Introduction

E.F. Schumacher’s seminal work Small Is Beautiful (1973) champions the idea of smallness and localism as the way for meaningful interactions amongst humans and the technology they use. Technology is very important after all. As Ursula Le Guin (2004) puts it, “[t]echnology is the active human interface with the material world”. With this essay we wish to briefly tell a story, inspired by this creed, of an emerging phenomenon that goes beyond the limitations of time and space and may produce a more socially viable and radically democratic life.

We want to cast a radical geographer’s eye over “cosmolocalism”. Antipode has previously published an article by Hannes Gerhardt (2019) and an interview with Michel Bauwens (Gerhardt 2020) that have touched upon “cosmolocalism”. Cosmolocalism emerges from technology initiatives that are small-scale and oriented towards addressing local problems, but simultaneously engage with globally asynchronous collaborative production through digital commoning. We thus connect such a discussion with two ongoing grassroots developments: first, a cosmolocal response to the coronavirus pandemic; and, second, an ongoing effort of French and Greek communities of small-scale farmers, activists and researchers to address their local needs.

Cosmolocalism in a Nutshell

Τhe most important means of information production – i.e. computation, communications, electronic storage and sensors – have been distributed in the population of most advanced economies as well as in parts of the emerging ones (Benkler 2006). People with access to networked computers self-organise, collaborate, and produce digital commons of knowledge, software, and design. Initiatives such as the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and myriad free and open-source software projects have exemplified digital commoning (Benkler 2006; Gerhardt 2019, 2020; Kostakis 2018).

While the first wave of digital commoning included open knowledge projects, the second wave has been moving towards open design and manufacturing (Kostakis et al. 2018). Contrary to the conventional industrial paradigm and its economies of scale, the convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing machinery (from 3D printing and CNC milling machines to low-tech tools and crafts) has been developing commons-based economies of scope (Kostakis et al. 2018). Cosmolocalism describes the processes where the design is developed and improved as a global digital commons, while the manufacturing takes place locally, often through shared infrastructures and with local biophysical conditions in check (Bauwens et al. 2019). The physical manufacturing arrangement for cosmolocalism includes makerspaces, which are small-scale community manufacturing facilities providing access to local manufacturing technologies.

Unlike large-scale industrial manufacturing, cosmolocalism emphasizes applications that are small-scale, decentralised, resilient and locally controlled. Cosmolocal production cases such as L’Atelier Paysan (agricultural tools), Open Bionics (robotic and bionic hands), WikiHouse (buildings) or RepRap (3D printers) demonstrate how a technology project can leverage the digital commons to engage the global community in its development.

Two Cases of Cosmolocalism

While this essay was being written in March 2020, a multitude of small distributed initiatives were being mobilised to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Individuals across the globe are coming together digitally to pool resources, design open source technological solutions for health problems, and fabricate them in local makerspaces and workshops. For example, people are experimenting with new ventilator designs and hacking existing ones, creating valves for ventilators which are out of stock, and designing and making face shields and respirators.

There are so many initiatives, in fact, that there are now attempts to aggregate and systematise the knowledge produced to avoid wasting resources on problems that have already been tackled and brainstorm new solutions collectively.[1] This unobstructed access to collaboration and co-creation allows thousands of engineers, makers, scientists and medical experts to offer their diverse insights and deliver a heretofore unseen volume of creative output. The necessary information and communication technologies were already available, but capitalism as a system did not facilitate the organisational structure required for such mass mobilisation. In response to the current crisis, an increasing number of people are working against and beyond the system.

Such initiatives can be considered as grassroots cosmolocal attempts to tackle the inability of the globalised capitalist arrangements for production and logistics to address any glitch in the system. We have been researching similar activity in various productive fields for a decade, from other medical applications, like 3D-printed prosthetic hands, to wind turbines and agricultural machines and tools (Giotitsas 2019; Kostakis et al. 2018).

The technology produced is unlike the equivalent market options or is entirely non-existent in the market. It is typically modular in design, versatile in materials, and as low-cost as possible to make reproduction easier (Kostakis 2019). Through our work we have identified a set of values present in the “technical codes” of such technology which can be distilled into the following themes: openness, sustainability and autonomy (Giotitsas 2019). It is these values that we believe lead to an alternative trajectory of technological development that assists the rise of a commons-based mode of production opposite the capitalist one. This “antipode” is made possible through the great capacity for collaboration and networking that its configuration offers.

Allow us to elaborate via an example. In the context of our research we have helped mobilise a pilot initiative in Greece that has been creating a community of farmers, designers and fabricators that helps address issues faced by the local farmers. This pilot, named Tzoumakers, has been greatly inspired by similar initiatives elsewhere, primarily by L’Atelier Paysan in France. The local community benefits from the technological prowess that the French community has achieved, which offers not only certain technological tools but also through them the commitment for regenerative agricultural practices, the communal utilisation of the tools, and an enhanced capacity to maintain and repair. At the same time, these tools are adapted to local needs and potential modifications along with local insights may be sent back to those that initially conceived them. This creates flows of knowledge and know-how but also ideas and values, whilst cultivating a sense of solidarity and conviviality.

Instead of Conclusions, a Call to Arms

We are not geographers. However, the implications of cosmolocalism for geography studies are evident. The spatial and cultural specificities of cosmolocalism need to be studied in depth. This type of study would go beyond critique and suggest a potentially unifying element for the various kindred visions that lack a structural element. The contributors (and readership) are ideally suited to the task of critically examining the cosmolocalism phenomenon and contributing to the idea of scaling-wide, in the context of an open and diverse network, instead of scaling-up.

Cosmolocal initiatives may form a global counter-power through commoning. Considering the current situation we find ourselves in as a species, where we have to haphazardly re-organise entire social structures to accommodate the appearance of a “mere” virus, not to mention climate change, it is blatantly obvious that radical change is required to tackle the massive hurdles to come. Cosmolocalism may point a way forward towards that change.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 802512). The photos were captured by Nicolas Garnier in the Tzoumakers makerspace.

Endnote

[1] Volunteers created the following editable webpage where, at the time of writing, more than 1,500 commons-based initiatives against the ongoing pandemic have been documented: https://airtable.com/shrPm5L5I76Djdu9B/tbl6pY6HtSZvSE6rJ/viwbIjyehBIoKYYt1?blocks=bipjdZOhKwkQnH1tV (last accessed 27 March 2020)

References

Bauwens M, Kostakis V and Pazaitis A (2019) Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London: University of Westminster Press

Benkler Y (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press

Gerhardt H (2019) Engaging the non-flat world: Anarchism and the promise of a post-capitalist collaborative commons. Antipode DOI:10.1111/anti.12554

Gerhardt H (2020) A commons-based peer to peer path to post-capitalism: An interview with Michel Bauwens. AntipodeOnline.org 19 February https://antipodeonline.org/2020/02/19/interview-with-michel-bauwens/ (last accessed 27 March 2020)

Giotitsas C (2019) Open Source Agriculture: Grassroots Technology in the Digital Era. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Kostakis V (2018) In defense of digital commoning. Organization 25(6):812-818

Kostakis V (2019) How to reap the benefits of the “digital revolution”? Modularity and the commons. Halduskultuur: The Estonian Journal of Administrative Culture and Digital Governance 20(1):4-19

Kostakis V, Latoufis K, Liarokapis M and Bauwens M (2018) The convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing from a degrowth perspective: Two illustrative cases. Journal of Cleaner Production 197(2):1684-1693

Le Guin U K (2004) A rant about “technology”. http://www.ursulakleguinarchive.com/Note-Technology.html (last accessed 27 March 2020)

Schumacher E F (1973) Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row

The post Small and local are not only beautiful; they can be powerful appeared first on P2P Foundation.

It has been roughly a decade after the days that people first discussed Open Design. It has hitherto evolved from a concept, to a movement, to a viable business choice.

The RepRap 3D printer has been one of the first and most successful examples of open design. A 3D printer that could replicate itself is more than a design solution; it is a bold statement on the technological capacities of our time. A thing built to create other things, now creating copies of itself. Creation, being one of the core human characteristics, is now embedded in our creations.

It is, thus, no wonder it has sparked a wave of enthusiasm across diverse communities. Different visions of open innovation, distributed manufacturing and an automated self-sufficient society embody, to a lesser or larger extent the notion of open design. Though as much as the vision extends, the actual practice remains rather restrained. And while RepRap based 3D printers may have evolved to a billion dollar industry, industrial uptake of open design and open manufacturing is, arguably, still not there to see.

Part of the problem, as it is often the case, is structural. As a social activity, the open sharing of ideas and collaboration to create useful things by the users themselves has a self-evident merit. It can lead to better technologies, more learning from the side of the users, broader access to means of making and less waste, due to on-demand production and better maintenance capacity. But as a business option it goes almost against the foundations of everything we understand as the purpose of an enterprise.

In the end of the day, is able to survive to the extent it succeeds to exchange their products and services for money. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations, identifies this practice of exchange as a core survival tactic amongst individuals too. In a society where people produce themselves only a small fraction of the things they need, they exchange the products of their labour with these of other people to get the rest of it. It is then the common sense that markets and money is in fact the very purpose of the economy.

From a different perspective, the economy is about provisioning. It is the sphere of human activity that serves to cover societal needs: from the basic means of subsistence, to things and actions meant for pleasure and self-actualisation. From this point of view, sharing is actually a very economic function. Even more, on many instances it serves to create and distribute vital resources much more efficiently than markets. However, at least until recently, sharing could not be generalised as a capacity providing for human needs at scale. Therefore, it was mainly restrained to those domains where the costs of enforcing the rules necessary for market exchange were simply too high to bear.

