PLANET EARNED

The first time I truly used a networked computer I saw it as the way out. Instead of being enslaved to big corporations—as employees and consumers—we’d be able to work on our own time, create value directly for other networked people, and get out of the obligatory, expansionist race against the debt clock that was destroying our planet.

But once WIRED and the other technology business folks got wind of the coming digital age, they framed it quite differently. No, digital technology wouldn’t liberate us from the values of the Industrial Age; it would amplify them! Instead of letting NASDAQ deflate and die its natural death, we could use the promise of the dotcom era and the “long boom” of infinite expansion to pump some more steroids in there.

To them, the digital age wasn’t something that was here, but something that was coming. Something to prepare for. Something to invest in.

And that’s when I started to hate futurists. Here we were already in possession of the things we needed to break free of the corrupting cycles of corporate culture—and yet we were now supposed to see them as the basis for a whole new stage of venture capitalism. All a company needed to do is hire one of the TED-talk-like digital luminaries to imagine a new scenario through which the same old banks and corporations could keep on growing.

But the promise of a digital age, as I see it, is just the opposite: We can retrieve the values and modalities submerged by the birth of the corporation and central currency. Instead of building our entire economy on debt-based money—money with a ticking clock inside it—we can begin to exchange goods and services with one another in real time.

We can even wake up to the fact that—thanks largely to technology—we already have more than enough stuff to go around. We are destroying houses and burning food to keep the market prices high. Unemployment shouldn’t be seen as a problem but as a goal. Who wants a job, anyway? I just want the stuff.

Sure, I am happy to work, but not simply as an excuse to keep an economic system in place that was much better at growing colonial empires than it is at creating sustainable solutions to problems in the present tense.

Time is not money. It’s the way human beings move through this thing called life. If we can bring ourselves to consider the ways digital technology can make time rather than simply take more of it, we will be in a position to live for a better today, right now. 

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Peru has officially passed a law banning genetically modified ingredients anywhere within the country for the next ten years

In a massive blow to multinational agribiz corporations such as Monsanto, Bayer, and Dow, Peru has officially passed a law banning genetically modified ingredients anywhere within the country for a full decade before coming up for another review.  Peru’s Plenary Session of the Congress made the decision 3 years after the decree was written despite previous governmental pushes for GM legalization due largely to the pressure from farmers that together form the Parque de la Papa in Cusco, a farming community of 6,000 people that represent six communities. 

They worry the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will compromise the native species of Peru, such as the giant white corn, purple corn and, of course, the famous species of Peruvian potatoes. Anibal Huerta, President of Peru’s Agrarian Commission, said the ban was needed to prevent the ”danger that can arise from the use of biotechnology.”  While the ban will curb the planting and importation of GMOs in the country, a test conducted by the Peruvian Association of Consumers and Users (ASPEC) at the time of the ban’s implementation found that 77 percent of supermarket products tested contained GM contaminants.  ”Research by ASPEC confirms something that Peruvians knew all along: GM foods are on the shelves of our markets and wineries, and consumers buy them and take them into their homes to eat without knowing it. Nobody tells us, no one says anything, which involves a clear violation of our right to information,” Cáceres told Gestión. GMOs are so prevalent in the Americas that it is virtually impossible to truly and completely block them, whether through pollination or being sneaked in as processed foods.

IS THIS ANOTHER SHELL GREENWASHING OR NOT ? 

Destroy to produce, consume to destroy. A sick circle indeed. Give a shit about nature !

Check out these examples ! 

www.nieuwsblad.be/idgsdfofjh

www.lavenir.net/sdfuhgdf

Publié le 31 août 2012

When I went to university in the late 1970s, fewer than 20% of school leavers went on to higher education. Some degrees were clearly vocational (medicine perhaps the most obvious example), but most were not. My module on the Comparative Government of Indonesia and Nigeria has not, I’m afraid to say, been of direct relevance to me in the world of work.

However, a degree did give graduates an experience that most of their contemporaries did not have and with that experience some unique opportunities. The ‘Milk Round’ university recruiting fairs, run by large often blue-chip organisations, offered a route into management that was by and large exclusive to graduates.

Wind forward 35 years and the Milk Round is no more. The UK now has 50% of school leavers going on to universities to do a degree, competition for graduate level jobs has hugely increased and, significantly, universities are now measured and compared on the number of their graduates that get ‘graduate level’ jobs. However, employer organisations, including the CBI, regularly criticise universities for failing to give students the skills they need to operate in the world of work.

In response to this criticism, UK universities have developed a series of initiatives to ensure that the ‘student experience‘ – both in degree courses run and extra-curricular opportunities provided – give students the competencies that employers want. Compared with the late 1970s, employability is now a strong feature of nearly all degree courses.

There has also been a dramatic rise in the number of enterprise clubs or societies, often run by students themselves, providing comprehensive support to help students start their own businesses. In the East Midlands, the Enterprise Inc. scheme run across nine universities, even provides funding to would-be entrepreneurs.

The opportunities for social enterprise

The public sector in the UK is going through a decade of transformation. Irrespective of which party is in power, the way services have been delivered to the public has been changing, and will continue to change. It is becoming clear that we have been living in a fools’ paradise, treating ourselves to ever more public services that we have not been able to afford.

At the same time, the UK private sector is also experiencing severe shocks to its system. Although the private sector has delivered some impressive growth in employment opportunities, the European – US financial crisis and the exposure of many banking practices, is bringing the fundamentals of the economy into question (and we saw it coming – or should have – if you want to know why read Niall Ferguson’s book The Ascent of Money, especially chapter six).

These tectonic shifts in the economy have created new opportunities for the UK’s long-established social enterprise sector. All mainstream political parties in the UK are voicing support for a more mixed economy, with a strong social enterprise sector delivering products and services in innovative and responsible ways. Legislation has been passed to support the sector and attitudes and practices are changing (albeit rather too slowly for many social entrepreneurs). Initiatives such as the £1bn University Challenge are increasing the opportunities for social enterprisesto get high value, long-term contracts from the public sector.

Social enterprise and the student experience

The growing opportunities for the social enterprise sector demand a response from universities which is being met. Nearly all UK universities have initiatives that provide educational and practical opportunities to get involved in social enterprise. Student run initiatives such as the Cambridge Hub (‘Connecting students with causes’) are particularly impressive, as is the Social Enterprise Network of universities run by the University of Plymouth which is doing some impressive research into the fundamentals of social enterprise.

For its part, Northampton University, has developed and implemented an institution-wide social enterprise strategy. It covering a wide spectrum of activities ranging from support for students to set up social enterprises (including providing them with start up funding) to using our intellectual capital to try and influence policy and practice – all parts of the spectrum are equally important to us. After all, there is no point in developing student social entrepreneurs if we don’t help develop a thriving social enterprise sector for them to work in.

The student experience is different, and better, than it was when I went to university. In 2012 a university education is still about becoming an expert in a chosen field and, I hope, learning to think in new ways, but it is increasingly and overtly about preparation for employment – and that includes employment in the social enterprise sector.

Simon Denny is social enterprise development director at Northampton University.