Imagine a social media platform that required a donation for every post. You can like, thumb up, share, or retweet as often as you want. However, the platform deducts a minimum donation from your account and disperses it to the organization featured in your post. This is the idea behind investment clubs. Individual members tout… Continue reading
Our colleague Guido Smorto who, among many other collaborations, gave a fascinating short talk at the Co-op/Commons convergence event we co-organised at the end of last year, has written this article about regulation issues in Platform Cooperativism. Originally published at the CCCBLab blog. Guido Smorto: “Platform cooperativism” has become the most successful term used in… Continue reading
Among those trying to build a new economy, there is growing interest in developing online maps as tools for helping people understand and engage with the rich possibilities. One of the earliest such maps was TransforMap, a project with origins in Austria and Germany that is using OpenStreetMap as a platform for helping people identify and… Continue reading
The Autonomy Institute is a new research platform launching in June 2017 for the purpose of rethinking work in our societies. It is a theoretical, political, and economic project. Below you may find a brief description: “Our aim is to promote real freedom, equality and human flourishing. We are a team of researchers from various… Continue reading
Terry Bouricius, writing for Co-op Water Cooler questions the prevalence of elections in democratic worker ownership. Terry Bouricius: All large cooperative and membership organizations (nonprofits, worker-owned enterprises, etc.) that seek to govern themselves democratically face a perennial problem. How can an organization maintain member interest in matters of organizational governance year after year, and avoid… Continue reading
There’s nothing resembling a “sharing economy” in an Uber interaction. You pay a corporation to send a driver to you, and it pays that driver a variable weekly wage. Sharing can really only refer to one of three occurrences. It can mean giving something away as a gift, like: “Here, take some of my food.”… Continue reading
http://empowerradio.net/podcasts/allthingsconnected_041217_danielwahl.mp3 This podcast conversation with our frequent contributor Daniel Wahl was originally posted in Empower Radio. From the notes to the podcast “Things have got to change!” How many times have you heard that phrase? Well, the world and humanity are changing. As we awaken and become conscious citizens, how can we co-create innovative change,… Continue reading
Goofy but informative video about Community Land Trusts produced by CLT Associates. If you want a more in-depth look at their history and possibilities don’t miss our Community Land Trusts, Urban Land Reform and the Commons special report, authored by Pat Conaty and Mike Lewis. From the notes to the video CLTs (Community Land Trusts)… Continue reading
“We’re living in extraordinary times that demand brave and creative solutions. If we’re able to imagine a different city, we’ll have the power to transform it.” – Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona. Excellent assessment of Barcelona en Comú’s first 20 months in power. It was written by Bertie Russel and Oscar Reyes and originally published… Continue reading
Everything is a coming of age short set in El Paso that tells the story of Sinai, a young woman faced with a life changing decision. “Everything” is an interesting public domain film project. They are currently running a crowdfunding campaign, check it out here. About Established in 2016, Unkut is a nonprofit production company designing… Continue reading
As part of our series on the 100 Women Who Are Co-Creating the P2P Society, I interviewed Spanish economist Susana Martín Belmonte on her work on monetary reform, commons-oriented P2P systems and future economies. Susana, tell us about your background, how did you end up being an activist working on financial reform and P2P/Commons Dynamics? After becoming… Continue reading
Pestilence is not a new phenomenon. Since humans began agriculture millennia ago, they have fought insects and other species over edible plants. Biodiversity is not a new idea. Humans were advocating for biological diversity decades ago. Hivos, and advocacy and development organization, combined these concepts in its Open Source Seed Programme. They were not the… Continue reading
A summary of last February’s Open 2017 conference, originally posted at Sharing is Caring: Platform cooperatives combine a technology platform with cooperative ownership. First described by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider, this approach appeals both to traditional coops looking to go digital, and startups trying to build a fairer world. For some, it’s a natural response to the co-option… Continue reading
Uber, the controversial corporate employer masquerading as a “ride-sharing” service, has recently stirred up more controversy with new revelations about its Greyball program for circumventing enforcement of local taxicab monopolies. Greyball maintains a database of likely local government officials. This database is populated by users who frequently open and close the Uber app near government buildings,… Continue reading
Salvatore Iaconesi: Since their beginnings, digital arts have provided great impetus to the commons, driven in part by their irreverent resistance to the ideas of copyright and of intellectual property. Arts criticize existing codes of politics and culture – through surrealism, irony and other means – creating new imaginary orders. On the one hand they sense… Continue reading
This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Witkar” the first car-sharing program in the world. This plan was revolutionary and prophetic in many ways. His time far ahead, Witkar was finally stopped. Not just the idea of car sharing was inspiring, also the way Witkar is organised was visionary: Witkar was, and still is,… Continue reading