It’s great to see our friends at Sensorica get an opportunity to experiment their open value accounting system with a research grant, here at the details: “The Block Chain Access project is funded by IRAP-CNRC (Canadian National Research Council). This small feasibility study aims to explore how block chain technology applies to access management for… Continue reading
Image By Guillaume Paumier, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15268041 French translation available below Commons Space, World Social Forum, Montreal 2016 We invite you to participate in the Commons Space which will be hosted at the the World Social Forum 2016 taking place from the 9th to the 14th of August in Montreal. This is a space… Continue reading
In our highly connected world of cell phones, ever expanding inboxes and regular social media updates, it is easy to be constantly immersed in the rich and dynamic worlds created by our technologies. While the internet gives us so much, it also changes our social relationships and mental environment in many subtle ways that can… Continue reading
Video exploring peer cooperativism, collaborative economy, feminist economy & social and solidarity economy, with Derek Razo, Felix Weth, Hillary Wainwright and Maria Cristina Carrasco. Note: All Procomuns videos feature simultaneous translation, please switch from left to right channels to change languages. This plenary was filmed at PROCOMUNS, a 3 day event which was held in Barcelona in… Continue reading
The basic income is attractive: it’s individually empowering, it crosses ideological borders, it’s a technocrat’s dream… but it would have terrible social and moral consequences: xenophobia, inequality, and a rise in the power of Big Businesses. Photo: “We don’t worship work: basic income” A few days ago, Yanis Varoufakis defended the idea of a universal… Continue reading
Mesh networking to build local community networks is being experimented with in many places. Here is the example of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Quoting from the article… While paying for services to correspond with others over long distances might make sense, modern technology gives us better and more affordable options for communicating with those close to us. If you have wireless… Continue reading
One of the most insidious things about enclosures is how they eradicate the culture of the commons and our memory of it. The old ways of doing things; the social practices that once bound a people together; the cultural traditions that anchored people to a landscape; the ethical norms that provided a stable identity —… Continue reading
Dahlia Wasfi describes the devastating consequences of the U.S.-imposed post-invasion destruction of the seed commons in Iraq. From the notes to the video: Having spent her early childhood in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and having returned twice to Iraq since the U.S. invasion, Dr. Wasfi has a first hand understanding of the invasions devastating repercussions…. Continue reading
From clothing to housing, design touches every aspect of our life. But as our world grows more connected, the role of designers is changing. In a recent conference in Amsterdam, Design & the City, designers explored a new sense of professional identity. An emerging focus for designers is to redesign relationships among individuals, groups, and… Continue reading
“Sharing is not an opposite of ownership nor a panacea. But we can make use of existing resources rather than create everything we need, sharing our knowledge and skills and getting inspiration. And through the dialogues inevitably occurred during the process, we can restore community spirits that have been forgotten for a while.” * eBook:… Continue reading
I am a pretty assiduous digital commoner, for what it’s worth. I almost exclusively use free/libre/open-source software (hereafter FLOSS), evangelistically so. I try to practice open journalism. I’ve run and developed business models for organizations devoted to producing Creative Commons content. I believe that property is theft, ultimately, and I hold the ancient doctrine of… Continue reading
The problem with blockchain is in its design: dependence on mining, an industrial activity based on the availability of infrastructure, puts any blockchain product in the custody of whoever manages to attract large-scale capital. A year ago, when we proposed an ideological map of the movements emerging on the Internet, we laid out two axes:… Continue reading
It … proceeds from a perspective that already presumes a neoliberal subject and an economic mode of governance in the face of social and/or political problems. ‘How do we manage and incentivise individual competitive economic agents?’ In doing so, it not only codes for that subject, we might argue that it also reproduces that subject…. Continue reading
Video exploring the current situation at the level of the City Councils, Generalitat, Central Administration and European Commission. What are the different roles of the administrations? A debate about the most appropriate models of collaborative economy to be promoted from the administrations, with Mara Ballestrini, Carolyn Hassan, David Hammerstein, Adrián Todolí and Ivana Pais. Note:… Continue reading
When I lived in Kenya, my friend, Kamau, needed to raise funds to purchase the storefront where he operated his grocery business. Even with a distant relative in the local bank, he could only borrow half the funds he needed. I offered to help some, but my contribution wouldn’t come close to covering the other half…. Continue reading
“The rule of law maximizes injustice. The rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people. We ought to begin to recognize this. What we are trying to do is to get back to the principles, the aims and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This spirit is resistance to… Continue reading