But what the internet revolution brought about is much higher capabilities for communication and coordination based on shared information and human sociality. The sphere of these domains where market exchange is not the common sense has rapidly expanded. It became possible for people to pool, rather than exchange, the products of their labour on much greater scale, thus creating a much more generalised capacity for societies to serve their needs.

That is of course not to suggest that markets and money are simply done away with sharing and open design. Nevertheless, they no longer serve as the sole imperatives stimulating human creativity and coordination, if they ever have been. And it is vital for the flourishing of our societies to recognise, support and further stimulate these dynamics in our economic institutions. Even when access to better design and user experience is now more available than ever, businesses, especially small ones, will not invest in these possibilities before clear returns can be foreseen, in terms of covering their overheads, wages and taxes.

In the transitioning from the feudal order to the industrial one, no markets could ever exist and no exchange could take place if there weren’t for the provisions and enforcement of property rights and trade agreements. Likewise, in order to reap the benefits of the new technological capabilities, we need legal provisions to re-establish the relationship of businesses with their user communities now largely participating in the design and production; support measures like universal basic income for workers to be emancipated and devote their creative energy where it most needed in their local societies; and collective institutions that generalise and support pooling of productive capacities wherever possible, from digital platforms of open design, software and knowledge to open spaces for collaborative production, distributed manufacturing and needs-based design for societal needs.

The post Is Open Design a Viable Economic Practice? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In these almost ten years 创客 chuangke (Chinese for makerspace) have boosted, shrunk, evolved. In 2019 the panorama is capillary diversified throughout the country: the strong policies of incentives actuated by the government starting from 2015 and the great diversity of the cultural and business landscapes in cities of 1st, 2nd, 3rd tier make the “mass entrepreneurship innovation” policy interpreted and implemented differently.

During several sessions, we have interviewed Eduardo Alarcon Gallo, the communication officer for 新车间Xinchejian[1], on if and how the source of funding and revenues, as well as impact potential on learning and business models, have evolved in this decade.[1] the first maker-space in China, founded in 2010 by David Li (李大维), Min Lin Hsieh (谢旻琳) and Ricky Ng-Adams (伍思力) in Shanghai, renown to be a true hackerspace with Chinese characteristics.

What is the financial status of XinCheJian?

Xinchejian is a no-profit establishment run by volunteers: it survives cutting down the costs.

What is XinCheJian?

Xinchejian is a makerspace. It is a community. It is a place to learn and experience, a place for STEAM.

XinCheJian also embraces business, it’s a place to cooperate and create, to help to create start-ups, and create win-win connections with schools, universities and companies.

How has the government’s set of incentives following the policy “mass entrepreneurship innovation” supported you?

It has not, until spring 2019. We have been offered several times, but we preferred singular sponsorships from different companies throughout the years to focus on our independent community and activities.

This year, nevertheless, the rent of our historic venue has increased quite considerably, to a point where it was not sustainable for us. We have been offered some other venues for free, but after careful consideration, we considered our location a real value and an asset for our activities and legacy. We believe the strongest element of a makerspace is its community, of both memberships and at large. After all these years our community is here, where we are. Moreover, this neighbourhood, differently from others, has kept its initial population of small vendors, craftsman, industrial workshops, repairmen; we know them, we collaborate: in a way the neighbourhood it’s part of our community at large.

Therefore, in spring 2019 we have applied for government funding to sustain the rent’s cost. We have not participated in other ways to the government policy.

Has the 2015 policy “mass entrepreneurship innovation” changed or influenced your activities? Did you perceive the Bubble[2]?

We did not feel the Bubble, I did not even hear about it. We are not new makers trying to do good. Nobody ever came here and told me “… we do not trust the movement or your space”.

As a maker I know the spaces which are active and thrive both in China and abroad, I am not aware of the details of other situations.

My experience is that it could take a couple of years to establish a healthy community around a space; a sudden growth of 189 beautiful spaces in 6 months may lead to the fact that some could remain empty if they were not established to further collate a community already growing in the area.

How were you funded?

At the beginning we were sponsored by companies which were interested in relating their brand to our community and members, companies like BMW, Frog, DF Robot. From the very first start, we designed and held workshops for the sponsoring companies on themes like DIY, electronics, SW design, and others. These activities provided us with enough income to grow and thrive.

How has the companies’ interest evolved?

Today the interest of the companies has evolved and it is distributed among the offer of the 16 different Maker-spaces now active in Shanghai.

In addition to the workshops and courses on themes like DIY, electronics, SW design, now the companies are asking for an array of different activities: it is more complex, more sophisticated, layered and deeply integrated with companies’ HR culture. For example, alongside hackathons and DIY workshops, we are asked for courses on ideation processes, innovation management, sustainability, design thinking, and activities for team building and family days.

We are developing similarities to a service company.

How are you funded now?

We are funded by the companies which are interested in what our community can offer and our structured and custom-designed services.  We are now leveraging our human resources in our community to allocate them to the project of our client. The most common topics are still related to machinery, hardware and software design, but we are also asked about soft skills. There is now a new project management layer added to the professional service: especially for those companies which, due to the specific project’s size and duration, won’t need to hire an employee, but just outsource with us. We can offer a vast database of people, competences and services. In the free-lancer hour-fee, there is a percentage for Xinchejian to help it continue to be the bridge.

Our community counts hundreds of people as Xinchejian members, thousands as collaborating non-members. We connect and collaborate with individuals, centres and also other communities (like Coderbanker) with a common focus on business.

Can we then refer to it as an organic and synergetic community’s business model?

Yes, sure.

As makerspace, our membership is 100 yuan per month. Being a non-profit based on a community, it is difficult to escalate our model and to run a business sustainably. The management is horizontal, not vertical, so, at times, the decision-making process can be slow or have not a clear and consistent direction. Therefore the makerspace needs to remain a makerspace.

On the other hand, the companies and startups that are born here in Xinxchejian give back a percentage of the revenues of the activities that are related to the space.

Also, as I mentioned, we provide services to companies through our pool of hackers of whom fees we receive a percentage.

Many companies come to Xinxchejian to collaborate with all aspects of our community because they are aware there is a symbiosis and a win-win; the very members act often as a connection to the industrial world. We have built a reliable brand.

From a business model point of view, what is opensource for you?

Opensource is a tool, one of the many. Well managed, it can support gaining a big community in and around the space, but it is hard to monetize. We do not push mandatory opensource, for us, it is one more tool to create and sustain healthy community learning and business models.

From a business model point of view, what is opensource for you?

Opensource is a tool, one of the many. Well managed, it can support gaining a big community in and around the space, but it is hard to monetize. We do not push mandatory opensource, for us, it is one more tool to create and sustain healthy community learning and business models.

Your community: how did you build it and how have you kept it? Can you tell us about its evolution?

I could summarize these years in three main phases.

At the very first beginning, there was a clear separation between staff members and other members. At times there was not much awareness of one another within the two groups and members took the place (Xinchejian) for granted not knowing the existing challenges on economic sustainability and other issues.

In a second phase, the first generation of staff was growing bigger, through interests related to their history in Xinchejian, but outside of it, and there was some detachment.

Through long experience, we have grown into the opinion that to grow and keep a wide and solid community for our place, members’ participation to the various issues occurring was fundamental: it would facilitate stable commitment, spread a sense of responsibility on both staff and regular members, and transparency would bring trust.

Therefore, in this third phase, we have reorganised internal fluxes and added a management take on the activities. We have established several departments: maintenance, external communication, workshops, party committee, open night, finance. Our economic situation is now completely disclosed through a big whiteboard, visible for anyone who enters the space, with detailed incomes and expenses: not being fully aware proved to be a real barrier for our community.

Our choice has been proven to be the right one, now also the staff group has evolved: it comprises also active and committed makers who use the space every day. The heavy users have hence committed also into maintaining the space.

Which is the impact of XinCheJian on business models?

For what concerns the other makerspaces, we are often looked at as a model, for example, our membership is 100yuan/month and the other spaces follow.

For what concerns other businesses, I do not feel we can influence the sector since we are a non-profit.

On the other hand, the companies and startups that are born here are new and innovative: in my opinion, they are influencing the market with new ways and new business models.

–Precious Plastic, for example, is a 100 countries’ business model offering to all teams around the world blueprints and toolkits to create a recycling station. The Shanghai branch was born here and they create and sell mainly activities on recycling awareness, educational with universities and institutions, CSR with companies.

–Tokylab is an edutech STEAM company with the goal to empower anyone to invent and create in 5 minutes with no previous knowledge. It collaborates with companies and institutions. It is a new business, it is softwareless, this allows to major savings on the maintenance and updating.

–Vincihub organizes flight lessons with the helicopter flight simulator that they developed in XinCheJian.

As I mentioned before we also offer a support system for a new way to freelance.

How do you see XinCheJian’s impact?

The impact on society at large I reckon is substantial since the 21st-century skills are DIY. One learns how to learn, create, share, give and take within the community. Achieving your goals within a community enhances your soft skills.

Broadly it has an impact on innovation through products, services and business models.

What would you say is typically Chinese about XinCheJian?

Approximately 40 or 50 % of members and managers are Chinese.

Images source: https://www.facebook.com/xinchejian/

———————————————–

[1] the first maker-space in China, founded in 2010 by David Li (李大维), Min Lin Hsieh (谢旻琳) and Ricky Ng-Adams (伍思力) in Shanghai, renown to be a true hackerspace with Chinese characteristics.

