Via WorkNet:

Franz Nahrada echoes our vision of combining more local production with global open design communities and applies it to the prospect for global villages. (it refers to a particular project but is readable for its general idea)

Franz Nahrada:

“The Economy of Global Villages is in my view a blended economy of local physical work for local goals with global immaterial labour, partly going in the cooperative design efforts that make local work more effective, but also partly simply to earn money that allows to add what is missing to the local toolbox. There is not black versus white, but rather a fine scale with many points or degrees of autonomy we can reach – and sometimes we have to compromise on one field to raise autonomy on another.

Of course Marcin is right that financial stream to a villager has nothing to do with the economy of a village. It might rather be the way this financial stream is branching and channelled to the local toolbox and local activities. Therefore for me a Global Village is very much built like a hospitality village, its attracting global population from the market sector and might decide hosting them physically for mutual benefit.

So yes, the work that allows us to be place-independent can be a benefit to places that were left out, if people understand this opportunity and act accordingly to it.

The goal of a corporation is attention to its product and that is something of high commercial value. At the same time, what and how this attention is achieved is an entirely different story. I would like to compare this to the commercials in a football match being aired. The product has nothing to do with the football, yet it sits there and enables millions of people to watch this.

We must think in the very same terms, the product is a side effect to the ongoing work it makes possible. Spurring hundred thoughts about the product but asking the additional question is a hundred time more effective than watching a tv commercial without context to the story.

So the second effect is that working openly by itself becomes a sport, an event, an object of attention.

The third and most important effect of this particular project on Global Villages is that online communities are maybe THE main source for the developments oif Global Villages. Online Communities have a theme, and a theme to be fully pursued needs a place. Whereas villages cannot survive if they don’t find themes.”