* Book: Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity by Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne. “The crux of the argument of the book is that local currencies have far greater velocity or turnover than national currencies.” John Lett: “Easily the best book I have read this year. Financial systems and currencies are not… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2014"
Recognizing a Human Right to the Commons
Dutch legal scholar Femke Wijdekop of the Institute for Environmental Security has tackled an urgent question for anyone concerned with planetary environment. She writes: How can we construct a right to a healthy and clean environment that is enforceable in today’s complex international legal order? What legal construct would be visionary and ambitious enough to meet the… Continue reading
Video: a short intro the Aikapankki Timebank in Helsinki
The Collaborative Cities project interviews Ruby Van der Wekken and colleague Piia on the experiences of the Helsinki Time Bank, one of the most elaborate projects of this type in Europe: Watch the video here:
Book of the Day: Society 3.0
Society 3.0. Ronald van den Hoff. URL = http://www.society30.com/ free digital copy Description Neal Gorenflo, Shareable: ” a roadmap out of this mess exists. Society 3.0 is a bold, no-nonsense call-to-action for those who sense something is amiss in early 21st century modern society. van den Hoff provides us with more than a history and treatise on… Continue reading
Open Everything exploring Commons Transition in Ireland
This September 10th to 14th Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation will be in Ireland taking part in OpenEverything.ie a Collaborative Economy Convergence. A series of events will take place in Dublin, Limerick and at the CloughJordan Ecovillage registration is now open and you can check out the schedule here http://openeverything.ie/schedule/ . OpenEverything is organised… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Think Like a Commoner
* Book: Think Like a Commoner. A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons by David Bollier. New Society, 2014 Description from the publisher: From the publisher: “The biggest “tragedy of the commons” is the misconception that commons are failures – relics from another era rendered unnecessary by the Market and State. Think Like… Continue reading
The Teatro Valle Occupation Ends — and a New Theater Commons Begins
The proposed privatization of the grand public theater in Rome, Teatro Valle, has been defeated – but perhaps more importantly, the historic three-year occupation of the building has succeeded in achieving many of its primary goals, including the recognition of its demands to establish a new theater commons, after weeks of contentious negotiations. The struggle… Continue reading
Video: The occupation of Teatro Valle in Rome, 3 years on
A short documentary on the occupied theatre from the Collaborative Cities project. Watch the video here:
Book of the Day: The Financialization of Food
* Book: Hungry Capital. The Financialization of Food. Luigi Russi. Zero Books, 2013 URL = http://www.zero-books.net/books/hungry-capital Description “Over the past thirty years, the ability of global finance to affect aspects of everyday life has been increasing at an unprecedented rate. The world of food bears vivid testimony to this tendency, through the scars opened by the… Continue reading
Open Co-ops: Inspiration, Legal Structures and Tools
this post originally appeared in Stir Magazine illustration by Daksheeta Pattni In 2002 I described United Diversity as “a member owned and stakeholder governed network of mutual advantage.” In truth, it was aspirational. At the time, the flexible off-the-shelf legal structures and open source tools needed to make such a network a reality simply didn’t… Continue reading
WeCreate.ie Fab Lab Micro Manufacturing for Sustainable Communities
Today we have a short interview with Ben Whelan of WeCreate a Fab Lab and Co-Working space based located at the Cloughjordan Ecovillage in Tipperary, Ireland. WeCreate have a strong focus on the development of micro manufacturing for sustainable communities. It will also be the venue for the upcoming Open Everything gathering a series of… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Peer-to-Peer Leadership
* Book: Peer-to-Peer Leadership: Why the Network Is the Leader. By Mila Baker. Berrett-Koehler, 2013 URL = http://www.bkconnection.com/static/Peer_To_Peer_Leadership_EXCERPT.pdf From the publisher: “Mila Baker believes that most of today’s leadership theories are old wines in new skins and still rely on the leader-follower hierarchy. Yet hierarchy is breaking down everywhere in society, from politics to religion to… Continue reading
Richard Swift on the Emergence of a New Horizontal Commons Democracy
Excerpted from S.O.S: Alternatives to Capitalism by Richard Swift, Between the Lines, 2014 Richard Swift: “Other commons-based movements, striving for an alternative ethos, are just getting started. Attempts to create a horizontal commons democracy include the Right to the City movement and other urban initiatives inspired by the French libertarian Marxist Henri Lefebvre. Right to… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Reinvention of Social Capital for Socio-Technical Systems
* Article: The Reinvention of Social Capital for Socio-Technical Systems. By Jeremy Pitt and AndrzeJ Nowak. IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE | SprING 2014. From the Abstract: “Social capital has been defined by Ostrom and Ahn as “an attribute of individuals that enhances their ability to solve collective action problems.” They observed that social capital… Continue reading
Bitcoin is not what you think it is: Anatomy of a Money-Like Informational Commodity
There is a lot to look forward to but it is also important to be realistic about the ramifications of Bitcoin. It is not a jack-of-all-trades nor a panacea for all the worlds’ ills. It may solve some issues in niche areas, but it likely cannot do the vast majority of the tasks that its… Continue reading
From (inter)objective Big Data to (inter)subjective Deep Data
The real problem of big data is that we are increasingly outsourcing our capacity to sense and think to algorithms programmed into machines. While this seems very convenient and cool at first and offers access to services that many of us want, it also raises a question about who actually owns big data, about the… Continue reading