Re: A Distributed Economy -- A blog involving Linked Data

In an attempt to understand the conversation we had, I was sent in a flurry
of confusion. I started checking out books, and one was Resilience by
Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy. I found a few quotes that seem exciting
to me:

"Adhocracies thrive on data. And by the stroke of fantastic luck, we're
currently witnessing the global birth of an adhocracy of data -- a global
revolution that, for the first time, empowers orgranizations with the
capacity to collect and correlate widely distributed real-time information
about the way many critical systems are performing. This kind of open data
will play a central role in resilience strategies for years to come." pg.
266, Resilience, Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy

"And for organizations of all types there is a powerful lesson here:
Resilience benefits accrue to organizations that prioritize the collection,
presentation, and sharing of data." pg. 269, Resilience, Andrew Zolli and
Ann Marie Healy

"A related theme in the resilience discussion is the importance of
networks, which provide a universal, abstract reference system for
describing how information, resources, and behaviours flow through many
complex systems. Having a common means to describe biological, economic,
and ecological systems, for example, allows researchers to make comparisons
between the ways these very different kinds of entities approach similar
problems, such as stopping a contagion - whether an actual virus, a
financial panic, an unwanted behavior, or an environmental contaminant -
when it begins to spread. Having a shared frame of reference allows us to
consider how successful tactics in one domain might be applied to another -
as we'll see in newly emerging fields like ecological finance." pg 19,
Resilience, Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy

"Rather the resilience frame suggests a different, complementary effort to
mitigation: to redesign our institutions, embolden our communities,
encourage innovation and experimentation, and support our people in ways
that will help them be prepared and cope with surprises and distruptions,
even as we work to fend them off." pg 23, Resilience, Andrew Zolli and Ann
Marie Healy

It is interesting that Buckminster Fuller wrote about similar ideas over 30
years ago:

"The inefficiency of automobiles' reciprocating engines - and their
traffic-system-wasted fuel - and the energy inefficiency of today's
buildings, are only two of hundreds of thousands of instances that can be
cited of the design-avoidable energy wastage. But the technical raison
d'etre for either the energy-effectiveness gains or losses is all
completely invisible to human eyes. Thus, the significance of their
omni-integratable potentialities is uncomprehended by either the world's
leaders or the led.
Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world,
nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general
realize the sum-totally the omni-engineering-integratable, invisible
revolution in metallurgical, chemical, and electronic arts now makes it
possible to do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material,
ergs of energy, and seconds of time per given technological function that
it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a "higher
standard of living than any have ever known.", pg. xxv, Critical Path, R.
Buckminster Fuller

"World Game will become increasingly effective in its prognoses and
programming when the world-around, satellite-interrelayed computer system
and its omni-Universe-operative (time-energy) accounting system are
established. This system will identify the kilowatt-hour-expressed world
inventory of foods, raw and recirculating resources, and all the world's
unique mechanical and structural capabilities and their operating
capacities as well  as the respective kilowatt-hours of available
energy-income-derived operating power with which to put their facilities to
work. All the foregoing information will become available in respect to all
the world-around technology's environment-controlling, life-sustaining,
travel- and communication-accomidating structures and machines.", pg. 219,
Critical Path, R. Buckminster Fuller

I'm happy that Milton Ponson pointed out Resilience. I had never thought
about resilience before. Looking into it was very gratifying. It gave me
some confidence that I was perhaps doing some things right, but at the same
time startled me by how much there is to learn to somehow survive the free
fall. Doing a search for Linked Data and Resilience gave me a result from
rkbexpolorer (
http://www.rkbexplorer.com/explorer/#display=project-{http%3A//wiki.rkbexplorer.com/id/resist})
which is from the ReSIST (Resilience for Survivability) project in Europe (
http://www.resist-noe.org/). They also have some links to some free course
material at <http://resist.isti.cnr.it/home.php>.

I believe my blog evolved to explore a peer-to-peer economy. Michael
Bauwens desribes such economies as distributed networks, "As political,
economic, and social systems transform themselves into distributed
networks, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer to peer (P2P). As P2P gives
rise to the emergence of a third mode of production, a third mode of
governence, and a third mode of property, it is poised to overhaul our
political economy in unprecendented ways." (
www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499)

This suggests something broader. As a result of our conversation, I also
looked at some people with socialist views such as Roberto Verzola, W. Paul
Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, Raoul Viktor, and Heinz Dieterich.

