Introduction text by Sharon Ede: Michel Bauwens, Mark Pesce and Ellie Rennie at the Blockchain event held in Adelaide, 21 October. Mark provided a ‘plain English’ explanation of Blockchain and its possible applications, showing the audience how it works and why it’s a revolutionary method of ensuring trust. Michel took the audience on a journey… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2016"
Habibi.Works: An Intercultural Makerspace
Initiated by the German NGO Soup&Socks, Habibi.Works is a FabLab equipped with all the tools for people to unfold their potential and hone their abilities. It is a place to illustrate talent, gain new skills and build. What makes this place truly unique, however, is that most of the inventors come from Syria, Iraq and… Continue reading
#BuyTwitter? German newspaper Taz has been there, done that.
Users want to unite as a cooperative and buy Twitter. This is exactly what saved the German newspaper Taz 25 years ago – and has kept it in good shape to this day. By Thomas Doennebrink #WeAreTwitter and #BuyTwitter are the hashtags of the recently-started internet campaign to buy Twitter, the online service that has… Continue reading
A Commons Approach to the Challenges of Our Time
Cat Johnson: “When faced with the massive crises of our time, the most logical response is paralysis. What can an individual possibly do about something so massive and complex?” This was the question posed recently by David Bollier, a policy strategist, activist, and a leading voice in the commons movement. In an effort to find… Continue reading
Team Human 7: Marina Gorbis at PDF2016
http://teamhuman.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/TH-07-Marina-Gorbis.mp3 Today’s Team Human was recorded live on the floor of the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum, where we caught up with Marina Gorbis, executive director to the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Marina joins Team Human to help us see how a utilitarian value set has been embedded into our society and its technologies. Together… Continue reading
New Report Highlights Fast Growth of Participatory Budgeting
Cat Johnson: In 2014, Shareable profiled 15 participatory budgeting (PB) projects that put financial decision making into the hands of communities. At the time, there were an estimated 1,500 PB programs around the world. In the two years since, PB has skyrocketed in popularity with an estimated 3,000 projects worldwide. At its essence, PB is a democratic… Continue reading
Osh-ki-bi-ma-di-zeeg: A New Political Revolution in America
The Decline of America American society is increasingly made up of people who’ve been conditioned through 2-3 + generations of fear, media framing, and corporate/bureaucratic caste system manipulation. Practically every avenue and direction either beats people down, or herds them into cubicles, or fenced-in fake and winding road communities. Worse yet, many more are lost… Continue reading
Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking: How the Internet Should Work
I’m pleased to introduce Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking as a free digital book, and to invite public and private feedback on its further development. For years, I’ve been looking beyond the technical and economic limits which we’ve developed during our fast few decades of personal computing and digital networking. I’ve looked at co-creative potentials envisioned… Continue reading
Seeing Wetiko: Agriculture: Soil, Seeds and Sanity
By Steven Farrell and Tom Newmark: How much longer do you hope to live? How long do you hope your children or grandchildren will live? Do you think you or your loved ones will live 60 more years? If so, you’ll be around to witness the end of food production on the planet. Unless, that… Continue reading
Values and Ownership
In the story of co-operative enterprises worldwide, there can be a powerful alignment between the ‘hard side’ of business structure and ownership, and the ‘soft side’ of business values and culture. There are 1.6 million co-operative enterprises worldwide, linked in theory under a common statement of identity and set of values. In the book Values,… Continue reading
First Meeting of the European Commons Assembly, November 15 to 17, 2016 in Brussels
We’re very happy to share this first version of the program for the upcoming ECA meeting in Brussels. Meanwhile, please check out our website for more information, join our Loomio group, and sign up for the mailing list by sending an email to [email protected]. Most importantly, you can still contribute to the co-creation of the… Continue reading
Patterns of Commoning: Eight Design Principles for Successful Commons
One of the great achievement of the late Professor Elinor Ostrom was the identification of eight key design principles for successful commons, which were set forth in her book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990). There have been elaborations and suggested modifications to these rules, but they remain a landmark… Continue reading
Open Source Business Models for Circular Economy Video Series (5)
VIDEO 5 – Square 2: Enabled Actions & Roles From a Video Series about ‘Open Source Business Models for Circular Economy’ – produced for the Open Source Circular Economy Days (OSCEdays). See our original post on Open Source Circular Economy Days for the complete set of resources: tool downloads, explanations, videos, script, links. Enabled Actions… Continue reading
The best smartphone is the one you already own
It’s time we technology consumers began demanding something different from our manufacturers: longevity. That’s a big ask. Even when our phones don’t wear out, they are nonetheless obsolesced by OS upgrades and network changes that seem designed to do little more than force new hardware purchases. Now that Apple has disappointed early adopters with a… Continue reading
#WeAreTwitter
There is a campaign happening right now to #BuyTwitter, which is up for sale, and transform it into a user-owned cooperative. The organizers are bringing together fellow Twitter users to try and make a fair deal, and to: Reward the creators Empower the users Innovate through co-ownership Skeptical? Worried that trolls will ruin it? Fear… Continue reading
Iniciativa Comunales – a Spanish initiative to secure the Commons
IniciativaComunales.org (the site is in Spanish) Iniciativa Comunales is a group working to bring the commons in Spain back under local control, where users steward and protect it. Here is their declaration of intent: The Valdeavellano de Tera Declaration on the Recognition and defense of the Commons and ICCAs in Spain We, the undersigned,… Continue reading