsion, Kelly explores the "technium," his term for the globalized, interconnected stage of technological development. Arguing that the processes creating the technium are akin to those of biological evolution, Kelly devotes the opening sections of his exposition to that analogy, maintaining that the technium exhibits a similar tendency toward self-organizing complexity. Having defined the technium, Kelly addresses its discontents, as expressed by the Unabomber (although Kelly admits to trepidation in taking seriously the antitechnology screeds of a murderer) and then as lived by the allegedly technophobic Amish. From his observations and discussions with some Amish people, Kelly extracts some precepts of their attitudes toward gadgets, suggesting folk in the secular world can benefit from the Amish approach of treating tools as servants of self and society rather than as out-of-control masters. Exploring ramifications of technology on human welfare and achievement, Kelly arrives at an optimistic outlook that will interest many, coming, as it does, from the former editor of Wired magazine. --Gilbert Taylor "

"Marianne Maeckelbergh: "In this brief article I would like to summarise some alternative approaches to 'knowing' that I have encountered through activism and anthropological fieldwork within the alterglobalization movement. Specifically I will address four assumptions about knowledge found within the alterglobalization movement that diverge considerably from 'standard' assumptions. First, the idea that knowledge is collectively constructed. Second, that knowledge is context specific, partial and provisional. Third, that a distinction must be made between knowing something and knowing better. Finally, I describe the idea that ignorance is useful. First, however, it is necessary to briefly describe the context within which these alternatives are emerging and the type of knowledge that they resist."

"Approval of Bolivia's revolutionary 'Mother Earth' law is an historic step by social movements in a long struggle for real ecological transformation of their economy and society."

"During the one-day session on April 19 at the AutoDesk Gallery, experts, researchers, and guests explored the many different frontiers where 3D printing and open manufacturing are changing the way that things are made. Among the topics that were explored were:"

"The digital peasants are getting restless. The first signs of unrest are evident in the stirrings of the bloggers filing a suit against the Huffington Post and its parent AOL, which acquired the publication in February for $315 million. The same writers who were happy to contribute for free before the sale are now accusing the publication of turning them into "modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington's plantation." The suit claims that about 9,000 people wrote for the Huffington Post on an unpaid basis, and it argues that their writings helped contribute about a third of the sale value of the site. These bloggers weren't paid a single penny in the sale-the money went mostly to Huffington and a few investors. "