Chris Anderson: The Economics of Giving It Away. (2009.)

Published with the permission of the author.

Over the past decade, we have built a country-sized economy online where the default price is zero -- nothing, nada, zip. Digital goods -- from music and video to Wikipedia -- can be produced and distributed at virtually no marginal cost, and so, by the laws of economics, price has gone the same way, to $0.00. For the Google Generation, the Internet is the land of the free.

Which is not to say companies can't make money from nothing. Gratis can be a good business. How? Pretty simple: The minority of customers who pay subsidize the majority who do not. Sometimes that's two different sets of customers, as in the traditional media model: A few advertisers pay for content so lots of consumers can get it cheap or free. The concept isn't new, but now that same model is powering everything from photo sharing to online bingo. The last decade has seen the extension of this "two-sided market" model far beyond media, and today it is the revenue engine for all of the biggest Web companies, from Facebook and MySpace to Google itself.

Fred E. Foldvary: The Completely Decentralized City: The Case for Benefits Based Public Finance. (2001.)

ABSTRACT. An alternative to centralized top-down city governance is a multi-level bottom-up structure based on small neighborhood contractual communities. This paper analyzes the voting rules and public finances of decentralized, contractual urban governance and the likely outcome of such a constitutional structure, substantially reduced transfer seeking or rent seeking. Tax and service substitution, with lower-level funding and services substituting for higher-level public finance, is the general process by which the governance would devolve. Land rent is the most feasible source of such decentralized public finance, and local communities could also engage in local currency and credit services. Some empirical examples demonstrate the implementation of some of these governance structures.

I. Governance

Jacques Attali : The Prophecy of Noise. Interviewed by Angus Carlyle. (2006.)

Angus Carlyle is a Senior Lecturer at the London College of Communication. Former editor of ‘Theme Park’, He writes extensively on technology, art and culture and also works as an arts consultant in the UK and internationally. Jacques Attali is a celebrated economist, professor and writer. A curious and brilliant mind, He addresses a wide range of subjects, whether they be economic, political or philosophical. The interview was an opportunity for both men to the focus on the ideas developed in ‘Noise’

Many years ago, I spent a summer holiday in a small cottage in the South of France. Long after the sun had gone down and my friends had retired for the night, I would place a deck chair next to the swimming pool and read David Toop's Ocean of Sound until overcome by sleep.

Jenna McWilliams: What Open Source can teach us about Spreadability. (2009.)

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons.

I've been working recently with my sensei, Dan Hickey, and my mentor and partner in crime, Michelle Honeyford, on a series of blogposts about “spreadable educational practices.” The concept draws from the work of Henry Jenkins (full disclosure: he's my boss) in a white paper for the Convergence Culture Consortium entitled "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead." This white paper, serialized and published on Henry's blog, contrasts the notions of sticky media (think of sites that pull you in and keep you there, "Godfather"-style: Amazon, eBay) and spreadable media (media that you want to forward on to friends—think Kittens, Inspired by Kittens; think the T-Mobile Dance at Liverpool Train Station).

In taking up this idea and applying it to the field of education, we've considered what makes practices spread within a classroom and between teachers. We contrast what we call Spreadable Educational Practices (SEPs) with Disseminated Instructional Routines (DIRs)--material developed by institutions and delivered, intact, and intended to be unpacked and presented intact to a class.

Michael Albert: Thinking Forward. (2010.)

Published with the permission of the New Left Project.

New Left Project talks to Michael Albert, co-founder of Z Magazine, ZNet and South End Press, about complementary holism, Participatory Economics and an alternative to capitalism.

1. Could you outline for us what the theory of complementary holism, is?

Pamela Gerloff: Sorting It All Out - What is Effective Giving. (2001.)

Published with the permission of The Project on Civic Reflection.

One of India's most revered spiritual texts, the Mahabharata, asserts that a gift of any size given to "the right person at the right time, with a pure spirit, will yield endless fruits hereafter."

This timeless counsel on effective giving offers intriguing advice for those of us who want to make our giving more effective; but who is the right person (or organization) and what is the right time to give? And how do we maintain a pure spirit (or intention)?

The task, it seems, is not so easy. The question is: Can it get any easier? And if so, how?

Some years ago, I wrote a doctoral dissertation on translation. I had students, professional translators, and people who had grown up bilingually think aloud about their process as they produced a written translation. One finding surprised me: When given as much time as they needed, it was the bilinguals and translators-those with the most knowledge of both languages - not the students, who took the most time and had the most "trouble" translating the text, even though they produced better translations. In an important way, the task was harder for them, because they knew too much.