Interview by Anca Voinea, originally published at coop news on 1st May 2019

Simel Esim heads the International Labour Organization’s Cooperatives Unit, which manages ILO activities on co-operatives and other social and solidarity economy enterprises (SSEEs). She has been at the helm of the unit since 2012. In an interview with Co-op News, she looked at the findings of the Global Commission on the Future of Work’s report released earlier this year.

What is the ILO Global Commission on Future of Work about?

The world of work is undergoing major changes. The new forces that are transforming the world of work include technological, demographic and climate changes, as well as globalisation. To understand and to effectively respond to these new challenges, the ILO has launched a Future of Work initiative. As part of this initiative, the ILO established an independent Global Commission with 27-members that includes leading global figures from business, trade unions, think tanks, governments and non-governmental organisations. The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, which has adopted a dual strategy of trade unionism and co-operativism for its 1.8 million women informal economy members, is also represented on the commission.

What does the report say about co-operatives?

The report of the Commission, launched in Geneva on 22 January, outlines the steps needed to achieve a future of work that provides decent and sustainable work opportunities, in line with Sustainable Development Goal 8 to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. It calls for a new, human-centred approach that allows everyone to thrive in a carbon neutral, digital age and affords them dignity, security, and equal opportunity. The report will be submitted to the centenary session of the International Labour Conference next month. The report mentions co-operatives on two issues. One in supporting women’s voice, representation and leadership. It also mentions the role of co-operatives in improving the situation of workers in the informal economy. It also notes the need to explore innovative measures that require enterprises to account for the impact of their activities on the environment and on the communities in which they operate.

How are co-operatives responding to the world of work challenges outlined in the report?

There is growing interest in economic models based on co-operation, mutualism and solidarity. The report of the Global Commission provides an opportunity to reflect on how co-operatives can contribute to creating a brighter future and deliver economic security, equal opportunity and social justice. Key issues highlighted in the report include lifelong learning, youth employment and gender equality, new forms of work, care economy, rural and informal economies, and social dialogue, and technological and environmental changes.

In terms of lifelong learning, co-operatives provide education and training for their members in order to contribute effectively to the development of their businesses. The fifth co-operative principle (Education, Training and Information) focuses on co-operatives engaging in education activities not only for their members, but also young people and the community at large towards mutualism, self-help and collaboration.

On youth employment, each year close to 40 million people enter the labour market. Co-operatives can help young people to find work and gain work experience. They can offer opportunities for professional and vocational training. The collaborative approach of working together, sharing risks and responsibilities in co-operatives and can also be appealing for young people.

Faced with the prospect of losing jobs due to enterprise failures during economic crises and subsequent transition, workers in firms with economic potential can buy out and transform the firms into worker-owned enterprises. A move towards a worker co-operative could also be attributable to the retirement of ageing owners, where there is no clear plan for the future of the enterprise.

With the rapidly ageing societies, co-operative ownership of services such as housing, leisure and care enables senior members to control decisions and lead more independent lives. Co-operatives play a complementary role to local and national governments in developing and providing improved care services in childcare, ageing, disability, reproductive and mental health, post-trauma care, and rehabilitation and prevention while meeting the needs and aspirations of their members and communities. Compared to other ownership models, they tend to provide better and fairer wages and benefits to workers.

Women’s unemployment rates remain high, and higher than men’s in many parts of the world with persisting gender wage gaps across the board. Fewer than one third of managers are women, although they are likely to be better educated than men. Women have opted to come together through co-operatives to improve their livelihoods, enhance their access to goods, markets and services and improve their collective voice and negotiation power. Co-operatives have a critical role to play in lifting constraints to women’s participation in the world of work by promoting equality of opportunity and treatment, including through pay equity and the provision of care, transport, and financial services.

The majority of co-operatives are found in rural areas where they are often a significant source of employment and are recognised as having a key role in the transition from the informal to the formal economy. Co-operatives have the potential to provide better working conditions, including adequate hours of work, social protection and safe and healthy workplaces for both their members and workers.

Co-operative insurance and mutual health insurance organisations are community and employment-based groupings that have been used for providing social protection to their members. When built up through secondary and tertiary institutions in favorable ecosystems of laws, financing and institutions they have been successful across the countries of the Global North and the South from workers’ health and childcare to old age income security.

Co-operative action to tackle discrimination ranges from the provision of services to marginalised groups of the population to making labour market access possible for discriminated groups such as women, young people, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, migrants and refugees.

Co-operatives have historically represented an alternative organisational form used by workers’ and employers’ organisations to advance social dialogue. Co-operatives have contributed to the representativeness of workers, especially those working in the informal economy and in areas where other organisational forms are limited.

New technologies are changing the way work is organised and governed, especially in emerging sectors like the platform economy. There will be significant job losses, some jobs will be transformed, and new jobs will be created that will require new sets of skills. Some see the platform economy as an economic opportunity. However, there is growing evidence that it creates unregulated spaces resulting in worker insecurity and deteriorating working conditions. Policy and legal frameworks typically lag behind these changes.

For the positive potential of technology to be realised, and its threats of increased unemployment and domination of capital over labour to be countered, new models of collective ownership and democratic governance could be used. Co-operatives can help strengthen voice and representation of workers in the platform economy. Platform co-operatives are being formed by freelancers as worker and user co-operatives in providing much needed services.

Climate change concerns are affecting the world of work in various ways. Green jobs and green enterprises are on the rise. Co-operatives can be instrumental in ensuring a just transition while working on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Mutual insurance for crops, diversification of crops, energy saving irrigation and construction techniques are a few adaptation strategies co-operatives can use. Prominent examples in mitigation include forestry and renewable energy co-operatives.

