Iceland Uses Social Media to Write New Constitution
Aaron Saenz writes on Singularity Hub:
The newest government in the world was designed with help from comments on the internet. God help us all.
After Iceland’s economic collapse in 2008, the island nation decided it was time to write a new constitution, this one not based on its parent country of Denmark but rather made from the original ideas of its citizens. Iceland’s small population of 320,000 elected 25 assembly members from 522 ordinary candidates (including lawyers, political science professors, journalists, and many other professions), who in turn opened their process up to the public in an unprecedented fashion.
The Constitutional Council was highly active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, where they solicited comments and suggestions for the new government. On Friday July 29th, 2011, the Iceland parliament officially received the new constitution, comprised of 114 articles divided into 9 chapters. Set to be reviewed, and then put before vote for ratification…
Meet An Open Source Weapon in Stuxnet: The Anatomy of a Computer Virus (Video)
An infographic dissecting the nature and ramifications of Stuxnet, the first weapon made entirely out of code. This was produced for Australian TV program HungryBeast on Australia’s ABC1:
Open-Sourced Blueprints for Civilization (Video)
Via TED:
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).
Can “Open Source” Save Science From Greed?
The transhumanist convening the first “Open Science Summit” at Harvard urges us to free “our scientific and technological commons” and enable “a new era of decentralized, distributed innovation to solve our greatest challenges.”
Joseph Jackson is calling for “a renegotiation of the social contract for science,” arguing that our current patent system stifles innovation. “All sorts of biases and agendas creep into our science and technology policy, affecting which paths are taken, and who controls the outputs of research… If obsolete business models focused on proprietary short-term advantage lead to the wrong platform in synthetic biology or nanotech, it may be game over.
“Digital rights management is problematic enough. Imagine ‘Neurological Rights Management’ asserted over your brain-machine interface.”
This is my favorite line. “At Harvard I studied political philosophy, or ‘political science,’ in the mistaken belief that government and politics were one of mankind’s most important tools for solving collective action
problems.
“I’ve since become an…
Europe Funds Autonomous Self-Learning Humanoid Robots
New details about the EU-funded AMARSi project, which includes a quadruped robot named “Cheetah” and a toddler-like robot named iCub as part of a project to build self-learning robots that can move like a human!
The new open source robot platform will enable bots to dynamically rewire their circuits to process new knowledge using dynamic neural networks…
Can Open Source Manufacturing Save Humanity?
Open source manufacturing essentially lets you download hardware from the web — free packages of coded instructions to make…well, just about anything.
It leverages collaborative “hackerspace” dens and fab labs, while the Social Engineering-Knowledge Database simplifies searching for free open source hardware designs and creating materials lists by organizing them into packages with things like CAD files, assembly instructions, and a bill of materials…
