The argument is by Elinor Ostrom, recently deceased commons economist: “We have never had to deal with problems of the scale facing today’s globally interconnected society. No one knows for sure what will work, so it is important to build a system that can evolve and adapt rapidly. Decades of research demonstrate that a variety… Continue reading
Project of the Day: EWS, one of Europe’s largest cooperatively owned green energy companies
A profile plus interview of the Electrizitatswerke Schonau: “1986, subsequent to the worst case scenario in Chernobyl, a parents’ Initiative was launched against atomic energy in the small Black Forest town of Schönau. As the operators of the local grid attempted to hinder these citizens’ activities, be they attempts to save energy or demands for… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Yochai Benkler on Successful Internet Rights Activism
Via Fora.tv: “After the groundswell around SOPA led to an tsunami of activism, Yochai Benkler reviews whether the way it all went down might prove to be a blueprint for future democratic participation. Using networks, he charts how the movement grew, and how the networked public sphere works in today’s world (that is to say,… Continue reading
Peer Production and the Poverty of Networks
Excerpted from Dmytri Kleiner‘s Telekommunist Manifesto: “A freer internet cannot exist within the present system of capitalist financing. Arguments for the clear technical superiority of distributed technologies over centralized ones have not been the deciding factors in the ultimate development of our global communications infrastructure, which has become more consolidated, regulated and restrictive. The determining… Continue reading
Video of the Day: David Ronfeldt on the TIMN Governance/Technology Framework
David Ronfeldt explains the evolution of governance: Tribes, Institutions (hierarchies), Markets, and Networks, each one is linked to a specific ‘information revolution’ ‘The presentation proceeds in three segments. Segment One is about how TIMN got started. It provides background and a basic description of TIMN. Segment Two is about how TIMN works. It relates my… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Bottega21, for digital manufacturing in Italy
Bottega21 (B21 from now on) is a Common, cooperative, peer production project and a – currently being equipped – physical center for enabling a new concept of manufacturing, creativity and design. B21 is an initiative to promote social and cultural change towards a new way of conceiving spaces and working methods as well as a… Continue reading
PeerPoint
(An excerpt from Poor Richard’s full version) This is an open invitation to participate in developing a crowdsourced design specification for a suite of integrated peer-to-peer applications to include (but not limited to) social networking, real-time project collaboration, content management, database management, voting, trust/reputation metrics, complementary currency, crowd funding, etc. This specification overlaps with several… Continue reading
Should we worry about capitalist commons?
Please note that Poor Richard has responded to the article below, here. I recommend you read that response. Michel Bauwens: There is a particular strand of thinking, which we have featured on occasion on our blog, with authors such as Massimo de Angelis of The Commoner, Sylvia Federici and George Caffentzis of Midnight Notes, and… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Jem Bendell on Rebuilding a Financial System by Ourselves
Very clear didactic treatment of what’s wrong with the current financial system and how ‘we the people’ can change it from the ground up.
Project of the Day: Research on “Building trust in P2P marketplaces”
• Thesis: Building trust in P2P marketplaces: an empirical analysis of trust systems for the sharing economy. Francesca Pick. Francesca Pick’s introduction: “As the sharing economy continues to gain momentum, the importance of security and trust between users is becoming increasingly apparent. Not only the Airbnb incident in June 2011 or the shutdown of the… Continue reading
Video of the Day: CATASTROIKA, on global finance and the destruction of the nation state
The Greek market s of the popular Debtocracy enlarge the framework for understanding what happened to Greece, and what will happen to other countries as well:
Cooperatives as an alternative economic model
Excerpted from Robin Murray in Red Pepper (UK): “What part can co-operatives play in a 21st-century model of an alternative economy? Could co-operatives become the dominant form of enterprise just as joint stock companies were in the industrial era? Can the state – itself part of the social economy – find a way of working… Continue reading
Emergence, Crisis, and Replacement of the Era of Decentralized Networks
P2P is about how distributed network models are replacing decentralized network models. David de Ugarte retraces three moments in this phase transition. • Article: Emergence, Crisis, and Replacement of the Era of Decentralized Networks. By David de Ugarte Excerpted from the Book: The Power of Networks. Moment 1: The Emergence of Decentralized Networks David de… Continue reading
Debate: Ten Guidelines for the Commons
Via Silke Helfrich’s Commons blog: “James Quilligan presented the following guidelines in his seminar on The Great Transition and the Commons presented at the New Economics Foundation in London, 14 May 2012. 1. We are Co-creators with Nature 2. By Creating our Shared Environment, we Participate in our own Culture 3. Through Creative Cooperation, Resource… Continue reading
Where crowdfunding needs to go (1). By Felix Stalder.
In the introduction to a mega-interesting interview with Goteo commons-crowdfunding project co-founders Olivier Schulbaum and Enric Senabre, the interviewer Felix Stalder makes a brilliant assessment of the weaknesses of current crowdfunding models. The interview is here and a must-read. Felix Stalder writes: “We are reinventing social and cultural practices. By necessity and desire. New ways… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Visualizing a Plenitude Economy
Via: ‘”Presented by The Center for a New American Dream, and summarizing the content of Schor’s book Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, what I love about this video is that it absolutely brims with positivity, excitement and optimism. This is not about letting go of a system that is working well, yet is… Continue reading