“Manuel Castells The Information Age Trilogy has been one of the most influential works to understand the societal change in the awake of the digital revolution of the last decades. It is, as Frank Webster (2002: 97) points out, one of “the most illuminating, imaginative and intellectually rigorous account of the major features and dynamics of the world today”. The theory of the network society developed in these books “open[ed] up new perspectives on a word reconstituting itself around a series of networks strung around the globe on the basis of advanced communication technologies” (Stalder, 2006: 1). Indeed, the work of Manuel Castells has influenced a generation of scholars, shaped a research agenda and has got important repercussions beyond academia (Bell, 2007).

Yet, more than two decades after the launch of his theory, the network society and the information age have been developing at a faster pace that anyone suspected in terms of: socio-technological and economic transformation (e.g. platform capitalism, sharing economy, robotization, algorithmic driven society, artificial intelligence and IoT, etc.), power geometries, new identities and socio-political contestation (e.g. populism, indignados, gilet jaunes, alt-right, technopolitics, buen vivir, #meetoo, LGBTIQ, black-lives-matters, youth for climate change, etc.) and new geopolitics and geographies of inequality and power (the rise of China as global power, multipolarity, the emergence of the Global South, the uneven impact of environmental crises, etc.).

At the same time, during the last decades a number of theoretical and epistemological trends have developed or consolidated in the social sciences that can be read as either influenced by or challenging the Trilogy position. Among others, the rise of network theories, mobilities paradigm, communication and power theory, technopolitics, post-colonialism or the relation between digital societies and nature.

In this regard, as 2021 will mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Manuel Castells’, it is time to revisit the trilogy and explore the relevance of Castells’ pioneering work in the light of the current state of the network society and of the ways to research about it. Thus, our aim is to gather together scholars from a wide range of disciplines – Including Castells himself – to engage with the Trilogy and debate on its contributions, legacies but as well shortcomings and new developments not envisioned at the time of its launch to try to develop a critical perspective on future trajectories of the network society and the information age.

We welcome contributions that sympathetically and/or critically engage with the Trilogy in any theoretical, methodological or empirical topic around the contemporary developments of the network society. Examples of areas and themes that we would like to discuss (but are not limited to) are:

• Information, data, datafication and the (new) sources of economic value;
• Networks, space-times, economy and society;
• Contesting the network society power configurations: politics, social movements and new identities;
• The network society in the world: uneven geographies and geopolitics of the information age;
• The Trilogy of the Network Society in front of the new turns in social sciences;
• The influence on the epistemic communities either geographically (e.g. Latin America, Europe, Asia…) or disciplinary (Sociology, media, geography, STS…).

Important dates

Workshop: Barcelona, 10-11 June 2020

• 23/06/2019 → Abstract submission. 500 words + up to 5 keywords
  Submit your proposals to [email protected]
• 23/07/2019 → Communication of abstract acceptance
• 20/3/2020 → Full paper submission: 5.000 – 8.000 words (mandatory). Papers will be the basis for the comments and discussion during the workshop. They will be submitted to a special issue / edited book

Practical Information

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Prof. Manuel Castells (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, University of Southern California)
• Prof. Fernando Calderón (FLACSO, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional San Martín Argentina) 
• Prof. Ida Susser (The City University of New York) 
• Prof. John Thompson (University of Cambridge)

The workshop is free of charge. Food will be provided at the conference for presenters. Accommodation and transportation are not included. 

The workshop presentations should be the basis for a special issue in an international peer-review journal by 2021 to discuss the work of Manuel Castells in the 25th anniversary of the launch of the first volume.

 Organization Committee (IN3)

• Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol
• Ramon Ribera-Fumaz
• David Megías

 Organization

This workshop is organized by the IN3 – Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Open University of Catalonia. The workshop constitutes a central part of the IN3’s 20th anniversary.”

Further info and queries: [email protected]

The post Call for abstracts: The Network Society Today appeared first on P2P Foundation.

More specific, André Rocha and Lucas Barreiro Lemos participated in the “Distributed Design Summit: Creative Minds for Productive Cities” which was held during the Techfestival in Copenhagen, from September 5th to 9th. This festival examined the impact of technology within 10 tracks: Ego, Food, Play, Learn, Create, Work, Start, Cities, Energy and Democracy. The festival included day-long workshops, dynamic activities by local and international co-creators, stage talks, conversations, installations, social meetings, music, after-hour drinks etc. Summits were organised as one-day gatherings where a diverse group of people could discuss the bigger picture, share insights, and challenge best practices.

Special emphasis was placed on the maker movement as a loose global movement of individuals who make physical projects with digital tools through collaborative processes and the sharing of the digital files or documentation.

The two prototypes that were presented by Andre and Lucas were an automated irrigation system and a solar dryer, respectively. The presentations were prepared in accordance with the overall program of the session. Based on the fact that most of the participants were makers and designers, the presentations focused more on the manufacturing process of the solutions rather than their use in agriculture. Also, some details on more practical issues and the efficiency of the solutions were provided together with info on the local Habibi.Works community.

These were the speakers of the Distributed Design Summit in Copenhagen:

More details about the Distributed Design Market Platform project can be found here.

