"Our current political economy is based on a fundamental mistake. It is based on the assumption that natural resources are unlimited, and that it is an endless sink. This false assumption creates artificial scarcity for potentially abundant cultural resources.

Introduction by Lawrence Lessig: « Every generation has its philosopher—a writer or an artist who captures the imagination of a time. Sometimes these philosophers are recognized as such; often it takes generations before the connection is made real.

One of the advantages, touted by the Open Source community is that you can read the source code and make changes to it if you need to. Now to be honest, how many of us even bother to look at the source code? Come on, fess up. Yes, that is about what I thought.

"One of the immediate stakes of the FSM S&D is to allow the exchange between the scientists and the social movements in the FSM ( especially at the self-managed workshops) on subjects connected to the mobilizations of the social movements.) To facilitate this process, we are seeking researchers to ask them to share with the social movements, the scientific controversies which move, of their point

"Geert Lovink interviews Christopher Kely on the issues covered by his book Two Bits, before Kelty’s joining of the UCLA staff in August 2008. This is a really grand interview that poses all the right questions and issues, and I may engage with it further in the future, but here is just the text of the interview itself..." --

RMS: «Mexicans are injecting themselves with RFIDs in a futile attempt to prevent kidnaping.

This is laughable, but the danger of it is real. If a practice becomes widespread even for stupid reasons, that makes it easier for society to make everyone do it. »

FOSS applications for Windows don't seem to get the same respect and support that their Linux counterparts do, even when they are genuine 100% GPL or BSD or whatever a person's favorite license is. Some say they are good introductions to FOSS; some think they're tainted and nasty and prop up the evil monopolist.

«I have recently finished reading the book "Two Bits - The Cultural Significance of Free Software" by Christopher M. Kelty, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University.

In summary, the book examines the development of the free software movement from an anthropological point of view (it is based on research work done as part of the authors PhD thesis)...»