Roberto Verzola describes an economy of abundance, which may indeed be
linked to P2P technologies.

"An economy of abundance seeks to dismantle or reform these
scarcity-generating institutions in such a way as to affirm our freedom to
live life as art (self-expression to others), social equity (so that
everything can live life as art), and sustainability (so that all life can
thrive into the future). Among other things, this implies a much greater
role for various forms of shared property, individual an community-level
self-reliance, and participatory decision making." (
http://www.shareable.net/blog/event-the-economics-of-abundance)

He also argues that for innovation to proceed, everyone seeking knowledge
should have access to it.

"the most important means to ensure that innovation can proceed is to
ensure that everyone seeking knowledge has access to it. ... Knowledge that
helps empower people depends on openness, while knowledge that is used to
coerce, to exert power over the disempowered, thrives on secrecy" p. 150,
The Economics of Abunance: A Political Economy of Freedom, Equity and
Sustainability, Roberto Verzola

This seems to align well with my present feelings.

I feel that engineering is so saturated with IP, that it is hard to feel
like you're not going to be doing that. At the same time I want to develop
my skills and thrive. How do become a Professional Engineer and not feel
like you're going to be doing that? What if you don't like the lawyer
saturated culture where people are suing other people over some idea you or
someone else produced? I can sense that a lot of people, especially in the
hacker and maker community, want to be able to support themselves and work
on cool new things but don't want to deny other people to work on the same
cool things. Why do ideas have to take on a life of their own and become
part of something you might be employed by, but have no control beyond
that? Sorry about the extreme language, but why do I imagine it as making
deal with the devil? Betraying your friends so you can enjoy life and eat?
In this, there is an underlying assumption that there are institutions that
do not want to share or partner, or make it very difficult. If it is
easier, I feel that could be better.

Buckminster Fuller also wrote about such things:

"2. Grandmother taught us the Golden Rule: "Love thy neighbor as thy
self--do unto others as you would they should do unto you.

3. As we became older and more experienced, out uncles began to caution us
to get over our sensitivity. "Life is hard," they explained. 'There is
nowhere nearly enough life support for everybody on our planet, let alone
enough for a comfortable life support. If you want to raise a family and
have a comfortable life for them, you are going to have to deprive many
others of the opportunity to survive and the sooner, the better. Your
grandmother's Golden Rule is beautiful, but it doesn't work.'" p. 123.
Critical Path, R. Buckminster Fuller

Is it possible to have a win-win between people an business? Are there any
financial barriers to entry and/or partnership? Sometimes I fear that I
will never be paid enough to implement my ideas, or if I do then it will be
too late to enter the market. Either I can't afford to do the work, or
someone who developed and patented something that matches at least some of
my idea decides not to involve me. Thus I would question spending the time
developing my idea. I'm assuming I can develop my idea for my own personal
use (possibly not?). However, I am more certain I may have trouble sharing
and selling things developed from my ideas. I imagine that this favors
those who already have money.

People like Eric von Hippel and Michael Bauwens both speak about a lot of
innovation goinf on outside the firm. For example Michel Bauwen's states:

"The French-Italian school of 'cognitive capitalism' stresses the value
creation today is no longer confined to the enterprise, but beholden to the
mass intellectuality of
knowledge workers, who through their lifelong learning/experiencing and
systematic connectivity, constantly innovate within and without the
enterprise. This is an important
argument, since it would justify what we see as the only solution for the
expansion of the P2P sphere into a society at large: the universal basic
income. Only the
independence of work and the salary structure can guarantee the peer
producers can continue to create this sphere of highly productive use
value."
The Political Economy of Peer Production (
www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499)

Eric von Hippel also speaks about his book. (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20060123-Eric.von.Hippel-Democratizing.Innovation.ogg
)

However, giving people money for doing nothing makes me feel uncomfortable.
Of course, as Heinz Dietrich suggests, if you already have money, things
work just fine:
"The first step, in fact, would be to establish a new cybernetic principle;
you need something that coordinates billions of economic transactions
everyday. And, so far, the market has been a relatively well-functioning
system under two conditions: If the market is not monopolistic and you have
the buying power for the merchandise you produce and for the services, then
the market coordinates quite well."-- The Socialism of the 21st Century (
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0805/dieterich/en)

Paul Cockshott, and Allin Cottrell suggest a payment system determined
democratically, "The payment system outlined in chapter 2 depends on the
idea that the total labour content of each product or service can be
calculated." p. 8, Towards a New Socialism

If this is by the state, then I am moved to say I do not trust the
government to do much right at all. Certainly, this is what I feel if I
spend any length of time watching the news. But I would like to look into
it. If this develops into something, the state should be involved at some
level. I feel bad about this. I'll have to read more.
However, I agree that with more democracy things would be better.

