Excerpted from Cristina Flesher Fominaya: “If one wants to look for ideological points of reference for the team behind Podemos probably Gramsci and Subcomandante Marcos would be the logical place to start. But it is precisely an anti-ideological stance, a refusal to self-define in terms of political ideologies, typical of autonomous social movements and 15-M… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2014"
Sharing City Seoul One Year After: Assessment and Future Plans
An update excerpted from Cat Johnson: “Mayor Park is leading a wave of social innovation in Seoul and opening a new chapter in the city’s history. The Sharing City is a sharp turn from the rapid growth of the last 40 years, but it’s one that the city government is fully embracing. And one that… Continue reading
Education as a Commons: the final hangout
After seven days of intense cross-fertilization of thought and practice on the future of education, a final conversation. Watch it here:
Douglas Rushkoff on Corporations, Money and the Middle Ages
Penny Nelson interviewed Douglas Rushkoff for HiLobrow magazine at a particularly sweet spot in time: a month and a half after the beginning of the occupation of Wall Street. Much like OWS and its global precursors and offshoots in 2011, we feel that the issues raised are just as, if not more, relevant today. We’ll… Continue reading
Essay of the day: Snowden, the Terminator, and Us
A very recent, stirring essay, written by Jérémie Zimmermann, co founder of Quadrature du la Net and originally published in Mediapart. “Fortunately, Edward Snowden also showed us a pathway out. Governments can maybe made accountable, and mass surveillance can surely be evaded, and made much more costly. By moving away from technology that controls us, we… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Pan y Trillar
“Pan y Trillar” is a self-sustaining rural community with a Glocal orientation, researching sustainable housing and dynamic, global peer network based in Segovia, Spain. We first heard about them when Jorge Juan García, one of the drivers behind the project, commented on a post right here in the P2P Foundation Blog. We then asked him for… Continue reading
The Record of the Ecuadorian Government
One of the critiques of the FLOK transition process is it association with the government in Ecuador. While no country or government is perfect and without contradictions, it has to be pointed out that this particular government has specific social achievements on its account, that are quite exceptional in a comparative perspective. Following a discussion… Continue reading
Interview: Petros Travelling Norway in Search of the Commons
I have the pleasure to host Petros at Freelab from Lublin in Poland. He is travelling Norway in search of positive and inspirational commons projects of all kinds. People warned me he might be a fortune seeker, but I’ve come to learn he’s a true, and not at least a very important evangelist of the commons. When… Continue reading
Too small to have internet? Tiny German village builds own broadband service
A German village on the border with Denmark and close to the North Sea, Löwenstedt had internet at appalling speeds and no prospect to get anything better. The telecom companies love the revenue from connecting whole city populations, but they hate to spend money to bring decent high speed internet to the countryside. What to… Continue reading
Is maker culture better than school?
Extracted from Reason.com and authored by Zenon Evans, the following article asks whether maker culture is a better option in today’s ravaged educational landscape. The first generation exposed en masse to zero tolerance policies, millennials have been expelled, arrested, and tasered for an absurd litany of inoffensive acts. That’s on top of schools’ perennial failure to… Continue reading
Reclaim the seashore
Another episode in the intense battle to reclaim the Commons in Greece. This time the enclosure of the seashore is imminent. Maria Hadjimichael writes in the ROAR magazine: A grassroots campaign is taking off against the proposed privatization and commodification of one of Greece’s last-remaining utopias: its coastline. Seashores are one of the clearest manifestations… Continue reading
Wirearchy 2: Knowledge, Trust, Credibility and a Focus on Results – Are They Factors That Disrupt or Help Society Evolve?
This is the second in a series of essays exploring Wirearchy, “The power and effectiveness of people working together through connection and collaboration…taking responsibility individually and collectively rather than relying on traditional hierarchical status.” In today’s essay, Jon Husband, the creator of Wirearchy, talks about flows of information, their meaning and what we can do… Continue reading
The Impossibility of Compound Growth Demands a New Post-Growth Economic System
Exceptionally a full reprint of a crucial editorial by George Monbiot: “Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This… Continue reading
John Restakis and Michel Bauwens on FLOK and the Open Knowledge Society
With emerging and innovative methods for distributing information and the means of education, we’re still embedded in the relationships created in the 20th century. Can our societies distribute knowledge to enable healthy forms of production and consumption as a template for a decentralized and equitable post-growth economy? On Extraenvironmentalist #78 we discuss the FLOK Society Project with Michel Bauwens of… Continue reading
Ralph Nader on the American Conservative Decentralists of the 1930’s and why they matter today
Excerpted from Ralph Nader‘s new book: Who Owns America? What conservatives of the ’30s teach left and right today about crony capitalism Source: THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, May 21, 2014 Ralph Nader: “There was a time in the Depression of the 1930s when conservative thought sprang from the dire concrete reality of that terrible era, not… Continue reading
Video conference: The Near Future Education Lab on Education as a Commons
Interesting June 1 Google Hangout organized by the Near Future Education Lab, starting a 7-week ongoing event on Education as a Commons One of the issues discussed is the creation of a mutualistic education currency called K-Coin. Watch the video here: