Date archives "May 2015"

Commons Against and Beyond Capitalism? May 28th with Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis and Anne B. Ryan

10.00am – 4.30pm, Thursday, 28 May 2015 – CACSSS Seminar Room (ORB G27), University College Cork, Ireland – http://www.ucc.ie/en/appsoc/news/fullstory-543936-en.html During the first part of this day-long Thinkery, which will be led by Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis, you will be invited to listen, think and converse with others about anti-capitalist commoning. Based in New York,… Continue reading

Commons conquer Barcelona! A victory for David over Goliath

By Mayo Fuster Morell – @lilaroja Originally published – http://www.onlinecreation.info/archives/1135 Yesterday (May 24th) the candidature “Barcelona in common” won the municipal elections (the option of 1 of each 4 people voting). “Now Madrid”- a candidature also connected to commons ethos – became a key force for the governance of Madrid city. Those are only two… Continue reading

Gar Alperovitz on Democratic Planning, the Market and the State

Gar Alperovitz, cooperativist and advocate of the Next System Project, is interviewed by Geoff Gilbert: “* You consistently return to economic planning as necessary for any system seeking stability, for both the entire economy and for communities. Can you explain our current system of backdoor corporate planning? Every area you look at, either tax or… Continue reading

New Film Documentary, “Seeing the Forest”

In the 1990s, many communities in central Oregon were torn asunder by the “War of the Woods.” Environmentalists had brought lawsuits against the U.S. Forest Service for violating its own governing statutes. For decades, timber companies had been allowed to clear-cut public forests, re-seed with tree monocultures, and build ecologically harmful roads on mountain landscapes…. Continue reading

With P2P: Spain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics

With the election results only a few hours away, we’d like to finish today’s coverage with an extract from Katharine Ainger‘s excellent Al-Jazeera article entitled “Spain’s ‘citizen candidates’ shake up politics“. In preparation for the article Ainger contacted P2P Foundation co-founder Michel Bauwens for some feedback. Bauwens told Al Jazeera given historical problems with monolithic… Continue reading

The Prospects for Radical Democracy in Spain

Continuing our series on Spain’s all-important municipal elections, we are happy to present this article, originally published in In These Times, and authored by Vicente Rubio Pueyo and Pablo La Parra The upcoming municipal elections will be a key test for the rising leftist movement in Spain. “Do you hear the buzz? The buzz says: let’s… Continue reading

Video of the Day: Buzzing for the Commons in Madrid

Today, as municipal elections take place throughout the Spanish State we wanted to present a series of posts reflecting the new citizen-led electoral coalitions spawned out of the 15-M Movement. First up is this inspiring video, originally shared by Cecilia Barriga on Vimeo and featuring an impassioned Ada Colau (who’s running for mayor in Barcelona)… Continue reading

The Ubiquitous Commons: a legal and technical toolkit for a user-controlled data commons ?

Excerpted from Maija Palmer: “Could a system be created that gave back some control to individuals? An international group of researchers led by Salvatore Iaconesi, a lecturer at the La Sapienza university in Rome, and Oriana Persico, a communication scientist, is trying to create a legal and technical toolkit that would allow people to do… Continue reading

Off-grid solar systems increasingly viable for low-income communities

Excerpted from the ‘GE Look Ahead’ series: ““First has been the improvement of efficiency of LEDs of 10,000% in the past 13 years,” says Russell Sturm, ?head of Climate Change Advisory at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group. “Batteries have improved 90% with the whole revolution around lithium and it’s… Continue reading

The emancipatory potential of the blockchain will rest on its property arrangments

A new legal and technological entity called a Distributed Collaborative Organization represents a new way of organizing multi-stakeholder cooperatives at scale. Could the difference between dystopia and protopia pivot on the structure of ownership? Excerpted from Noah Thorp, on Disintermediating Banking and User Accounts: “The revolution in progress can generally be described as “disintermediation”. It… Continue reading

The resurgence of emancipatory muncipalism in Barcelona and beyond

It is always great to receive news that our work at the P2P Foundation has a real effect on the world and social change, so I was particularly happy to receive a message from a journalist in Barcelona that “Your ideas have been really instrumental in creating the participatory democratic online platforms being adopted by… Continue reading

Essay of the Day: Ethnography of a Humanitarian Hacking Community

* Article: The Ethic of the Code: An Ethnography of a ‘Humanitarian Hacking’ Community. By Douglas Haywood. Journal of Peer Production, Issue 3, July 2013 From the Abstract: “Hackers and computer hacking have become important narratives in academia and popular media. These discussions have frequently portrayed hackers as deviant, framing them ethnocentrically within North Atlantic… Continue reading