"The principal bases for a post-Soviet socialism must be radical democracy
and efficient planning. The democratic element, it is now clear, is not a
luxury,
or something that can be postponed until conditions are especially
favourable. Without democracy, as we have argued above, the leaders of a
socialist society
will be driven to coercion in order to ensure the production of a surplus
product, and if coercion slackens the system will tend to stagnate." p. 7,
Towards a New Socialism

I definately think there needs to be some way to accomplish things that
makes it fair to people. In terms of me, I believe this underlies a larger
problem than me being connected with the right job or being afraid of debt
going back to school. It is the problem of connecting people with the right
jobs,
utilizing the skills they already have so they don't have to fear paying to
learn what they already know, and raising awareness that the jobs are
there. I dream about linked data being able to illuminate relationships
between present skills and related skills to job seekers and employers. I
also dream about linked data allowing people to market themselves with
clarity as a basket of skills that represents who they really are rather
than a basket of skills that was set by a well-meaning college,
trade-school, or university. I honestly believe that people who do
something they have a passion for, will be more effective employees or
entrepreneurs.

But how to pay for it? If you take out debt you need to find a way to pay
it off. If you can't find something that reflects your values you may feel
like you're enslaved to something else while trying to pay it off. It can
be a pressing struggle as Paul Grignon's Money as Debt video on Youtube
describes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K5_JE_gOys). Paul Grigon and
others say that our present monetary system leads to infinite growth.

"We need to become politically sensitive to the invisible architectures of
power. In distributed systems, where there is no overt hierarchy, power is
a function of design. One such system, perhaps the most important of all,
is the monetary system, whose interest-bearing design requires the market
to be linked to a system of infinite growth, and this link needs to be
broken.
A global reform of the monetary system, or the spread of new means of
direct social production of money, are the necessary conditions for such a
break."
(http://p2pfoundation.net/About_The_Foundation)

I'd imagine this would create no problems for people as long as there is
the will and resources to grow infinitely. However, Paul Grigon points out
an exception: those with the money to lend at interest will eventually wind
up with all of the money, and due to forclosure the property too.

My site explores distributed funding. (
http://adistributedeconomy.blogspot.com/2012/03/distributed-funding.html).
I am still not sure how exactly to accomplish it. I think it may involve
something like Ripple (https://classic.ripplepay.com/) and PaySwarm (
http://payswarm.com/). A friend of mine pointed out that it did not seem
that Ripple allows to keep track of what you owe who, whereas PaySwarm
appears to do so. I may need to develop something on my own (
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments/2013Feb/0034.html)
that involes donations, and whatever models are needed. Embarrasingly, I'm
still learning JavaScript. Thankfully, my friends are also encouraging me
to focus on some small project.

A few other thoughts:

As I was reading, I noticed some mention of rival and non-rival goods.
Rival goods could be seen as raw materials or products, and non-rival goods
could exist in an infinite amount. In the
maker world I see things such as CAD files as non-rival and raw materials
and end products as rival. I question whether people would still pay for
rival goods, and perhaps donate for non-rival goods if there was an open
source economy? What if things such as PaySwarm made it easy to do so?

The Rep Rap and Ardrino are open source hardware, and all products by
Makerbot used to be (http://josefprusa.cz/open-hardware-meaning/,
http://www.hoektronics.com/2012/09/21/makerbot-and-open-source-a-founder-perspective/).
People can share their designs, but would people share their profits with
those who contributed to their idea? It wouldn't have to be much, as small
amounts still add up. Would this be bad? Even if people don't have to pay,
things might still vary as does the amount you might get by selling a book?
Concieveably if you have a lot of open source hardware, then you could have
as much flexibility in the physical world as you do in the software world.
In an extreme case, maybe you could have open source spaceships. They are
after all lots of little parts, much like a GNU/Linux distro.

