PRELIMINARY PROGRAM: http://scepsi.eu/en/program
PRACTICAL INFORMATION: http://scepsi.eu/en/info

Reinventing the autonomy of knowledge is the task of our time. It’s not
only a political task. The epistemic foundation of research and learning
as autonomous activities is at stake, when dogmas of profit, growth,
competition take the lead in the old institutions of production and
transmission of knowledge. This is why we are calling students and
researchers, artists and scientists and social activists to gather in the
first conference of SCEPSI that will take place in San Marino, on 20-22
May 2011.

Protests against the financial aggression and the destruction of the
public school in the European continent are spreading, but we have to
create new institutions, aimed to self organization of cognitive workers
and to the reactivation of social sensibility and imagination. The
conference will be the first act of the activity of the European School of
Social Imagination, that in the next year will organize seminars in San
Marino, and in European cities like Helsinki, London, and Oslo.

The activity of the School starts from four question: 1. How can we think
the consequences to every day life in the face of a possible economic
failure of the European Union? 2. How can art and poetry arouse new
energies and revitalize the social field weakened by precarization and the
alienation of (digital) labour? 3.How can emergent scientific imagination
reconstitute the social body? 4. How can we open up spaces for the
autonomy of knowledge within the process of the marketisation and
capitalisation of the education system?

These questions will be foundational for the emergent curriculum of the
first year of seminars and engagements of the European School of Social
Imagination. The following is the program of the conference, that may
change slightly during the next weeks.

- – - -

[versione italiana]

SCEPSI – Scuola Europea di Immaginazione Sociale
Conferenza 20-22 maggio 2011, Repubblica di San Marino

PROGRAMMA PRELIMINARE: http://scepsi.eu/it/program
INFORMAZIONI PRATICHE: http://scepsi.eu/it/info

Reinventare l’autonomia della conoscenza è il compito del nostro tempo.
Non è solo un compito politico. E’ in gioco quando i dogmi del profitto
della crescita e della competizione prendono il posto di comando nelle
vecchie istituzioni della produzione e trasmissione della conoscenza, lo
stesso fondamento epistemico della ricerca e dell’apprendimento come
attività autonoma è in gioco. Questa è la ragione per cui chiamiamo
studenti e ricercatori, artisti e scienziati e attivisti sociali a
riunirsi nella prima conferenza di SCEPSI che si svolgerà a San Marino nei
giorni 20, 21 e 22 Maggio 2011.

Si diffondono le proteste contro l’aggressione finanziaria e la
distruzione della scuola pubblica nel continente europeo, ma dobbiamo
creare nuove istituzioni, che abbiano come scopo la autor-organizzazione
dei lavoratori cognitivi e la riattivazione della sensibilità e
dell’immaginazione collettive. La conferenza sarà il primo atto della
attività della Scuola Europea per l’immaginazione sociale, che nel
prossimo anno organizzerà seminari a San Marino, e nelle città di
Helsinki, Londra, Oslo.

L’attività della Scuola parte da quattro questioni: 1. Come possiamo
pensare le conseguenze di un fallimento dell’Unione europea nella vita
quotidiana? 2. Come possono l’arte e la poesia far emergere nuove energie
e rivitalizzare il campo sociale fragilizzato dalla precarietà e dalle
patologie della psicosfera? 3. Come possono le immaginazioni scientifiche
emergenti ricostituire il corpo sociale? 4. Come possiamo aprire spazi per
l’autonomia della conoscenza di fronte al processo di mercantilizzazione
del sistema educativo e alla sua sottomissione al dogma capitalista?

Queste domande saranno fondative per il curriculum del primo anno di
seminari e attività della Scuola Europea di Immaginazione sociale. Quello
che segue è il programma della conferenza che potrà cambiare leggermente
nelle prossime settimane.

Decentralized platforms such as Usenet, email and IRC were not controlled by any one organization, and do not directly capture profit. The web has been the focus of the commercialization of the internet due to it’s client-server architecture that gives full control to the website operator. This control is required by the logic of Capitalist finance in order to capture value. Without such control profit-seeking investors do not provide funds.