The report of the Global Commission highlights that promoting social justice through decent and sustainable work for all requires ongoing commitment and action. Some of the key trends in the changing world of work suggest that areas of the economy could benefit from community-based action, self-help and mutuality to address unmet needs. Co-operatives are engaged in collective satisfaction of insufficiently-met human needs, working toward building more cohesive social relations and more democratic communities. They can be viable means to promoting decent and sustainable work especially along with an enabling environment with appropriate policy frameworks and financial and institutional support mechanisms.

How is the ILO working with co-operative organisations such as the ICA bilaterally and multilaterally?

The ILO recognises the relevance of co-operatives to its mandate toward achieving social justice since its foundation in 1919. It is the only specialised agency of the UN with an explicit mandate on co-operatives. This is reflected in its constitution. Since 1920 the ILO has had a specialised unit on co-operatives. The ICA has a general consultative status with the ILO. It was also involved in the process leading to the adoption of the Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives, 2002 (No. 193).

The ILO and the ICA are members of the Committee on the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC). Most recently, the Committee contributed to the process that culminated in the adoption of the guidelines concerning statistics on co-operatives at the 20^th International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 2018.

On 24 June this year the ILO and the ICA are organising an event on co-operatives and the future of work in Geneva. The two organisations’ leaders will sign a new memorandum of understanding. A jointly produced book on co-operatives and the world of work will be launched around the International Day of Co-operatives. Co-operatives for decent work is also the slogan of this year’s International Say on Co-operatives.

The post Co-ops and the Global Commission on the Future of Work: Q&A with Simel Esim appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Jorge Pinto, research associate at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society (University of Minho, Portugal) and co-founder of the Portuguese party LIVRE, writes about the ‘Order of Barcelona’, and global municipalism.

Jorge Pinto: Confronted with the lack of action and proposals by their countries, many cities have been trying to assume a leadership role regarding some of the most pressing issues of our times, from the reduction of inequality to the struggle against climate change. They do so thanks to their capacity to involve civil society – and all its diversity of views and ideas – to an extent which is difficult to achieve at the national level. This has allowed municipalist movements to assume power in various large cities, grounding their actions in democratic and participatory values, reinforcing the historic role of cities as progressive and cosmopolitan places, places of tolerance and of intercultural meeting.

A key characteristic of the current municipalist vision is the fact that, besides the attention given to the city itself, there is a clear global vision: a cosmopolitan sense, in which all citizens feel part of the city but also part of the global community. It was precisely under the banner of municipalism and a vision of a global polis that more than 700 mayors and activists from 180 countries came together in Barcelona, in June 2017, to discuss what ‘fearless cities’ can do. It might not be too optimistic to argue that this has planted the seeds of a new global and municipalist order – the ‘Order of Barcelona’ – that could potentially supplant the previous Westphalian order. This new order is one where fearless cities and regions have a more preponderant role in the definition of global politics, bringing decision-making processes closer to the people. This municipalist vision can support the development of republicanism, a political theory that has been kept in the shadows for too long and is increasingly worth exploring.

Rethinking republicanism

Republicanism as a political theory has its roots in Ancient Greece and Rome, with figures such as Aristotle or Cicero among its main thinkers. Central to the definition of republicanism are the notions of freedom as non-domination, civic virtues (Cicero talked of four: justice, prudence, courage, and temperance), participation in the political life of the community and the debating of ideas, public over private interest, combatting all forms of corruption, and also the defence of a state based on strong laws – the “empire of laws and not of men”, to use the words of the 17th century political theorist James Harrington.

Within republicanism, there are two different lines of thought: on the one hand, civic humanism (or the neo-Aristotelian line) and, on the other, civic republicanism (the neo-Roman line). The first, similar to communitarianism in its defence of a single vision of the common good, defends the positive concept of freedom, in which the individual is free through active participation in the political life of the community. The second, clearly the most popular amongst current defenders of republicanism, argues for a vision of liberty in which individuals are free as long as they are not dominated – either by the state (imperium) or by other individuals (dominium) – and are protected from arbitrary forms of power.

Non-arbitrary interference that serves to reduce domination over individuals – i.e. actions taken (by the state or the city, for example) in order to increase one’s liberty – is not only accepted but defended. To give an example, when we think of the fight against economic inequality and climate change, it is difficult to make much progress without any kind of interference from public powers, such as a stronger taxing system or better economic (re)distribution. And this interference is politically more difficult to justify through a liberal vision of freedom based on non-interference, than through the republican approach of non-domination.

A classic example used to distinguish between non-interference and non-domination is the case of the slave and the master. If the slave has a good relationship with the master and doesn’t suffer any punishment throughout their life, the vision of liberty as non-interference would consider such a slave to have more liberty than another one who is regularly punished. On the other hand, the republican notion of liberty as non-domination would say that although this slave has slightly better life conditions, they are not free, because all the actors – slave and master – are aware of the difference in terms of power and know that, whenever the master decides – an arbitrary form of power – the slave can be punished. Thus, in this view, the bigger the difference in power, the bigger the risk of domination. This offers the political justification to avoid the (increasing) inequality between states, cities, and individuals.

The political participation defended by republicanism implies the existence of a political community, which is, in theory, more easily promoted at the municipal level. At this level, it is easier to give a voice to citizens, and for them to be able to disagree openly, debating and deliberating the matters that interest them. Complementarily, municipalism contends that the local is extremely important and that it is at this level that citizens have a greater capacity to actively participate and to know the problems that affect them, and are being better prepared to resolve them. Obviously, in an interconnected world, there are a number of problems that cross borders, with inequality and climate change being at the forefront of this.

