Here’s a fascinating sign that commoning is growing as a social and political form: new histories are being written to trace its recent evolution! The latest example is a new book released by The Institute for Political Ecology in Zagreb, Croatia, has recently published Commons in South East Europe: Case of Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Macedonia. (PDF file)… Continue reading
Propaganda used to mean getting people to believe stuff. Now it means getting them to question what they believe or whether there’s any truth at all. However disorienting this is, it may not be all bad. The term “propaganda” originally referred to a 17th-century committee of Roman Catholic cardinals that sought to propagate the religion… Continue reading
The OD&M project has participated to the 83rd Florence International Handycraft Fair with the exhibition of the prototypes realized by the students of the course Design Driven Strategies for Manufacture 4.0 and social innovation. Students have been working in teams in response to 2 main challenges – new services in remote areas and sustainable and citizens-centered urban regeneration -, exploring… Continue reading
BY PhD. Paweł Buchwald | WSB UNIVERSITY The development of cheap single-board programmable systems in the recent period, has significantly facilitated the prototyping of electronic circuits. One of the first open electronic platforms was the Arduino. This hardware platform is compatible with open programming systems. The Arduino platform was based on a simple design and… Continue reading
At the Open Coop conference in London I interviewed Maru Bautista, Director of the Cooperative Development Program at the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn, New York. For the past 5 years, she has worked with her team and the Sunset Park community to strengthen immigrant-led worker cooperatives in New York City. She oversees all… Continue reading
BY GIUSEPPE LOTTI , UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE AND LAURA MARTELLONI, AGENZIA LAMA On November 30th the Italian OD&M course “Design Driven Strategies” began. The course is organized by the faculty of Architecture and Design University of Florence together with CSM – Centro Sperimentale del Mobile – a consortium association of companies operating in the furniture… Continue reading
Jeremy Lent: We need to rein in the destructive power of corporations and billionaires before it’s too late. These five ideas would do that, while leaving global capitalism intact. Ultimately, only a complete transformation of our economic system will save our future, but these proposals could set changes in motion that might eventually take us… Continue reading
When things are messy and unclear, most of us tend to want to tidy up. I of all people love to create structure and find it hard to resist the urge to organize everything around me. Could it ever make sense to purposefully maintain a status of chaos? One of the lessons that I have… Continue reading
The Next Billion Seconds (AUS) – Episode 8: CRYPTOPIA Fanatical belief in cryptocurrencies lead to the perfect becoming the enemy of the good. Michel Bauwens takes us on a tour of what’s good. The future of tech: the next billion seconds are the most important in human history as technology transforms the way we live… Continue reading
This book offers a compelling narrative for change – that we want to be free and creative people, governing ourselves through fair, accountable institutions, and experiencing the aliveness of authentic human presence. Free, fair, and alive! Click here to download the German edition. The forthcoming English edition will be available in September 2019. Video reposted… Continue reading
This report examines what’s causing commercial rents to skyrocket and explores six broad policy strategies that elected officials and community leaders are proposing to address it. Report: Affordable Space. How Rising Commercial Rents Are Threatening Independent Businesses, and What Cities Are Doing About It. By Olivia LaVecchia and Stacy Mitchell. Institute for Local Self-Reliance, April… Continue reading
BY RAÚL TABARÉS GUTIÉRREZ , FUNDACIÓN TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION During the last years we have witnessed a popularization of the maker movement. This phenomenon has arisen on a global scale due to the emergence of what is known as open hardware, which has allowed the appearance of innovations with an open design and low cost. The great development… Continue reading
This article by Bill Baue and Ralph Thurm is part 8 of the Reporting 3.0 series that highlights the ‘burning questions’ of Boards and Sustainability Professionals why we need Reporting 3.0 and what it aims to deliver with its Blueprints on Reporting, Accounting, Data and Integral Business Model Design. Reposted from Medium.com What’s the issue?… Continue reading
This Friday marks a special date for me – the release of the German version of my new book with Silke Helfrich — Frei, Fair und Lebendig: Die Macht der Commons — published by transcript Verlag. The English version — Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons – will be published in… Continue reading
Ever since about 1790, economic philosophers have puzzled over a question: “What are we going to do with all the surplus labor when machines do all the work?” Filmed by Jonathan Hiller: HillerVisual.com CharlesEisenstein.org
Originally published on thenextsystem.org This week we are talking about deepening democracy in our communities through participatory budgeting and participatory decision making more broadly. We’re joined by three great guests: Shari Davis of the Participatory Budgeting Project, Lorian Ngarambe of the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative, and Yale University Ph.D. student Alexander Kolokotronis. Adam Simpson: Welcome to… Continue reading