[p2p-research] Universities Irrelevant by 2020?

Mon Apr 27 17:29:33 CEST 2009

Duh! :-)

Examples include:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

The coming Digital Media and Learning Research hub from UC Human Research
Irvine

Localfoodsystems.org is of course also an example from Michigan State
University and Ohio State University.

Those are a couple of examples. There are probably more. Many Universities
are at least experimenting with this approach. Connecting internal processes
with external communities, and releasing under an open license.

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> excellent insights Sam, do you have a source for that footnote on commons
> inspired uni's?
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> There are Universities that are turning to commons-based methods of
>> governance and problem solving [1]. These are the Universities that are
>> positioning themselves for the series of changes that are likely to come.
>> While many of them are approaching this change in a rather ham-fisted way,
>> some are also learning. Those that are learning how to apply commons-based
>> governance/problem solving practices are positioning themselves both for
>> survival, and for the type of change that they see their students being
>> ready for.
>>
>> (Michel makes a great point that in the east, in Asia, that many
>> Universities are possibly in a different track, fulfilling a different set
>> of needs. As we know, in the US, Universities are modeled after
>> corporations, often with a primary focus on procuring and securing money
>> from practically any source available. This is the type of arrangement that
>> cannot be sustained. ).
>>
>> The nature of the change that will like happen in the case of Universities
>> will not be collapse, but rather dynamic transformation, which includes
>> collapse or die off of some parts of the system, and change in others.
>>
>> When we talk about "collapse", we are not actually talking about the
>> complete eradication/extinction of an ecosystem.
>>
>> For instance, we can say that the Roman Empire collapsed at around 500AD,
>> and yet one could argue that successive empires in Europe carried forward
>> many of the patterns of Rome, all the way to this day in the Republic of the
>> United States of America, where we still convene a Senate, still arrange
>> military and state power structures in ways that are remarkably similar in
>> more than a few ways to Roman systems, etc Parts of the institutions of the
>> Roman Empire remain with us today. They are cultural inheritances that were
>> carried forward even though Rome itself ceased to exist.
>>
>> Another example is inside of your own body, which carries structures,
>> systems, symbiotic relationships, and adaptations that emerged long before
>> humans ever existed. Some of them go all the way back to the first organisms
>> that we know of.
>>
>>
>> On planet Earth, systems rarely completely collapse and disappear. Instead
>> that usually change, evolve, adapt, and pass forward those parts that are
>> still usable.
>>
>> We are in the early stages of seeing some of the Universities change and
>> adapt. I think that Ryan can intuit that this change seems very likely to be
>> coming. But, if I were to describe what I think is going to happen, I would
>> not say that Universities are going to just be obsoleted into collapse and
>> non existence. I'd suggest that the *current landscape and configuration of
>> Universities is what is going collapse and become obsolete*, in those areas
>> where it cannot be sustained. There are people on the edges of Universities
>> that are already in the process of changing them, making them more
>> networked, more commons-based in wealth creation and curating. Consider
>> these people to be the evolutionary agents in the system (mostly at it's
>> edges). They are doing it not because they have some kind of fondness or
>> nostalgia for Universities and want to nurse them along, but because of the
>> conditions of their existence. They are heavily invested in those
>> institutions, and yet can see that Universities (especially here in the US)
>> cannot sustain centering all activity around securing money.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 3:32 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> undoubtedly the present system will be under great strain,
>>>
>>> but I wouldn't discount the power of social demand, higher education is
>>> at the heart of the social contract, and the allegiance of the whole middle
>>> class depends on it,
>>>
>>> Michel
>>>
>>>
>>> On 4/25/09, Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 4/22/09, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If you had asked me in 1990 whether GM could be on the verge of
>>>> > bankruptcy and irrelevance, I'd have said you were delusional.  I'm
>>>> sure the
>>>> > horse shoe-ers on Main St. in Palo Alto in 1905 thought they had work
>>>> for
>>>> > life.
>>>>
>>>> A lot of it depends not so much on the trends in conventional
>>>> education and in technical alternatives for networked education, taken
>>>> in isolation, but in the larger economic environment.
>>>>
>>>> I'm thinking of a series of cascading crises in which gasoline in the
>>>> U.S. goes over $12/gal., the supply chains of large corporate
>>>> manufacturers either collapse or start frantically shortening and
>>>> relocalizing, the large hierarchical institutions that provided the
>>>> main market for university grads dry up, hollowed-out states lack the
>>>> fiscal resources to fund universities at anywhere near the present
>>>> level and the securities in private college endowments become
>>>> worthless.  And given the current economic environment and Peak Oil
>>>> waiting in the wings to return, this is all quite plausible.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Kevin Carson
>>>> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
>>>> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
>>>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
>>>> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
>>>> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
>>>> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
>>>>
>>>> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Sam Rose
>> Social Synergy
>> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
>> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
>> AIM: Str9960
>> Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrose
>> skype: samuelrose
>> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
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>> http://notanemployee.net
>> http://communitywiki.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "Long ago, we brought you all this fire.
>> Do not imagine we are still chained to that rock...."
>>
>> http://notanemployee.net/
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>

-- 
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
AIM: Str9960
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrose
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://socialsynergyweb.org/network
http://socialmediaclassroom.com
http://localfoodsystems.org
http://openfarmtech.org
http://notanemployee.net
http://communitywiki.org

"Long ago, we brought you all this fire.
Do not imagine we are still chained to that rock...."

http://notanemployee.net/
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