Republicanism needs therefore to be conceptualised in such a way that it can be applied globally, but the answer is unlikely to lie in a hypothetical global government. Rather than concentrating power in one entity, it would be better to distribute it among cities, states, and regions linked in a network. International institutions could, nevertheless, ensure that basic liberties are respected, guaranteeing a common minimum of republican freedom to every individual around the globe. The exact shape of a global republican approach is subject to big discussions between those who defend a statist view (where people are represented by their states) and those defending the civil society view (representation via non-state actors such as NGOs). Municipalism provides strong arguments in favour of a third view, a more expansive one that keeps the best of both other approaches, by facilitating the multi-layered representation of citizens at the international, national, and city level. With greater opportunities to participate politically in their own republics, citizens’ voices would carry more weight, both locally and globally, proving the advantage of this local/global republicanism when compared to the nation-state and the intergovernmental approach. And, after all, who better than the citizens themselves to put forward solutions to the problems directly affecting them?

The sun is setting on Westphalia

For the first time in human history, the number of inhabitants in cities has overtaken that of inhabitants in rural areas. This is a fundamental change in the way that societies organise themselves, and everything indicates that this trend of migration from the country to the city will continue. Although this reality must not mean a lack of investment at the level of territorial cohesion policies, or the abandonment of the rural world, it is also clear that cities will assume an increasingly important role in the definition of public policy. This is a moment in which states are increasingly losing control and sovereignty, to use Saskia Sassen’s words.

A world governed by sovereign, independent nation-states, coming out of the Peace of Westphalia, has been questioned by the advancement of globalisation. While it is true that states remain an essential element in governance and can be expected to stay this way in the near future, the progressivists who aim to achieve a more just and sustainable world should start to think about how a new model of global organisation could be designed. We do not want a retreat to a world of siloes that do not communicate, therefore it is of primary importance to think of alternative globalisation models. This is where municipalist cities come in.

There are a number of cities and their respective metropolitan areas which today represent what in the past was considered a state, in terms of their size, population, and income. However, the autonomy of cities in various domains is still very limited by the definition of national laws, which creates conflict at the level of sovereignty between state and city. This conflict is seen most clearly in the notion of citizenship rights. The European Union provides a case in point and can define the role of cities in the future. Currently, access to European citizenship is granted solely through the intermediary of national citizenship – people can enjoy European rights only when they enjoy the citizenship rights of one of the Member States. Now, the discussions surrounding the acceptance of refugees have started to expose some of the problems of this model. While the number of refugees that each state should receive has been decided at the European level, a number of states have postponed this intake.1 In contrast, some of their cities have not only shown themselves willing to take refugees in, but have also held demonstrations to demand this. This is a clear example of conflict between the three levels of sovereignty. It can be expected that such conflicts will increase as cities continue to grow in importance and states continue down the opposite path.

A small number of progressive cities, challenging the established order in radical ways but acting more or less separately, will find it difficult to achieve great things. However, a global network of rebel cities2 acting in a coordinated way, sharing their experience and knowledge, errors and lessons, will be able to completely reformulate the way in which globalisation takes place. A republican globalism based on cities organised in a network can therefore be our next step. And there are various examples of attempts to form these networks, with varying levels of success, such as: ‘Solidarity cities’, ‘Eurocities’, the ‘Global Parliament of Mayors’, or the ‘Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy’.

But specifically, what can be done to promote municipalism and to strengthen republican freedom within cities? A first step is to look at what has been done already, namely regarding remunicipalisation initiatives. Secondly, one can look at city governments such as the ones in Paris and Stockholm which have assumed a leadership role in pressing issues such as climate change. It has to be noted that the construction of a republic of cities will not only include larger cities, as proven by the municipalist examples of A Coruña and Bristol with their complementary currency system. These latter cities exemplify the republican motivation of the citizens and the civic virtues that animate them: the search for more justice, participation in the life of the community, and a strong sense of perseverance. These practical examples are truly inspirational and serve as baseline for other municipalist movements and for the definition of a 21st century brand of municipalism.

Barcelona: The Dawn of a New Order

The definition of a new global order should not happen through the creation of a hypothetical global government but through greater shared sovereignty. States should share their sovereignty with supra-national institutions (such as the European Union), but also with sub-national institutions, namely cities. The European Union can, as a matter of fact, be a good environment in which to experiment with municipalist republicanism in the 21st century, by supporting existing projects in various countries and promoting a true Europe of the regions and cities, in which subsidiarity does not boil down to intergovernmentalism, but to the sharing of skills, responsibilities, and funds with cities and regions. Direct contact between European institutions and cities must therefore be increased and improved, not making it dependent on the states in which these cities are located. Republican cities would therefore have various platforms on which to make themselves heard, and be able to have a more influential role in public policy and in shaping alternative development models. This true subsidiarity – clearly distinct from the current model – would help to promote the republican notion of non-domination at the European level.

Global municipalism has therefore a fundamental role to play in the critical moment we are living in, through the promotion and support of governance for the common good. Responsibility to the entire human community, based on the criterion of global justice, is a necessity for those municipalist movements which, having emerged initially as opposition forces, now have to start implementing their proposals.

Today a European republic, tomorrow a global republic

Throughout history, the constitution of citizenship has been defined as top-down. That is, the definition of a specific political area was followed by the attribution of a series of rights and responsibilities associated with belonging to that area. But the European Union can radically challenge this model, going to the heart of belonging to a nation state: citizenship. Allowing access to the privileges of European citizenship for those who are not citizens of any of the EU countries but reside in their cities, would represent a true change of paradigm.

