GitHub Goes 3D Printing

A couple of people have talked of being "the github of 3D models". Guess Github thought they were already it.

The Logic Of The Future

John Robb :


One way to accomplish [trading energy for computation] quickly (before the old system completely fails) is to decentralize production with networked resilient communities.  At that point, the global economy would be 98% information and all basic needs would be provided for locally.  Information only economies built on a base of self-sufficiency can be as different from capitalism as capitalism is from feudalism.

Here's a fascinating Quora answer which shows why BitCoin could be very interesting indeed.

Meanwhile, I asked a question about bitCoin and Botnets.

What's wrong with the Big Society?

Another way of putting this .. there's a lot that's right about the idea of a Big Society where people get involved in running their communities in a more decentralised and autonomous way. But what's wrong is the context of "Capitalism" ie. an economic system with a dominant Capitalist class who are focussed on vacuuming up all the possible surplus wealth for themselves. As long as the capitalist is trying to extract all the surplus value generated by society (by requiring most people to work long hours to earn a modicum of comfort) there'll never be the capacity available for any community to live comfortably.

(More on Dillow, of course.)

Some pretty amazing uses of The Mechanical Turk. See video.

More wikileaks links :

A suggestion for a distributed architecture.

Anonymous Infowar : Battle for a new Intelligence

It's amazing that over 10 years after Michael H. Goldhaber wrote "The Attention Economy", Eric Raymond wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and at least 8 years after Clay Shirky wrote "Help! The Price of Information has Fallen ..." that famous, public alleged "thinkers" are arguing about this at such a naive level.

Anderson is right that Free will dominate the production of *non-scarce* information products. (The only paid information products will be commissioned ie. the author will be paid for attention.) But he's lying through his teeth about there being opportunities to build business models around this.

Rubbish! It's just going to get amateurized. And there won't be much of a money-business at all around the provision of content or culture. Or its "community management".

It's not going to happen with non-scarce resources, which is why there *will* be a "Hosting" business. And a business supplying computers or handsets to access the free information. But these will be far smaller than the currently existing computer and phone businesses. (Think Open Source circuit-board design meets printable electronics.)

It's true that Anderson doesn't answer Gladwell's "cost of the distribution infrastructure" point. I'd say that the best answer to that is likely to be that we're going to break up those big infrastructures and replace them with smaller, cheaper, more decentralized production. So we won't need the grid because we'll be catching our own sun and wind energy (free) with locally made equipment (very cheap) and local distribution nets (cheaper). Similar for food, furniture, homes etc. Production that relies on huge economies of scale, mass-production, mass-marketing, long-distance transport etc. is likely to go bust anyway due to energy crunch on one side, and smarter, better informed tools which can pull manufacturing closer to the end-consumer, on the other.

Political Allsorts #5

Last post reminds me, that among the things conveniently forgotten now we have the MPs' expenses scandal, is not only the recession and swine flu, but also the whole issue of policing of protests and spying on activists.

Political Allsorts #3

Meanwhile, my friend Oli has, for a while, been giving me some tough push-back on the decentralist, anarchist and green directions that I've been moving in for a while. And I need to flag that I don't have good answers to him yet.

Oli's arguments can be summarized, roughly, as

a) decentralism is unproven, whereas centralism, and strong power-centres, when wielded in the right cause, have demonstrable achievements.

b) in particular, centralism is necessary to promote egalitarian ends. Examples include the EU which is helping spread wealth more equably through Europe, and counter-examples include "opt-out schools" or the "local democracy" which has failed to bring the US school system to an acceptable state.

So, you need centralized concentrations of power to set and ensure standards. And encouraging decentralism is as likely to allow the wealthy and powerful communities to secede from wider social responsibilities or shared planning.

Like I say, I don't have good answers to this. Though I am looking.