PhilosophyInsights: Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. He is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In this interview he talks about postmodernism, how it is an instrument of power and why academics embrace it. Photo by Truthout.org
Date archives "July 2017"
Podcast: Flatpack Democracy Architect Peter Macfadyen’s DIY Guide to Independent Politics
In this episode of Upstream we spoke with Peter Macfadyen, one of the architects behind Flatpack Democracy, a do-it-yourself guide to creating independent politics. Macfadyen is the former mayor of the small town of Frome in the U.K., which we explored in depth in our series on Frome. In many ways he is a legendary… Continue reading
Are You Ready To Accept That Capitalism Is the Real Problem?
Before you say no, take a moment to really ask yourself whether it’s the system that’s best suited to build our future society. Jason Hickel and Martin Kirk: In February, college sophomore Trevor Hill stood up during a televised town hall meeting in New York and posed a simple question to Nancy Pelosi, the leader… Continue reading
Errekaleor Bizirik Crowdfund: A Little Light In The Darkness
Click here to support this crowdfund, ending July 22, 2017! Errekaleor Bizirik Errekaleor Bizirik is a project based in Gasteiz that is founded on the ideals of self-determination and communal life. It is a neighborhood that we have reclaimed from gentrification and real estate speculation and is now called home by over 150 people. We… Continue reading
LaFabrika detodalavida – Revitalising a rural area
From cooperativecity: When the organisation LaFabrika detodalavida set itself to refurbish an abandoned industrial space in Spain’s disadvantaged Extremadura region, they launched a crowdfunding campaign with the help of the Goteo platform. The campaign reached the target of 6.000 euros, of which 2.630 euros were co-financed by the Regional Government of Extremadura through an agreement… Continue reading
A Toolkit for Community Shared Power
The centralized energy grid of today is moving towards a more decentralized architecture that distributes decision making to the grid edge, both technically and democratically. In the current system, physical power is centralized in power plants where energy is produced far away from where it is consumed. Economic power is centralized in the hands of… Continue reading
FairCoin activates the first Cooperative Blockchain
After two years of development and testing, Faircoin’s blockchain is ready to change its consensus algorithm from Proof of Stake (PoS) to Proof of Cooperation (PoC). The PoC protocol has been argued to present significant advantages, in relation to energy consumption and control by its community. The following post has been published by FairCoop on… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Libre-Currency for Sustainable Social Change
An article by Sybille Saint Girons and Carole Fabre, presented at the “IV International Conference on Social and Complementary Currencies: Money, Consciousness and Values for Social Change” in Barcelona. The article was originally published at Regles de Jeux. Abstract “Libre-currency proposes a self-issuance, or co-creation of units by the people of the monetary system for… Continue reading
Podcast: Cheyenna Weber on the History and Future of the Solidarity Economy
In this episode, we spoke with Cheyenna Weber, co-founder of Solidarity NYC and a lead organizer of the Cooperative Economics Alliance of NYC, or CEANYC. We talked with Weber about her work with SolidarityNYC and CEANYC and how these organizations support a growing solidarity economy in New York City and beyond. The conversation broadly explores the concept… Continue reading
Wikitoki – Sharing non-monetary resources
From cooperativecity.org: Wikitoki is a laboratory of co-creation and collaborative practices in Bilbao. Wikitoki experiments with new models of production and organisation giving an important role to non-monetary kinds of capital, such as time, knowledge, networks or contacts.
Make Medicines for People Not for Profit
This post was originally published on Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (uaem.wufoo.com) Towards an Agreement on Biomedical Research and Development for the Public Benefit: Academia’s Urgent Call to Action As members of the international academic and scientific community, we call upon the member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to negotiate a much overdue… Continue reading
The rule of the market in East-Central Europe is absolute (Interview)
It is no secret for any observer that democracy is under threat, and from within. The weakening of the labour movement has given free rein to authoritarian market forces, and nowhere is this as true as in Eastern Europe. Here’s a fabulously interesting interview on the new authoritarian regimes, mostly about Hungary, but it applies… Continue reading
Made Again Documentary — The ‘Silicon Valley of sustainability’ in Barcelona
This post by Tomas Diez was originally published on blog.fab.city This is a press release by Space10, our partners in organising the Made Again Challenge in Poblenou — Barcelona during the summer in 2016. We brought IKEA designers, local and international makers, to prototype in 5 days how we could redesign material flows at the neighbourhood scale…. Continue reading
A visit to a urban commons in Ghent: the NEST experiment
This spring, in preparation of the crafting of the Commons Transition Plan for the city of Ghent, we mapped out nearly 500 urban commons that are commoning the infrastructures that we need for a social-ecological transition. One of the things that the city does well is using temporary empty space for collective use, and one… Continue reading
How a Cooperative in Indonesia is Bridging the Digital Divide
Written by Nithin Coca and cross-posted from Shareable Indonesia is one of the world’s hottest and fastest growing digital markets. “With around 90 million Internet users and more than 281 million active mobile phone subscriptions, we can anticipate the development of the digital ecosystem in Indonesia that will lead the growth,” Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo wrote in “Strategic… Continue reading
Homes by people
A public service broadcast by WikiHouseUK on Britain’s housing crisis, offering one key idea for reinventing our housing systems in the 21st century. WikiHouse Foundation is a non-profit registered in the UK, please donate to support us at http://www.wikihouse.cc/support/ @WikiHouseUK Supported by Wikihouse Foundation http://www.wikihouse.cc Production by Dynamichrome http://www.dynamichrome.com