Date archives "February 2017"

How Can We Redesign Cities as Shared Spaces?

Cat Johnson: At a time when corporate sponsorship and ownership of city spaces, buildings, and events continues to grow at lightning pace, it’s more important than ever to rethink our cities as shared entities that belong to all of us. In his recent speech at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, researcher, activist, and author David Bollier argued that… Continue reading

Essay of the Day: Thinking about Commons as a post-capitalist perspective for social work

A book chapter by Jef Peeters in “The Ecosocial Transition of Societies: The Contribution of Social Work and Social Policy” (2017): Abstract “An eco-social transformation of society should imply an answer to the crisis of the social welfare state, which comes under pressure from neoliberal recipes because of the downturn in economic growth: many services… Continue reading

Degrowth in Movements: Artivism

By John Jordan. Originally published on degrowth.de Injecting Imagination into Degrowth Labelled a ‘domestic extremist’ by the police and ‘a magician of rebellion’ by the press, John Jordan has spent the last 25 years merging art and activism. He has worked in various settings, from Tate Modern to squatted social centres, from international theatre festivals… Continue reading

Patterns of Commoning: Notable Urban Commons Around the World

Jannis Kühne: A wide variety of urban commons around the world are challenging the idea that people’s needs can only be met via city governments, urban planners and lawyers. Expertise matters, of course, but a growing number of urban commons is showing that it is not only possible but highly attractive to create commons through… Continue reading

For a truly decentralized energy-based cryptocurrency

Bitcoin: capitalism 2.0 Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency so far, was designed to provide: “(…) an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party”1 . This seemingly revolutionary capability, though, suffers from two specific… Continue reading

Why you should read “Ours to Hack and to Own”: the book in 24 powerful insights

The book “Ours to Hack and to Own: the rise of platform cooperativism, a new vision for the future of work and fairer Internet” edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider came off the presses a few months ago. You have to add to this the firsthand testimonial descriptions of twenty-five initiatives based on cooperative… Continue reading

Reason, creativity and freedom: the communalist model

Whether the twenty-first century will be the most radical of times or the most reactionary … will depend overwhelmingly upon the kind of social movement and program that social radicals create out of the theoretical, organizational, and political wealth that has accumulated during the past two centuries… The direction we select … may well determine… Continue reading

John Thang interviews Layne Hartsell on his work and new book

Originally published on medium.com Post-Truth: Matters of Fact and Matters of Concern—An Internet of Thinking Together (Global Digest, Seoul) John Thang (JT) Global Digest: Let’s go with your background and work, first. Tell about your work in Asia, 10 years right? Layne Hartsell (LH): Yes, and you and I have known each other for about… Continue reading

How do we mobilize today ? Charles Heckscher on Transient Solidarities

Charles Heckscher is a great scholar on the evolution of forms of cooperation within business entities, and on collective action with the labor movement. In this brilliant overview, “Transient Solidarities: commitment and collective action in post-industrial societies“, that starts with historical forms, he outlines the new forms of solidarity that are born within networked societies…. Continue reading

John McDonnell on enabling mass participation to create a democratic economy

By Oliver Sylvester-Bradley: In this mini video, the Rt Hon John McDonnell MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaks about Labour’s thoughts on enabling mass participation to create a democratic economy. We’ve never hear an UK MP speak so candidly about utilising online tools to enable mass participation in the democratic process and are very… Continue reading

On the perils of trustless systems

“On 20 July 2016, something happened that was arguably the most philosophically interesting event to take place in your lifetime or mine.” The above quote is undoudbtedly hyperbole if you’re not a geek, but nevertheless, last year’s conflict around Ethereum and The DAO, which punctured the anarcho-capitalist utopia of a trustless society, was a milestone… Continue reading

Life’s economy is primarily based on collaborative rather than competitive advantage

A holistic understanding of modern evolutionary biology suggests that life evolves by a process of diversification and subsequent integration of diversity through collaboration (John Stewart in BioSystems, 2014). As our focus shifts from individuals and individual species as the unit of survival to the collective of life—its complex dynamic interactions and relationships—we begin to see… Continue reading

Free trade vs free tech

The pursuit of freedom has been one of the fundamental elements of the western civilisation. A quest so pervasive that has expanded through almost every discipline and domain of human thought and practice, receiving a variety of interpretations. For freedom is an ambiguous word. It can be seen as freedom from something or freedom for… Continue reading

Peer To Peer: A New Opportunity For The Left

By Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis: Digital technologies allow for the creation of a new mode of production, a new mode of allocation, and new types of social relations beyond the state-market nexus. Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper… Continue reading

OSCEdays’ First Writers Weekend – Open Call For Participants

OSCEdays’ First Writers Weekend Open Call For Participants – A 2 day open collaborative online event dedicated to documenting circular economy solutions – (Forum Topic) Good documentation is key for decentralised collaboration and the collective set up of a sustainable circular economy. And good documentation needs its own time and attention. So OSCEdays starts a new and… Continue reading

Value in the Commons Economy

What is at the heart of the problems erupting worldwide? Is anything good emerging from these multiple crises? Can a new system grow from within the old one? Is it already here, visible and thriving? These questions are addressed by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros in this report, Value in the Commons Economy, co-published by… Continue reading