Today we present an extract from the opening essay ‘Economy as Ecological Livelihood’ from the collection ‘Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene’ Edited by Katherine Gibson, Deborah Bird Rose, and Ruth Fincher and published by Punctum Books. The book is licensed with Creative Commons to be freely shared. ECONOMY AS ECOLOGICAL LIVELIHOOD by J.K. GIBSON… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2015"
Video: An Introduction by Primavera de Filippi on Decentralized Blockchain Technologies
Selected by Shareable as one of the best ten presentations at the Ouishare 2015 conference and festival: “Bitcoin, a decentralized crypto-currency that operates independently of any one government or central bank, has introduced the idea of blockchain to people around the world. Primavera de Filippi from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society discusses a… Continue reading
Why big solar isn’t better than distributed solar
“There’s nothing wrong with building utility-scale solar. But let’s be clear: it’s neither the most economic nor fastest way to green the electricity sector, and it cements centralized control of electricity system in an era of widespread decentralized innovation. And that may be too high a price to pay.” Excerpted from John Farell, of the… Continue reading
The Gift a documentary by Robin McKenna
I met Robin McKenna in Rome earlier this year at a gathering called Giftival and she shared this beautifully shot trailer from her upcoming documentary based on one of my favourite books The Gift by Lewis Hyde. Realy looking forward to seeing this. GIFT-trailer from Robin Siobhan on Vimeo GIFT Movie Synopsis 2015 The… Continue reading
How Mass Mosaic is adopting the Fair Shares model of peer property and governance
Excerpted from an interview of the Mass Mosaic Operations Chief Eric Doriean conducted by Anna Bergren Miller: * ABM: Let’s talk about the transition to FairShares. First, why shift to a different ownership model? ED: Many years ago, I read a book called When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten. It opened my eyes… Continue reading
Blockchained: A conversation with Vinay Gupta
topics: 1:00 “The Republicans were right” 3:50 Homelessness 4:30 Ethereum launch: programming the blockchain 5:55 Smart contracts 8:40 What does Ethereum do, who will use it? 9:25 Augur: A prediction market 11:14 Providence: supply chain tracking of goods 11:50 Mycelia: The Blockchain & transforming music : Imogen Heap 13:40 Which areas of Ethereum are seeing… Continue reading
Inclusive Capitalism won’t work and is a dangerous illusion
“The problem is that these solutions don’t work. They may improve the lives of a few people in the short run, but they do nothing to tackle the broad systemic problems that need to be solved. In the long run they may actually make things worse by deepening the reach of inherently divisive market forces…. Continue reading
DIYsect is a documentary web-series on DIY Biology and Bioart
“DIYSECT (pronounced like “dissect”) focuses on DIY Biology and the Biology-Art intersection. In Summer 2013, we traveled across the United States and Canada to film biohackers, bioartists, synthetic biologists, writers, and curators on this growing phenomenon of “biotinkering” on the non-institutional level. Our goal is to raise questions and discuss the way biotechnology is changing our… Continue reading
Spanda Essays on Systemic Change – On the role of Platform Based Peer Production and the Commons in the dynamics of Innovation
By Simone Cicero This post is extracted from Spanda Journal Vol. VI, 1, 2015 Systemic Change available here, published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Generic. Big thanks to Helene Finidori for the amazing editorial work. Spanda Journal is a series of essays on the theory and practice of collective intelligence and transformative action, from a systemic dynamic… Continue reading
Skoros, the ‘give what you can, take what you need’ store in Exarchia, Athens
Strongly recommended by our Athens correspondent, Penhy Travlou: “This is a collaborative ethnographic film about Skoros, an anti-consumerist collective in Exarcheia, Athens, that run a space where people could come and give, take, or give and take goods and services without any norms of reciprocity. Soon after came the Greek “Crisis”, a new kind of… Continue reading
The Ecological Plan C for Greece
Excerpted from Olivier Tickell: “While its important for Greece to get the money side of things sorted out, what really matters in the long term is getting its ecology right too. To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville: “It’s the ecology, stupid!” And rather than using ‘bailout’ funds to move money around the banking… Continue reading
How To Scale P2P, Sustainability and Social Economy Innovations ?
“We have collected a range of analytical and descriptive understandings of how ideas and practices get scaled”. I see a huge number of innovations passing over my desk nearly every day, and yet, precious few of them spread or scale so that they can have a real impact. Why do we have a open source… Continue reading
Debating Common Wealth Trusts (2): Towards a biodiversity of ownership models
One age builds upon the last. We do not go back, but carry forward the former ages in new ways. In the industrial age, we industrialized agriculture. In the age of finance, we financialized industry. As we move into a more ecologically sensitive era, we will need to ecologize finance. And we will need to… Continue reading
The Urban Co-operative Farm in Helsinki
“The Urban Co-operative Farm concept originated with the idea that participants each get an area of a farm the size of a normal allotment, with a professional grower (whom we call a Personal Farmer) looking after it. The Personal Farmer cultivates your piece of the farm and keeps you up to date with what is… Continue reading
100 Women who are co-creating the P2P Society – Andrianna Natsoulas on Food Sovereingty
Continuing our series on P2P women, we present Andrianna Natsoulas’ interview with Michel Bauwens. Q: You are mostly known for your work around food sovereignty, can you tell us a bit of personal history and how you decided to get engaged on that issue; then, how do think your work is related to the concept of… Continue reading
The anti-democratic and anti-social design foundations of the Euro
“This was not a mistake; this was not something that they tried to avoid. It is what they wanted to happen, a crisis that would cause a realignment of political power and the end of the European welfare state.” Excerpted from an interview with Greg Palast: “Mundell, who taught at Columbia University, won the Nobel… Continue reading