[2] From the implementation of the 2015 policy “Mass Entrepreneurship Innovation” China has experienced incredible growth, reaching the biggest number of incubators and makerspaces in the world. The first high-tech business incubator was born in 1987 (in Wuhan, Hubei province), the first makerspace in 2010 (Xinchejian in Shanghai), the second one in 2011 (Chai Huo in Shenzhen), and at the end of 2016 China owned 3.255 incubators and 4.298 makerspaces triggering the creation of 223.000 SMEs. The numbers of the active makerspaces fluctuate considerably between 2015 and 2018: this phenomenon of sudden opening and closing have been referred to as The Bubble.

The post The Evolving Business Strategy Of A Community In The First Chinese Makerspace appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The leitmotif of this year’s LUMEN Conference was the practical aspects of the implementation of Law 2.0, including change management at universities. The debate featured the main stakeholders of the science and higher education system, including the representatives of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW) and other government institutions, university and academic association authorities, academic staff, management practitioners, as well as outstanding representatives of the academic community from Poland and abroad.

The Conference ended with a special session during which the nominees and winners of the 3rd edition of the Leaders in University Management Competition LUMEN 2019 and review good management practices at Polish universities based on materials submitted for the Competition was presented.

Polish OD&M Training called “Open Design & Manufacturing through event bades learning” was presented as a good practise with 5 other projects in Special prize section for projects which are exceeding main categories. Those projects include three main aspects – Management, Development and Cooperation.

Video presenting thePolish OD&M Training:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mR7KYo48ksed1zmOveTmRNdE58X8mOMu

The post Lumen Prize for Polish OD&M Training appeared first on P2P Foundation.

If the fourth industrial revolution brings with it radically new models of production and consumption, how do you design new products, services and experiences? What does it mean to make open and collaborative innovation in the age of complexity? And how do you train to enable sustainable change?

Next 4.0 is an international workshop dedicated to the design and training of designers in the 4.0 paradigm. One morning with experts, universities, businesses and makers to find out how the skills of those who design the small and big things around us evolve.

Find out more here.

The post Next 4.0: Formative Scenarios for the 4.0 Revolution appeared first on P2P Foundation.

• Design Driven Strategies for Manufacture 4.0 and Social Innovation. Florence (Italy)
• Open Design and Manufacturing through event-based learning. Dabrowa Gornicza and Lodz (Poland)
• Citizens Centered Innovation and Design for Open and Distributed Manufacture. London (UK)
• Prototyping Artisan – A Designer who makes. Bilbao (Spain)

Introduction to the workshops

The report contains a presentation of the four training activities implemented by the OD&M Alliance between October 2018 and June 2019, respectively in Italy, UK, Spain and Poland.

The trainings have been developed, in the first instance, on the basis of the insights gathered through the exploratory study implemented by the Alliance over the course of 2017 . The study was aimed at achieving in depth understanding of the types of collaborations that Universities, communities of makers and firms across Europe and China are currently developing around the making culture and, by extension, open design and manufacturing. Besides, the study was aimed at gathering insights about possible innovations in higher education – including curricula and teaching and learning methods – that would lead to better and increased cross-sectoral synergies in the emerging OD&M field.

The training projects have been further advanced through a round of co-design implemented first at the international level (see London Co-design workshop Report available at www.odmplatform.eu), and then at the local levels of the four EU nodes, with the involvement of local stakeholders and external experts.

These co-design activities, which included workshops, desk research and stakeholder consultation, have led to the identification of key characteristics of each training, in terms of strategic positioning, target-group(s), types of learning challenges, learning outcomes and assessment and validation of competencies. More broadly, the trainings have been operating as testbeds for prototyping possible innovations within the higher education institutions involved, in order to explore the application of open design & manufacturing as a means to drive new cross-sectoral alliances, as well as to boost new knowledge and skills via new teaching and learning methods.

The document contains a summary of the activities implemented, methodology applied, learning challenges explored in each node and prototypes realized. More qualitative results and outcomes stemming from the training are instead documented in the final impact report (D5.3).

OD&M Team, June 2019

Download the report here: OD&M Training and Activities

Lead image: WeMake Open Design by wemake_cc

The post Industry, Design, Makers: Open Design and Manufacturing trainings appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There is much hype around circular and collaborative economies over the past few years. From Davos to the European Union, everyone is eager to grab a piece of the new mode of industrial development. But what lies beneath these grand narratives?

In this 3-part short series we attempt to critically review the current discussion on the circular and collaborative economy and provide insights from some alternative trajectories.

This short series based on a workshop on circular, collaborative and distributed production designed and facilitated by Chris Giotitsas and Alex Pazaitis on the occasion of the participation of OD&M project at the 83rd Florence International Handycraft Fair, on April 24, 2019 in Florence.

Part 1: On the circular economy.

The most widely known and basic definition for a circular economy (accepted even by the European Union) entails cycles of production, ranging from repair, to maintenance, to re-use, refurbishment, and last to recycling. For this conceptualization to work, products need to be designed to fit these cycles. Meaning that we need to rethink how we design and make things. For instance, a phone may be designed so that it can be more durable, easier to repair and easier to recycle. So far so good.

However, considering the production and distribution networks today, that would presumably take place on a global scale. A product would be produced in one place, then purchased on the other side of the planet, then repaired or refurbished and resold somewhere else entirely. Until ultimately it is recycled for material and entering the cycle all over again. The question here, then, is: who would do the repair/ refurbishment/ recycling on that scale? As it is currently conceptualized, it is the service provider or the manufacturer that does it. How? Would manufacturers have processing facilities all over the planet, or would the products be sent to their locations thus increasing energy consumption and pollution? Doesn’t this reverse the whole point of circularity related to sustainability?  

Furthermore, how would manufacturers and service providers keep track of all these products? Apparently, it is with the help of the “Internet of Things”, by making products smart and trackable. But if we’re talking about a circular system of this complexity then this means that the “manufacturer” would need to have massive operational capacities and resources as well as tracking (or surveilling really) data to an alarming degree.

From a different perspective, if one looks at the EU reports on the issue of circular economies they will find assessments based on collected data and while there is plenty available on a state and municipal level (regarding, for instance, recycling) there is next to none when it comes to industry. That is hardly surprising. It is costs money to track and collect information and when there is no clear profit foreseen, then why would a private manufacturer do it? The idea is to incentivize industry to change their practices. Allow them to make money in a different, more sustainable way. But even then, why would they share data? And how would the protocols and processes of one huge manufacturer work with those of another. They are competitors after all and the profit of one signals the loss of another. 

So, circularity without being open source, is not really circularity. By making it so, then it would ensure interoperability for start. Meaning the products of one manufacturer would work with those of another. Open licenses and standards for parts, tools, materials as well as the sharing of all relevant information would mean that the product of one manufacturer would be possible to be repaired or maintained by whomever locally. Their materials would also be easier to locate, distribute, and reuse. However, at least for now, this seems not to be the goal.

When it comes to the circular economy, we are attempting to apply a concept on a production system that is incompatible. And the attempts so far, seem either too small or they end up being co-opted to such a degree that they lose any transformative potential.  

Part 2: On the Sharing Economy

As a global society, we are facing what could be understood as an existential dilemma with the sharing economy. As a phenomenon, the sharing economy has been increasingly gaining attention since -roughly- 2004, as it gets more and more share in the global markets. But sharing, as a practice, is not a new phenomenon. It has been present in communities since the dawn of human history. And, frankly, in our current form of economic organisation we have not always been very fond of it…. 

Those of us who have been old enough to witness a primitive type of audiovisual technology called “Digital Video Disc” (aka DVD), have often found ourselves irritated with -and simultaneously amused by- aggressive anti-piracy ads like this one. In all their ridiculousness, comparing a downloaded movie with car theft, what they were basically tackling was early forms of peer-to-peer file-sharing.  

So what has happened in less than 10 years that made sharing (esp. over the internet) from a criminal activity to the whole “sharing is caring” story? 

Apparently, the answer lies in some people making enormous amounts of money through sharing. A glimpse on the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg or the market value of tech start-ups like Uber or AirBnB nicely illustrate this. On the other hand, a closer look in their underlying infrastructures (and also their tax returns) shows that, despite profiting on sharing capacities, they are not equally interested in sharing themselves. So, to put it bluntly, what is interesting about sharing, is the sharing economy. What is less obvious is what it is about the economy that is of the interest of sharing. 

In a broader view, the economy can be described as a system that caters for the production and distribution of the means necessary for our subsistence and well-being. In the specific kind of economic system we broadly refer to as capitalism, economic affairs usually involve two main institutions: (a) private property; and (b) market exchange. The latter is fundamentally dependent on the former, and, respectively, the former rationalises the latter. This line of economic understanding also by and large underpins the definition of the sharing (or collaborative) economy from the European Union (European Commission (2016). A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy. Available): 

“[…] the term “collaborative economy” refers to business models where activities are facilitated by collaborative platforms that create an open marketplace for the temporary usage of goods or services often provided by private individuals” 

And further it is pointed out: 

“Collaborative economy transactions generally do not involve a change of ownership and can be carried out for profit or not-for-profit” 

More or less, the understanding of sharing on behalf of the EU is reduced to the extent it can relate to these fundamental institutions of property and exchange. The focus is then placed on regulating issues evolving around these relations, concerning both things and people, including labour, liability and taxation. 