The post Showcasing cultiMake at the TechFestival (Copenhagen) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Find the full article here.

Highlights

• Smart City is a technology-led urban response to global environmental challenges.
• Smart City may imply technological determinism, privatisation and depoliticisation.
• ICT may open the prospect of alternative, non-capitalist urban transformations.
• Degrowth should establish a critical dialogue with ICT-led urban transformations.

Abstract

“The 21st century has been hailed as the urban century and one in which ICT-led transformations will shape urban responses to global environmental change. The Smart City encapsulates all the desires and prospects on the transformative and disruptive role technology will have in solving urban issues both in Global North and Global South cities. Critical scholarship has pointed out that private capital, with the blessing of technocratic elites, has found a techno-environmental fix to both reshuffle economic growth and prevent other alternative politico-ecological transitions to take root in urban systems. Against this bleak outlook, the paper argues that these technological assemblages might be compatible with alternative post-capitalist urban transformations aligned with Degrowth. Through a cross-reading of research on Smart Cities with theoretical perspectives drawn from the literature on Degrowth, I suggest that Degrowth should not refrain from engaging with urban technological imaginaries in a critical and selective way. As the paper shows through alternative uses of Smart technologies and digital open-source fabrication, the question is not so much around technology per se but around the wider politico-economic context into which these technological assemblages are embedded.”

Introduction

“The 21st century will be marked by the critical role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in shaping urban responses to global environmental change. Cities will be both the locus of global environmental problems but also the places where many solutions to these challenges may emerge. The Smart City paradigm has become one of the most important urban strategies to foster green growth and to improve urban sustainability against the backdrop of climate change, austerity politics, inter-urban competition, aging population, rampant social inequality, rapid urbanization, aging infrastructures, high unemployment and stagnant economic growth (Glasmeier and Christopherson, 2015, Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015, White, 2016). The Smart City articulates a “fantasy city” and utopian vision based on the emancipatory role of technological progress that aims to be the “common sense” of how 21st century cities should look (Gibbs et al., 2013, Hollands, 2008, March and Ribera-Fumaz, 2014). In that sense, it “consists of a general but flexible narrative and a common set of logics” for anticipating uncertain global future crisis (White, 2016:574). Cities across the world have embarked on a “quest for technologically enhanced urban management” (Taylor Buck and While, 2015:3) to enable “a more efficient use and organization of urban systems” (Wiig, 2016:538). The global urban scene observes an inter-local competition to attract Smart City investments (Shelton et al., 2015), either to retrofit the existing built environment or to develop neighbourhoods or even to build new cities from scratch.

Since the past few years, the Smart City techno-utopian imaginary is strongly influencing urban debates and shaping contemporary urbanism. Concepts such as ICT, Big Data, sensors, Smart grids, Smart meters, Internet of Things, 3D printers, digital open-source fabrication, circulate not only among large private corporations, start-ups, urban planners, architects and policy makers but are also progressively making headway into the imaginaries of civic organisations, grassroots and social movements.

From a critical viewpoint, one may say that hegemonic corporate notions of the Smart City and cognate concepts built upon entrenched promises of capitalist technological solutionism, ecological modernization and depoliticized environmental improvement, leave small room for post-capitalist alternatives such as Degrowth. However, behind these urban techno-imaginaries and its fetishism of Smart City technologies, there may lay a set of spaces of intersection with non- or post-capitalist projects, which may open up new opportunities for alternative and emancipatory socio-environmental transitions. If cities are said to be both the locus of environmental problems but also the place where solutions may develop, and if techno-modernizing narratives such as the Smart City dominate this debate, how does Degrowth need to position itself in front of these technologically-led urban futures?

This paper aims to open up a critical reflection and dialogue on whether and how ICT and paradigms such as the Smart City may be compatible with an urban Degrowth transition. Through a cross-reading of research on Smart Cities and digital open-source fabrication with theoretical perspectives drawn from the literature on Degrowth, the contribution of this paper is double. First, it argues that Degrowth has paid insufficient attention to the question of technology on the one hand, and to the urban question, on the other hand. Second, it suggests that despite all the problems of urban techno-modernizing imaginaries such as the Smart City (which are identified) there are latent technological possibilities that could inform a Degrowth transition. Beyond presenting a comprehensive review of critical social sciences scholarship on the perils of the Smart City, this article reviews how Smart City technology could be appropriated by grassroots for a progressive urban politics. The example of digital open-source fabrication demonstrates that these technological assemblages could not only be seized to produce data, make visible hidden urban problems and organize contestation, but also to impact upon the way we design, produce and consume at the urban scale. Degrowth should not be a passive observer of this process but may help to inform a process of critical scrutiny, reworking and appropriation of those technologies to enable alternative urban transitions not dictated by the pursuit of economic growth but of socio-environmental justice. In short, this paper argues that a progressive, bottom-up and emancipatory appropriation (or subversion) of ICT and Smart City technologies is possible. However, the paper also shows that this engagement should not solely focus on the technological artefact alone but also on the broader urban political economic context it is inserted in.