We can imagine a European Republic3 formed by various republics at the municipal or regional level. Small, medium, and large republics agreeing on deliberation as a way of doing politics and creating the necessary platforms for citizen representation. Places with alternative currencies at the regional level, as exists in Bristol now, that promote sharing and the decommodification of goods. Republics that follow the example of Barcelona and where the citizens, also through their representatives, are members of energy production and distribution cooperatives, living in cities designed for this end: living. Cities and regions where everyone has the right to not be dominated, giving everyone a set of minimum conditions (e.g. access to shelter, to education, to health, to transport, and a basic income) that allow them to freely exercise their activities as citizens. Republics that look inwards, concerned about the quality of life for those living there, but also look outwards, cosmopolitan and open to those who arrive, conscious that there exist multiple visions of the common good.

The message from the main municipalist projects is opposed to a dark and defeatist vision based on fear. With a message of hope, justice, perseverance, and courage – essential republican civic virtues – these movements have managed to awaken in citizens a sense of urgency to act and to grasp their future with their own hands. Not by chance, the first municipalist meeting in Barcelona was called ‘Fearless Cities’. But fear of what, exactly? Of course, to no longer fear being open to all those who seek shelter there, be they residents or refugees. To be courageous in confronting states when they fail in the definition of progressive policies, in fighting inequality, in investing in education, and in promoting a sustainable development model. To not fear involving citizens in their civic virtues, giving them the platform necessary to make themselves heard. To not fear being ambitious in envisaging the future. And what objective could be more ambitious than the definition of a new global order?

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 3rd article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

1 In September 2015, in one of the peaks of the refugee crisis and faced with lack of governance and reluctance by Member States to open their borders to refugees, the European Commission adopted a refugees’ relocation policy, intended to relocate 120,000 refugees among the Member States.

2 Using David Harvey’s expression, who in his 2013 book lays out the potential role of cites as places of social justice and ecological resistance.

3 To use Ulrike Guérot’s expression, although not directly referring to it.

Photo by ifolha

The post The Order of Barcelona: Cities Without Fear appeared first on P2P Foundation.

I started a Youtube channel, and here is the first video I made: One more time on “What Is Open Source Circularity?”

It is my first video and I learned a bunch of things for future videos. But I think the quality is already good enough to make people understand Open Source Circularity and why we need it. If you prefer reading over watching you can download the script here. It is also on Facebook in case you like to share it there.

(Deutsch unten)

From the video:

Utopia

… Open Source Circularity – that sounds like world worth living in.

* It is a world that invites our creativity and intellect.

* A world that supplies us with what we need. Without having countries invading each other for resources. Because if we don’t burn resources or turn them into garbage there should be enough for all.

* It is a world that preserves nature and the biosphere. In such a world nature remains beautiful and rich everywhere.

* And it is a world that will provide us with a lot of free time! Because for a working circular economy we also need to consume much less! Therefore less production is needed. Which frees up or time. For other things.

* And it is a world where we are enabled to express our freedom and are not surveilled or controlled by large companies using the products around us.

An Open Source Circular Economy … well … that sounds like the best positive utopia I know.

SCRIPT DOWNLOAD: PDF Video Script.PDF1 (60.8 KB) | ODT Video Script.ODT (21.0 KB)

DE Ich eröffne einen Youtube-Kanal. Und hier ist das erste Video. Noch einmal zur Frage: Was ist Open Source Circularity – was ist Kreislaufwirtschaft und wieso brauchen wir sie und für sie Open Source? Wer lieber liest als schaut, kann sich das vollständige englische Skript herunterladen. Das Video ist auch auf Facebook, falls man es dort teilen möchte.

Aus dem Video:

Utopia

… Open Source Circularity? Das klingt nach einer Welt, in der man vielleicht gern lebt?

* Es ist eine Welt, die unseren Intellekt und unsere Kreativität einlädt durch die Produkte, die uns umgeben.

* Es ist eine Welt, die uns mit allem Notwendigen versorgt, ohne dass Länder kriegerisch ineinander einmarschieren müssen, um an knappe Ressourcen zu gelangen. Denn wenn wir die Ressourcen nicht wegwerfen oder verbrennen, sollte genug für uns da sein.

* Es ist eine Welt, die die Natur und unsere Biosphäre bewahrt. Denn für eine echte und funktionierende Circular Economy muss die Natur schön und reich sein, überall!

* Und es ist eine Welt, die uns sehr viel Freizeit schenkt. Denn für eine funktionierende Circular Economy müssen wir vor allem auch weniger produzieren. Weniger Fabriken. Weniger Arbeit. Mehr Zeit für andere Dinge!

* Und es ist eine Welt, in der wir frei bleiben dürfen und nicht überwacht werden durch die Produkte, die wir zum Leben brauchen.

Eine Open Source Circular Economy … das klingt nach einer ziemlich überzeugenden Utopie für mich …

Crossposted from OSCE Days

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Jordan Greenhall: There have been a lot of conversations about Bitcoin over the years. Is it a currency or an equity or a commodity? Is it a store of value? Is it a “settlement mechanism”? Is it not money at all, but merely an example of a decentralized application on the Blockchain? The short answer is: none of the above.

Bitcoin is a self-organizing collective intelligence. As such, what it becomes is entirely a function of what it can do — that is, it is a function of the capacity of its collective intelligence to overcome the challenges that it encounters in its environment.

In some sense, we’ve seen this sort of thing many times. Every “movement” or “scenius” (to use Brian Eno’s ingenious term for “collective genius”) is a form of self-organizing collective intelligence. The Punk Rock movement, skateboarding, Ruby on Rails. What makes Bitcoin important is that it represents a new mutation in self-organizing collective intelligence.

In order to explain what I mean by this, I’m first going to have to spend a few minutes laying out what I mean by self-organizing collective intelligence.

