6th meeting of the International Society for the Study of Decentralized Governance (https://issdg.org), including a presentation on “Ostrom and Blockchain Governance” by Jason Potts. Presentation slides are here: https://meet.lucidmeetings.com/a/sJVq…
What Enspiral can teach us about how to run a company with no boss
Darren Sharp interviews Alana Irving about “Better Work Together”, a compendium of distributed leadership strategies prototyped at Enspiral. Cross-posted from Shareable.net Darren Sharp: How do you create a viable business or organization without a hierarchy? Enspiral, an entrepreneurial collective based in Wellington, New Zealand, has been working to answer this question since 2010. Started as… Continue reading
What if Workers Owned Their Workplaces?
The cooperative movement is showing that worker-owned businesses can not only survive, but thrive. By Michelle Chen Can good values be good business, too? For generations, the cooperative movement has been answering with a resounding “Yes!” After a surge of entrepreneurial fervor following the 2007 economic collapse, cooperative ventures are even getting a nod from our… Continue reading
Fellowships with Bursaries for Human-Centric Internet builders! Deadline: May 30
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BUILD A HUMAN-CENTRIC INTERNET? Meet people who are doing it. Learn how to do it. Build it together. Internet of Humans is a track within our annual Edgeryders festival. It is dedicated to bringing together existing projects into a demo of a Next Generation Internet that supports values of openness,… Continue reading
Arts Catalyst Event in London, UK – Towards the planetary commons: reimagining infrastructures for autonomy
Marwa Arsanios | Paloma Polo | Lorenzo Sandoval | They Are Here 12.00pm, Thu 23 May 2019 – 6.00pm, Sat 3 August 2019 Arts Catalyst74-76 Cromer StreetLondonWC1H 8DR FURTHER INFORMATION Free, no need to book we-are-in-this together-but-we-are-not-one-and-the-same” — Rosi Braidotti Towards the Planetary Commons is a new exhibition investigating agency and autonomy in the face of global ecological crises. Encompassing artist film, an… Continue reading
The Morning After The Rebellion: An Open Letter To The People of #ExtinctionRebellion
I spent the last 4 days in the Extinction Rebellion camp at Marble Arch in London. Yesterday, while police stepped up their presence on site, the protestors held an assembly to discuss their next steps. They decided to end this phase of the protest, clear up the camp, and leave within a couple of days…. Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Anatomy of Escape: A Defense of the Commons
Market anarchists favor replacing the state with a fully free market, i.e., one with no restrictions on voluntary production and exchange; all functions of the state are either to be abolished (when they are inherently invasive of people’s right to live their lives peacefully) or turned over to free competition (when they are not). Many… Continue reading
One Cheer — More or Less — For the Green New Deal
In critiquing and analyzing a state policy proposal like the Green New Deal from an anarchist perspective, I should throw in the usual disclaimers about my working assumptions. I’m not an insurrectionist and I don’t believe the post-capitalist/post-state transition will be primarily what Erik Olin Wright called a “ruptural” process. Although the final transition may… Continue reading
Time for Progressives to Stop Shaming One Another
Sometimes I find my hopes for the progressive agenda outweighed by my fear for what happens each time they make another stride. I realize times are hard — economic inequality is high; racism, sexism, and homophobia are on the rise; and climate crisis is in progress — and these issues need to be addressed urgently. But I’m growing increasingly… Continue reading
Heteromation as the New Division of Labor Between Machines and Humans
Book: Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism. By Hamid R. Ekbia and Bonnie A. Nardi. MIT Press, 2017 Description: “The computerization of the economy—and everyday life—has transformed the division of labor between humans and machines, shifting many people into work that is hidden, poorly compensated, or accepted as part of being a “user”… Continue reading
Cochabamba, Bolivia: Confronting speculators and financing community infrastructure
The informal settlement of Las Peñas, on the outskirts of Cochabamba, has been refused the right to become part of the city, leaving it with no public investment for basic infrastructure and services. Las Peñas neighbourhood forced the re-sale of unoccupied plots of land at original price plus a small amount (owned by speculators taking… Continue reading
The Future of Computing and Why You Should Care
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The future of computing and why you should care Todd Weaver Founder and CEOPGP Fingerprint: B8CA ACEA D949 30F1 23C4 642C 23CF 2E3D 2545 14F7 (transcript follows) Let me set the tone by using a quote from a great person of history: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people,… Continue reading
Patterns for Decentralised Organising / Richard D. Barlett and Natalia Lombardo / Intersection18
Presented at Intersection Conference If you’re interested in the future of work, you may have heard rumours about Enspiral, a network of 200 entrepreneurs in New Zealand working on “stuff that matters”. The network is composed of many start-ups and small co-ops experimenting with radical self-management practices, decentralised ownership, and shared leadership. Nati and Rich… Continue reading
Using the CSA Model for Jazz Performance
I am always amazed at how commoning reaches into the most unlikely realms of life. The latest example that I’ve discovered is jazz performance! For the moment, leave aside the idea of jazz as an artform that is fundamentally about commoning – improvised collaboration, individual artistry that flowers within an ensemble, being attuned to the… Continue reading
Ecological Collapse: what will you tell your grandchildren?
Facing oncoming climate disaster, some argue for “Deep Adaptation”—that we must prepare for inevitable collapse. However, this orientation is dangerously flawed. It threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy by diluting the efforts toward positive change. What we really need right now is Deep Transformation. There is still time to act: we must acknowledge this moral… Continue reading
A Short History of the Commons in Italy (2005-present)
In a variation on my last post, on the commons in South East Europe, it seems apt to mention another regional history of the commons, in Italy. This history was written by Ugo Mattei in 2014 as a chapter in a book, Global Activism: Art and Conflict in the 21st Century, edited by Peter Weibel (and… Continue reading