However, this control comes at a cost. Centralized systems are far less efficient at managing online communications than decentralized systems. The corporate, web-based communication-platforms that emerged under the Web 2.0 monicker are hungry for more than just Capital. The huge datacenters required to run them also consume massive natural resources and energy, and cause massive amounts of pollution. Yet, desipite all, these platforms still commonly experience scaling issues and frequent outages, straining under the profit-imposed need to centralize control. And this in a world where the majority of the global population does in practical terms not have access to the internet. Of course, environmental concerns are not the only issue with overly centralized systems. Perhaps even of greater concern are the implications for privacy and freedom of speech and association when control of our social technology is held by only a few private corporations.

Lost in the hype of the Social Web is the fact that the Internet has always been about sharing: Usenet, email and IRC have for a long time enabled social connections, including citizen journalism, photo sharing, and other features of recent web-based systems.

Thimbl demonstrates the potential for integrating classic internet technologies into the Open Web. On the surface, Thimbl appears to be yet another microblogging service, similar to Twitter or identi.ca. However, Thimbl is a specialized web-based client for a User Information protocol called Finger. The Finger Protocol was orginally developed in the 1970s, and as such, is already supported by all existing server platforms.

Thimbl offers no way to sign up. It is up to your own webhost, internet service-provider or system administrator to provide accounts. Virtually every server on the intenret already has Finger server software available in its software repository. All that is required for any organisation to provide Thimbl accounts is to simply turn their Finger service on. In most cases, this would take the server administator no more than a few minutes, after which all of their users could log in to thimbl.net and participate. So Thimbl is a call to arms for users to demand this option.

Most importantly, Thimbl has embedded within it a vision for the Open Web that goes beyond the web. For the web to be truly open it must integrate pervasivaly in to the internet as a whole. The internet has always has been much more than the web.

via Thimbl

This project proposes an alternative economy based on Peer-to-Peer architecture for a more equal sharing of wealth in society. It offers an innovative participative system using counterfeit virtual money.

Promotional AD:
Go on http://P2PGiftCredit.com and get your P2P Gift Credit Card instantly, just by typing your email or cell phone number. When you activate the card you get your first £100 of gift credit! Other rewards come every time you introduce a new friend!

About the P2P Gift Credit Cards:
By issuing a visionary type of credit card, the project introduces the P2P Gift Finance system based on Peer-to-Peer free credit shared across digital networks. The P2P Gift Finance is a democratic creation of money directly regulated by ordinary people in order to redistribute wealth in society. Power to create virtual money with a multiplier effect should be restored to the people, and regulated by democratic participation. It is recognised that the perpetual creation of money is necessary, however, since there is a private monopoly on the monetary system, it is proven to be unfair and is unlikely to ever change without intervention. Indeed many theorists have pointed out that allowing banks to create money is fundamentally unjust, unethical and immoral.
Find out more about it:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/about.php

More details:
The website P2PGiftCredit.com allows people to generate unique virtual card numbers to send to others via digital devices and platforms. In order to activate and use the P2P Gift Credit Cards users must generate new virtual credit card numbers for friends. Rules like this underline the idea of ‘Sharing’ a concept which defines the basis of P2P Gift Finance and enables a viral spread of free credit among people, generating a real alternative virtual credit that anyone can own. This approach also simulates the distribution of free credit by people as a form of “Basic Income”, which may help to stimulate the entire economy.
Find out more how it works:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/how.php

A limited edition of physical plastic P2P Gift Credit Cards are available by request on the P2PGiftCredit.com, and they will also be distributed through public actions in London during the month of January 2011.
You can see a preview of the printed card and its holder in this picture:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/press/P2PCC_carrier_HD.jpg

Purpose of the project:
- Researching alternative virtual currencies, peer-to-peer lending platforms and electronic payments as a positive step in reshaping the future of sustainable finance in the contemporary digital networked scenario.
- Underlining the consequences of private speculative lending institutions and explaining how they often determine economic crises due to the deregulated creation of credit.
- Calling people to sign petitions to shut down tax havens, and to investigate the bailout money that taxpayers recently paid to major banks by supporting ongoing campaigns on this issue.
- Bringing “Basic Income” (as a form of universal, guaranteed, minimum income) to public attention and the inequities of current patterns of the redistribution of wealth into question.
- Targeting social classes vulnerable to the deceptive marketing of the credit card industry (such as university students, artists, the unemployed and people with low incomes) in order to highlight the inherent dangers.
- Increasing awareness about global credit and debit owned by people and banks during the recent so-called global recession, as well as issues related to the creation of money.

