Charles Eisenstein: Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, & Society in the Age of Transition (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · banking, commons, debt, economics, economy, gift culture, gift economy, money, production
Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.
This book is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with “right livelihood” and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen.
Publisher North Atlantic Books, 2011
ISBN 1583943978, 9781583943977
469 pages
via Podinski
website dedicated to the book
author
publisher
google books
PDF (EPUB)
View online (HTML)
Lewis Hyde: The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (1979/2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, creativity, gift economy
By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orchestrated defense of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities. Widely available again after twenty-five years, this book is even more necessary today than when it first appeared. An illuminating and transformative book, and completely original in its view of the world, The Gift is cherished by artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. It is in itself a gift to all who discover the classic wisdom found in its pages.
Edition 25, illustrated, annotated
Publisher Vintage Books, a division of Random House, New York, 2007
ISBN 0307279502, 9780307279507
435 pages
PDF (EPUB)
Comment (0)McKenzie Wark: A Hacker Manifesto (2004–) [EN, DE, FR, CR, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · commons, copyright, floss, free software, gift economy, hacker ethic, hacking, intellectual property
A double is haunting the world–the double of abstraction, the virtual reality of information, programming or poetry, math or music, curves or colorings upon which the fortunes of states and armies, companies and communities now depend. The bold aim of this book is to make manifest the origins, purpose, and interests of the emerging class responsible for making this new world–for producing the new concepts, new perceptions, and new sensations out of the stuff of raw data.
A Hacker Manifesto deftly defines the fraught territory between the ever more strident demands by drug and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of file sharing and pirating. This vexed ground, the realm of so-called “intellectual property,” gives rise to a whole new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information–the hacker class of researchers and authors, artists and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers–against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hacker produces.
Drawing in equal measure on Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze, A Hacker Manifesto offers a systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and globalization. In the widespread revolt against commodified information, McKenzie Wark sees a utopian promise, beyond the property form, and a new progressive class, the hacker class, who voice a shared interest in a new information commons.
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2004
ISBN 0674015436, 9780674015432
208 pages
Review: Hua Hsu (Village Voice, 2004).
A Hacker Manifesto (English, 2004, updated on 2014-9-12)
Hacker-Manifest (German, trans. Dietmar Zimmer, 2005, added on 2018-7-13)
Un manifeste hacker (French, trans. Club Post-1984 Mary Shelley & Cie Hacker band, 2006, added on 2018-7-13)
Hakerski manifest (Croatian, trans. Tomislav Medak, 2006)
Un manifiesto hacker (Spanish, trans. Laura Manero, 2006, added on 2018-7-13)
Manifiesto hacker (Spanish, trans. of a shorter essay, undated, v4, added on 2014-3-6)