Nevertheless, the same document still cannot move away from pointing out -even if in a footnote- a certain element that is significantly different: 

“Collaborative economy services may involve some transfer of ownership of intellectual property […]” 

And I would add a hint: often without conventional market-based transactions. Earlier examinations of the phenomenon focus exactly on this dynamic, explaining those conditions that allow them to have massive economic impact. Harvard Law Professor, Yochai Benkler, more than a decade before the EU became interested in the sharing economy (Benkler, Y. 2004. Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Form of Economic Production. The Yale Law Journal, 114(2): 273-358), eloquently argues on sharing as a form of economic production and nicely summarises his position as follows (again in a footnote, yet for different reasons here): 

“I am concerned with the production of things and actions/services valued materially, throughnon-market mechanisms of social sharing […]” 

And then continues: 

“Sharing’, then, offers a less freighted name for evaluating mechanisms of social-relations-based economic production” 

The phrase “valued materially” concerns the real value of sharing, not the one expressed in financial markets or the balance sheets of Facebook’s partner advertising companies. It relates to the very human interaction of sharing stuff and our own time and capacities in things we consider meaningful, from food, shelter and rides, to knowledge, information and technology. The meaning, or value, of this interaction, contrary to the so-called sharing economy, is not guided by price signals between the people, commodities and services. It is a form of an economy, i.e. a system catering for human subsistence and well-being, based solely on social relations. And this is partly why a Harvard professor has to come up with a “less freighted name” for it, as we can all imagine the all-too-freighted name of it that any Fox News anchor would instinctively shout out based on the above definition alone. 

And here lies the real transformative dynamic of sharing as a form of economic production. It is this element that allows a group of uncoordinated software developers create better a web-server than Microsoft; or thousands of people, contributing their knowledge with no predefined structure, roles or economic incentives, create a digital encyclopedia that outgrows Britannica. But such sharing-enabled success stories typically don’t mobilise huge cash flows and don’t create “added value”, which basically entails an understanding of value stemming exclusively from selling stuff to people.  

Going back to our existential issues with sharing, our general position as societies is that we basically think of sharing as a nice thing to do, but lack the institutions to really appreciate its value for our economic system. This massively restrains the actual dynamics of sharing, which are gradually subsumed by the dominant private-property-and-market-driven system. 

There are of course great alternatives in the digital economy alone that build on this sharing capacity in a more humane and socially-minded way, from early neighbourhood tools and rides sharing platforms, to Free and Open Source Software, open design projects and Wikipedia. There is frankly as much sharing taking place on Facebook as in Wikipedia, at least on the front end. But the underlying value models and, subsequently, potential outcomes for the majority of the people involved are vastly different. 

For this we need to finally mature with regards to our issues with sharing and, eventually, make a choice for the kind of sharing for which we would design our institutions and societies. And hopefully that would be the one that would help us escape the current dead ends on the social and ecological front. 

Part 3: Needs-based design as an alternative paradigm 

Despite the serious conceptual and systemic problems described in the previous parts of this short series, it does not necessarily mean that there are no examples of true implementation for collaborative and circular practices right now. In fact, there are several technological development communities that make it happen to some significant degree. More specifically,  needs-based design and grassroots innovation as community-driven endeavours offer a serious alternative paradigm. 

In other words, communities can harness these ICT-enabled capabilities to collaboratively create technology for themselves, and promote sustainable practices based on shared values, knowledge and infrastructure. For instance, small-scale farmers in the agricultural communities of L’atelier paysan and Farm Hack, collaborate to produce tools and machines, often from recycled scrap material, suitable for their type of agriculture, which conventional market channels often fail to adequately cover. 

Yet, this type of self-construction activity is limited in simpler, frugal solutions, whereas  to address today’s challenges we need a broader engagement of design and engineering. But for a community to create complex technologies and systems, advanced skills still need to be employed, including designers, engineers and software developers. The main difference is the type of relationship they have with the community of users. This means the experts would act according to their own motives for engagement but with an explicit purpose to provide a solution which best serves the users of the technology. 

As far as the users are concerned, designers take up a specific purpose. They serve the role of guides or “Sherpas” (with reference to the ethnic group of the Himalayas that are expert mountaineers helping other groups). In that sense, the design process begins after a need within a community is made explicit. Then the designer meets with the community several times to discuss the parameters of the problem that needs solving and uses her expertise to design the solution, which is then reviewed by the community. This is an iterative process until a final artefact is produced, often through a collective process.

Nevertheless, engaging in such a creative activity  and simultaneously making a living out of its is no easy task, yet it is better than the alternative. Having a community as a base of support beats deciding to engage in “social innovation” on your own. At least if we are defining social innovation as something that you make for the common good rather than a thing to make money out of. For instance, designers in the agricultural communities mentioned above, could receive funds to help farmers refurbish or redesign an existing tool, or they could crowdfund within the community for the creation of a new tool. 

Such hybrid and radical models may lead to some sustainability for the designer willing to engage in social production. In our view however, for these terms to be genuinely meaningful in terms of sustainability, openness and equity, structural changes need to take place starting from a policy level. These communities provide a certain blueprint to inform the direction which needs to be taken. 

For instance, instead of incentives for manufacturers, perhaps more focus could be placed in empowering communities to tackle parts of the extremely complex problems of circular production. Likewise, user-communities can harness favourable licences and legal tools to build on shared capacities for collaborative forms of production and distribution. Individuals like designers could also be given incentives and support to engage with these communities in a relationship that is not profit-driven but informed by mutually shared values. 

What this would look like may take many forms, especially depending on local cultures and social contexts. For instance, such a community in the US, which generally lacks serious welfare structures, means that farmers need to rely largely on themselves and each other. Designers that work with them, manage to secure limited funding through the national agriculture organisations and donors while doing also something else to secure their personal sustainability. A similar community in Europe, on the other hand, which still manages to maintain basic social welfare amidst austerity obsessions, means that designers and engineers working with the farmers can secure state funding. So the volume of the work, as well as the quality of tools and documentation can be significantly increased. 

In conclusion, collaborative and circular economies are possible. But we need, as a society, to engage with these ideas in more radical ways than it is happening at the moment.

The post OD&M: Designing for Sustainable Economic Transformations appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Last week, 12 students of the OD&M training visited the training nodes (Florence, Bilbao, London, Dabrowa Gornicza) exploring the local ecosystems of alliances between Universities, makers communities and enterprises. The mobility gave the possibility to build mutual knowledge and relations between students from the four countries, and has been a very positive experience for both visitors and hosting organisations.

Student’s experiences describe the rich learning environment of the four nodes of the project:

• In Poland, students had the occasion to work together on robotics based on open source hardware, and visited Łódź where they were able to customize their robots and see how revitalization of textile city looks like.
• In the UK, the week has been focussed on Social Enterprise and Intellectual Property in a context of Open Design, Co and Participatory Design Practices. Through tours, design activities, and workshops the students worked in teams to develop enterprise propositions focused on OD&M activities.
• In Spain, mobility focused on transferring to students the experience of the exercise carried out in collaboration with Fekoor – Etxegoki, an association that manages a group of apartments that provide autonomy to people with reduced mobility. During the week the students had the possibility to know the city of Bilbao and its transformation model, and they visited the most important open work spaces in the city.
• In Italy, they visited the spaces of Manifattura Tabacchi, and reviewed the solutions for the space developed by Italian students, with the aim of adding elements draining from their local learning experience in their OD&M training. Mobility students also presented, as a moment of peer learning, the solutions developed on their own challenges/contexts. Moreover, they participated to the event “Erasmus4Ever, Erasmus4Future” organised by Impact Hub Florence and INDIRE – Italian National Agency for Lifelong Learning Education.

The mobility has been aimed at defining commonalities and differences with their local context and with the solutions prototyped in their learning experience to inspire and influence both visiting and local students and their ideas/prototypes. It has been a success that hopefully will be replicated in next years.

The post OD&M students’ mobilities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Game of Thrones was arguably about climate change, but the HBO series turned this narrative around by presenting a last-minute technological solution as magically saving the day, the planet, and existence. 

!!! SPOILERS AHEAD !!!

Game of Thrones was arguably about climate change. George RR Martin himself confirmed that it is indeed “a great parallel”. Perhaps that is still the case in the books (we’ll have to wait until, or if, he completes his story), because the HBO series certainly shattered this narrative.

Presumably the message here is: no need to stop our petty squabbling in the face of a cataclysmic threat looming, a last-minute solution will magically turn up. While that might be an unfair bit of criticism to place on a show that indeed specialises in human squabbling, it is yet another example of pop culture reinforcing a dangerous idea. That whatever existential peril we may face as a species, we can solve through our real-world magic: technology!

This belief that eventually technological breakthroughs solve our problems is as powerful today as ever. How could it not? In the face of a problem like planetary collapse, which would require us to completely alter the way we exist as a society, it is easier to just passively hope for that inevitable bit of tech that will save economic growth!

One might imagine that this development in the show was forced due to the creators’ desire to move onto other projects. Because up to the point where the massive problem is instantly resolved, the show seemed to be building a narrative that relied on the humans getting their act together and making radical changes to their behaviour in order to survive. Thus, the opportunity to make a point to millions of people watching was sadly lost.

From Arya Stark’s dagger to personal computers and smartphones, technological artefacts reach users who often ignore the production history of those artefacts. Who produced them? At what social and environmental cost? How was nature transformed in the place where the materials of a certain technological artefact were found? The technologically-enabled abundance that a few people experience is linked to the scarcity experienced by many.