If things could be freely copied and not exclusively owned as in the GPL,
would you still have brand loyalty? While not going into the fine details,
the Ultimaker and the Makerbot Thing-O-Matic look very similar. Why would I
want one over the other? If whatever you chose was linked to previous
innovations, and people let their donations flow to those authors, how much
would it matter?

Would the crowd maintain accountability so people would not collect money
for doing nothing? The maker community seems to be supportive of things
that they are free to contribute to. How far could this go, especially with
support from arguments made by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams in the
book Wikinomics? For the legality, things like the JOBs act seem exciting.
However, this seems to be for equity-based crowdfunding and not just
donations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOBS_Act). I'd imagine that it
would be both even if some of the things were as described above. What if
you were retired, and you had money, but nothing you contributed was being
used? Could you grow your money to support yourself?

The potential of digital technologies seems huge. I read about the
Industrial Internet, as pointed out by Milton Poson. The GE report titled,
"Industrial Internet. Pushing the Boundaries of Minds and Machines"<
www.ge.com/docs/chapters/Industrial_Internet.pdf>, by Peter C. Evans and
Marco Annunziata has the following quote:

"The combination of physics- based approaches, deep sector specific domain
expertise, more automation of information flows, and predictive
capabilities can join with the existing
suite of “big data” tools. The result is the Industrial Internet
encompasses traditional approaches with newer hybrid approaches that can
leverage the power of both historic and
real-time data with industry specific advanced analytics."

Of course, this makes me want to go down the path of Density Functional
Theory and Molecular Dynamics. I had a brief exposure to these concepts in
graduate school, and it reminds me of the layout algorithms in Gephi (at
least MD, I know a little less about DFT). Yes! I just learned about DBSCAN
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBSCAN) in R (
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~dq209/others/Rdatamining.pdf) and ELKI (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELKI). And here you have it, the original
DBSCAN paper
(http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.121.9220).

In addition, they speak about Enterprise Management Software in terms of
the Industrial Internet:

"At the other end of the spectrum, enterprise management software and
solutions have been widely adopted to drive organizational efficiencies at
the firm level. The benefits
of these efforts include better tracking and coordination of labor, supply
chain, quality, compliance, and sales and distribution across broad
geographies and product lines.
However, these efforts have sometimes fallen short because while they can
passively track asset operations at the product level, the ability to
impact asset performance is limited.
Optimizing the system to maximize asset and enterprise performance is what
the Industrial Internet offers."

This reminds me of a presentation given by Dr. Manoj Dharwadkar of Bentley
Systems Inc. titled, "Using Sematic Web Technologies in Open Applications" (
http://www.w3.org/2008/12/ogws-slides/Bentley.pdf). It also reminds me of
the The Simantics Platform at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (
www.vtt.fi) and the mission of Dassault Systems (www.3ds.com). They all
have the ISO15926 ontology in common.

I wasn't sure if they were talking about linked data in the report:

"To make information intelligent, new connections need to be developed so
that Big Data ‘knows’ when and where it needs to go, and how to get there.
If imaging data is better
connected, the right doctor could automatically receive a patient’s
rendered images so the information is finding the doctor instead of the
doctor
finding the information. "  --- Opportunity for Liked Data?

random paper with medical devices communicating with the semantic web:
http://radiographics.rsna.org/content/30/7/2039.abstract

http://www.mdpnp.org/uploads/8-3_Schluter_26Jan.pdf (devices
commmunicating, like Industrial Internet)

Further, they go into what is needed to to build the Industrial Internet:

"The Industrial Internet will require an adequate backbone. Data centers,
broadband spectrum, and fiber networks are all components of the ICT
infrastructure
that will need to be further developed to connect the various machines,
systems, and networks across industries and geographies.
This will require a combination of inter- and intra- state infrastructure
order to support the significant growth in data flows involved with the
Industrial Internet.
"

I heard that Oklahoma, and the U.S. in general, needs more fiber. Someone
said that Denver, Dallas, Kansas City, Silicon Valley, Austin(?), all have
good networks.

How would the talent to build the Industrial Internet be gathered? Here are
a few more quotes:

"Other alternatives for sourcing cross-discipline talent might include
developing the existing resources in the native domain through
collaborative approaches. Instead
of building or buying talent that has multiple skills, create environments
that accelerate the ability of people with different skills to interact and
innovate together.
On a larger scale, approaches such as crowdsourcing might be able to close
some of the capabilities gaps that are sure to occur."

