The internet and near-costless scaling of digital has allowed the concentration of too much power in too few hands. Our systems for accountability can’t or won’t keep up. By building alternatives, the decentralisation of networks, governance and control are a promising antidote. That’s why it’s exciting to see web inventor Tim Berners-Lee announce a commercial venture to… Continue reading
This article, originally published in Platform.Coop, was authored by Lieza Dessein and Chiara Faini, both strategic project managers for SMart.coop headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Stop Chasing Unicorns Lieza Dessein and Chiara Faini: There is a fundamental flaw in the narrative of the startup culture: everyone is chasing Unicorns i.e. private companies valued at one billion dollars… Continue reading
Democratizing Urban Technology Evgeny Morozov and Francesca Bria – January 2018. Republished from Rosa Luxemburg New York. Evgeny Morozov and Francesca Bria: Following the celebration of the “creative city” (as described by Richard Florida), the “smart city” has become the new flavor of the month—and a brand. It makes clever use of resources, and it attracts money,… Continue reading
Wouter Tebbens, Co-Founder and President of the Free Knowledge Institute; Chris Croome from UK co-op Webarchitects; Alexandre Bourlier and Sophie Rocher from happy-dev.fr discuss their work developing a suite of cooperatively owned and managed open source tools to rival Google and Apple; a shared technical infrastructure to enable co-operators to move away from data harvesting monopolies. The co-op cloud project is one… Continue reading
What happened at OPEN 2018? Nathan Schneider kicked things off with an excellent introduction explaining some of the history of cooperative ownership. Nathan also questioned where our movement sits relative to the mainstream, for-profit startup world, and in what way the development of platform co-ops and member owned businesses are disruptive … Lynne Davis, CEO… Continue reading
Inter-Nation European Art Research Network | 2018 Conference DATE AND TIME Thu, 18 Oct 2018, 10:00 – Fri, 19 Oct 2018, 17:00 IST Add to Calendar LOCATION The Wood Quay Venue, Dublin City Council, Civic Offices Wood Quay D08 Dublin, Ireland View Map Key-Note speakers include: Dawn Weleski, Conflict Kitchen, Pittsburgh Bernard Stiegler, Institut de… Continue reading
Republished from Medium.com Dick Bryan, Benjamin Lee, Robert Wosnitzer, Akseli Virtanen* The mounting literature on cryptoeconomics shows an interesting but also alarming characteristic: its underlying economics is remarkably conventional and conservative. It is surely an anomaly that many people who have gone outside the mainstream to disrupt and develop new visions of the future and… Continue reading
Since 2015, Budapest-based Cargonomia has acted as a sustainable urban transport centre and local organic food distribution point through its cargo-bike messenger service, bicycle-building cooperative, family-scale organic vegetable farm, organic bakery, wine distributor and network of citizen volunteers. The cooperative supplies more than 3,000 food boxes per year, with messengers cycling nearly 18,000 km while… Continue reading
Karissa McKelvey from the Dat Project provides an overview of the new decentralized Internet and the need to insert commons thinking and practices into this new space. This text is based on Karissa’s2017 Full Stack Fest’s keynote and was originally published in the Dat Project’s Blog. Karissa McKelvey: In the 18th, 19th centuries it was… Continue reading
Pre-order our new issue Beyond Disaster Capitalism — Jonny Gordon-Farleigh “What if the expected responses during disasters either fail to occur or are only marginal? What if the temporary breakdown of social hierarchies allows for new ideas and systems to emerge? What if disasters resolve pre-existing conflicts? And what are the new political powers of… Continue reading
“Cities accumulate capital, people, aspirations, and power. But, whose power? Whose aspirations? How can we find in the city a place of possibility?” These are the questions from Laura Flanders’ opening statements at the Transnational Institute’s convening on Transformative Cities in Amsterdam during July 2018.
Refugee Phrasebook provides useful phrases and information for newcomers Welcome to Refugee Phrasebook. Together we are building an open collection of useful words and phrases for refugees who just arrived. The Refugee Phrasebook is a multilingual tool that provides basic useful vocabulary related to the most common immediate needs. The phrasebook is created in a set of google… Continue reading
Jerry Michalski: “Trust” is one of those words we think we understand, but mostly we don’t. In particular, we don’t understand the role of trust in designing our institutions. Worse, few of us question how our institutions are designed. We humans are so adorably adaptable, no? What If We Trusted You — this Patreon project —… Continue reading
We are very excited about the launch of our new publication: Radical Realism for Climate Justice. A Civil Society Response to the Challenge of Limiting Global Warming to 1.5°C Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial is feasible, and it is our best hope of achieving environmental and social justice, of containing the impacts of… Continue reading
After some time of preparation, Waag launches the (or: a) Chamber of Commons Chamber of Commons in Amsterdam. The program for the first half of 2019 is well underway. Because we’re eager to get started and reach out, we’re doing a pre-launch already: October 11th. That happens to be during the World Commons Week World Commons Week… Continue reading
Collaboration for Change A Task for our Time Saturday 6th October 2018 The Guildhall, Whittaker Suite Derry, Northern Ireland 9.30am – 4.30pm A new initiative Collaboration for Change which is bringing together radical initiatives proposing solutions to the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges we are facing. Please keep Sat 6th Oct 2018 free for… Continue reading