After this introduction, the paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 I briefly review the main tenets of Degrowth, and I underscore the lack of engagement of Degrowth with the technological and the urban questions. Section 3 documents the emergence of the Smart City concept and shows how it is orchestrating urban transformations in the 21st century. After that, in Section 4 I carry out a comprehensive review of perils associated with current hegemonic understandings of technology-led urban transformations for a transformative and emancipatory socio-environmental Degrowth transition. In Section 5 I discuss how, within this heterogeneous, nebulous and ambiguous techno-utopian urban imaginary, we can find space for subversive, bottom-up strategies that could potentially be aligned with Degrowth. I end up with a concluding section where I argue for a selective and reflexive use of Smart City technology and ICT by Degrowth.”

Find the full article here.

Photo by TERRY KEARNEY

The post The Smart City and other ICT-led techno-imaginaries: Any room for dialogue with Degrowth? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The P2P Lab is happy to announce the launch of

“The cultiMake project: Crowdsourcing open source agricultural solutions”,

celebrating the gathering of designers, makers and farmers who are adapting to the digitised world.

Where: Habibi.Works, Ioannina (Greece)

When: From Monday, July 30th to Friday, August 3rd.

Currently, the P2P Lab aims to create awareness and promote an emerging collaborative productive model of agriculture, based on the conjunction of commons-based peer production with desktop manufacturing. Agriculture is a key activity in the peripheral and less-developed regions of the EU and a crucial productive sector. It is a field in which ready-to-apply open source hardware and software solutions have already been produced and, thus, can be implemented and improved. Considering the fragmentation of the existing abundant open source projects in relation to agriculture, the replication, sharing and improvement of solutions is hindered.

To facilitate interaction and create feedback loops among makers, designers and farmers, the P2P Lab is organising this 5-day event in Ioannina (Greece). The event will be hosted at Habibi.Works, a makerspace for asylum seekers and Greek locals in Katsikas (Ioannina), managed by the German NGO Soup and Socks e.V. Since 2016, Habibi.Works is operating eight workshop areas which serve as platforms for mutual education, empowerment and encounter.

The main aim is to familiarise the local community with open source technologies developed within the EU and, ideally, connect hubs (e.g. Fab Labs) that provide technical infrastructures for development. This may create a network of open source software/hardware communities and local farmers that overcome barriers through knowledge diffusion and collaboration for their mutual benefit.

During the workshop, four solutions related to agriculture will be manufactured. After publishing an open call and receiving several applications, the local community selected the following designers to lead the manufacturing of the prototypes:

• André Rocha, Adjunct Professor at ESELx – IPL and a Senior Product and Interaction designer.
• Angelos Pappas, Software developer and activist.
• Jonathan Minchin, Coordinator of the Green Fab Lab at Valldaura Labs, IAAC Campus in Barcelona.
• Trifonas Papaioannou, Maker and beekeeper.

The selection of the designers was informed by the following criteria:

• Does the solution create value for small-scale farmers and society?
• Does the solution express empathy to user needs?
• Is the solution visionary and paves the way for others?

The workshop will be open for everyone so we hope you join us there.

For queries, you may contact us at [email protected]

This event is organised in the context of the Distributed Design Market Platform Creative Europe project.

Organised by

Supported by

Photo by efou222

The post cultiMake: Crowdsourcing open source agricultural solutions [Open Event] appeared first on P2P Foundation.

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?
• Does the solution express empathy to user needs?
• Is the solution visionary and paves the way for others?

The selected designers who will lead the manufacturing of 4 prototypes during the workshop are:

• André Rocha, Adjunct Professor at ESELx – IPL and a Senior Product and Interaction designer.
• Angelos Pappas, Software developer and activist.
• Jonathan Minchin, Coordinator of the Green Fab Lab at Valldaura Labs, IAAC Campus in Barcelona.
• Trifonas Papaioannou, Maker and beekeeper.

We wish to thank all applicants for their contributions. The workshop will take place from July 30 to August 03 at Habibi.Works. It will be open for everyone so we hope you join us there.

We firmly believe in the power of collective creativity.

The post CultiMake: Announcing the Results of the Open Call for Ideas appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Abstract

“Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) is a new model of socio-economic production in which groups of individuals cooperate with each other without a traditional hierarchical organisation to produce common and public goods, such as Wikipedia or GNU/Linux. There is a need to understand how these communities govern and organise themselves as they grow in size and complexity. Following an ethnographic approach, this thesis explores the emergence of and changes in the organisational structures and processes of Drupal: a large and global CBBP community which, over the past fifteen years, has coordinated the work of hundreds of thousands of participants to develop a technology which currently powers more than 2% of websites worldwide. Firstly, this thesis questions and studies the notion of contribution in CBPP communities, arguing that contribution should be understood as a set of meanings which are under constant negotiation between the participants according to their own internal logics of value. Following a constructivist approach, it shows the relevance played by less visible contribution activities such as the organisation of events. Secondly, this thesis explores the emergence and inner workings of the sociotechnical systems which surround contributions related to the development of projects and the organisation of events. Two intertwined organisational dynamics were identified: formalisation in the organisational processes and decentralisation in decision-making. Finally, this thesis brings together the empirical data from this exploration of socio-technical systems with previous literature on self-organisation and organisation studies, to offer an account of how the organisational changes resulted in the emergence of a polycentric model of governance, in which different forms of organisation varying in their degree of organicity co-exist and influence each other.”