"Today, the people that manage big data systems or perform advanced
analytics have developed unique talents through self-driven specialization,
rather than through
any programs that build a standard set of skills or principles.
Co-development of curriculum, integration of academic staff into industry,
and other approaches will be
needed to ensure that the talent needs of the Industrial Internet do not
outpace the educational system."

There definately is a lag between the development of IT, and its adoption.
In Chemical Engineering, I'm pretty sure people thought I was crazy when I
started talking about the Semantic Web. People in network security, and
even computer science were not familiar with it. If you're talking about
Wikinomics (Openness, Peering, Sharing, Acting Global) thinking there might
be some growth to do. I heard of people at universities and hackerspaces
speak of themselves as universities, but their culture is very different.
Maybe hackerspaces are on the extreme of being open, whereas universities
are less so? Maybe this is the case with IP. Maybe less so, with papers
(but who can access them?).
See a presentation in 2008 by RIC Jackson, then Director of the FIATECH
Consortium: (
http://www.slccc.net/documents_pdf/Technology-Ric%20Jackson%200811.pdf).
Adoption of new tech for the enterprise is slow:
(http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/11/why-oracle-may-really-be-doomed-this-time/
).

There are some, such as the Mayor of Newark, NJ, who bothered to go to SXSW
to speak about the adoption of more tech:
(
http://pandodaily.com/2013/03/10/cory-booker-calls-for-tech-empowered-open-democracy/
).

Here are three more quotes from the report:

"Measures to ensure the security of restricted data, including intellectual
property,proprietary information, and personally identifiable information
(PII) are critical.
" --- this reminds me of the Read Write Web Community Group

"Currently there are several standards bodies, but they are fragmented. The
promotion and adoption of common and consistent standards on data
structure, encryption,
transfer mechanisms, and the proper use of data will go a long way in
advancing cyber security."

I was made fun of by a CS graduate when I was excited about a possible new
standard.

"Academia: Further research on data security and privacy should be pursued,
including research on enhancing IT security, metrology, inferencing
concerns with non-
sensitive data, and legal foundations for privacy in data aggregation."

Perhaps more collaboration with the hacker community? Is it true that some
programmers, and some in CS tend to build things and ignore security in the
process? I wonder what is going on at hacker conferences like Blackhat and
DEFCON. BTW, people at the Chaos Communication Congress are geniuses.

Whew! That's enough. If you're interested in more, read the report. It's
exciting. :)

I asked myself this question: What is the future role of the University?

The university may serve as a repository for books, a place to do research,
and a meeting place. Lectures? I'm not sure.

How do the things that Michael Hammer & Lisa W. Hershman talk about fit in?

They wrote a book titled, "Faster, Cheaper, Better: The 9 Levers for
Transforming How Work Gets Done".
I believe they were talking about Business Process Improvement (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_improvement). Would Process
Owners, as mentioned by them, serve a major role in the Industrial
Internet? (http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/Process_Owner)

----------------

Resources that I am considering reading:

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Evengy Morozov, 2011

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism,
Evengy Morozov, 2013

The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler, Yale University Press, 2006

Science and the Crisis in Society, Frank H. George, Wiley, 1970

Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age, Steven Johnson,
2012

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organization Without Organizations, Clay
Shirky, 2008

Nasa's Advanced Automation for Space Missions,
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/ (Robots, Expert Systems, Etc..), The
Technical Stuff, 1980

The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, Al Gore, 2013,
http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Drivers-Global-Change/dp/0812992946,
Reviewed by Tim Berners-Lee, may relate well to the previous link

An Inquiry to Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam
Smith, LL.D. F.R.S., MDCCCXLIII (1843) (according to Wikipedia, it was
first published in 1776)

Books by Chris Anderson and Lawrence Lessig

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom,
Rebecca MacKinnon, 2012

Business Process Improvement: the breakthrough strategy for total quality,
productivity, and competitiveness, H J Harrington , 1991

Faster, better, cheaper : low-cost innovation in the U.S. space program,
Howard E McCurdy, 2001


On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:42 PM, Michel Bauwens <michel@p2pfoundation.net>wrote:

