In a Nutshell

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Ce n’est plus un secret pour personne : le capitalisme est en train d’être dévoré par ses propres effets toxiques. En 2005, parmi d’autres voix peu écoutées alors, une association française, Ars Industrialis, lancée par quatre philosophes et une juriste, avait sonné le tocsin. A l’époque, leur manifeste décrivait les dangers d’un capitalisme “autodestructeur” et la soumission totale aux “impératifs de l’économie de marché et des retours sur investissements les plus rapides possibles des entreprises” et notamment celles actives dans les médias, la culture ou les télécommunications.

Aujourd’hui, l’association comporte plus de 500 membres, économistes, philosophes, informaticiens et toxicologues (car le capitalisme est devenu “addictif” et “pulsionnel”) confondus et ne semble pas s’être trompée de sonnette d’alarme. “Nous faisons partie des gens qui ont soulevé, dès 2006, l’insolvabilité chronique du système financier américain. On nous riait au nez, à l’époque”, explique le philosophe Bernard Stiegler, fondateur d’Ars Industrialis et directeur de l’Institut de recherche et d’innovation du Centre Pompidou.

Le dualisme Marché-Etat ne suffit plus. Il y a une impérieuse nécessité à tenir compte des apports de la société civile, de l'engagement des citoyens, des capacités propres de développement de chaque territoire. Il y a urgence à mettre en œuvre une véritable démocratie économique. Les acteurs de l'économie sociale et solidaire en ont la capacité. Les responsables politiques en auront-ils la clairvoyance ?

Five Things I Saw at Contactcon

Host Doug Rushkoff on the stage at Contactcon (via Flick user Steven Brewer)

On October 20 I had the luck to join a group of some of the brightest and most creative people from every part of the tech spectrum at Contactcon. Held at the beautiful Angel Orensaz Foundation Center (see above), the conference was a flurry of energy and excitement, never lingering on one point of focus too long. As befits the format, below are five events or situations that caught my attention at Contactcon:

1. Unendorsed sharing. Wifi was provided in the center by KeyWifi, which had set up eight or so networks and handed out pieces of paper with passwords to one of the hotspots. They hoped to evenly distribute them among participants to keep all the networks running. When I went to the table to get my password, it was clear that wasn't working: "Just please don't tell anyone the passcode!" a poor Key employee asked me. People were giving out their codes and overloading the access points. I guess you couldn't stop them from sharing with those in need.
    
2. Unattempted procedures. The structure of the conference -- though I'm sure a lot of participants would object to that word -- was based on a series of short provacations and then a series of project meetings established on the spot. I'm always skeptical that people come to events like Contactcon ready to work and think outside their comfort zone, but the attendees really were. The board quickly filled with great ideas, from an alternative currency for Occupy Wall Street to new ways to dodge internet censorship. People grouped with whatever proposal they liked and got started. Judging from the list-serv I'm on, they're very much still at work.
    
3. Unparalled hosting. In addition to being one of the most original minds working on questions of technology and society, as well as one of the most radical thinkers to crack the mainstream media, Doug Rushkoff is incredibly good at keeping people on track. With an open format and people suggesting different workshops, Rushkoff kept things moving by making sure anything too vague or self-serving got passed by, with a good sense of what the group did or did not support. Plus, you could hear the bile dripping from his voice when he had to announce the Pepsi sponsorship. The man is a dynamo.
    
4. Unexpected radicals. Occupy Everything and Occupy Wall Street in particular had a big impact on participants' thinking. I was surprised to see a group project on getting people to pledge collectively not to pay their student debts attract wide support at the conference level. Some of the participants who would have been in a small tech bubble a couple years ago are now actively looking to use their talents and ideas to support global social movements. There was a big focus on technologies that used international networks to overcome parochial restrctions to access. And a few of these tech-minded folks have better political imaginations than I've seen in policy circles. Contactcon showed me that their are not just people, but communities out there waiting to meet each other.
    
5. Unlikely bedfellows. I've heard Contactcon described as a meeting of the top pro-human technologists, and that turned about to be the case. A campaign based around food justice was one of the most popular projects at the conference, and all the participants anchored their thoughts and projects in very human problems. That is, except for the Makerbot printing out plastic shells for homeless hermit crabs. Apparently people like collecting shells they use as housings, and now crab populations are in need of some man-made assistance. 3D printing isn't exactly made for problems like this one, but it could have been. And maybe the next generation of tech solutions will be.

Let's start with this.

There are at least 27 million slaves worldwide. That’s roughly the combined population of Australia and New Zealand. Crikey!

 

In the last nine months of planning the Contact Summit, I’ve come across a range of projects and initiatives building toward the “Next Net.” Though they vary in their stages of development and specific implementations, they fall under the common themes of enabling peer-to-peer communication and exchange, protecting personal freedom and privacy, and giving people more control over their data and identity on the web. Here’s list of just ten projects, many of which will be demoing at our exhibitor space at Contact on October 20th in New York City.

1. The Locker Project

The data that we generate on the web every day is being collected, stored and sold by third parties, but we are left unable to benefit from that value we create. The Locker Project is making it possible for people to access and aggregate their own personal data, so they can exchange and leverage it in valuable ways.

What it means: Step 1 is to create the lockers that allow people to collect all their data in one resource. Step 2 is to enable application developers to build products on top of that personal data, creating a whole new data marketplace.

2. Commotion Wireless Project

Commotion aims to build a new type of tool for democratic organizing: an open source “device-as-infrastructure” distributed communications platform that integrates users’ existing cell phones, WiFi-enabled computers, and other WiFi-capable personal devices to create a metro-scale peer-to-peer (mesh) communications network.

