Published late on 7⁄14
Reading Enclosure Public Goods
both from Wikipedia
Discussion - does a historical perspective add anything to our
definitions of the commons, how about the possible ways of managing
the commons. On enclosure - note the changing dynamics of the
economy in England - the shift toward sheep farming; the importance
of historical particularity - it’s clear that many different forms of
enclosure were pursued and many forms of commons governance as well.
Reading Notes About the commons
The commons is a new way to express a very old idea—that some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good and all.
The commons are the things that we inherit and create jointly, and that will (hopefully) last for generations to come. The commons consists of gifts of nature such as air, oceans and wildlife as well as shared social creations such as libraries, public spaces, scientific research and creative works.
A week or two ago I posted a question about Open Courseware to the LinkedIn Q&A forum.
What’s your personal experience with Open Courseware? Open courseware is a growing phenomenon among colleges and universities throughout the world. Itunes U, MIT OpenCourseware, the Open Courseware Consortium, and a bunch of other institutions show the growth of the this movement over the last few years. Have you taken a free course online through one of the open courseware portals?
Jon Udell’s recent remarks on apprenticeship and barter in the new economy generated a surge in my web traffic so I want to extend some of my remarks about the reception of his idea among the audience at SI.
For one thing the STIET program at Michigan, which sponsored the Thursday talk, is particularly focused on the transactions enabled by electronic technology. A major problem with barter is the lack of information connecting traders.
Jon Udell the lead analyst at InfoWorld came to Michigan today to share some of his ideas about online learning and exchange in the new economy. Jon runs a consistently worthwhile weblog at Infoworld that combines a number of my interests: using the web for mashing technology together (Library Lookup may be one of the first examples of a mashup before the term got common), groupware or social software, and online identity.
Enthusiasm is lagging. It must be the heat. It got into the 80s today, with an afternoon thunderstorm. Tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to be in the 90s. And there’s no sign that the humidity is going to let up. The dewpoint is at 68, and it’s almost midnight. So as the physical world sends me into lethargy, the mind begins to flag as well.
It’s not all useless. I want to point out this new post about shared online and education and peer production by Jon Udell.