> it seems to me that these shifts have already started, before 2013,
> including in these fields, but are also much more long-term transformations
> ... in the case of deep-pocketed and politically powerful vested interests,
> only moderate bottom-up advances can be expected in the very short term ...
>
> both telecom and banking are still heavily centralized, they enabled
> people-based p2p dynamics but control the infrastructure, the data, the
> design and many other aspects of their only partly distributed systems ...
>
> I'm sure the same is true of GE .. no corporation will allow a fully p2p
> distributed system without some form of centralized control
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 2:54 AM, ProjectParadigm-ICT-Program <
> metadataportals@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> 2013 will see the advent of new paradigms for infrastructures that up
>> until now where centralized, i.e. electric power generation and
>> distribution, intermodal transportation and logistics, food and
>> agro-industrial production and distribution, industrial production and
>> distribution, consumer products manufacturing and distribution,
>> pharmaceuticals production and distribution, energy extraction and
>> distribution (including coal, gas, shale oil/gas and biofuels).
>>
>> The data and telecom infrastructure and parallel the banking and
>> financial sectors are the only ones espousing decentralized distributed P2P
>> (and B2B) processes.
>>
>> Resilience is a property that can only be achieved by copying the
>> structure of the internet and some of its inherent characteristics.
>>
>> By defining strategic infrastructures as decentralized networks of
>> distributed P2P (B2B) processes embedded in an intelligent grid it becomes
>> possible to define resilience in a way similar to the resilience of the
>> Internet.
>>
>> And a resilient grid lends itself perfectly to embedding in a semantic
>> web overlay grid.
>>
>> The Industrial Internet as defined by GE and outlined in a recent white
>> paper comes pretty close to it but not quite yet.
>>
>> See http://www.gereports.com/meeting-of-minds-and-machines/.
>>
>> Milton Ponson
>> GSM: +297 747 8280
>> PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
>> Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
>> Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for
>> sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide by creating ICT
>> tools for NGOs worldwide and: providing online access to web sites and
>> repositories of data and information for sustainable development
>>
>> This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
>> intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are
>> addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the
>> system manager. This message contains confidential information and is
>> intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee
>> you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail.
>>
>>   ------------------------------
>> *From:* Brent Shambaugh <brent.shambaugh@gmail.com>
>> *To:* ProjectParadigm-ICT-Program <metadataportals@yahoo.com>
>> *Cc:* Michel Bauwens <michel@p2pfoundation.net>; Samuel Rose <
>> samuel.rose@gmail.com>; "public-lod@w3.org" <public-lod@w3.org>; Paul
>> Cockshott <william.cockshott@glasgow.ac.uk>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 9, 2013 2:10 AM
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: A Distributed Economy -- A blog involving Linked Data
>>
>> Oh well, I'll share my story on a W3C forum no less.
>>
>> Model, true. Would my experiences even translate? I think you'd have to
>> see this from my own personal perspective. Even though I grew up in an
>> American home there was a lot of discourse in my family. There wasn't a lot
>> of room for personal expression, and my family was very religious so I was
>> afraid of offending God if I went against the dominating figure and/or
>> ideology in the family. I was also very shy growing up, and I did not have
>> much money, even though I came from an upper middle class family. I felt
>> out of place most of the time, and sometimes I had ideas that people did
>> not seem to understand or be interested in. I liked computers, and wanted
>> to learn more about them. I was always asking people doing computer stuff
>> how to program, even though I had a lot of trouble doing it myself. I think
>> it was because I struggled with algebra (and other maths), but more so
>> algebra. I also was a bit lost in some documentation, and may have not been
>> fully aware of other resources that may have helped. I was afraid of
>> tinkering, but I built webpages and was proud of them and I also built
>> structures in the woods (but that is a bit off topic). My family paid for
>> my college. I'm thankful for that, but it also leaves me with a feeling of
>> responsibility to them. I'll admit to not being in sync with things in my
>> undergraduate years. It looks very good if you have an internship. But at
>> the time I made a few mistakes perhaps. I was a bit afraid to try because
>> the companies I qualified for either were not doing something that
>> interested me and/or something that I felt reflected my beliefs, values and
>> possibly something else that is hard to describe. In short, perhaps
>> passion. Over time I realized that it would probably be wiser to accept
>> things as is if I ever hoped to be employed. Making the sale was difficult
>> though. I think perhaps people think I'm lazy, or uniformed, because I did
