Forward Foundation Blog

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In order to understand the complex world emerging around us, it is necessary to have a grasp of the ecological concept of "carrying capacity." This post explains this crucial concept without letting the mathematics distract us from the important points.

Title: Access Commons
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
Ref: FF-2010-5-25

Introduction

The Access Commons is one of The Five Commons and emerges as access to infrastructure and services (i.e. politics) shifts from centralized hierarchical institutions to distributed networks of "peer-to-peer" participants.

Title: Food Commons
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
Ref: FF-2010-5-18

Introduction

The Food Commons is one of The Five Commons and emerges as food production shifts from "Big Agro" to smaller, distributed networks of local farmers and markets.

Title: Energy Commons
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
Ref: FF-2010-5-4

Introduction

The Energy Commons is one of The Five Commons and emerges as energy production shifts from massive technological production infrastructures to smaller scale distributed energy production networks.

Title: Culture Commons
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
Ref: FF-2010-4-20

Introduction

The Culture Commons is one of The Five Commons and emerges as cultural production shifts from large mass-media organizations to networks of small niche-media creators and remixers.

Title: Thing Commons
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
Ref: FF-2010-4-20

Introduction

The Thing Commons is one of The Five Commons and emerges as manufacturing shifts from centralized large-scale mass-production infrastructure into decentralized small-scale niche-production sites.

Title: The Five Commons - An invitation to 21st Century wealth-generating ecologies
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
Ref: FF-2010-4-19

Introduction

The Five Commons constitutes an evolving vision of the emerging 21st Century economy. Each of the five commons represents a key area in which transition is apparent.

The Forward Foundation hopes that by sharing this vision, people will find clues and insights into new ways of structuring human activity and sustainable living.

Title: Comparing Business Development Paradigms
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike

Introduction

In a posting to http://localfoodsystems.org on Feb 04, 2010, Steve Bosserman introduced the idea of "Production Centered Local Economies", and "People Centered Local Economies". This article synthesizes Steve's coining of those terms, and uses concepts developed by Sam Rose, Paul Hartzog and Richard C Adler of Forward Foundation to further explain the differences between these economies, from a business development perspective.

Title: Resource Sharing - Grounding the 21st Century Economy
Authors: Paul B. Hartzog, Sam Rose, Richard C. Adler
Web: The Forward Foundation http://www.forwardfound.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
Ref: FF-2010-2-1

Introduction

Twenty-first century wealth-generating ecologies need to remain robust and flexible in order to allocate resources quickly and efficiently, and to mitigate the effects of constant fluctuations and redistributions. Nobel Prize recipient Elinor Ostrom's work on "commons" provides vital thinking towards a solution: peer governance and information transparency.

This overview attempts to provide the following:

1. a brief summary of the requisite theoretical framework on the production of "commons"
2. an example implementing the theory in a technological deployment

Taken together, it is the authors' hope that this document can be a springboard for interested practitioners in the world.

This post is not just about "quantity does not equal quality". This is about volume of information and how it can affect decision quality. It's also about a more scaleable and sustainable ecology and economy for your activities online.

The technology of the weblog (and more recently the microblog) have led to the emergence of an *unsustainable* set of media ecology approaches. Your ability to track, read, digest and understand blog posts cannot match the exponential volume of blogs emerging on the internet every day (even just in the subject areas that you are interested in). The paradox is that the perceived model for "success" in blogging, online community building, and representing projects and businesses online is to "blog frequently". The idea is that you become an "information source" about particular topics. This is fine if you have a strategy for being a frequent source of information. However, if your intent is to be a source of re-usable knowledge, then focusing on frequency of posting, and statistics of people looking at your web or blogsite could become difficult to sustain.

The purpose of this blog post is to argue that blogging frequently is *not* as important as quality of the blog's content, if the blog seeks to be a re-usable knowledge source. A second purpose is to argue that if a blog's success in the digital medium hinges on the fleeting attention, focus and choice of other people using the internet, then it is using an unscalable and non-sustainable model for success.