Summary (excerpted from preface)

“This thesis presents a study of self-organisation in a collaborative community focused on the development of a Free/Libre Open Source Software, named Drupal, whose model responds to the latter: a Commons-Based Peer Production community. Drupal is a content management framework, a software to develop web applications, which currently powers more than 2% of websites worldwide. Since the source code, the computer instructions, was released under a license which allow its use, copy, study and modification by anyone in 2001, the Drupal project has attracted the attention of hundreds of thousands of participants. More than 1.3 million people are registered on Drupal.org, the main platform of collaboration, and communitarian events are held every week all around the World. Thus, as the main slogan of the Drupal project reflects — “come for the software, stay for the community”, this collaborative project cannot be understood without exploring its community, which is the main focus of this thesis.

In sum, over the course of the next eleven chapters, this thesis presents the story of how hundreds of thousands of participants in a large and global Commons-Based Peer Production community have organised themselves, in what started as a small and amateur project in 2001. This is with the aim of furthering our understanding of how, coping with diverse challenges, Commons-Based Peer Production communities govern and scale up their self-organisational processes.

* Chapter 1 provides an overview of the phenomenon of Free/Libre Open Source Software and connects it with that of Commons-Based Peer Production, allowing the theoretical pillars from previous studies on both phenomena to be drawn on.

* Chapter 2 provides an overview of the main case study, the Drupal community. Throughout the second chapter the Drupal community is framed as an extreme case study of Commons-Based Peer Production on the basis of its growth, therefore offering an opportunity to improve our understanding of how self-organisational processes emerge, evolve and scale up over time in Commons-Based Peer Production communities of this type.

* Chapter 3 provides an overview of Activity Theory and its employment as an analytical tool: a lens which supports the analysis of the changes experienced in complex organisational activities, such as those from Free/Libre Open Source Software communities as part of the wider phenomenon of Commons-Based Peer Production.

* Chapter 4, explores the fundamental methodological aspects considered for this study, which draws on an ethnographic approach. The decision for this approach is reasoned on the basis of the nature of the research questions tackled in the study. Firstly, on requiring an inductive approach, which entails the assumption that topics emerge from the process of data analysis rather than vice versa. Secondly, on the necessity of drawing on a methodological approach which acknowledges the need to understand these topics from within the community.

* Chapter 5 begins the presentation of the findings of this study. It presents the findings regarding the study of contribution in the Drupal community, a notion which is fundamental for the choice of the main unit of analysis, contribution activity, in Activity Theory. The results from this study enabled the identification and consideration, throughout the subsequent chapters, not only of activities which are “officially” understood as contributions, such as those listed in the main collaboration platform, but also of those which have remained less visible in Free/Libre Open Source software and Commons-Based Peer Production communities and the literature on them.

* Chapters 6 and 7 address the study of the development of projects, activities whose main actions and operations are mostly performed through an online medium;

* Chapters 8 and 9 present the main argument that binds this thesis together: the growth experienced by the Drupal community led to a formalisation of self-organisational processes in response to a general dynamic of decentralisation of decision-making in order for these processes to scale up. This research identified these two general organisational dynamics, formalisation and decentralisation of decision-making, affecting large and global Commons-Based Peer Production communities as they grow over time. Thus, throughout these chapters, the means by which these general dynamics of formalisation and decentralisation shaped the overall systems which emerged around these different contribution activities are explored. The exploration of the organisational processes of this case study does not only show the existence of these dynamics, but it provides an in-depth account of how these dynamics relate to each other, as well as how they shaped the overall resulting system of peer production, despite the main medium of the peer production activities studied being online/offline, or the significant differences with regard to their main focus of action — writing source code or organising events. For each pair of chapters this exploration starts with the most informal systems and progresses towards the most formal respectively: custom, contributed and core projects, in chapters 6 and 7; and local events, DrupalCamps and DrupalCons, in chapters 8 and 9. After carrying out this in-depth exploration of self-organisation, the overall identified changes experienced in the self-organisational processes of the Drupal community are brought together according to general theories of self-organising communities, organisational theory and empirical studies on Commons-Based Peer Production communities, in order to connect the exploration with macro organisational aspects in chapter 10.

* Chapter 10 argues that this study provides evidence of the emergence of polycentric governance, in which the participants of this community establish a constant process of negotiation to distribute authority and power over several centres of governance with effective coordination between them. In addition, this chapter argues that the exploration carried out throughout the previous chapters provides an in-depth account of the emergence of an organisational system for peer production in which different forms of organisation, varying in their degree of organicity, simultaneously co-exist and interact with each other.

* Finally, chapter 11 summarises the main contributions of this thesis and provides a set of implications for practitioners of Commons-Based Peer Production communities.”

The full thesis is available here.

Photo by Fernan Federici

The post Essay of the Day: Self-Organisation in Commons-Based Peer Production appeared first on P2P Foundation.

AbilityMate is a Sydney (Australia) based social enterprise whose mission is to help people with disabilities access the equipment they need. Their vision starts by making custom-made 3D printed Ankle Foot Orthoses (AFOs) available to Australian children! The enterprise’s approach is to use 3D scanning & printing technology to fabricate customised designs for AFOs. They are developing 3D scanning equipment and are making it widely accessible on the World Wide Web in 2018. The enterprise was founded by Melissa Fuller and Johan du Plessis.

