The Rules is a worldwide network of activists working to transform the politico-economic structure undergirding global inequality. The network, which actively supports individual social movements while operating as a think tank, advocates radical reform focused on five strategic areas: money, power, secrecy, ideas, and the commons. Last month, I spoke over Skype to The Rules founder… Continue reading
Large companies have long sought to boost profits by converting their employees into “independent contractors,” allowing them to avoid paying benefits. The rise of the “gig economy” – exemplified by digital platforms such as Uber and Airbnb – has only accelerated this trend. Business leaders like to celebrate the free agent, free market economy as… Continue reading
The following inquiry, by the University of Melbourne’s Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL), and in part inspired after a workshop attended by various members of the P2P Foundation network (Darren Sharp, Jose Ramos, Michel Bauwens), reports on a comparison between three models of the digital economy: proprietary, p2p exchange (sharing economy), and p2p commons (peer production)…. Continue reading
An article on Sarantaporo by Bezdomny: “The Area Around Mt. Olympus When the unMonastery visited Sarantaporo and the surrounding villages during the eponymous Symposium, it became clear that the overall population of the area of is in decline. There are very few children since many young families are moving to the cities for work. People… Continue reading
Co-authored by Katalin Hausel What if the hundreds, even thousands of existing local currency initiatives were interoperable? Could they constitute a global system of exchange and offer at least a partial alternative to a dominant parasitic financial system? What are the social and technical obstacles to scaling grassroots initiatives which grow out of local community… Continue reading
Prompting discussion on network democracy, new forms of citizen participation and digital commons in democratic Cities, the International Conference will showcase the success of the European D-CENT project and look at the future of digital democracy. An important announcement from our friends at D-CENT and Medialab-Prado. Hurry up as registration closes tomorrow. Democracy Lab: 23–27… Continue reading
The Cooperativa d’Autofinançament Social en Xarxa (CASX) – which means co-operative of social and network self-financing – is a savings, donations and project funding cooperative, which was set up with the purpose of providing funding for projects that are aligned with the principles of the CIC and the integral revolution, as “the deposits made to… Continue reading
The special issue “The Materiality of the Immaterial: ICTs and the Digital Commons” was recently published in the TripleC Journal. Edited by Andreas Roos, Vasilis Kostakis and Christos Giotitsas. “Today, two great signs of change are occurring. On the one hand, the capitalist world economy is putting tremendous pressure on the earth’s biosphere and bringing… Continue reading
Some of the country’s biggest financial institutions would still need public bailouts if they failed. But it’s not their size that’s the problem, it’s how they’re run. Throughout the 20th century, the chief legislative option in the United States for confronting monopolistic firms has been to break them up into pieces with antitrust law. Presidential… Continue reading
Excerpted from David Ronfeldt, this is a great overview of the evolution of the concept (which he pioneered) and the practice of creating Chambers of the Commons to promote an ethical economy which is generative to the commons. David insists that they should focus on the creation of network forms (N+) and not just alternative… Continue reading
If the p2p movement had a soundtrack, what would it be? Perhaps more importantly how would that soundtrack be licensed? Since I attended Mutek Montreal last year, I’ve been listening to electronic music. Their magazine features some videos, but I need tracks I can play on my tablet at work. I felt ecstatic when I… Continue reading
Stages in our deepening relationships with nature, excerpted from Tommy Lehe: “As we evolve we begin to identify with larger and larger systems, recognizing the nested nature of subsystems and the uncountable interconnections between them. Using the terminology from Reed, we can see this process of transforming identity (role & relationship) as a function of… Continue reading
Note: I published a shorter version of this in Nesta’s magazine The Long+Short as You Are the Robots. This is a modified and extended version, published under Creative Commons A banker in 1716 had two main tools: a ledger book and a quill pen. A customer – perhaps a prominent carpenter – would enter a… Continue reading
It is time to systematically dismantle this wealth hoarding system. Now that we know what it is and how it was built, we can tear it apart piece by piece and replace it with something better. Don’t miss the extraordinary graphic visualization and timeline below!! Joe Brewer explains how the extractive system today known as… Continue reading
Have you ever lived on a compound with a group of people? I’ve done it twice: once in the United States and once in Kenya. I found both experiences intense. It was great getting to really know the others. Yet no one is perfect and inside a compound people’s flaws are magnified. But as we… Continue reading
“Civilization is not just about saving labor but also about “wasting” labor to make art, to make beautiful things, to “waste” time playing, like sports.” Very interesting argument about the new type of civilizational progress made possible through universal networking, and why it does not show up in productivity statistics. Excerpted from Kevin Kelly: “(Robert)… Continue reading