Ecomodernism argues that the issues of scarcity and environmental degradation can be addressed by using more efficient technologies. It has been a matter of debate in political ecology and in this blog. Ecomodernism overlooks the consequences of efficiency improvements. The Jevons Paradox is a finding attributed to the 19th century economist Stanley Jevons. It illustrates how efficiency improvements can lead to an absolute increase of resource use.

For example, the invention of more efficient train engines allowed for cheaper transportation that catalyzed the industrial revolution. However, this did not reduce the rate of fossil fuel use; rather, it increased it. More efficient technologies use less energy, and thus they cost less, which often encourages us to use them more—resulting in a net increase in energy use. Although since the 1970s technological advances have been significant, both global energy use and global material use have increased threefold.

In a famous quote, prolific writer Ursula K. Leguin says

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art…”.

Art, and especially science fiction and fantasy, has the power to challenge ingrained beliefs and explore radical imaginaries, which may inspire action. Sadly, however, the Game of Thrones series failed to deliver.

Vasilis Kostakis is a Professor at TalTech and a Faculty Associate at Harvard. He is coordinating the Cosmolocalism.eu project. Chris Giotitsas is a Research Fellow at TalTech and a core member of the P2P Lab.

Header image: CC Chapman/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The post Why ‘Game of Thrones’ was about ecomodernism appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This piece by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis was originally published on The Next System.org.

Download PDF here.

Why is this emerging mode of production so important in discussions about post-capitalist futures? And how can participants in commons-based peer production— the “commoners”—make sustainable livings, thereby creating a thriving global commons economy within and beyond capitalism?

Here’s why and how.

Introduction: Two big questions

When we investigate realistic social change, it is not enough to ask (normatively) how things should be or (idealistically) how things could be. We must also look at the seeds of potential change. Just as capitalism developed over centuries by combining such patterns as double-book accounting and knowledge diffusion through printing, any post-capitalist system will be grounded in patterns emerging within capitalism or from attempts to solve its systemic problems.

These post-capitalist patterns include commons-based peer production. John Restakis (2017), David Bollier (2016), and others have addressed the re-emergence of the commons, defined as a shared resource, maintained or co-created by a community, and governed through that same community’s rules and norms. Here we go one step farther, describing an emerging mode of production that makes the commons the central feature of its value creation and distribution.

This new modality of value creation has fresh but widespread roots. It emerged in the digital realm to organize the production of open knowledge, free software, and shared designs. Now, it is also a strong candidate to take over the organization of physical production and create a political economy in which the distribution of value is both more socially just and ecologically regenerative. As we will show, forces already afoot could produce and distribute value in socially fair and environmentally balanced ways.

Commons-based peer production as a new pattern of value creation for digital production

In commons-based peer production (CBPP), originally identified as a new pathway of value creation and distribution, Internet-enabled infrastructures allow individuals to communicate, self-organize, and co-create digital commons of knowledge, software, and design (Benkler, 2006; Bauwens, 2005; Kostakis & Bauwens, 2014). Think of the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, the myriad free and open-source projects (e.g., Linux, Apache HTTP Server, Mozilla Firefox, WordPress, Enspiral), or such open design communities as Wikihouse, RepRap, Sensorica, and Farm Hack. This remarkable new modality combines global coordination mechanisms with the small-group dynamics characteristic of human tribal forms, allowing these dynamics to go global.

Post-capitalist characteristics

CBPP differs fundamentally from value creation under industrial capitalism. In the incumbent models, the owners of the means of production hire workers, direct the work process, and sell products for profit maximization. Production is organized by allocating resources through price signals, or through hierarchical command harking to these price signals.

In contrast, CBPP is in principle open to anyone with skills to contribute to a joint project, pooling the knowledge of every participant. Some participants may be paid by companies or clients, but this system of production is also open to self-motivated contributors and distributors. In these open systems, there are many reasons to contribute beyond or besides receiving monetary payment.

CBPP allows contributions based on all kinds of motivations, but most important is the desire to create something meaningful or mutually useful to those contributing. For the productive communities as well as other users, most of their work is oriented to use-value creation, not exchange-value. In CBPP’s open and transparent systems, everyone can see the signals of others’ work and can that way adapt to the needs of the system as a whole.

Stigmergic collaboration

In CBPP, some commoners may be paid or employed as wage labor or work for the market as freelancers. Whether paid or not, all of them produce commons. The work is not directed by corporate hierarchies, but through the mutual coordination mechanisms of the productive community. Indeed, corporate hierarchies must defer to the community values if they want to participate in this type of production. In CBPP’s open and transparent systems, everyone can see the signals of others’ work and can that way adapt to the needs of the system as a whole.

CBPP is often based on ‘stigmergic’ collaboration. Basically, stigmergy is the phenomenon of indirect communication among agents and actions (Marsh & Onof, 2007, p. 1). Think here about how ants or termites exchange information by laying down pheromones (chemical traces). This indirect form of communication enables social insects to build such complex structures as trails and nests. An action leaves a trace that stimulates the next action by the same or a different agent (ant, termite, or, in the case of CBPP, commoner).

In the context of CBPP, stigmergic collaboration is the “collective, distributed action in which social negotiation is …mediated by Internet-based technologies” (Elliott, 2006). For example, free and open-source software code lines and Wikipedia entries are all produced in a distributed and ad hoc manner as large numbers of people contribute.

Of course, unlike termites and ants, people are given to ego problems, mixed agendas, and other human frailties, so what about quality control? CBPP projects do have quality-control systems based on a hierarchy (or heterarchy). These safeguards are imperfect but improving. Without coercing work, “maintainers” in free and open source software collaboration or Wikipedia “editors,” for instance, protect the integrity of the system as a whole and can refuse contributions that endanger that integrity.

Far from the norm in traditional business, this kind of collaboration does appeal to profit-seekers, too. Since CBPP is based on more freely engaged and passionate labor and obviates some costs to capital, it can appeal to for-profit forces. Hence, we see the massive growth of CBPP in software production for industry.

A new institutional ecosystem

Through CBPP, we see a new institutional ecosystem of value creation emerging. This ecosystem consists of three institutions: the productive community, commons-oriented entrepreneurial coalition(s), and the for-benefit association. Our description cannot be all-inclusive or definitive because each ecosystem is unique and this new mode of production is rapidly evolving. The aim instead is to offer a birds-eye-view of the expanding universe of CBPP.1

^{Five of the oldest and best-known commons-based peer production ecosystems.}

Along with Wikipedia and the well-documented ecosystems of the free and open-source software projects, Enspiral, Sensorica, Wikihouse, and Farm Hack offer new perspectives on the rich tapestry of proliferating CBPP ecosystems. All can be described as building new post-capitalist ecosystems of value creation, and all illustrate the shift from the purely digital production of software and knowledge to its use by entities that produce physical products and sophisticated services. Enspiral has a complex service offering, including the participatory decision-making platform Loomio, Sensorica designs and deploys sensors, Wikihouse produces designs for sustainable housing, and Farm Hack engages in the participatory design of agricultural machinery. All four replay the tripartite institutional structure emblematic of digital production. A recent study of the urban commons in Ghent (Bauwens & Onzia, 2017) shows that commons-based urban provisioning systems also exemplify this new structure.

^{Three emerging commons-based peer production ecosystems.}

The first linchpin of the new model is the productive community. It consists of all the contributors to a project of CBPP. As noted, its members may be paid or may volunteer their contributions out of sheer interest. Either way, all produce the shared resource. Most important when compared to systems based on wage labor, the system must remain open to contributions.

The second institution is the commons-oriented entrepreneurial coalition. It aims to create either profits or livelihoods by creating added value for the market, based on the shared resources. The participating enterprises can pay contributors.

The digital commons themselves are typically outside the market because they are not scarce so are not subject to the laws of supply and demand.

Crucially important in the relation among the entrepreneurs, the community, and the common-pool resource on which they depend is whether their relationship is generative or extractive. That said, every entity is expected to present a mixture.

Two distinctions are relevant here. First, entrepreneurship should not be identified exclusively with capitalism: not all entrepreneurs are motivated by profit maximization. For some, entrepreneurship expresses the desire for autonomy. In the emerging class of autonomous and precariously employed workers, many are involved in the “auto-entrepreneurship” crucial to CBPP ecosystems. Entrepreneurship should not be identified exclusively with capitalism.

Second, markets should not be identified with capitalism. Non-capitalist market systems that are not based on wage labor or the separation of the means of production from the workers, and that operate with different “value logics” than profit maximization, have existed throughout history. They still coexist within capitalism and can be further developed as post-capitalist modalities. CBPP’s potential here is to create commons-oriented market forms that both benefit the commons and the commoners.

Crucial to the “commonification” of the entrepreneurial coalitions is the figure of the “autonomous worker.” Today’s dominant conception of the entrepreneur is of someone who is independent and takes all the risk to play the capitalist lottery. In contrast, if you want a salary, then you need to obey corporate rules. So, if you are a worker, you have a contract of subordination. In contrast, autonomous workers are free to make their own decisions and interact with the market and the commons as they wish and without permission.

This form of self-propelled enterprise should not be confused with neoliberal entrepreneurship. From a Gramscian perspective (Gramsci, 1971), CBPP can be viewed as an effort to advance alternatives to dominant ideas of what is considered “normal” and legitimate. Commons-based entrepreneurship places freedom and autonomy associated with entrepreneurship in a contributory perspective.

