Monthly Archives: November 2005

After the Crash: A Blueprint for a Community-Based Economy

Posted on November 10, 2005 by Dave Pollard

Irish Economist Richard Douthwaite, who I have written about twice before, has done (nine years ago) something I had planned to do: Write a book about how to create a bottom-up community-based economy. What’s more, he’s now put it on … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch | 7 Comments

What the Raven Said

Posted on November 9, 2005 by Dave Pollard

What will it take to convince a few billion people that destroying wilderness, natural habitats and our fellow creatures is not only harmful to humankind, but also irrational, morally repugnant, and instinctively insane? How can we give people who are … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch | 4 Comments

Complex Intractable Challenges: What to Do About New Orleans and Paris

Posted on November 8, 2005 by Dave Pollard

Photo: Julie Fouchet/Taamallah Mehdi/SIPA for Time Magazine    I‘ve been writing a lot recently about complexity and how it serves to make many of our world’s most urgent and profound challenges intractable. Recent events have provided two extreme examples of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Working Smarter | 12 Comments

Are Artists the ‘Canaries in the Mineshaft’ of our Civilization?

Posted on November 7, 2005 by Dave Pollard

Photo from Newcastle-Emlyn anti-war site. I‘ve been chatting with good friend Jon Husband about weak signals, and he made the point that although Everybody Knows deep inside that we’re in deep shit, it is only the artists and dreamers who … Continue reading →

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves | 10 Comments

The Atomization of Software

Posted on November 6, 2005 by Dave Pollard

Reader Bill Burcham talks about one Open Source phenomenon that had not occurred to me: Just as business is likely to atomize into a World of Ends—  many small specialized, networked businesses each doing one or two things really well, … Continue reading →

Posted in Working Smarter | 8 Comments

Links of the Week

Posted on November 5, 2005 by Dave Pollard

The Forbes Anti-Blog Screed: By now you probably know that Forbes’ latest cover story was an inflammatory assault (“blogs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective”) that smears all bloggers as … Continue reading →

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves | 2 Comments

Community Resource Management: Old Rules, and New Sustainable Ones

Posted on November 4, 2005 by Dave Pollard

As regular readers of these pages know, I am predicting that, at some point in this century, the large political and economic structures (state governments and multi-national corporations) that currently govern much of our lives will collapse, probably due to … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch | 3 Comments

The Boycott List (Updated)

Posted on November 3, 2005 by Dave Pollard

Two years ago I produced a list of especially responsible (socially and environmentally) and irresponsible businesses, provided by Responsible Shopper and vetted by The Better World Handbook. Two years later, Responsible Shopper, a division of Coop America, remains the definitive … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse Watch | 11 Comments

The Social Networking Landscape

Posted on November 2, 2005 by Dave Pollard

In preparation for one of my presentations in San Jose, I’ve been trying to define the boundaries of Social Networking, rather than simply (and less usefully) trying to define the term. The best way I found to do so is … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 10 Comments

Innovation, Discontinuity and Weak Signals

Posted on November 1, 2005 by Dave Pollard

If you have ever watched The Jetsons on television you know the hazards of projecting current trends into the future. Like most of the futuristic predictions of a half century ago, the program assumed that what was true in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Working Smarter | 7 Comments