Felix Stalder: Digital Solidarity (2013) [English, German]

“Felix Stalder’s extended essay, Digital Solidarity, responds to the wave of new forms of networked organisation emerging from and colliding with the global economic crisis of 2008. Across the globe, voluntary association, participatory decision-making and the sharing of resources, all widely adopted online, are being translated into new forms of social space. This movement operates in the breach between accelerating technical innovation, on the one hand, and the crises of institutions which organise, or increasingly restrain society on the other. Through an inventory of social forms – commons, assemblies, swarms and weak networks – the essay outlines how far we have already left McLuhan’s ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’ behind. In his cautiously optimistic account, Stalder reminds us that the struggles over where we will arrive are only just beginning.”

Publisher Mute and Post-Media Lab, Leuphana University, December 2013
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ISBN 1906496927, 9781906496920
68 pages

Author
Publisher (EN, Mute)
Publisher (EN, PML)
Publisher (DE, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

Digital Solidarity (English, 2013)
Digitale Solidarität (German, 2014, added on 2017-6-4)

European Central Bank: Virtual Currency Schemes (2012)

“Virtual communities have proliferated in recent years – a phenomenon triggered by technological developments and by the increased use of the internet. In some cases, these communities have created and circulated their own currency for exchanging the goods and services they offer, and thereby provide a medium of exchange and a unit of account for that particular virtual community.

This paper aims to provide some clarity on virtual currencies and tries to address the issue in a structured approach. It is important to take into account that these currencies both resemble money and necessarily come with their own dedicated retail payment systems; these two aspects are covered by the term “virtual currency scheme”. Virtual currency schemes are relevant in several areas of the financial system and are therefore of interest to central banks. This, among other things, explains the ECB’s interest in carrying out an analysis, especially in view of its role as a catalyst for payment systems and its oversight role.” (from the Executive Summary)

Publisher European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, 29 October 2012
ISBN 9789289908627
54 pages

discussion (Bitcoin Forum)
discussion (Bitinstant via Reddit)

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Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies, Issue Two (2012)

Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of inter-disciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural computational objects, practices, processes and structures.

With contributions by Robert W. Gehl & Sarah Bell, Annette Vee, Bernhard Rieder, Jennifer Gabrys, Carlos Barreneche, Shintaro Miyazaki, Bernard Stiegler, Chiara Bernardi, Kevin Hamilton, “ “, Boris Ružić, Felix Stalder, Greg Elmer.

Editorial group: Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Olga Goriunova, Graham Harwood, Adrian Mackenzie
Published in September 2012
Open access
ISSN 2047-2390

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