The Development of Self Organizing Collective Intelligences (SOCI)

The basic dynamics of a SOCI is as follows. It begins as some sort of attractor — some aesthetic sensibility or yearning — that is able to grab the attention and energy of some group of people. Generally one that is very vague and abstract. Some idea or notion that only makes sense to a relatively small group.

But, and this is the key move, when those people apply their attention and energy to the SOCI, this makes it more real, easier for more people to grasp and to find interesting and valuable. Therefore, more attractive to more people and their attention and energy.

Thus begins the generative loop: as the SOCI becomes more real and attracts more people it begins to encounter challenges. Maybe Impressionism is being rejected by the status quo and it needs to find some way to display itself. Maybe hand-coded HTML is too burdensome and clumsy and this SOCI needs to get easier to use.

If the SOCI has enough capacity within its collective intelligence to resolve the challenge, it “levels up” and expands its ability to attract more attention and energy. If not, then it becomes somewhat bounded (at least for the present) and begins to find the limit of “what it is”.

Different SOCI will resolve challenges through different mechanisms. Some will form relatively centralized nodes (ICANN, Rolling Stone Magazine) that will accelerate problem solving in certain areas — but at the cost of losing some of the generativity and flexibility of decentralization. Others will mutate and proliferate exploring their niche like a slime mold (Protestantism and electronic music might be a good examples here).

As the SOCI develops, the choices that it makes — the solutions that it crafts — become part of its core architecture. “Frozen accidents” in its development, these begin to shape and define its future paths, slowly accreting structure and topography as the SOCI moves from its vague, open and highly creative infancy through adolescence and finally into its mature, effective, but much less creative adulthood.

In the end, the development of a SOCI is defined by the challenges it faces, its capacity to surmount those challenges, and the consequences of its solutions on its own further development.

Bitcoin as a Self Organizing Collective Intelligences (SOCI)

Bitcoin is a SOCI. And its future will be determined precisely by the dynamic tension between the problems it faces and its capacity to solve those problems.

Over the years, Bitcoin has worked its way through a complicated childhood. It was able to attract the attention and energy of a core of developers who built software that made it possible for less technical folks to participate and apply their energy. It has been able to create online exchanges and marketplaces and then survive the collapse and redesign and collapse and redesign of these pieces of its architecture.

As it did this, it expanded its “reality” and attracted the attention and energy of more “professional” entrepreneurs and venture capitalists — whose work significantly expanded Bitcoin’s capacity (and birthed an offshoot in the form of the “blockchain” SOCI).

Over the past year and a half it has struggled mightily with its most recent challenge: governance. For most of its developmental history, Bitcoin has been defined by two different governance mechanisms. The vast majority of the work has been highly decentralized — activities like wallet construction and exchange building that is entirely done “at the edge” and with little to no governance outside of simple architectural boundaries. The remainder of the work has been handled through an ad hoc oligarchy of the “Core Developers” who have been broadly able to maintain a highly technocratic coherence.

This loose governance mechanism broke down as the collective intelligence couldn’t achieve coherence on purely technical grounds: two paths emerged that each presented valid, compelling and incompatible attraction to different sensemaking elements of the collective intelligence. The result was the exploration of what might be a fundamental feature of this kind of SOCI’s governance — a “hard fork” where doctrinal and values differences are physically formalized into two separate code bases.

So now we wait. Will the “hard fork” be the next level up for the Bitcoin SOCI and lead to an expansion of its ability to attract more intelligence? Or is this the hill that Bitcoin can’t climb and the beginning of its senescence?

Bitcoin as a new form of self-organizing collective intelligence

Lets step back and consider what the Bitcoin SOCI has already done.

Beginning with essentially no backing and no resources Bitcoin has been able to organically attract attention and energy to grow into something that includes dozens of exchanges in something like 40 different countries and a computational infrastructure that processes an astounding 14 Million PetaFLOPS.

And it has done this while innovating directly against one of the most fundamental components of our current social fabric: money. The beaches are littered with the bodies of well funded efforts to step into this space and, indeed, even a major victory like PayPal required the improbably combined genius of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Luke Nosek, Reid Hoffman and the rest of the much gloried PayPal Mafia simply to carve out a “nice” niche in online payments.

And the Bitcoin SOCI has done this in merely seven short years.

This is no ordinary SOCI. The deep importance of Bitcoin is that it represents the first example of an entirely new SOCI organism in our landscape. One that clearly represents a new kind of power and capability. In fact, one that might relate to our legacy forms of collective intelligence in the same way that Homo Sapiens related to Homo Neanderthalensis.

What is the essence of this new form of collective intelligence that represents so much potential? My guess is that this can really only be answered with the benefit of hindsight. But I’ll venture a guess:

1) It is intrinsically global. More to the point, it is geographically unconstrained, and, therefore able to take advantage of any attention and energy anywhere in the world.

2) It is intrinsically virtual. In other words, it is able to connect with resources anywhere with minimal lag and at minimal cost.

These two features combine to mean that in principle this new form of SOCI can attract and utilize the total collective intelligence of the human species almost instantly. While in practice this level of concentrated collective intelligence isn’t likely to happen the potential of tapping into and connecting precisely the girl in Phuket and the team in Slovenia when where and how they are needed is flat out revolutionary.

And, most importantly,

3) It solves motivation, reward and collective action problems through an architecture that is responsive to nuanced and changing value landscapes without being bottlenecked by concentrated (and, therefore, intelligence reducing) decision-makers.

This is a dense and important point that needs to be unpacked.

