An interview between these two thinkers where they discuss finance, value, business and the Commons including a historical perspective. What follows is a list of items covered during the discussion.

00:00 Douglas Rushkoff
1:52 Michel Bauwens
3:13 Michel asks Doug about the evolution of society and guilds.
4:09 Guilds: “the wheels of commerce”, Fernand Braudel’s books on capitalism and civilization.
4:50 After the Crusades, late middle age, trade guilds emerged, economy, work
7:30 Aristocracy got crushed by p2p economy so broke up guilds and local currencies – chartered monopolies
8:20 Michel talks about what might be contemporary versions of guilds – Enspiral, Sensorica,
10:34 How can we create value sovereignty? Open value accounting
11:50 Open Coops, Cap return,
14:47 Douglas: How to get buy in to these new kinds of company form – freelance union
16:10 Michel: Smart – Belgian payment service – http://smartbe.be/ – mutualizing – alternatives
18:30 Douglas: Mutualism.
23:00 Developing sustainable businesses: example : Acre – Open farm toolkits –http://www.poc21.cc/aker-2/ one of 12 projects at POC innovation camp http://www.poc21.cc/
24:57 Netarchical capitalism http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Netarchical_Capitalism , Platform cooperativism – http://platformcoop.net/ , Can existing companies change?
26:30 Borrowing instead of buying
27:50 Flexible versus brittle in highly financialized landscape.
29:40 Open Accounting – Sensorica – transvestment – http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Transvestment
30:30 Derivative markets led to amplification of capital, local currencies will end up more stable then central currencies
31:42 Madison mapping summit – mutual aid network –
34:13 Asking Doug how he applies P2P to government and governance? (direct democracy, Loomio)
35:50 P2P form of democracy – cities, city states and nation states
37:00 We live in the spectacle of a democracy, trans-nationality, trans-local, guilds to counter global corporations
40:28 Currency + nationality. National economies, federal banks, fiscal policy.
42:10 Crypto and LETS, critique on using blockchain
44:27 DAO – we need ethical, sustainable forms not more rent extraction schemes, legacy advantage
46:46 Platform Cooperitivism – {Doug}
50:00 Distributed ownership
51:30 Open Coops {Michel} – coop as distributed capitalism not good enough, actively creating common goods, Fairshare

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Interview with executive director of betaNYC discussing civic technology past and present in NYC

0:14 – Introductions Noel Hidalgo – executive director beta.NYC
1:16 – How Noel became an open data advocate / his history
2:00 – beginnings of NYC civic hacker community
3:21 – Haley Cooper Rider – meet up based around question of what is open government ?
3:58 – Open NYC Meetup becomes Open NY Forum
4:28 – Kind of people getting involved
5:15 – Rebranded as Beta.NYC – betanyc.us/
5:24 – Beta NYC helped create city’s open data law
6:00 – BetaNYC – joins Code for America – Brigade Program – discussion covers BP
8:10 – Hurdles, challenges, wins
10:00 – Peoples roadmap for digital NYC
12:25 – City’s analytics officer redefines data as being human readable
13:37 – Tools developed by community getting most use/reuse
Data.beta.nyc
talk.beta.nyc – community
www.citygram.nyc/
15:58 – Citygram in the perspective of Everyblock, Fixmystreet, SeeClickFix types of services. 311 services.
18:50 – Data found at 2 repositories: data.beta.nyc + data.cityofnewyork.us
19:30 – Data advocacy program
21:10 – Teaching internal government to use civic tech platforms
22:10 – Community boards, land-use decisions, licensing and permitting
23:45 – NYC Civic Innovation Fellows Program – undergraduates taught civic tech, data and design and then embedded in community boards
25:15 – What are community boards?
26:35 – Do community boards have gender/age balance? Are new members voted in frequently?
29:00 – Manhattan recent call to change/redesign concept of community boards vs Brooklyn
30:25 – Are community boards the same model in different US cities?
32:57 – How are you funded?
34:02 – Final thoughts – influencers coming into civic tech. space in NYC. NYC BigApps bigapps.nyc/p/, co-working specifically for civic tech. activistis, civic hall – civichall.org/, center for social innovation – nyc.socialinnovation.org/, transition towards civic tech. entrepreneurs , data & society www.datasociety.net/

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topics:

1:00 “The Republicans were right”
3:50 Homelessness
4:30 Ethereum launch: programming the blockchain
5:55 Smart contracts
8:40 What does Ethereum do, who will use it?
9:25 Augur: A prediction market
11:14 Providence: supply chain tracking of goods
11:50 Mycelia: The Blockchain & transforming music : Imogen Heap
13:40 Which areas of Ethereum are seeing the most interest by outside parties? Bankers…
14:42 Blockchains are the 3rd wave of fundamental technology
15:54 Blockchain speed & scaling
17:14 Corporate forms (p2p & blockchains)
19:52 Government interest in the Blockchain and Ethereum?