3D printed Ankle Foot Orthoses (AFOs)

AbilityMate initially started by running design jams and projects at community makerspaces. The aim was to help people with disabilities by developing custom made 3D printed devices. In this early phase the AbilityMate community would work directly with people with disabilities to assess their needs and 3D print the devices that made them more independent. This has been exploratory and the AbilityMate community has co-created a number of different designs for people in need of assistive devices. These designs have been made available online.

Hack-a-Home Project

A more recent collaborative research project which is still ongoing seeks to test “what happens when you put the means of production in the hands of those who need it”, whether the production of custom made assistive devices could be moved to the community requiring them. The project entailed conducting trainings at various residences where people with disabilities live. People with disabilities and their carers were trained to do various aspects of the design and production of assistive devices, from body scanning to 3d modelling and 3D printing. Overall, this project seems to have had a low general impact, as coordination has been challenging and production has only happened when AbilityMate makers have been present. However, the impact is large for individuals when they experience the power of being able to produce assistive devices to cover their own needs.

Open Source 3D scanner

The Magic Shoes project  

In mid 2016 AbilityMate started receiving many request form families in the Cerebral Palsy community who saw 3D printing as solution to the challenges they face. Members from this community requested that they have a go at 3D printing Ankle Foot Orthoses (AFOs). AFOs are customised leg braces worn to support posture and mobility of kids and are used for corrective therapy. Currently AFOs are prescribed and hand fabricated by a medical specialist called an Orthotist. After looking into how AFOs are currently made they realised that their approach of using 3D scanning and 3D printing could potentially create a more pleasant experience for children and reduce the turnaround times and wait times experienced by these families. Because of the large amount of work and investment required to make this a reality, AbilityMate was joined by 6 other impact driven organisations. The project includes regulatory affairs, a clinical study with 20-30 children, development of an open source 3D scanner, the establishment of 2 orthotics clinics to make 3D printed AFOs available and the release of an open source package including blueprints of the 3D scanner and findings from the clinical study. A considerable financial investment of $600,000 is required for a project of this size. With a strong collaboration in place and a successful proof of concept AbilityMate has raised $400,000 through crowdfunding and philanthropic donations and still needs to raise $200,00 to complete the project.

Magic Shoes project team

The AbilityMate model

Having explored the production of a number of assistive and medical devices, AbilityMate came to the realization that it needed to create a viable business model. Once it has done this, it will be able to apply the same model to other types of customised assistive and medical devices. The current focus of AbilityMate is therefore to establish this new enterprise model around the customisation and production of AFOs. They’ve started with  “The Magic Shoes Project” and now have now begun to set up a sustainable social business.

AbilityMate are a For Purpose technology start-up that’s incorporated as a Proprietary Limited Company. They have modified their constitution in line with a Social Benefit Company. It permits and requires Directors to act to deliver the purpose and to consider wider impacts of their decisions. AbilityMate will be engaged in the customisation and digital manufacture of custom-made assistive devices. AbilityMate’s products help orthotists achieve the clinical results they expect and deliver effective, cutting-edge options and better experienced to their patients.

In their experience the interaction with orthotists is critical to the safe delivery of 3D printed AFOs because these devices are corrective by nature not augmented like a prosthetic hand for example. AFOs are traditionally prescribed and made by Orthotists, after careful evaluation of biomechanical needs.

Moreover, many devices that are normally prescribed by health care providers have been subjected to clinical trials. Simply having a repository of open source templates for assistive and medical devices does not really suit a large percentage of the market. AbilityMate has learned that it has needed to create a model which incorporates the medical profession and clinicians that prescribe the devices. The new model has three basic aspects:

1. Open source body scanning devices;
2. A customisation and fabrication service (CFS);
3. A network of localised 3D printing facilities

Customization of AFO

The first barrier to overcome is the way in which orthotists develop AFOs in the first place. For things like AFOs, orthotists have traditionally used plaster casting which children tend to dislike. The first problem to solve is to find a way in which orthotists can digitize the production process. There are many types of body scanners, but they have not been widley adopted by the profession. Good scanners can cost between $20,000 to $30,000, and may not be made for scanning the legs of wriggly children. AbilityMate is therefore working on an open source scanner that will be available to anyone to make at a much lower cost.

Secondly, orthotists are not digital designers, they work with their hands, and do not normally have knowledge and experience with CAD and 3D printing. AbilityMate believe it is not realistic to expect orthotists to become experts at these. AbilityMate’s strategy is therefore to set up a customisation and fabrication service (CFS). This is currently the model used for orthodontics and other medical devices that require a high degree of customisation. The CFS would be an online platform set up and run by AbilityMate. AbilityMate would receive orders from orthotists based on digitised body scans and their prescriptions. AbilityMate will make arrangements to have the leg brace printed at a 3D printing facility located closest to the orthotist who placed the order. Before onboarding a 3D printing facility to join the platform, AbilityMate will ensure the facility has all the required quality control and regulation requirements in place.