Consider digital SOCI like, say, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. While these collective intelligences are both global and virtual, their ability to connect with, motivate and apply the attention and energy of their communities is either very narrow (you can contribute to the Instagram SOCI by uploading photos, liking and commenting them, but little more) or bottlenecked by a relatively small team of people who have exclusive power to adapt the architecture (like when the Facebook team added the ability to upload videos).

Bitcoin-like SOCI use the technical capabilities of the blockchain, crypto-tokens and smart-contracts to provide a motivational architecture that can be highly adaptive to the real needs of the SOCI without bottlenecking through some concentrated control structure. As these techniques mature, they provide this new class of SOCI with an “executive function” that has little to no agency risk and can scale without creating a bottleneck on the SOCI.

To get a better sense of what I mean here, consider Bitcoin as an extremely early prototype of how this kind of motivational architecture can work. By linking “run hashing software” with “be the source of coin creation”, Bitcoin created an invitation to value contribution at an architectural level. Anyone who could understand and act on the invitation could participate without any human agents getting in the way to bottleneck the process.

And by carefully wiring up difficulty and scarcity, Bitcoins became at least potentially appreciating assets — motivating anyone who could appreciate and act on this invitation to figure out how they could best give their value to the Bitcoin SOCI in exchange for increasingly valuable coins.

While rough and coarse-grained, this approach worked. It was flat out brilliant in incentivizing the construction and rollout of mining infrastructure, and as mentioned has delivered on a tremendous amount of creative activity.

Of course, the Bitcoin approach has known issues. High volatility, a dependence on risk seeking speculation, too much concentration in the hands of early adopters, coarse-grained focus on mining, etc. Arguably, these design elements limit the effectiveness of the SOCI to attract and deploy collective intelligence and, therefore, its overall potential.

With regard to the Bitcoin SOCI in particular, the future is uncertain. Will it overcome its governance challenges and emerge on the other side with still more collective intelligence? I honestly have no idea, I suspect it will, but these moments are always deeply uncertain.

If it does, however, it will come out the other end much stronger than it has been so far. Governance is a major challenge. If Bitcoin survives this current crisis, my bet is that the collective intelligence will focus its efforts on governance much like it has on past crises like the Mt. Gox collapse — and the result will be a much, much more capable SOCI.

The Future of Self Organizing Collective Intelligences

Regardless of the specific result of the Bitcoin experiment, we are clearly in the middle of a new era. As I discussed in The Future of Organization, a lot of smart people are currently hard at work understanding, generalizing and optimizing the deep code of these new forms of collective intelligence.

The limitations of Bitcoin’s approach to motivation and collective action are well understood and new technical layers like Ethereum’s smart contracts and Backfeed’s distributed governance system magnify the potential intelligence of this kind of SOCI at least as much as the neocortex magnified the intelligence of the mammalian brain.

I really wish the reality and importance of this new frontier were more broadly understood. My sense is that over just the next five years this new form of SOCI will go through its gestation, birthing and childhood development stages. The result will be a form of collective intelligence that is so much more capable than anything in the current environment that it will sweep away even the most powerful contemporary collective intelligences (in particular both corporations and nation states) in establishing itself as the new dominant form of collective intelligence on the Earth.

And whoever gets there first will “win” in a fashion that is rarely seen in history.

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New economic arrangements also need to reverse decades of privatisation, corporate control and profiteering over the Earth’s natural resources (such as water, oil, gas and minerals) so that nations can share the global commons more equitably and sustainably. This presents an epochal challenge for the international community at a time when humanity as a whole is already consuming resources and emitting waste and pollutants 50% faster than they can be replenished or reabsorbed.

Clearly this state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely, and governments may eventually be forced – through public pressure or intensifying ecological catastrophe – to abandon the current economic logic in favour of a cooperative strategy for sharing the world rather than keeping it divided. Two basic prerequisites will remain essential to successfully negotiating such a transition. Firstly, governments have to accept the need to limit resource use in both national and global terms. Instead of the endless drive to increase economic growth and maximise profits, the goal of economic policy must shift towards a sustainable sufficiency in which nations aim to maximise well-being and guarantee ‘enough’ for everybody, rather than encouraging the consumption of ‘more’ of everything.

Secondly, nations will have to collectively formulate a recognition that natural resources form part of our shared commons, and should therefore be managed in a way that benefits all people as well as future generations. This important reconceptualization could enable a shift away from today’s private and State ownership models, and towards a new form of global resource management based on non-ownership and trusteeship.

Transitioning to a sustainable world

New governance regimes for sharing natural resources could take many forms. For example, in line with the Common Heritage of Humankind principle that already exists in international law, many of the commons that are truly global in nature, like the oceans and atmosphere, could be held in a global public trust and managed by elected representatives, or else by newly created United Nations agencies. Another option for governments is to maintain sovereignty over the natural resources held within their jurisdiction, but agree to a coordinated international programme of sustainable use of those resources and the sharing of national surpluses.

Such economic arrangements may finally make it possible for governments to progressively reduce and equalise global consumption levels so that every person can meet their needs within the limits of a finite planet. To achieve this, over-consuming countries would have to take the lead in significantly reducing their national resource use, while less developed countries increase theirs until a convergence in levels of material throughput and carbon emissions is eventually reached. At the same time, a progressively tighter cap on the overall rate at which nations consume resources could ensure that global consumption patterns are gradually but definitely reduced to a sustainable level. To facilitate this dramatic shift towards ‘fair share’ ecological footprints, the international community will also need to adopt a low-carbon development strategy by significantly reducing dependence on non-renewable fuels and investing heavily in alternative sources of clean energy.

