Thursday 28 October 2010

Kick It Over Manifesto


Kick It Over


warning
An international student movement to free the economics curriculum from its neoclassical straightjacket was launched last week at the University of California at Berkeley.

For its first action, students worldwide are being encouraged to post the following manifesto, preferably printed on brightly coloured paper, on the doors and bulletin boards of their univeristy’s economics department. See Tere Waden's Nuvatsia blog!

Kick It Over Manifesto
We, the undersigned, make this accusation: that you, the teachers of neoclassical economics and the students that you graduate, have perpetuated a gigantic fraud upon the world.

You claim to work in a pure science of formula and law, but yours is a social science, with all the fragility and uncertainty that this entails. We accuse you of pretending to be what you are not.

You hide in your offices, protected by your mathematical jargon, while in the real world, forests vanish, species perish and human lives are callously destroyed. We accuse you of gross negligence in the management of our planetary household.

You have known since its inception that one of your measures of economic progress, the Gross Domestic Product, is fundamentally flawed and incomplete, and yet you have allowed it to become a global standard, reported day in, day out in every form of media. We accuse you of recklessly projecting an illusion of progress.

You have done great harm, but your time is coming to a close. Your systems are crumbling, your flaws increasingly laid bare. An economic revolution has begun, as hopeful and determined as any in history. We will have our clash of economic paradigms, we will have our moment of truth, and out of each will come a new economics – open, holistic, human scale.

On campus after campus, we will chase you old goats out of power. Then, in the months and years that follow, we will begin the work of reprogramming your doomsday machine.

Available as a PDF file here

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Co-creation, co-governance and peer-to-peer production of public services

Seminar at Taik Helsinki Friday 22 of October 2010. 9 - 16.


Co-creation, co-governance and peer-to-peer production of public services SIG
The co-p2p special interest group initiative aims to increase stakeholders understanding of the processes, logic’s and incentives that can make possible co-creation, co-governance and peer-to-peer production of public services, as well as chart the limits and implications of these approaches (social,economic, political, technical and cultural dimensions). The members represent different expertise with in the Aalto University in order to provide a multidisciplinary and multifaceted view to these developments.

Focus:
1) The need for a multidisciplinary perspective towards the challenges and opportunities that exist in designing and developing services for participatory modes of governance (including co-creation and peer-to-peer aspects).
2) The mapping of the constellation of new technologies and actors involved in citizen-sensitive public service creation and delivery, and their current and emerging roles.
3) Understanding and proposing new service ecosystem configurations (technological and social) and designs to address the challenges and circumstances identified.

More info on co-p2p webpages, including online registration for the seminar.