Consider here the creation of the labor mutual SMart, which advances the concept of “autonomous worker.” Participating workers freely engage with the market to advance their values and life projects, but mutualize their life risk through a co-owned cooperative. Such workers are ideally situated to join more commons-centric models.

Marjorie Kelly (2012) introduces non-capitalist/generative enterprises, pressing the distinction between markets and capitalism. In these enterprises, collectively owned market agents use their surplus to further social and environmental causes, rather than accumulation. To demonstrate the difference between extractive and generative economic activity, think of industrial agriculture versus permaculture. In the former, the soil grows ever poorer and less healthy while in the latter the soil becomes richer and healthier.

Extractive entrepreneurs seek to maximize their profits, and few of this breed reinvest enough in the maintenance of the productive communities. Like Facebook, they do not share any profits with the co-creating communities that provide the company’s value and its realization. Some, like Uber or Airbnb, tax exchanges without creating transport or hospitality infrastructures. So, though such enterprises develop useful services based on previously untapped resources, they do so extractively. They facilitate these services, but they also create competitive mentalities that destroy the collaborative and environmental advantages of mutualizing pooled resources. Moreover, extractive enterprises may free-ride on social or public infrastructures (e.g., roads in Uber’s case) and further undermine welfare provision by evading taxation and failing to provide social benefits. To demonstrate the difference between extractive and generative economic activity, think of industrial agriculture versus permaculture.

In contrast, generative entrepreneurs add value to these communities, which they both seed and depend on. In the best case, the community of entrepreneurs and the productive community are one and the same. Creating livelihoods while producing commons, contributors re-invest the surplus in their well-being and the overall commons system they co-produce.

The third institution is the for-benefit association. This entity can be seen as the infrastructural organization of the commons that manages commons-based cooperation. Indeed, many CBPP ecosystems feature independent governance institutions that support the infrastructure for collaboration, empowering the CBPP. Cooperation thus takes place autonomously, without any command-and-control apparatus. Indeed, commoning is impossible without it. For example, the Wikimedia Foundation is the non-coercive for-benefit association of Wikipedia. Similarly, free and open-source software foundations often manage infrastructure and networks of projects.

Traditional nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations operate in a world of perceived scarcity. They spot problems, search for resources, and direct their resources toward solving the issues they have identified. This approach arguably mirrors the for-profit model of operating.

In contrast, for-benefit associations operate for ‘potential’ abundance. They recognize problems and issues but believe that there are enough contributors eager to help solve or resolve them. Hence, they maintain an infrastructure of cooperation that allows contributive communities and entrepreneurial coalitions to engage in CBPP processes vital for addressing these issues, without directly commanding the contributors. They protect these commons through licenses and may also help manage conflicts between participants and stakeholders, fundraise, and help build the general capacity needed to work in particular fields through, for example, education or certification.

The specific CBPP ecosystems are interrelated through their digital commons. Since the output of one project can be the input of another, CBPP can be seen as a grand ecosystem composed of diverse smaller ecosystems.

Overcoming the commons-capital contradictions towards an integrated economic reality

The nascent ecosystems described here are not sovereign in the current political economy, and all come with challenges and contradictions. For instance, Enspiral owes its business success largely to the distinct talent and skills of its members who are very competitive in their respective fields and who acquired skills and experiences from their education and occupations in such traditional institutions as universities, software companies, and financial firms. Beyond that, its area of expertise fills a niche in a developed market with low capital entry. Enspiral’s business model may be hard to replicate absent these factors.

Similarly, Sensorica and Farm Hack both face significant challenges concerning proper and comprehensive documentation of their processes and outputs, while WikiHouse is still striving to broaden the scope and reliability of its layouts and technologies. All the described projects, especially those entailing localized manufacturing, still rely substantially on cheap, mass-produced raw materials and components. Their business models, not yet fully defined, can sustain livelihoods for only a small number of active and highly dedicated contributors.

These caveats notwithstanding, don’t underestimate the importance of examples like those sketched here in solving urgent and neglected societal challenges. These new initiatives are gradually building considerable capacity to support this emerging commons-based political economy. Each case offers unique techno-social solutions, crystallizing a new socially embedded perception of value, defining new forms of organization and relationships to the means of production, and providing a new and more holistic representation of economic reality.

As these solutions mature and get adopted, replicated, and improved by other projects, this new economic reality could subsume and transcend today’s tumbling political order. Empowered by commoning, in time they will reshape and sublate the current contradictions and processes into a synthesized, concrete, commons-centric totality.

To be sure, the autonomous emergence and development of these seed forms are by themselves not a sufficient condition for social change. But they are a necessary feature of such change and their prefigurative function and power are vital to the success of any social change strategy. No conflict or crisis resolution can occur without reliance on these seeds of change.

From seed form to societal form

Make no mistake: the new models of production described here as an emerging institutional infrastructure at the micro level of concrete projects are also potential formats for a new post-capitalist political economy and civilization:

• The productive community at the heart of contributory value creation is also a model for a new type of civil society and for the central institution of a new post-capitalist economic and civilizational model. In this model of a productive civil society, citizens are also recognized for their contributions to society through CBPP.
• The entrepreneurial coalitions, which are generatively co-creating added value to the human and natural commons, are a model for a generative and ethical market.
• The infrastructural for-benefit associations are a model for enabling and empowering the state, which ensures the contributory equipotential capacity of its citizens and inhabitants.

Commons for the commoners, commodity for the capitalists

In CBPP, contributors create shared value through open contributory systems, govern their work through participatory practices, and create shared resources that can, in turn, be used in new iterations. This cycle of open input, participatory process, and commons-oriented output can be considered a cycle of accumulation of the commons, and this cycle parallels capital accumulation.

At this stage, CBPP prefigures what could become a post-capitalist mode of production. It is a prototype since it cannot yet fully reproduce itself outside of mutual dependence with capitalism. Productive and innovative “within capitalism,” CBPP also has the capacity to solve some of the structural problems generated by capitalism—in effect, transcending it. That said, CBPP won’t be the new “total social reality” until it also engages in physical production. The new models of production described here as an emerging institutional infrastructure at the micro level of concrete projects are also potential formats for a new post-capitalist political economy and civilization.

As for capitalist competition, CBPP can spur innovation. Firms that can access the digital commons possess a competitive advantage over firms that use proprietary knowledge and rely only on their research (Tapscott & Williams, 2005; Benkler 2006; von Hippel, 2017). For example, by mutualizing the software development in an open network, firms save substantially on their infrastructural investments. In this context, CBPP could be seen as a mutualization of productive knowledge by capitalist coalitions.

This capitalist investment is not negative in itself. Instead, it is a condition that has increased society’s investment in a commons-oriented transition. Since CBPP solves some structural issues of the current system, capital and both productive and managerial classes gravitate toward it. Even though prolonging the dominance of the old economic models distorts CBPP, it simultaneously sparks new ways of thinking that undermine in that dominance.

Even so, the new class of commoners cannot rely on capitalist investment and practices. Marinus Ossewaarde’s and Wessel Reijers’s (2018) threefold observation rings true here: “(1)…through technologically mediated practices of digital commoning implicit and explicit pricing mechanisms can be realised, (2)…such mechanisms draw the practices of digital commoning towards the monetary economy, (3) which in turn affects the forms of resistance that are implied in practices of digital communing.”

In the end, commoners must render CBPP more autonomous from the dominant political economy. Eventually, the balance of power could then be reversed: the commons and its social forces would become society’s dominant modality, forcing the state and market modalities to adapt to societal requirements.

Reverse cooptation

Commoners should avoid situations in which capitalists co-opt the commons and head toward situations in which the commons capture capital and use it to build its own capacity. Such reverse cooptation has been called “transvestment” by Dmytri Kleiner and Baruch Gottlieb (Kleiner, 2010, 2016). In the case of CBPPs, value would flow from the capitalist market to the commons, using generative market practices whenever possible. Thus, transvestment would help commoners become financially secure and independent. Such procedures are being developed and implemented in seed form by such open cooperatives as Sensorica or the Enspiral network.

Sensorica is a collaborative network that develops sensors. It was officially launched in 2011 in Montreal, Canada, inspired by free and open-source projects and the forms of collaboration they entailed. Sensorica explicitly separates its production processes, which are commons-based, from its market operations, which are held by independent entities though controlled by the productive network. The network’s contribution-based accounting system logs every contribution by every project participant at every stage, from initiation to marketing. In turn, all revenue from marketable products is distributed back to those who have contributed to their production. By providing livelihood opportunities, Sensorica emancipates its contributors so they can commit more of their creative energy to commons-based productive processes.

As for structure, the Enspiral network consists of the Enspiral ventures, the Enspiral Foundation, and a community of professionals representing various domains and a broad range of competencies. The Enspiral ventures offer their products and services in the market, like any common enterprise, but their focus is on the social economy, and they mobilize in response to societal challenges. Through this process, they create commons (software, infrastructures, knowledge—most famously, Loomio, a web application that helps groups make decisions together), but also revenue and (in some Enspiral ventures) even profits. A portion of these funds is donated to the Foundation. The latter then uses a part of them to cover its operation, and the rest is reinvested to new commons-based projects through democratic procedures. When projects are externally financed, the backing companies typically redeem their shares once an agreed-upon level of return has been reached. This agreement, combined with democratic control, allows the companies to decide to reinvest profits in their social mission and/or new Enspiral projects.