The implications of implementing any form of global mechanism for sharing natural resources cannot be underestimated. For example, the transition to an era of cooperative resource management is dependent on more inclusive governance at all levels, the democratisation of global institutions (including the United Nations), and a shift in power relations from North to South. An orderly transition will inevitably have to be negotiated and coordinated by UN Member States, which presupposes a degree of international cooperation that is increasingly lacking today. World leaders have yet to move beyond the self-interest and aggressive competition that characterises foreign policy, and are heavily invested in maintaining the dominant economic model that prioritises short-term business interests ahead of a healthy ecosystem and social justice.

Hence we cannot wait for governments to rethink the management of an economic system built upon endless consumption and competition over scarce resources. A solution to global environmental and resource security crises can only be brought about by the active engagement of civil society, with concerted efforts to overcome the corporate and political forces that stand in the way of creating a truly cooperative and sharing world.

The text above is taken from ‘A primer on global economic sharing‘.

Photo credit: JazzmYn*, flickr creative commons

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For example, I define baby boomers as those people who remember the Kennedy assassination, but not Pearl Harbor. Gen X as those people who remember the Challenger disaster but not Kennedy. Note that by the terms of this theory, people who are part of a given political nation, but not of a shared culture would never be part of the same “generation”. For example, recent immigrants will always have a unique enculturation compared to their peers, and, therefore, a different sensibility.

Generation Omega, then, would be that cohort of people who do not remember anything before September 11, 2001. These are kids who simply have no deep reference to what life was like before we decided as a culture to fully immerse ourselves in fear. Equally, of course, these are kids who have absolutely no recollection of the time before Google and Wikipedia, when the right answer was not simply a keystroke away. Interestingly, some of them will have vague recollections of life before smart phones, financial crises, gay marriage, and Minecraft; but these and many other cultural dynamics of the past decade and a half combine to form the general “adaptive landscape” that has given rise to their unique, shared generational sensibilities

Broadly speaking, we can suggest a number of characteristics that might be part of the generational flavor. For example, having been weaned in a highly interactive and responsive environment (think iTunes, YouTube and Minecraft), this is likely to be a generation of intuitive agency. They expect significant influence over and responsibility for their world. For example, unlike previous generations for whom media was an act of passive consumption (whatever is on NBC at 8 is what you are going to watch), their most fundamental assumption is the inverse: not only can you choose, but you must choose from a nearly unlimited selection. And the notion of being an active participant in “remix culture”? Millennials were the early adopters. For Generation Omega this is simply the water.

Additionally, of course, this is a generation for whom “to be networked” is an unconscious assumption. They are native collaborators and bricoleurs—assembling what they need from a cloud of people and materials “out there” on the network; and presenting it back without thinking twice. In a strong sense, precisely because it has been with them as long as walking and talking, they perceive the network as an extension of themselves. If Millennials are “digital natives”, Generation Omega is “network native”.

Finally, and less obviously, we might guess that this will be an extremely empathic and sensitive generation. Strauss and Howe refer to the children of a “crisis era” as the “Artist” archetype. Raised in a world characterized by a ubiquitous anxiety, these kids are over-protected during a time of adult sacrifice.

This has certainly been the case for Generation Omega. More than any time in history, this is a generation that has completely lost the right to roam. Where Boomers fondly remember hitch hiking across the country and walking miles alone to the local fishing hole, and Generation X recalls nomadic bike rides across the suburban landscape, the Omegas are rarely allowed to leave the house without an adult escort. Fear of school shootings, white vans, ebola, whatever, has left them always under the watchful gaze of adults (who might face jail time if they behave otherwise) and corralled into structured playdates in constructed environments. As a result, their physical environment is other people.

Hence their sensitivity. They started learning anti-bullying and empathy in kindergarten and their ability to navigate their world has been all about reading and dealing with other people. This is as true of their virtual lives as their physical lives. While Generation X was placated in front of television and the Millennials were plugged into video games, Generation Omega’s virtual experience is social. Grandma and Grandpa have always been a Skype call away. Every friend they’ve ever had is always within Instagram range. Virtually, they are always surrounded by a crowd.

We can go on and on, looking at the broad constants in the developmental landscape of these kids and sussing out guesses as to what this means for their long term generational character. But none of this is why I dub them Generation Omega.

The reason why they will be the last generation is not the world that produced them, but the world that they will produce for their children.

Over the next twenty years, Generation Omega (and their elders in Generation Y) will be faced by three fundamental questions. The resolution of these questions will, for good or for ill, describe a world that is so profoundly different from anything that humanity has yet experienced as to truly be the end of an era.

These questions are:

1. Humanity’s relationship to its environment
2. Humanity’s relationship to technology; and
3. Humanity’s relationship to itself

“We are as gods and we have to get good at it.”—Stewart Brand

 

HUMANITY + ENVIRONMENT

When Stewart Brand updated his 1968 Whole Earth Catalog slogan from “we are as gods and we might as well get good at it,” the message was clear: human beings have reached a degree of power and impact that, if we are to survive, we must learn how to take responsibility for our entire global environment.

From ocean acidification to soil depletion, from melting ice to dramatic changes in the chemical composition of our environment, the impact of humanity’s swelling population and power has been decisive. Every ecosystem. Every species. Every complex and subtle dynamic. This is a challenge that is unprecedented in the totality of global history—and it is a challenge that will fall firmly on the shoulders of Generation Omega.

The resolution of this challenge is going to require deep systemic change. For example, we are going to have to dispense with the extraordinary bullshit that we call dialogue these days and develop a collaborative truth-seeking function that is up to the task of getting eight billion super-empowered people to dance. This means more than just to come to a consensus on how the world works and how our actions impact it—it means to really coordinate in a way that we haven’t experienced as humans since we first began building the walls of Jericho. Amidst enormous uncertainty and subtle connections, we are going to have to engage in geo-engineering at the grand scale while pursuing intelligent, elegant and effective behaviours all the way down to the day to day lives of every individual.

