By Panayotis Antoniadis, Nethood: The refugee crisis has revealed the limitations of the telecommunications market to offer internet connectivity to people in need. As is often the case when the market fails, citizen organisations have stepped in. Freifunk.net, one of the most successful such community networks, has come to fill the gap and provide vital… Continue reading
TRANSGOB is a research project which addresses the impact of the economic crisis on the forms of urban governance in Spain, contrasting the experience of our country with that of the United Kingdom. Full title: “TRANSGOB: Transformations of Urban Governance in the Context of the Crisis. Evolution and prospects for participative governance in Spain and… Continue reading
The European Union proposed one of the worst copyright laws in the world [1]. European copyright law dates from 2001 (before the smartphones, the social media explosion, youtube…) so yes, it urgently needs to be updated. Yet, the proposal put forward by the European Commission is not even close to be focused on update the… Continue reading
‘Fail’, because failing is obviously relative. By now, there is no real doubt that blockchains deliver on their technological promise: tamper-proof distributed permissionless ledgers. But they may very well fail to deliver on their promise as a new shiny class of peer-to-peer technology disintermediating all those pesky central authorities into oblivion. 1. Poor usability for… Continue reading
VIDEO 9 – Square 6: ‘Value Extraction (Money Income Sources)’ 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. (6)… Continue reading
This is the second part of an article by Robert Herian which was originally published at Critical Legal Thinking: “Under the aegis of a feverish entrepreneurial spiritualism and redoubled post-crisis capitalism of the fourth industrial age, the radical transparency and openness once promised by blockchain is in retreat. We are witnessing blockchain-as-enclosure; enclosure through the… Continue reading
Originally published by Bonnie McArthur.
An update on this important event: “There are now less than one week to go until the first meeting of our commencing European Commons Assembly process! Since there have been many people getting involved over the past weeks and months, it’s good to share some words on the background and process until now so that… Continue reading
VIDEO 8 – Square 5: ‘Channels For Exchange’ 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. Introduction to the… Continue reading
HEARING OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND THE ROLE OF FEDERAL REGULATORS October 23, 2008 Henry Waxman Let me interrupt you, because we do have a limited amount of time. But you said in your statement that you delivered, the whole intellectual edifice of modern risk management collapsed. You… Continue reading
This is the first part of an article by Robert Herian which was originally published at Critical Legal Thinking: “A critical turn is needed in discussions of blockchain — the tech that underpins the virtual currency bitcoin – especially with respect to it as a phenomenon of the so-called fourth industrial age.1 Many have been… Continue reading
“More than 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, global urbanisation keeps accelerating. United Nations projections indicate that 75% of the human population will be living in cities by 2050. Newly created cities and the urbanisation process in rural areas replicates a lifestyle based on consumerism and the linear economy, causing destructive social and economic impact,… Continue reading
A paper by Primavera De Filippi and Benjamin Loveluck. Originally published here. Photo by zcopley
This is an important essay which in many ways is convergent with the approach of the P2P Foundation. The authors’ concept of the ReMaker society acknowledges that a key issue is that peer production has the radical potential of drastically lowering the cost of complex social organization, and agree with us that this needs to… Continue reading
An interview conducted by Alexandra Groome and Griffin Klement. Originally published at Regeneration International: “Abdellah Boudhira, a third-generation farmer in Morocco, has experienced first-hand the downside of conventional farming. Boudhira watched his family farm suffer for decades under the false promises of higher yields, combined with the high costs of chemical inputs like synthetic fertilizers… Continue reading
Because they are often developed and shared through extensive Campesino a Campesino (farmer-to-farmer) social networks, peasant-based agroecological approaches are an integral part of many agrarian struggles for land and market reforms… For them, agroecology is… a science, a practice and a movement. The following article presents the Latin American and other Global South farmer’s movement… Continue reading