(Un)monastery has nothing in particular to do with religion. However like a monastery it aims to bring together a community of like minded individuals. In this case passionate change makers, artists, activists and innovators. To live and work together on creative world changing projects for 6 months to a year in Matera Southern Italy. The… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2013"
Essay of the Day: Internet, Deliberative Democracy, and Power
* Article: The Internet, deliberative democracy, and power: Radicalizing the public sphere. By Lincoln Dahlberg. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics Volume 3 Number 1 Abstract: “Deliberative democratic public sphere theory has become increasingly popular in Internet-democracy research and commentary. In terms of informal civic practices, advocates of this theory see the Internet as… Continue reading
How Bottom-up Broadband will overcome the ‘last mile’ problem
Jaume Barcelo is a Spanish post-doctoral researcher who co-founded the bottom-up broadband project in Barcelona. He works on spreading the concept of user-owned bottom-up networks that will eventually overcome the bottleneck of the “last mile”, an economic hurdle that has kept telecom operators from providing decent internet access to many potential users. Telecom operators cite… Continue reading
A documentary about the London p2p-driven Food Revolution: “Best Before”
“Best Before: the London Food Revolution is a short documentary about rising food prices and an impending food crisis in the UK. In London, a handful of supermarkets dominate the market, an incredible amount food food is wasted everyday, and fresh, healthy food has become the privilege of the wealthy, while those worse-off have access… Continue reading
Charles Eisenstein on the Next Step for Digital Currency
With these learnings from the Bitcoin experiment, I would like to propose a new model for digital currency. The question is how make the issuance of and access to money egalitarian on the one hand, yet also regulate the money supply in an organic, decentralized way. A new article by Charles Eistenstein: “Today’s national and… Continue reading
The Five Framing Conditions for a Commons-Oriented Economy
In their excellent book, The Resilience Imperative: Cooperative Transitions to a Steady-State Economy, Pat Conaty and Michael Lewis outline five conditions for a new economy, which are explained here below. * Resilience: Strengthening Our Capacity to Adapt * Reclaiming the Commons * Reinventing Democracy * Constructing a Social Solidarity Economy * Pricing As If People… Continue reading
The Commons Guide to Placemaking (2): The West Marin Commons experience
This is our second excerpt from: * (e)Book: How to Design Our World for Happiness. The commons guide to placemaking, public space, and enjoying a convivial life. By Jay Walljasper and On the Commons, 2013. How One Small Town Lives the Commons: An interview with Elizabeth Barnet, director of the West Marin Commons. Interview by… Continue reading
Book of the Day: City Sense
* Book: City Sense – Shaping our environment with real-time data. ACTAR (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia), 2013 Summary from the Networking City blog, by SeunghoYoo: “Since 2005, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, which is a provocative architectural school and research institution, has opened architectural competition once in every two… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Red de Ecoaldeas Colombia
Excerpted from Albert Bates: “The ecovillagers, Red de Ecoaldeas Colombia when we last visited, reformed 7 years ago into Renace Colombia. RC is developing a multilayered strategy for greater communication with other networks, sectors and movements in the country, as well as developing capacity to incubate new ecovillages and other varieties of experimental human settlements…. Continue reading
Discussing time banking and taxation: no Euro Taxation but Complementary Taxation ?
“Instead of euro taxes then, a complementary tax as a timetax can be further strengthening the workings of the timebank, and further contribute to a strenghtening of participation in civil society, the cooperative economy, and a democratising of the public sphere … In the Helsinki timebank, members choose to which ethical actor in the timebank… Continue reading
Documentary on the Bangla Pesa complementary currency in Kenya
Documentary on the currency project facing legal charges in Kenya:
Book of the Day: The Political Power of Weak Interests
“This book makes a bold and startling claim: diffuse interests, rather than concentrated interests, dominate the making of public policy in the advanced democracies. (Pepper D. Culpepper, European University Institute )” * Book: Strength in Numbers: The Political Power of Weak Interests, by Gunnar Trumbull. Harvard University Press , 2012. From the publisher: “Many consumers… Continue reading
The dark side of India’s neoliberal model
Excerpted from Arundhati Roy: “In India, the 300 million of us who belong to the new, post-IMF “reforms” middle class—the market—live side by side with spirits of the nether world, the poltergeists of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of 2,50,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the… Continue reading
Microgrids in Rome in the context of European ‘Third Industrial Revolution” policies
Excerpted from Livio de Santoli and Carlo Maria Drago: “Mayor Gianni Alemanno and the city of Rome host a joint press conference with Jeremy Rifkin (the principal architect of the European Union’s Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan), on May 31st 2010, to release a master plan that will radically transform Rome into a… Continue reading
Response to Natalia Fernandez on the history of cooperativism (3), by Pat Conaty
As a reminder, Natalia’s key thesis (see the article published on the 16th) is: – By severing cooperativism from its communal origins and and focusing on consumption, British cooperativism … caused lasting damage to the transformative capacity of cooperativism, which we should not repeat today in the debate between the economy of the commons and… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Commons Guide to Placemaking
‘We are witnessing a significant social shift in which people are rediscovering common connections and recognizing the collaborative power we share for strengthening our communities. On the Commons documents these examples of the commons in action in our new guide to placemaking, public space, and convivial living by Senior Fellow Jay Walljasper, who writes, speaks,… Continue reading