If you would like to have more information about the recent so-called “economic recession”, the victims of global fraud, the artificial scarcity of money, or, if you would like to know more about the credit card industries, their criminal interest rates (which cause depression and suicides), and more besides, you should have a look at the Infoshop section which is a real treasure trove of information:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/infoshop.php

A project by Paolo Cirio.
http://www.paolocirio.net
(This project is commissioned by an anonymous arts organisation in the UK)

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES
If your interested in a very smart perspective on system collapse, please go read the anthropologist Joseph Tainter’s book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies” (I’ve been a big fan of his work for ages). In the book, he makes the compelling case that complex societies are, at root, very successful problem solving systems. If they weren’t, they would never have become complex in the first place. Why? Societies solve challenges by creating new rules and processes (new complexity) that are then added on to the existing system ad infinitum. More successful outcomes = more complexity.

However, as noted above, problem solving comes at a cost. Each solution leaves a residue, a layer of complexity that never goes away (laws, taxes, monopolies, treaties, etc.). It builds up over time and saps the social system’s flexibility and efficiency. Eventually, ever new layer of complexity extracts more in costs than it provides in benefit (solution). At that point, according to Tainter’s analysis of ancient civilizations, the complex society collapses.

So, the question always is, why don’t these societies simplify themselves? The problem is they can’t. The techpundit Clay Shirky words this eloquently in a recent post on Tainter’s work called, “The Collapse of Complex Business Models”:

In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. Tainter doesn’t regard the sudden de-coherence of these societies as either a tragedy or a mistake—”[U]nder a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”, to use his pitiless phrase. Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites. When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.

If this is true, then the question for all of us is: is our global society an interlocking nightmare of complexity on the verge of trying to solve one crisis too many? I believe it is. When is the last time that anything big got done without more negatives, tradeoffs, corruption, or unintended consequences than it was worth?

However, there may be another away around this trap. A clue to how this is possible may be found in a recent example of a successful transition from one complex system for another. That’s the transition of China from a decrepit Communist system into a fast growing Capitalist system. It did this by growing an alternative at the periphery of the dying system, and those attempts at free enterprise grew a set of problem solving methods so quickly they are now dominant. In contrast, Russia and much of eastern Europe attempted wholesale change and emerged criminally deformed.

Of course, there are caveats to this example. China did have a model that they could copy (the US and the global market system) and a way to integrate with that larger system as their efforts grew. These efforts also had state sanction. Regardless, it does indicate that it is indeed possible to radically remake a complex society from seemingly simple bottom up efforts.*

My belief is that networked resilient communities can replicate this strategy by growing at the periphery. Given their potential for rapid problem solving, at nearly costless levels of complexity, it may be a short transition.

* However, hilariously, with this success China only jumped out of the fire and into the frying pan.

via Global Guerrillas

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Blogging by teenagers and young adults has dropped by half over the past three years as they turn instead to texting and social networking sites such as Facebook, a new study shows.

The study released this week by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site.

According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 — and only 8 percent were using Twitter.

“It was a little bit surprising, although there are definitely explanations given the state of the technological landscape,” Pew researcher Aaron Smith told Reuters.

Smith said the report’s authors attributed the decline in blogging to the explosion of social networking sites such as Facebook, which emphasize short status updates over personal journals.

According to the study, 73 percent of teens who were online used social networking sites.

He also cited the ubiquity of cell phones. Much of the communication between young people now takes place on mobile devices, which don’t lend themselves to long-form writing.

via Reuters