Loomio
Wed 31 Jul 2013 2:03AM

Resources: videos, articles, people, books, etc

RDB Richard D. Bartlett Public Seen by 17

It would be great to crowdsource some juicy content that's relevant to this paper. I'll seed the list with some of my favourite finds of the last year or so. Add your suggestions in the comments or edit this context field directly :)

Articles

  • Heather Marsh's series on mass collaboration is some of the best thinking I've read on the topic of how a society can organise itself in the networked age
  • Michel Bauwens is one of the leading experts on P2P. This article Occupy as a Business Model views the Occupy Wall Street movement as a tantalising glimpse of the future of economics.

Videos

  • A conversation with Stephen Johnson, Yochai Benkler, Susan Crawford and Lawrence Lessig - Has Politics Gone Peer 2 Peer?
  • Clay Shirky - How the internet will one day transform government
  • Program or be Programmed; media theorist/futurist/author and Loomio advisor Douglas Rushkof does a great job of exploring the societal implications of new technologies in a really accessible, engaging, slightly frenetic style.
  • Eben Moglen - Innovation Under Austerity; described as the 'I have a dream' speech of internet freedom/digital rights. Totally must watch.
  • Free Network Foundation - Free The Network; beautiful short documentary showing how a small group of Occupiers built a free wifi network and their plan to extend it throughout the world.
  • Kim Dotcom in his own words; this interview lays out his plan to encrypt half the world's internet traffic, and gives a direct insight into the man behind the myth.

Books

  • Yochai Benkler is probably the greatest scholar of the internet, his book Wealth of Networks is an incredible (though rather academic) analysis of the economic implications of peer-to-peer technology. A more accessible starting point would be his book Penguin & Leviathan - How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest which flips everything we know about the "economic man as rational self-interested actor" on its head.
  • Larry Lessig, another incredibly accomplished internet scholar and constitutional lawyer's book Code v2 is required reading for anyone interested in the intersection between politics and technology. He argues that computer code is an equal complementary force to legal code in shaping the behaviours of a society.
  • Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody is a really fun easy read, a great introduction to the power of technology to transform society. It explains "what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures".
  • Carne Ross, the world's first 'freelance diplomat', released this book just as Occupy emerged: The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century