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“A truly interesting article in Club of Amsterdam’s e-Journal, issue no 152 (Nov 2012), under the title of “One Minute before 12: Understanding the Global Model”, reports on a comprehensive and ‘complex model’ study titled “Effects of Political and Social Conditions; Demographics; Global Finance and Economy; Energy, Food and Fresh Water Production and Consumption; Environmental Effects”. Its subheading is a very stark reminder of what the article and the underlying study concludes; that we now are in “The Consequence Era”. The following quote describes what they mean by that:

“This is not some futuristic horror scenario; this is with us today now, and must be dealt with now, and not in some distant future. Now is the moment when we must carefully look at the mathematical evaluation of how all these factors will affect each other over time. We must set aside complacency as well as political or dogmatic belief, analyse the empirical evidence, and connect those critical dots. There is no more time for opinions, only for science and hard mathematical models, to under-stand the true reality. We must act accordingly.
[…]This realization must also constitute an invitation to world leaders, responsible decision makers, corporate heads and global thinkers to come together now, and to work on urgent solutions immediately, to preserve the continuation of human civili-zation in a sustainable, dignified and peaceful way.”

It continues to present a (what it calls) “Global Master Model”, one that intends to identify areas of concern and guide how we shall move forward. It comprises eight points:

1. Monetary and economic systems and their critical debt sustainability issues

2. Governmental/Political trends, conflicts, dogmatic and religious dynamics

3. Corporations and their behavior impacts under missing global regulations

4. Energy production, global energy economics, and critical conflicts

5. Interconnected Farmland, Food and Water factors and their sustainability

6. Environmental Impacts, pollution, weather and habitation consequences

7. Human overpopulation and its interconnected demographic behavior effects

8. Security; cyber-terror; terrorism as the emerging form of ‘political discourse’

My commentary to this very well presented article is not to dispute its findings. To the contrary, I neither can nor intend to dispute the facts it presents. But – and this is a serious ‘but’ – the idea that there will ever be an egalitarian world-government, or some other world-power that can, like John Rawls’ idea of “Justice as Fairness”, where (what he called) a ’veil of ignorance’ on behalf of the ruling elites, would eliminate their self-interests, putting this aside in favour of equal opportunities across the (global) board, is truly utopian.

Throughout history have dominant ideas been imposed with the help of hegemonistic forces, masking their ambitions in ‘good-for-all’ kind of terms. The one we currently ‘suffer’ from is the call for constant, eternal and global (economic) growth. Also this call supported itself on serious research and mathematical logic. People actually believed it to be the answer to everybody’s prayers. It however proved wrong, simply because some parameters where forgotten – or ignored. For instance was the actual objective, spelled ‘markets’, commonly confused with the more egalitarian-sounding term ‘people’. The architects of globalisation did mean all (foreign) markets – but only some (not foreign) people.
The fundamental problem is (and has always been) that it’s typically said that (quote) “There is no more time for opinions, only for science and hard mathematical models, to understand the true reality” (from the here quoted article’ One Minute before 12: Understanding the Global Model’)
But already Karl Popper – knighted five decades ago and dead since two – noted that science always struggles with what he called the problem of induction, meaning that certain assumptions must be made, and treated as ‘underlying facts’ when (scientific) truths are developed. So, when the assumptions changes, the truths must change too. Debating socio-economic developments, using hard economic mathematical methods, we must therefore take into account that that ‘black swan’ may once again appear, i.e. the one that 300 years ago overthrew the western assumption that all swans are white.

This was however also claimed in 1955 by anthropologist Melville Herskovits (one of the founders of the concept of cultural relativism) who wrote that ‘given the premises, the logic is inescapable’. It has never been harder to prove him wrong than now.
Where does this take me? Well, just to be provocative enough to make my point: How do we know that we – in 50 years or so from now – will not praise what we today call terrorism as being the birth of the ecological revolution – where people finally took up arms against the ever-hegemonic state – a state that obviously failed to see, or ignored, the plight of its people? Only by finally using the single thing the individual ‘has’ that the state ultimately cannot control – the self – could people overthrow the hegemonic structure of the state that proved itself totally unwilling to deal with the core questions that this (and other) article raises.

All drastic changes have initially been seen as disturbances or, as in this case, a true evil. Only time will tell how those disturbances and/or evils will develop. Some will be forgotten, some will be banished by history as just that, while other may develop into something we in the future will consider beneficial. Like the French Revolution. Hence, to assume that “an invitation to world leaders, responsible decision makers, corporate heads and global thinkers to come together now, and to work on urgent solutions immediately, to preserve the continuation of human civilization in a sustain-able, dignified and peaceful way” would be the way forward is actually very limiting. We must realize that these people are much more a part of the problem than a part of the solution. The reason for this is called vested interests.

As of today we may not have a better structure to offer than the Westphalian state. But before Westphalia did most societies live with a totally different reality. This was not only the case outside Europe, but also for most Europeans. So why do we believe that, just because Europeans invented and exported this structure 3-400 years ago – arms in hand, and at the expense of almost all other governing structures around the globe – it cannot change once again? Who knows, is 400 years perhaps the end of the lifecycle for just about any socio-political model? Actually, our state- / capital-centric model probably need to change or most of the problems the quoted article raises will remain till the end of times – which according to that article could be very soon!

