It seems, that Silke Helfrich in her introductory conference talk has a different meaning of reciprocity in mind. She wants to emphasize, that in commons the balance of giving and taking does occur on the level of the commons itself, and not on the individual level like in commodity relationships. The latter is usually called… Continue reading
Towards post-dialectical thinking
Bonnita Roy responds to my question on “grand narratives after post-modernism” The Question Michel Bauwens: “It is often said that post-modernism killed grand narratives yet post-post-modernism is about synthesis, integration and looks a bit like grand narratives … my own feeling with constructing p2p theory is that it was necessary to reconstruct after deconstruction, but… Continue reading
Should we KickStop a SyntheticBiology Kickstarter campaign?
“The ETC group … (is trying) … to block (a) crowd funding project from releasing untested GM plants into the environment“: A public crowd-funding campaign has been launched by a starter Biotech company Genome Compiler, to create bioengineered glow-in-the-dark plants that will be given away to donors. This will be the first organism created by… Continue reading
Commons as new medievalism, the tension between local and global
Excerpted from Anna Seravalli’s review of the Economics and the Conference conference: “The idea of commons seems to be quite close to the idea of Things, which is often used at Malmö Living Labs (editor’s note: for an introduction to Things, see Ehn’s Participation in Design Things). When discussing how to design Things, the concern… Continue reading
Resilient P2P Innovations Means a Thrivable World Is Possible
Producing more locally isn’t just a survival strategy anymore, or a way to get by in an increasingly unstable world. No, producing more locally using these new methods is fundamental shift. A way of living that could change the world if people voted in their billions with feet, minds, hands to adopt this successful approach… Continue reading
Video: the Money Fix documentary
The full-length documentary is available on YouTube, essential for your education, with all the usual suspects: “”Money is just information, a way we measure what we trade, nothing of value in itself. And we can make it ourselves, to work as a complement to conventional money. It’s just a matter of design.” Money is at… Continue reading
Is there a Social Media-fueled Protest Style?
While social-media fueled collective action lacks the affordances of politics and the institutional capital that political parties and NGOs can provide, they can be very good at drawing red lines and organizing and gathering attention to a loud “NO!” (ie., Mubarak, SOPA/PIPA, Gezi Parki demolition). However, such movements seem usually unable to translate their power… Continue reading
First Reactions from Participants to the Economics and the Commons Conference
The co-organizer Silke Helfrich of the ECC20213 conference went through a first batch of reactions, her intro is followed by ongoing commentary. For a better edited and sourced version, go to the original here. “What a conference! It is still flooding my inbox. I guess, it was my first conference (and I’ve co-organized pretty many)… Continue reading
What the Commons Is Missing
A contribution by the “Economics and the Commons” conference attendee, Joel Dietz: “After the “Economics and the Commons” conference here in Berlin, I spent a long time digesting the proceedings here in Berlin. Despite near consensus among interested parties on the importance of the “commons” and “commoning,” I had an eerie sensation that something was… Continue reading
The current state of open knowledge in medicine
Excerpted from Iain Hrynaszkiewicz: “The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the organisation which approves drug license applications from the pharmaceutical industry in Europe, has made important progress towards more open science. They hope to release anonymised data from drug trials online, but are faced with widely divided opinions on how data sharing should happen, as well… Continue reading