Thirdly, to fund and protect users this model requires there are elements of open source IP and closed IP. By opening the IP of the 3D scanner they reduce barriers to 3D printing. It will also enable AbilityMate to reach kids in remote communities. They will also have to keep some IP closed. AbilityMate has received genuine concern from the medical profession about open sourcing templates and 3D designs for AFOs. Because AFOs are corrective devices there is a major risk in having an unqualified person designing and printing AFOs for already vulnerable members of the community. AbilityMate is also in the process of raising seed investment from impact investors. For them it doesn’t make sense to open the IP surrounding how to customise an AFO in CAD modelling. These barriers have really challenged their thinking about open design and cosmo localisation because their vision started out with ambitions to keep everything open! In reality this approach could have negative consequences on children and on AbilityMates’ ability to raise capital. As the business model evolves, they hope that the tensions between the vision for cosmo-localization and the practical considerations of AFOs and seed investors can be resolved and integrated.

Based on this three-part model their plan is to support the development of AbilityMate “Pods”. Pods would be localized operations that can support a number of territories in instantiating the model (a little bit like a franchise but using open source principles). AbilityMate would package as a service how to set up a full-fledged operation, which would include how to conduct 3D printing as a CFS, how to produce and use the scanners and upgrade orthotics clinics to digital workflows, and how to draw on an open design commons. AbilityMate would help people set up their own operations in different parts of the world to service their local areas.

Open clinical trials and university collaboration

AbilityMate have also learned that the production of medical devices based on open designs needs to be coupled with clinical trials and the validation of models and technologies of medical devices. In Australia, for example, clinicians/orthotists will not normally prescribe an medical devices that has not been validated through clinical trial. This means that from a medical profession point of view, there is no real value in having hundreds of innovative open source designs for medical devices if none of them have been trialled and validated. In addition to this, medical trials are very hard to do, they cost a lot of money because of the research costs involved. In their opinion, they believe that certain contexts warrant a more liberal approach to this. For AFOs, for example, it is better that kids have them than not. For other types of devices where there is higher risk, they feel clinical trials need to be strictly applied.

Therefore, the challenge is not just to cultivate an open design commons for assistive devices and medical devices, but to build an approach to prototyping, testing and trialling assistive devices and medical devices in conjunction with this design commons. This requires open data on clinical trials that others can build on, which allows for people to build on and create subsequent design optimizations. In essence there is a need to create a commons around clinical trial data and the validation of devices. AbilityMate have only just begun to have conversations with universities about this.

Values and principles and the role of the maker movement

AbilityMate is an expression of deep personal connections with the experience and challenges for people who are disadvantaged by disabilities. Johan’s grandfather, for example, had polio, which left him with an impaired limb. The social stigma of being cripple haunted his grandfather’s entire life, impacting his work opportunities, and had an impact on three generations of his family. Melissa has a cousin who was struck by a car and acquired a spine and brain injury, losing the ability to walk and speak. The state insurance, which was meant to last his whole life was quickly exhausted by medical costs for equipment, and she saw how her cousin’s family constantly improvised to figure out how to solve basic problems.

The maker movement has also had a big impact on the values and thinking of AbilityMate. Before starting on this journey, Melissa did a tour of 40 makerspaces / tech shops / Fab labs across the United States. Realizing the massive impact of producing material things, and the possibility this new model could have has been a motivation as well. The way in which the maker movement merges the idea of the user with the designer and the consumer has been significant. In 2014 Melissa started a community makerspace in Sydney which is where she and Johan met.

Fairness is also a key concept. AbilityMate do not want to do charity, but rather create a more fair and equitable system. They feel that the emergence of a global design commons levels the playing field and creates fairer opportunities for people to have access to assistive devices and equipment. Fairness also means the price of assistive devices. The current high costs of assistive devices adds yet another burden to people with disabilities. The global design localized production model provides a way to lessen that cost burden.

Overall, they feel four words help to express their values and principles:

1. authentic-ness;
2. transparency / openness;
3. courage;
4. fairness.

Team, skills and decision making

Melissa comes from a design and manufacturing background, and Johan comes from a computer science and startup background. There are 4-5 other people they work with. Their backgrounds include industrial engineering, marketing and product management, CAD modelling and UX design. There are also volunteers that are connected with local maker spaces, and some interns with a biomedical background. Overall engineering with a scientific approach is valued, the ability to test hypotheses and conduct rapid prototyping, engage in user centric design, entrepreneurial skills and fund-raising. Areas where they may need future support include legal, fund-raising and finance. But the intangibles are critical in their opinion. They feel that people must have a personal connection with the area, and they are always looking for people who understand the “why” behind why they want to be involved. Often there is a personal story or connection with the disability area.

In terms of work style they prefer to cultivate a culture of co-learning rather than hierarchy. Decisions are made in different ways depending on the context. Most the time there is a team conversation which is open. Meetings are weekly. If there are more urgent decisions to make then less people may be involved in a decision. They use Loomio’s method of working groups and ensure decision-making is transparent, documented and as open as possible. Overall they try to be as organic, open and inclusive in their decision making as they can. While Melissa and Johan are the driving force, they try and distribute this as much as possible, for example by trying to rotate pitching for money or when applying for competitions.