>> not work (except for academic things) in college. Or was it emotion? Ideas
>> out of place? I was also affected by many of the same family things growing
>> up.
>>
>> I have an interest in physics, electronics, economics, systems, etc. I
>> think that if I ever hope to use my education, and share what I have
>> learned, I need to do something amazing. I could go back to school, take on
>> a lot of debt, and just hope that I get enough good grades to impress
>> enough people (and not have them think I'd get bored when trying to get a
>> job). Or I could learn things on my own, participate in projects, and hope
>> that people receive me with open arms.
>>
>> Since 2007 when I discovered Polywell nuclear fusion I've gained new
>> perspective on the world. I never actually built a fusion reactor, but I
>> did try to learn what was behind them. This motivated me to read lots of
>> books, and my desire to do other things to explore my uniqueness as an
>> individual led to even more books. GNU/Linux facilitated my graduate work,
>> and I can relate to it's philosophy through my many frustrations. Open
>> source is great, because I don't have to worry so much about my skills
>> wasting away. Being at the university also helps. I also don't have to
>> manufacture things or do anything special to have excitement about it.
>>
>> But you know, how much can you actually get from someone who hasn't
>> experienced that much real employment? Because of that automatically people
>> see me in a certain way. And my views may not be necessarily realistic for
>> lack of experience. But whatever it is, it seems I have have found a lot of
>> energy and my friends seem to notice. I think about what I am learning more
>> too.
>>
>> But would this model help people in the real world? I feel that had it
>> existed it could have helped me growing up, but that is my own personal
>> experience. In addition to studying, a lot of my peers spent their time
>> drinking beer, socializing, and playing and/or watching sports. And most
>> seemed to have more money. Now most seem to have even more money, and spend
>> time on Facebook talking about things they have bought or families that
>> they are raising. Their educational level is hard to discern. Not many seem
>> to be posting things about hacking, making or things that might suggest
>> deep insight. But not everyone fits that.
>>
>> I guess what matters is whether it will work or not, and whether it truly
>> will benefit others. For that both an experiment and conversation will
>> help. Thank you Samuel for referring me to Michael. Milton, I am not
>> certain what it will do yet.
>>
>> I am not certain what resilience truly means. I'm definitely bothered by
>> the wastefulness brought upon by obsolescence of products. It would be much
>> better I think if we knew how they worked so we could reuse the them (I'm
>> saying the parts) in other things. We've had this problem at the
>> hackerspace. We have lots of stuff around that if we had the blueprint, it
>> would be much better. If we knew how this blueprint connected to other
>> things I personally think that would be even better.
>>
>> On a separate issue. In graduate school there were people there that
>> seemed really lost. I mean they were doing their work, but didn't seem to
>> have a joy about it. There also was not a lot of organization, and it was
>> hard to find things.
>>
>> Outside of school, there are people that I know could go to graduate
>> school but didn't. It was frustrating to me that I could not seem to sell
>> them on thinking more deeply about things, or when they said I was really
>> smart (but did not have the confidence or belief that they could do it
>> themselves). Still others just weren't there. I've seen those who weren't
>> there at the hackerspace. I question why, and think the world would be a
>> better place if this could be tapped into.
>>
>> "
>> Roberto Verzola is to my mind the political economist who has done most
>> in studying this, see http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Commons_Economics; Wolfgang Hoeschele is planning an ambitious database based on a Needs,
>> Organisational REsources, (I forgot what the A stands for)
>>
>>
>> I'm  sure that the proposed modelling effort will contribute to this
>> field; if you are ideologically open, you may also want to talk with people
>> like Paul Cockshott and the people of the Center for Transition Science at
>> UNAM in Mexico City; who are very good at econometric modelling and
>> interested in a cybernetic planning revival, "
>>
>> I still have to think more about this. I was reading over it a bit today.
>>
>> I might have seen something about this today. Someone was talking about
>> how technologies were allowing us (or could? ) to become more mobile, and
>> that people really didn't have to be co located. I don't remember what
>> technologies that they were referring.
>>
>> "Peer to peer processes in addition should be defined as geography
>> independent, historically nomads, hunter gatherers and technomads in the
>> modern age all show this to be true."
>>
>> I hope to write soon.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Brent Shambaugh <
>> brent.shambaugh@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm feeling that this is shaped by my own personal experience? I'm
>> willing, but should I risk putting it out there?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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