I am not a revolutionary. And I do not support ‘terrorism’. But just as all roads used to lead to Rome, do all clues today lead to the suspicion that the state is the culprit, or at least the smallest common denominator in today’s conflict-prone world. By ‘the state’ I refer to the vested interests that are channelled through a faceless machinery by non-committing bureaucrats, where the individual is reduced to a loyal voter and powerful groups, representing sectorial interests, use the political system to advance their cross-border interests. People are not in conflict with people across the globe; states are – as the best way for vested interests to advance their agenda is to be seen represented by the state. The race is on, and even Obama knows the perils of being squeezed between the voters, every 4th year, and the lobby that bankrolled his campaign – every day. The fiasco in Copenhagen 2009 was not because our elected leaders do not understand the issues or the urgency. But as mere puppets they have no space to act.

There are indeed many initiatives taken to get around this problem. The problem with those initiatives is that most of them make the assumption that the state must take the lead – or, as in many cases – that ‘a particular state’ must take the lead. But this is doomed to fail, since nobody is going to willingly cut the very branch he is sitting on.

A new wind is however blowing; the Commons. A third force, supplementing but not replacing both the public sector (based on the state) and the private sector (based on capital) – where peer-to-peer collaboration is at the core – is picking up speed. It may still take long before it can influence any other areas than what by media is typically called ‘culture’ (music, film, computer-code, etc), but some promising research is also being done in the political arena. How will the w.w.w. affect what Jürgen Habermas called the ‘public sphere? The reason why Habermas’ public sphere was important was that it identified the role of the people also beside their role as an electorate. In other words, Habermas recognised that ‘people’ have both the right and the desire to influence their elected politicians also in between elections. That is democracy.

So is for instance the small but progressive German university Leuphana University in Lueneburg conducting a research project on principles of democratic representation, titled: The Principle of Democratic Representation in a Globalising World: A Gap in the Governance Literature? From these kind of projects will hopefully – sooner rather than later – new and better models for local vs global (often called glocal) governance emerge, by which the kind of urgent issues the eminent article that this paper refers to can be both better and more effectively addressed.”

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““Quo Vadis?”. That is what most recently appointed Cabinet ministers in Europe, China, and the USA will ask themselves during the endless quarrels over money and budgets they have to attend. Where do we go from here?

Centuries of violent clashes between empires have passed, each trying to impose dominance of their own central rules, prejudices and belief systems at the expense of those of other nation states. In more recent decades we see a zig-zag movement of rulers and elites that expect ALL solutions, blessings and virtues from either “the State” (socialism) or “the Market” (capitalism). By zig-zagging I mean that successive governments have either a Leftwing or Rightwing mindset. And when that does not work they change direction towards the other extreme. In two-party countries like UK and the USA these are Labour / Democrats and Tories / Republican Party, respectively. In general “society” expects that ‘the State should do this or that’ (even young people in France say that) or the other extreme: that everything, even Health Care and the legal system “should work more efficiently in a competitive market situation”. And when the policy doesn’t turn out to WORK as expected (state ineffectiveness, market failures respectively) the tide turns and the the solution is sought by the opposite extreme: the government is changed and another mentally uniform political party is promising to solve everything. Unfortunately it turns out that neither one idealistic ruling doctrine can do everything best on behalf of its citizens. No more “isms” please!”

Read original post by Jaap van Til

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The Future of Retail: Park Slope Food Coop from Maaike Holvast on Vimeo.

A short portrait of the Park Slope Food Coop made by fim-maker Maaike Holvast as part of a research project on The Future of Retail. The video was commissioned by Out of Office who in their turn were asked to do this research by the Dutch province of Overijsel.

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republished via Experiencia:

“In this new RSA Animate, Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, explores the power of network visualisation to help navigate our complex modern world:

Network visualization has experienced a meteoric rise in the last decade, bringing together people from various fields and capturing the interest of individuals across the globe. As the practice continues to shed light on an incredible array of complex issues, it keeps drawing attention back onto itself.

In his talk (held in London on 8 Dec 2011), Lima explores a critical paradigm shift in various areas of knowledge, as we stop relying on hierarchical tree structures and turn instead to networks in order to properly map the inherent complexities of our modern world.”

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We need feedback. Reflection is essential.

We’re doing an end of year round of questions on checking with you on our mission and what we produce. Pretty please could you answer a few questions to let us know what you think. We will do a follow up post on reflecting on your answers. 2011 has been a tumultuous year of change. I won’t go into details as, well, it’s not the end of December yet.

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The work of P2P Foundation relies mostly on the goodwill of volunteers around the world who care about this effort. You can help us continue and improve this work by making a donation using the Flattr button below.

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Identity Bureau @ A New Day’s Work from A New Days Work on Vimeo.

Heath Bunting, is a British artist and hacktivist, based in Bristol, known for creating art provovations that challenge political norms. He’s still banned from traveling to the United States for his work on genetic engineering.

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