Strengths and weaknesses of open design logic and the future

One of the biggest challenges that they face is in articulating the benefits of an open design business model. There has been lots of scepticism on the part of potential impact investors and it has been hard for people to understand why they would want to give away their “IP”, a constant need to explain and educate people on the benefits of equity fundraising. Alternatively, the benefits of working within the open design business model is the clear resonance it has with many people, associated with its altruistic dimension and potential for social impact. People have been very attracted to the model and have wanted to help, which has made it easier to establish strong partnerships. This has also helped attract talent which has become part of the team.

They feel the open design business model is a critical strategy in addressing the many challenges that we have. They do not feel approaches that rely on patents and tight intellectual property will make enough of a difference. They feel the future of open source hardware is bright if people take the open design pathway. They are optimistic and feel the changes will come from the bottom up.

They see the outlines of a virtuous cycle developing across the open design distributed manufacturing development space. There needs to be ways to circulate value from users and clinicians back through designers and platform developers. As well, learning from other open design enterprises is critical, as the verification of such models helps to create knowledge and legitimacy. They feel it is a bit like social bootstrapping. When there are not a lot of cases it is hard to articulate the benefits of such a model and harder to get resources and people behind it.

At a social level they see an economic virtuous cycle emerging. When a valuable design is added to the global design commons and the benefits of that design begin flowing into the local community, then it frees up people and their time to do others things, and people can apply yet more open source strategies, in a virtuous cycle of economic benefits. As open design enterprises get on their feet and produce results, they capacitate communities to do more. This can include strategies for building circular economies into this model. Finally without a global design commons, local production is not possible, and without local design production then the global commons is not possible. Creating such virtuous cycles is key.

This report on AbilityMate was conducted by Jose Ramos in the context of the Open Design & Manufacturing project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission.

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Abstract

“This study is an effort to contribute to the current urban studies debate on the way to conceptualize the city by advancing a rights-based approach and to suggest that to build such vision one needs to reconceive the city as a commons, which is to say that the city serves as an infrastructure enabling the “pooling” of city inhabitants actions, energies, resources and the cooperation between city inhabitants and other four urban actors thereby embedding a “quintuple helix” or “pentahelix” approach in the governance design of the city.

Part I articulates the three most prominent visions or paradigms of the city of the 21st century and the “metaphors” that are currently used to conceptualize the city. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this part then discusses some complications and emerging key points that deserve further reflection.

In Part II, the article argues that a rights-based paradigm or vision in the conceptualization of the city is emerging. It does so through the analysis of urban laws and policies adopted in exemplary case studies such as Naples and Barcelona, on one side, and Bologna and Turin, on the other side. Two main rights-based approaches seem to emerge: the rebel city model and the co-city model.

In Part III, to better define this fourth urban paradigm and in particular the second approach, a focus on the key concept of commons and a review of the main bodies of literature is provided which are key to carve out the concept of “pooling” as a form of cooperation that encompasses both sharing of congestible resources to avoid scarcity and collaboration around non congestible, constructed resources to generate abundance. Building on the existing literature of a particular subset of studies on infrastructure commons, the concept of pooling is extracted from the observation of how pooling as a demand-side strategy can both expand or leverage the idle “capacity” of an infrastructure to avoid congestion and at the same time generate abundance. Pooling is particularly effective in explaining the main features of one of the rights-based visions of the city, the co-city approach, ultimately envisioning the city as an enabling infrastructure for social and economic pooling.

Part IV offers concluding remarks and proposes the idea of the “right to the co-city” to build a body of urban laws and policies advancing “urban rights to pooling” as a key legal tool to structure a commons-oriented interpretation of the fourth vision of the city, the rights-based approach.”

Find the full article here.

Photo by ThoroughlyReviewed

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Abstract

“Libre-currency proposes a self-issuance, or co-creation of units by the people of the monetary system for the people. Calculated on a mathematical equation with three variables: number of human members alive, their average lifespan and monetary mass, it ensures symmetry on space and time. As no material value is absolute in space and time, Libre-currency is rooted on our unique common value among humans on Earth: being alive on Earth!

Symmetry in space: at a time T, everyone wherever he is, co-creates its part of money at the same amount. Symmetry in time: an old generation could not co-issue more than the next, and the next more than the former. Therefore it’s sustainable as it’s valuable for everyone everywhere; no one can deprive others even next generations. Respect, innocuity and sovereignty are embedded in the DNA of Libre-currency, as every human member is an equal co-creator of the currency, independently of its production, unconditionally of its status. People are co-producing their universal dividend because they are humans alive. Organizations can also be part of the monetary system but they aren’t co-issuing units, only trading.

As Bitcoin, Libre-currency algorithm generates monetary units. But unlike data mining, here algorithm relies on the three variables; unlike proof-of-work, it’s people’s proof-of-life that determines recurrent and periodical creation of units (per day, week, month…). Thus each human member’s wallet increases evenly according to the universal dividend co-created. Then members, human or organizations, can use their units to sell and buy among them as any currency. A blockchain ledger records either recurrent issuances or transactions exchanges.

According to experimentations, issuing money with Libre-currency creates favourable conditions to behave toward social changes and sustainability, as it’s intrinsically fair, abundant, transparent and decentralised. People are responsible, equal and free, and Libre-currency insures durability and reliability.