Open Cooperativism

Open cooperativism is a working concept aimed at infusing cooperatives with the basic principles of CBPP (Bauwens & Kostakis, 2014). Pat Conaty and David Bollier (2014) have called for “a new sort of synthesis or synergy between the emerging peer production and commons movement on the one hand, and growing, innovative elements of the co-operative and solidarity economy movements on the other.” To a higher degree than in traditional cooperatives, open cooperatives would statutorily be oriented toward the common good by co-building digital and/or material commons. This orientation basically extends the seventh cooperative principle—concern for the community (ICA, 2018). In contrast to traditional cooperatives, open cooperatives pool their digital resources (knowledge, software, designs), creating a multifaceted digital commons for other open cooperatives. So, open cooperatives would internalize negative externalities, adopt multi-stakeholder governance models, help create immaterial and material commons, and be socially and politically organized around global concerns, even if they produce locally.

One way to understand open cooperativism is to look at how the medieval guild system functioned. A guild was an association of producers who oversaw the practice of their craft or trade in a particular geographical area. It had elements of a professional association, a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society. Externally, guilds sold their goods or services in the marketplace, but internally they were fraternities and solidarity systems. In a commons-centric economy, such efficiency and solidarity could be achieved through open participatory systems that would connect producers and consumer/user communities, as community-supported agriculture does now. By this token, the models proposed below would intertwine contributors with various roles into one solidarity ecosystem.

Beyond the classical corporate paradigm

Here, six interrelated strategies for post-capitalist entrepreneurial coalitions are outlined. All aim to go beyond the classical corporate paradigm and its extractive profit-maximizing practices to establish open cooperatives that cultivate a commons-oriented economy.

First, it is essential to recognize that closed business models are based on artificial scarcity. Although knowledge in digital form can be shared quickly and at low marginal cost, traditional firms may use artificial scarcity to extract rents from its creation. Through legal repression or technological sabotage, naturally shareable goods are sometimes made artificially scarce to generate extra profits (Kostakis et al., 2018). This is particularly galling when life-saving medicines or planet-regenerating technological knowledge are overpriced or unnecessarily scarce. Open cooperatives, in comparison, would refuse to generate revenue by making such abundant resources as knowledge artificially scarce.

Second, a typical CBPP project involves various distributed tasks, to which individuals can freely contribute. For instance, in the free and open-source software projects, participants contribute code, create designs, maintain websites, translate text, co-develop the marketing strategy, and offer user support. In this setup, salaries based on a fixed job description may not be the most appropriate way to reward contributors. An alternative is open value accounting or contributory accounting: any income from contributions flows to contributors according to the points accrued from their meaningful participation in collective production. This model could be an antidote to the tendency in many firms for a handful of well-placed contributors to capture the value co-created by a much larger community.

Third, open cooperatives could secure fair distribution and benefit-sharing of commonly created value through “copyfair” licenses (Bauwens & Kostakis, 2014). Today’s “copyleft” licenses—such as Creative Commons and the GNU Public License—allow anyone to reuse the necessary knowledge commons provided that changes and improvements are subsequently shared in that same commons. The hitch is that this framework fails to encourage reciprocity for commercial use of the commons or to foster a level playing field for commons-oriented enterprises. These shortcomings can be overcome through copyfair licenses that allow for sharing while also ingraining reciprocity. More particularly, these licenses preserve the right of sharing knowledge but predicate commercialization of any such knowledge commons on contributing to that commons. For example, the copyfair approach to licensing endorses the free and open-source software freedoms enshrined in the GNU Public License, but regulates profit-making potential. The Peer Production License is the first case of copyfair that restricts the usage of a digital commons to worker cooperatives (Kleiner, 2010). Further, the FairShares Association uses a Creative Commons non-commercial license for the general public but allows its members to use the content commercially.

Fourth, open cooperatives would use open designs to produce sustainable goods and services. For-profit enterprises often build planned obsolescence into products to maintain tension between supply and demand and maximize profits. Such obsolescence is a feature, not a bug. In contrast, open design communities do not have the same incentives to plan obsolescence (Kostakis et al., 2018).

Fifth, open cooperatives could reduce waste. The lack of transparency and penchant for antagonism among closed enterprises makes it hard for them to create a circular economy in which the output of one production process becomes an input for another. However, open cooperatives could develop ecosystems of collaboration through open supply chains. These chains may enhance the transparency of production processes so participants could adapt their behavior based on the knowledge available in the network. There is no need for overproduction once the realities of the network become common knowledge. Open cooperatives could then move beyond exclusive reliance on imperfect market price signals and toward mutual coordination of production, thanks to the combination of open supply chains and open value accounting.

Sixth, open cooperatives could mutualize both digital and physical infrastructures. Despite the justified critique it receives, the misnamed “sharing economy” of Airbnb and Uber does illustrate the potential for matching idle resources. Co-working, skill sharing, and ride sharing also exemplify the many ways in which we can reuse and share resources. With co-ownership and co-governance, a genuine sharing economy could use resources far more efficiently, aided by shared data facilities and manufacturing tools.

Cooperative ownership of platforms can also begin to reorient the platform economy around a commons-oriented model. The six practices highlighted here are already emerging in various forms but need to be more universally integrated. In our estimate, the primary aim for fostering a more commons-centric economy is to recapture surplus value that is now feeding speculative capitalism and reinvest it in the development of commons-oriented productive communities. Otherwise, CBPP’s potential will remain underdeveloped and subservient to the dominant system.

The challenge of physical production and the creation of sustainable production

Typically, the need for capital is dramatically higher for physical production, which requires natural resources, buildings, machines, and people. Clearly, assembling networked individuals requires substantially less capital. Nevertheless, as noted, CBPP cannot be considered a full mode of production unless it integrates both digital and physical production.

Building on the confluence of the digital commons of knowledge, software, and design with local manufacturing technologies, new models of physical production are emerging. They can be codified as “design global, manufacture local” (DGML). What is light (knowledge, design), this logic goes, becomes global, while what is heavy (machinery) is local and ideally shared. DGML demonstrates how a technology project can leverage the digital commons to engage the global community in its development, celebrating new forms of cooperation (Kostakis et al., 2018; Kostakis et al., 2015; Kostakis et al., 2016). Unlike large-scale industrial manufacturing, the DGML model emphasizes small-scale, decentralized, resilient, and locally controlled applications. DGML could recognize the scarcities posed by finite resources and organize material activities to conserve them. After all, since manufacturing is largely local, shipping costs are lower, and maintenance is easier. Manufacturers design products to last as long as possible under the DGML mantle, and knowledge and design are freely shared since there are no patent costs.

Already, we see a rich tapestry of DGML initiatives unfolding in the global economy that do not need a unified physical basis because their members are located all over the world. For example, consider the L’Atelier Paysan (France) and Farm Hack (U.S.), communities that collaboratively build open-source agricultural machines for small-scale farming or the OpenBionics project that produces open-sourced, low-cost designs for robotic and bionic devices or the RepRap community that creates open-source designs for 3D printers.

Cities around the world are partially embracing this shift, as evidenced in a study on the urban commons (Bauwens & Onzia, 2017). In Ghent, Belgium, nearly 500 urban commons were identified, a tenfold increase in 10 years, covering all the basic provisioning systems. Most of these commons-based forms, however, redistribute but don’t produce goods. For instance, car and bike-sharing schemes mutualize access to transport but do not manufacture the vehicles. Similarly, housing coops, co-housing, and community land trusts offer access to housing but do not “make” the housing.

A further limitation: Many generative projects remain fragmented and locally limited. As welcome as these initiatives’ rapid growth is, it’s not enough to turn the tide. Public-commons cooperation must be combined locally with community wealth building policies inspired by the models in Cleveland and Preston, UK. What’s more, transnational investment coalitions are needed to create global open depositories for setting up provisioning systems and mutual learning endeavors that are locally adapted but globally coordinated. Public-commons cooperation must be combined locally with community wealth-building policies inspired by the models in Cleveland and Preston, UK.

One fast-growing sector amid a more fundamental transformation is ahead of the game. It can create healthy food for urbanites, livelihoods for producers, multi-stakeholder governance systems involving both producers and consumers, and meaningful work in an integrated ecosystem. Indeed, 80 of the 500 projects identified in Ghent were food projects—organic farmers supplying food through various commons-based schemes. Such local agricultural production exemplifies CBPP’s next stage: the cosmo-local production of goods. This stage combines open global communities mutualizing production knowledge, distributed local production, and cooperative, generative organization of the productive ecosystem. The challenge—extending this model to the economy’s more capital-intensive sectors—is likely to require the commitment of both the public sector and the world of cooperative investment and financing.

The greatest challenge, however, remains creating sustainable modes of production. Kate Raworth (2017) has very usefully summarized what needs doing: fulfill humanity’s social needs without exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet and damaging the vital cycles and needed balanced ecosystems that sustain human life. Commoning is both green and efficient.

The commons will be a vital part of this strategy for human survival. Commoning requires pooling and mutualizing resources and infrastructures to replace the wasteful corporate competition that reflects the systematic externalization of social and environmental costs to keep expenses and prices as low as possible. In contrast, CBPP’s “collaborative advantage” is that it produces products and services for human need, at lower thermodynamic costs than capitalist production models (Piques & Rizos, 2017). For example, the associate car-sharing project in Ghent, Degage, uses 130 cars for 1,300 members, guaranteeing them full mobility while greatly lowering environmental costs. Studies of similar projects have shown that every shared vehicle can replace up to 13 private cars (Shaheen, 2017).

