Commons Transition presents this report in two volumes by Céline Piques and Xavier Rizos, with the support of P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens. The Commons movement is facing a challenge: to articulate the optimum rate at which a resource can be harvested or used without damaging its ability to replenish itself. The next economy will… Continue reading
Why is software created using taxpayers’ money not released as Free Software? We want legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence. If it is public money, it should be public code as well. Code paid by the people should be available… Continue reading
Our forthcoming report Changing Societies through Urban Commons Transitions examines the re-emergence of the urban commons as both a bottom-up emergence by citizens/commoners and a radical municipal administrative configuration. Starting with an exploration of the relationship between cities and the commons, with a particular focus on the recent revival and growth of urban commons, we attempt… Continue reading
Migration and borders, municipalism and the commons are the axes of a Festival of art and politics that invites dialogue and participation In conjunction with the Madrid European Commons Assembly, part of the P2P Foundation team will be present at the TRANSEUROPA festival. Come join us! European Alternatives’ (EA) Biennial Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary… Continue reading
Alternative technological systems could develop through the confluence of digital commons, peer-to-peer relations and local manufacturing capacity – but we need the integration of a political ecology perspective to face and overcome the challenges this transition implies. Humans do not control modern technology: the technological system has colonized their imagination and it shapes their activities… Continue reading
This essay of mine appeared on September 21 at journal-e, published by the 21st Century Global Dynamics website, UC Santa Barbara. The rise of so many right-wing nationalist movements around the world—Brexit, Donald Trump, the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, anti-immigrant protests throughout Europe—have their own distinctive origins and contexts, to be sure. But in the aggregate, they… Continue reading
You’ll need to book travel and accommodation ASAP and submit it here to be reimbursed. The deadline for reimbursements is this Friday, 13th of October. For more information about the program, click here. In cooperation with the Transeuropa Festival and MediaLab Prado, the assembly features 4 days of workshops, visits to local commons initiatives, debates,… Continue reading
Reposted from Battle for the Net. What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers like Comcast & Verizon should not control what we see and do online. In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The rules… Continue reading
How to run a marathon when all you know is sprinting I had a phone call last night with a friend in Houston. They’re doing emergency relief work in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. In their words, West Street Recovery is: “a grassroots organization of people from diverse backgrounds, collaborating to leverage our skills and… Continue reading
A great article by Yochai Benkler, originally published at Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences: “If we are to preserve the democratic and creative promise of the Internet, we must continuously diagnose control points as they emerge and devise mechanisms of recreating diversity of constraint and degrees of freedom in… Continue reading
Martin Kirk is Co-founder and Strategy Director for The Rules. They work on challenging root causes of global poverty and inequality and climate change, but specifically through a narrative lens. They look a lot at psychology, cognitive linguistics, network theory, that sort of thing, to try and get into the deep narratives and deep logics and assumptions… Continue reading
If you’re coming to the commons for the first time, it can be difficult to grok the idea because there are so many different ways to understand the commons. That’s because the commons is not so much a fixed, universal thing as a general concept describing durable, dynamic sets of social relationships for managing resources… Continue reading
Mix Irving: Protozoa is a tech coop, and we write open source code. This is a little bit about what that means, and how open source is the foundation on which we’re building an aspirational future. I recently published a new feature for Patchbay — an open source project I maintain. It allows you to easily @-mention… Continue reading
Cross-posted from Shareable. Dirk Holemans: When Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation, started his research for the development of a “Commons Transition Plan” for the Flemish city of Ghent, he was overwhelmed by the sheer number of commons-oriented programs. In three months time, he discovered 500 initiatives. A remarkable figure, related to recent research indicating a… Continue reading
One of the key differences between private platforms (platform capitalism) and cooperative platforms (platform cooperatives) lies in how they are designed, by whom, and for whom. Indeed, technology and design, and all the invisible architectures that govern our lives and influence our choices and behaviour, are ‘value sensitive’. This point is very well argued and… Continue reading
Successes and failures in the use of digital tools in Catalonia’s rebellion The battle presently being fought in the streets and polling stations in towns and cities throughout Catalonia before, during and after October 1, in which a diverse civil society has come together in huge numbers, putting their bodies and knowledge in the service… Continue reading