What it means: Democratic activists around the globe will gain access to a secure and reliable platform to ensure their communications cannot be controlled or cut off by authoritarian regimes.

3. Lantern

Lantern is a globally cooperative censorship circumvention tool build on the Little Shoot peer-to-peer platform. It lets people living in relatively uncensored countries to donate a small part of their bandwidth to help people living under censorship gain access to the open internet.

What it means: Kind of like how SETI@home lets you help search for extraterrestrial life, Lantern lets you contribute your computing power to solve global censorship.

4. FreedomBox

‘The FreedomBox is a project that combines the computing power of a smart phone with your wireless router to create a network of personal servers to protect privacy during daily life, maintain beachheads of free network access during times of political instability, and open lines of communication during natural disasters’.

What it means: Privacy protection from snooping governments, billionaires, thugs or gossipy neighbors. Anonymous communication, encrypted email, and resistance to internet shutdown included.

5. Diaspora

Diaspora aims to be a distributed network, where computers can connect to each other directly without surrendering privacy. Their mission is to build a social web that’s 100% owned and controlled by its users.

What it means: If you’re tired of privacy policy changes on Facebook or social networks selling your information to advertisers, you can switch to a place where you own your own data and it’s easy to share what you want with whom.

6. Project Byzantium

Project Byzantium aims to develop a communication system by which users can connect to each other and share information in the absence of convenient access to the Internet. Their current approach is to investigate existing technologies that could support this system, such as mesh networking protocols, wireless networking technologies, and decentralized alternatives to internet addressing/naming systems such as DNS.

What it means: According to project wiki, this system would be useful if the internet became unavailable due to natural disaster, shutdown from central authority, or as a result of a zombie apocalypse.

7. Metacurrency Project

In our information economy, we need tools other than money that can help to guide the flows of our attention, trust, participation and value. The Metacurrency Project is developing the technology tools, protocols and platforms that will enable people to interact and transact directly with each other, beyond centralized control.

What it means: As new currencies and ways to measure and acknowledge value emerge, we’ll want ways for them to interact. Metacurrency aims to enable that interoperability.

8. Tor Project

‘Tor is free software and an open network that help you defend against a form of network surveillance ta threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis. It protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world.’

What it means: Use Tor to prevent anyone from learning your location or browsing habits.

9. Bitcoin

‘Bitcoin is an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is also the name of the open source software which enables the use of this currency.’

What it means: Bitcoin is an experiment to create a decentralized free monetary system that is frictionless, can process micropayments, and where transaction costs are driven to zero.

10. Community Forge

Using a LETS architecture coded into a Drupal platform, Community Forge enables real-world and virtual communities to use mutual credit currencies to build towards a more sustainable economy.

What it means: This open source mutual credit software, ideal for LETS and Time Banking communities, enables community members to express their wants and haves, and to begin exchanging value without the need of money.

Three bonus projects to watch:

11. MeshKit Bonfire

MeshKit is a social networking toolkit for building self-sustaining , ad-hoc and static wireless mesh communities, through intrinsic social gaming and a peer to peer economy. The aim is to meet the social goals of creating a community of reciprocity, trust and interdependence, while extending the community’s need for a mesh beyond the decentralized value.

What it means: Just like starting a community garden serves the purpose of providing food while fulfilling greater social aims of bringing people together, the Meshkit is an attempt to do the same thing, but with wireless mesh communities instead of gardens. So, should the internet get knocked out, you’ve got both a community of friends and a backup plan.

12. Free Network Foundation

Member of the FNF believe access to a free network is a human right and necessary tool for environment and social justice. Their vision is to steward a cooperatively owned global communications infrastructure that is immune to censorship and resistant to breakdown.

What it means: Instead of paying an Internet Service Provider, a local community would essentially form a co-op to own and operate their share of the network.

13. Connect.me

Connect.me is a social vouching system for the web. It enables you to share your reputation, get recognized for your skills and passions, and demonstrate your expertise. By vouching for the people you respect, a stronger layer of trust on the web can emerge.

What it means: Instead of relying on an algorithm to make recommendations for who to follow and why, we rely on each other to develop a web of trust and reputation that each of us can stand behind.

 

L’immense lègue de Wangari Maathai à l’écologie mondiale et au continent africain

Wangari Maathai, lors de la session inaugurale du Conseil des droits de l'homme de l'ONU, le 19 juin 2006.

REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Par RFI

Wangari Maathai, militante kényane, s'est éteinte dimanche 25 septembre au soir à l'âge de 71 ans, des suites d'un cancer. Prix Nobel de la paix en 2004 pour son engagement en faveur du développement durable, de la démocratie et de la paix, elle aura passé sa vie à travailler pour l'écologie, laissant derrière elle un héritage immense.

Mission:

The Meta-Activism Project (MAP) is a non-traditional think tank that leverages the affordances of the digital network to better understand its effects on social power.

We pursue our mission by building human and informational infrastructure for the study of digital activism, which means weaving human networks of activists and scholars and creating informational resources. Our motivating question is: “How are we creating knowledge about digital activism and how can we do so more effectively?”

The ultimate goal of these activities is to make digital activism a more effective means of achieving a transparent, democratic, and participatory global society.

"La compassion, assortie d'un effort de la puissance publique, est la moins confortable et la moins commode des règles de comportement et d'action à notre époque, conclut Galbraith. Mais elle reste la seule compatible avec une vie vraiment civilisée."