Commoning is both green and efficient. Commons-based organic food ecosystems do not pollute the groundwater, do not use toxic additives, and can use carbon-free transportation systems. As shown in the meta-historical comparisons of civilizational overshoots (Motesharrei et al., 2014), more equal access to the resources of life significantly reduces resource catastrophes and makes crisis periods less severe. Production models that use a “subsidiarity of material production” approach will dramatically cut transportation costs and needs while maintaining global cultural and technical cooperation.

The good news is that pioneering communities all over the world are developing many of the tools needed to make this shift. For example:

• open and contributive accounting systems, able to recognize and reward all contributions, not just market value, as pioneered by Sensorica and others,
• shared ecosystemic circular supply chains, as experimented by Provenance, the Oxchain research project, eventually using the eco-systemic shared accounting systems like the R-E-A system, integrated impact and/or biophysical accounting systems, allowing direct access to thermo-dynamic flows and expenditures, using “global thresholds and allocations,”
• non-ecologically destructive distributed ledger systems, such as the Holochain,
• token-based value systems, which allow programmable production based on various value logics.

Instead of conclusions: A drinking horn for the commons

In medieval times, drinking horns were often used by guilds communally to symbolize and promote conviviality, friendship, and solidarity among the members. These values proved of great importance to the prosperity of the guild (Rosser, 2015).

Needed now is a drinking horn for the commons to help make CBPP a dominant production modality. The guild system can inspire commoners looking for sustainable livelihoods. Our transitional vision includes commons-based networks of “neo-guilds” comprised of cooperatives and autonomous producers. These networks would produce value—a global commons for the commoners and the general public and a product to be sold to enterprises outside the commons.

The small-scale initiatives can now be influential on a larger scale, as nodes in a commons-based global network of local networks. Through digital commoning, grassroots initiatives can have both a local and global orientation: “the small and the local, when they are open and connected, can therefore become a design guideline for creating resilient systems and sustainable qualities, and a positive feedback loop between these systems” (Manzini, 2013). Hence, instead of “scaling-up,” CBPP initiatives are “scaling-wide.”

With a crisis of capital accumulation upon us, might a stream of value seek and find a place in the commons economy? Yes. Instead of the cooptation of the commons economy by capital through capitalist platforms that capture value from common enterprise (e.g., Facebook, Google, IBM), commoners can coopt capital inside the commons, and subject it to its rules. With a crisis of capital accumulation upon us, might a stream of value seek and find a place in the commons economy?

Much depends on whether we can pull off more sophisticated types of reverse cooptation. Commoners must create interconnected transvestment vehicles that admit capital disciplined by the new commons and market forms developed through CBPP. For example, “double-licensing” schemes require those who wish to capitalize to pay a license fee or join the commons-based neo-guild. This approach creates a flow of value from the system of capital to the system of the commons economy.

The ultimate vision for a new society is one of a civil society productive in its own right, not just an adjunct to the market and state. Under this new dispensation, the state enables free social production in a galaxy of interconnected, collaborative initiatives. True, CBPP does not solve many of today’s inequalities and systemic social unfairness, especially involving race and gender. Nor does it directly address the hidden environmental and social costs of digital technologies, which are energy-intensive throughout their life-cycle, from cradle to the grave. Also, low-wage laborers (often including children) work under inhumane circumstances so that ever more people in the advanced economies have access to cheap digital technologies. But these shortcomings and injustices can be addressed, and CBPP traces a unique grand institution dealing with value creation that is far removed from the catastrophic characteristics of modern capitalism. This connection to sustainability is likely to open up new spaces for a free, fair, and long-lived society.

Acknowledgments

Parts of this essay are based on the authors’ forthcoming open-access book (co-authored with Alex Pazaitis), titled Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto, to be published by University of Westminster Press. It also builds on Bauwens M. & Kostakis V. (2016). “Why Platform Co-ops should be Open Co-ops.” In Scholz

T. & Schneider N. (eds) Ours to Hack and Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet. New York, NY: OR Books, 163-166. Vasilis Kostakis acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 802512).

References

Bauwens, M. (2005). The Political Economy of Peer Production. Ctheory. Retrieved from http:// www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499 (accessed on 10 June 2018).

Bauwens, M., & Kostakis, V. (2014). From the Communism of Capital to Capital for the Commons: Towards an Open Co-operativism. tripleC:JournalforaGlobalSustainable Information Society, 12(1): 356-361.

Bauwens, M., & Onzia,Y. (2017). ACommonsTransitionPlanfortheCityofGhent. Ghent: City of Ghent and P2P Foundation. Retrieved from: https://stad.gent/sites/default/files/page/documents/Commons%20Transition%20Plan%20-%20under%20revision.pdf.

Bauwens M., Kostakis V. & Pazaitis, A. (2018) Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. UK: University of Westminster Press. In press.

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bollier, D. (2016). Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm. The Next System Project. Retrieved from: https://thenextsystem.org/commoning-as-a-transformative-social-paradigm.

Conaty P. & Bollier D. (2014). Toward an Open Co-operativism: A New Social Economy Based on Open Platforms, Co-operative Models and the Commons. A Report on a Commons Strategies Group Workshop, Berlin, 27-28 August. Retrieved from http://commonstransition.org/toward-an-open-co-operativism/ (accessed on 10 June 2018).

Dafermos, G. (2012). Authority in Peer Production: The Emergence of Governance in the FreeBSD Project. Journal of Peer Production, 1 (1): 1-12.

Elliott, M. (2006). Stigmergic Collaboration:The Evolution of Group Work. M/CJournal:AJournalof MediaandCulture, 9(2) . Retrieved from: http://journal.media-culture. org.au/0605/03-elliott.php (accessed on 10 June 2018).

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York, NY: International Publishers.

Harhoff, D., & Lakhani, K. (2016). RevolutionizingInnovation:Users,Communities,and OpenInnovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

ICA. (2018). Co-operative Identity, Values & Principles. Available at: https://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles (accessed 10 June 2018).

Kelly, M. (2012). OwningOurFuture:TheEmergingOwnershipRevolution—Journeysto a Generative Economy. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Kleiner, D. (2010). TheTelekommunistManifesto. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

Kleiner, D. (2016). What Economy? Profit Versus Sustainability. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGBzhon_vS0&feature=youtu.be&t=36m1s.

Kostakis, V., & Bauwens, M. (2014). Network Society andFuture Scenarios fora Collaborative Economy. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kostakis, V., Roos, A., & Bauwens, M. (2016). Towards a Political Ecology of the Digital Economy: Socio-environmental Implications of Two Value Models. Environmental Innovationand SocietalTransitions, 18, 82-100.

Kostakis, V., Niaros, V., Dafermos, G., & Bauwens, M. (2015). Design Global, Manufacture Local: Exploring the Contours of an Emerging Productive Model. Futures, 73, 126-135.

Kostakis, V., Latoufis, K., Liarokapis, M., & Bauwens, M. (2018). The Convergence of Digital Commons with Local Manufacturing from a Degrowth Perspective: Two Illustrative Cases. JournalofCleanerProduction,197, 1684-1693. Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652616314184 .

Manzini, E. (2013). Small, Local, Open and Connected: Resilient Systems and Sustainable Qualities. Design Observer. Retrieved from: https://designobserver.com/feature/small-local-open-and-connected-resilient-systems-and-sustainable-qualities/37670.

Marsh, L., & Onof, C. (2007). Stigmergic Epistemology, Stigmergic Cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 9(1-2), 136-149.

Masters, R. (1753/2011). TheHistoryoftheCollegeofCorpusChristiandtheBlessedVirgin MaryintheUniversityofCambridge,FromitsFoundationtothePresentTime. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Mateos-Garcia, J., & Steinmueller, E. (2008). The Institutions of Open-source Software: Examining the Debian Community. InformationEconomicsandPolicy, 20: 333-344.

Motesharrei, S., Rivas, J., & Kalnay, E. (2014). Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies. EcologicalEconomics, 101, 90-102.

Ossewaarde M. & Reijers W. (2018). Digital Commoning and its Challenges. Organization. In press.

Pazaitis A, Kostakis V. & Bauwens M. (2017). Digital Economy and the Rise of Open Cooperativism: The Case of the Enspiral Network. Transfer:EuropeanReviewofLabour and Research, 23(2): 177-192.

Restakis, J. (2017). Cooperative Commonwealth & the Partner State. The Next System Project. Retrieved from https://thenextsystem.org/cooperative-commonwealth-partner-state.

Piques, C., & Rizos, X. (2017). Peer to peer and the Commons: A Matter, Energy and Thermodynamic Perspective. Amsterdam: P2P Foundation. Retrieved from: https://commonstransition.org/peer-peer-commons-matter-energy-thermodynamic-perspective/.

Raworth, K. (2017). DoughnutEconomics:Seven WaystoThinkLikea21st-centuryEconomist. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Rosser, G. (2015). The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250-1550. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shaheen, S. (2017). Carsharing Trends and Research Highlights. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-06/documents/05312017-shaheen.pdf.

Tapscott D.& Williams A. (2006). Wikinomics:HowMassCollaborationChangesEverything. New York, NY: Portfolio.

von Hippel, E. (2017). Free Innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Weber, S. (2005). TheSuccessofOpenSource. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

All web links were active on July 6, 2018.

• 1. These ecosystems have been thoroughly discussed by several studies. See indicatively Dafermos, 2012; Harhoff & Lakhani, 2016; Mateos-Garcia & Steinmueller, 2008; Weber, 2005; Benkler, 2006; von Hippel, 2017.

The post How to Create a Thriving Global Commons Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.