Moreover each monetary community self-manages its Libre-currency. The only needs are a way to regularly validate that people are alive meaning having a “proof-of-life” mechanism (e.g. through web-of-trust-certification process) and a Libre-currency-algorithm-blockchain. Yet Libre-currency is only solving monetary issuance, other mechanisms have to be set by the members (prices, taxes, finances, marketplaces…).”

Find the full article here.

Photo by Ratchanee @ Gatoon

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“At Ceptr we’re building a platform for distributed applications that will power new forms of human collaboration and help the world successfully navigate the daunting challenges we face. Designed using the organizational patterns found in nature, we’re opening new possibilities for more more equitable and regenerative forms of governance and wealth creation.

You don’t program? Cool! Because the project needs all sorts of skills; storytellers, marketeers, organizers, community developers and more. We are looking for summer residents to join our team as we build and launch initial applications, share discoveries, and grow a movement that will change the planet. As a Resident of the Ceptr team you will help awaken people’s minds to possibilities that they’ve never imagined and create the tools that will make that future a reality.

As an Open Source project, Ceptr is not a profit-driven organization and has no short-term revenue. Most people participate as volunteers. We operate as a “do-acracy,” empowering people to participate in whatever ways they see fit within self-directed teams.

Residencies include room and board. There will be domain-specific teams located in San Francisco(CA), Albuquerque(NM), and Ashland(OR). More important than specific job skills or experience is communication, competence and commitment. We can provide training and development on particular skills, although it is also great if you’re already bringing some good ones.

Types of Residencies – Ways to Participate

There are many ways to participate and contribute. Below are some that our teams have identified, maybe you can bring some of the skills, talents, and interests we need.

• Software Development – Skills/Interests in Go, JavaScript, protocols, blockchain, or distributed computing.
• Writing, Blogging, & Editing – Good writing skills. Actually enjoy writing and editing. Research, develop, and write engaging blog posts, website content, video scripts, crowdfuding copy. Edit new and previously written documents and prepare them for public distribution. Find supporting images and/or work with photographer to capture useful visual content.
• Executive Assistant, Admin & Organization – Competent, detail oriented, and excited to learn. Support founders and team leaders on a wide range of tasks including training, calendar management, travel logistics, email communication, editing, and report writing.
• Marketing, Social Media & PR – Good communication skills, facility with many social media tools. Support for the social media strategy. Listen to conversations, analyze data, engage with audience, track questions, monitor influencers and hashtags, identify opportunities. Help design strategic vision and lay groundwork for broadcasting that vision.
• Crowdfunding, Communications & Outreach – Experience running a crowdfunding campaign. Coherency holder for one or two of our crowdfunding campaigns. Ability to communicate effectively with a team of broadly skilled individuals including writers, videographers, and marketing strategists to engineer a brilliant campaign in a short amount of time.
• Graphic Design – Skills in visual communication and graphic design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. Work with our UX, Web, and Marketing teams to create style guides, branding, and online experiences that are compelling, yet intuitive. Your work will be critical for both our products and community relations.
• Web Site Development – HTML, JavaScript, Jekyll, and basic layout & design. Create websites for Ceptr and for specific projects and applications that are engaging and delightful. We are building new ways of computing, but many of these need to interface with or be marketed on the world wide web. Work with our graphic design and backend software development teams to drive engagement and adoption.
• UX Design – Design and iterate on user-centered experiences. Expertise in UX software such as InVision, UXPin, Balsamiq, Framer.js, Quartz Composer, and the like is a must. Basic HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript skills are a plus. Design and deliver wireframes, user stories, user journeys, and mockups that lead to intuitive user experiences. Make strategic design and user-experience decisions related to core, and new, functions and features. Collaborate with Graphic Designers, User Interface Designers, Web Developers and Software Engineers.
• Infrastructure and Deployment Engineering – Automating cloud and metal infrastructures with tools like Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, Storage, Networking, Security.
• Test Engineering – Creating test suites for automated distributed app test-driven development processes. Holochain application development includes a testing-harness to automate tests across many automatically instantiated instances of the application. This work includes developing and enhancing that testing-harness and it’s Docker integration. Expertise in Test-driven/Behavior-driven development, Docker, go, unix system scripting all helpful.
• Videographer, Video Editor – Natural storyteller with video filming and editing experience. Experience editing with Adobe Premier (preferred), Final Cut Pro or similar software. Create videos for social media, online education and community onboarding to help build understanding of – and nurture participation in – our work to re-design internet communication, collaboration, and work itself.
• Animation & Illustration – Natural storyteller with experience in graphic illustration and/or digital animation. Experience creating 2d animations or motion graphics with After Effects or similar software. Illustration chops and experience with Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign a plus. Create video and web animations that help communicate world changing ideas and engage audiences..
• Community Development, Event Organizing – Good communication skills, eagerness to learn and create value. Contribute to event organizing and production online and offline. Learn to produce e-learning materials in Learning Management Systems (LMS), be in service to the needs of people in the community. If proficient in the content, then contribute to forum moderation. Contribute to activities related to community development like potlucks, be-ops and others.”

Apply to the Summer 2017 Residency here.

More information can be found here.

Photo by Randy Wick

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