It seems implausible. A utopian vision. Perhaps. But a Utopia built not of aspiration, but of necessity. As Stewart said, “We are as gods. We have to get good at it.”

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”—Albert Bartlett

HUMANITY + TECHNOLOGY

Perhaps the most astounding truth of the modern age is that certain kinds of technology advance not on linear, but on exponential curves. Moore’s famous law applies to batteries and bandwidth as much as to processors. Every year, more and more of our technical landscape is sucked into these exponential curves. In broad strokes, what this means is that every year sees more “innovation” than all of the years before combined.

More practically, what this implies is that the next twenty years will present technological changes so profound as to dwarf everything that has come before. The Science Fiction and “Transhumanist” communities have long toyed with the consequences of exponential technological growth. For Generation Omega these speculations will move firmly into the realm of reality.

Estimating these kinds of changes is notoriously hard for the human mind to grasp. Mathematically, if our technological ability continues to grow at the same rate that it has been growing, in twenty years we will be one million times more technologically capable than we are right now. One million times—in one generation. That is a bit like going from the invention of writing to the invention of the computer—in a single generation.

Human beings as we currently know them have absolutely no idea how to adapt to that rate and scope of change. Forget self-driving cars, 3D printers and autonomous drones. Those are the pong and slinky of Generation Omega. Certainly cybernetically-enhanced intelligence and detailed control over our children’s genetic material. Probably telepathy-like technologies and “swarm consciousness” where it becomes impossible to distinguish “your” thoughts from the thoughts of the people you are connected to. Possibly Matrix-like VR that is indistinguishable from reality.

And maybe digital super-intelligence, that favorite of “singularitarians.” Listen to Elon Musk, “[I] hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital super-intelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable.” Is the Singularity near? Maybe, but it’s looking increasingly likely that Generation Omega will find out. And that if the Singularity does come to pass, it could be the single most important event in the history of life. It may still smell of science fiction, but for those who are paying the closest attention, it is becoming more salient every day.

Regardless, it is likely that Generation Omega will find itself wielding power over all the various aspects of life far greater than any so far touched by man. How we will navigate such power is anyone’s guess. But what comes out the other end might very well be farther from us than we are from our hominid ancestors.

“If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.”—Buckminster Fuller

HUMANITY + SELF

In the first question we examined the growing necessity over the next twenty years of humanity taking responsibility for the whole of life. Then we looked at how through the exponential growth of technology we will have the power and capability of doing so—if we learn to master that power. We now come to the final crucial question: how will humanity come to have the collective and individual wisdom to accept this responsibility and to wield this power?

For those who are students of history and the human condition, this question is the most daunting. For millennia, we have (at least ostensibly) aspired to a world characterized by inner and outer peace. Great teachers have walked among us, numerous great traditions have attempted to provide practices to bring us wisdom. And yet war, violence and hatred are still a dominant portion of our world. It seems a desperately foolish hope to think that in a mere twenty years we could bring a critical mass of humanity to a level of wisdom, compassion and integrity that is adequate to the task.

Nonetheless, this shall be the task for Generation Omega. And there are reasons for optimism. There does seem to be a trend over the long course of our becoming civilized towards peace and away from violence. Moreover, it appears that human nature is inherently peaceful and cooperativeconstructed culture and not our inherent nature that leads to systemic violence.

This is more than theoretical. Over the past few decades an increasing number of thinkers have realized that we are currently undergoing a massive transition from an economy founded in scarcity toward an economy anchored in abundance. With this comes more and more research that those individuals, organizations and societies that can cultivate a generative or abundance mentality will out-perform those who hold to older conflict and zero-sum ideologies. Thus, not only is “collective wisdom” possible, it seems increasingly likely that in the high technology future, it is the winning strategy.

And here is where one of Generation Omega’s most unique characteristics becomes catalytic. Hitherto, generations have been an overwhelmingly national phenomena. Remember that a generation is defined by a shared set of cultural sensibilities. It seems that for quite some time, we have been witnessing the slow birth of a truly global culture. Certainly, the Baby Boomer generation in America has deep differences from their British or German or Japanese peers. But equally certainly, they have much more in common than did their respective parents or grandparents. In the intervening seventy years, global media, global technology, global trade and an increasing synchronization of global crisis events has only served to intensify global culture.

This means that Generation Omega will not be merely the next American generation, they will be the next generation on the world stage. And, given the intrinsically global nature of their generational challenges, they are likely to be the first truly global generation. Uninhibited by dysfunctional tribal and national boundaries, they will connect with their peers based strictly on what works. Unlike every previous period in human history where the kind, the creative and the wise have been voices in the wilderness; over the next twenty years, these voices will be able to find each other and when they do they will be able to coordinate and cooperate in ways that let them rapidly take leaps ahead of everyone else. Those who can follow will quickly realize that it is in their best interests to focus on peace rather than war. Those who don’t will simply be left behind.

No doubt this is a daunting future facing Generation Omega. Win or lose, theirs will be a generational bridge to an uncertain future. And there is no guarantee that they will navigate these challenges successfully. In fact, in all fairness, the odds are stacked firmly against them. Where we sit right now, there are many reasons to fear and only a few reasons to hope. But there are reasons to hope. Foremost among these is that Generation Omega is not yet formed. The eldest among them are not yet adolescent and the youngest are not yet born. They are still in the process of becoming who they will be and, therefore, we have an opportunity to give them the best possible chance while we still hold the reins of power.

We know what they will face. What can we do now to help them?

Photo by 1elf12

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