Here is a good review of the political commons developments, a contribution from Birgit Daiber to the Barcelona Conference on Social Commons, Barcelona June 2018. Birgit Daiber: After years of commoning in conferences, cooperation projects, networking, discussions on the diversity of experiences and designing strategies how broaden them – I think it’s time to discuss… Continue reading
Dear friends and commoners: In the lead up to the Open Coop 2018 conference, Richard Bartlett and Natalia Lombardo (Loomio, Enspiral, the Hum) will join me in hosting an action-oriented workshop on Commonspoly at Newspeak House, London. Commonspoly is a hacked version and critique of the game Monopoly, where the goals are to first re-municipalize private goods… Continue reading
On some accounts, we are moving from a world of hierarchy to a world of networks. A common feature of hierarchies, with its emphasis on communications as instructions, has been to promote simplicity, assigning low value to what lies outside of its frame of reference. So, can complexity now make a comeback in business? Ed… Continue reading
The Distributed Design Market Platform (DDMP) aims to strengthen a creative community of more than 10.000 registered users who are fabricators, artists, scientists, engineers, educators, students, amateurs, professionals, ages 5 to 75+, located in more than 40 countries in more than 1000 Fab Labs. The Platform aims at promoting and improving the connection of makers… Continue reading
Cross-posted from Shareable. Shanna Hanbury: In the face of poor public services and high rates of assault and violence, how can women help each other heal and deal with the aftermath of traumatic events? A small team spread out across Rio De Janeiro, Recife, and São Paulo in Brazil, is betting on solidarity and sorority… Continue reading
In this final installment in the REMODEL design sprint program, the 10 Danish manufacturing companies were challenged to prototype a community eco-system chart based, among other things, on all the work done in the previous phases. With this, it started to become clear how essential and powerful communities of co-creators can be, but also how… Continue reading
By Morgan Meyer (Director of Research, Mines ParisTech, PSL) and Alekos Pantazis (Junior Research Fellow, Tallinn University of Technology & Core Member, P2P Lab) This is a story about people who build their own machines. It’s a story about people who, due to necessity and/or conscious choice, do not buy commercial equipment to work their… Continue reading
Two forms of government have dominated in the west over the last hundred years. In one big power is vested in the state, the government, in the other policy is dominated by the influence of big industry, big corporations, or big money. Well a hundred years after the Russian revolution, and ten years after the… Continue reading
Republished from Open Democracy By Thomas M. Hanna, Joe Guinan and Joe Bilsborough: There is no telling when the next UK general election will come, and when the Corbyn Project could accede to national political power in what R.H. Tawney once called ‘the oldest and toughest plutocracy in the world’. But there is still plenty… Continue reading
Joyful Militancy by carla bergman and Nick Montgomery foregrounds forms of life in the cracks of Empire, revealing the ways that fierceness, tenderness, curiosity, and commitment can be intertwined. This is part of a series of about the project. See all interviews here. This interview with Gustavo Esteva was conducted in 2014 by carla bergman and Nick… Continue reading
Since 2014, the Our Water Our Rights Campaign has mobilized communities and people’s groups to resist water privatization across Lagos, and broadened citizen engagement in resolving the city’s water crisis. Against the odds it has also increased government spending on water and sanitation in the capital. When ERA learned that Lagos state government was secretly… Continue reading
Frome in Somerset has seen a dramatic fall in emergency hospital admissions since it began a collective project to combat isolation. There are lessons for the rest of the country. Michel Bauwens: One of the key issues concomitant to the emergence of a neoliberal system of society is the spreading of one-sided ‘materialist’ efficiency thinking in… Continue reading
The Fab City Summit Gathers Public Institutions, Industry and Society in Paris to Define the Path Towards The Future of Productive Cities. 18 Fab City members, iCapital alumni and International City Leaders will gather in Paris. International speakers such as Neil Gershenfeld, Saskia Sassen and Dave Hakkens will discuss innovative approaches to future-proofing cities through… Continue reading
A story about a wiki Let me open by saying this is only a sketch – Michel Bauwens would probably want to elaborate, but I would like to mention only the very barest details here. Back around 2006, Michel started putting his notes about Peer-to-Peer and related ideas on the P2P Foundation wiki, and opened… Continue reading
The P2P Lab is happy to announce the results of the Open Call for Ideas in the context of “The cultiMake project: Crowdsourcing open source agricultural solutions”. The selection of the designers was made by members of the local community, informed by the following criteria: Does the solution create value for small-scale farmers and society?… Continue reading
It’s time to reclaim the mantle of “Progress” for progressives. By falsely tethering the concept of progress to free market economics and centrist values, Steven Pinker has tried to appropriate a great idea for which he has no rightful claim. Michel Bauwens: Historical change is complex and gives rise to conflicting interpretations, on the one hand,… Continue reading