Wed 21 November 2018, 18:15 – 20:30 GMT

Makespace Oxford: 1 Aristotle Lane, Oxford OX2 6TP, United Kingdom

REGISTER HERE

Building upon Shareable’s years of experience covering the ‘sharing ecosystem’ and the 137 model policies and case studies curated for the new book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons,” Tom Llewellyn, strategic partnerships director of Shareable, will show how the real sharing economy is already connecting people together, empowering community-led disaster recovery efforts, and working under the radar to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Tom Llewellyn is a lifelong sharer, commoner, and storyteller who travels the globe inspiring and empowering communities to share for a more resilient, equitable, and joyful world. He’s the Strategic Partnerships Director for Shareable.net, executive producer and host of the podcast documentary series The Response, and co-editor of the book “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons”.

Following the presentation, attendees will participate in an interactive ‘World Café’ style discussion, working together to evaluate Oxford by exploring the state of things, the available resources, the needs of residents, and what the steps might be to meet those needs together.

This workshop is for anyone interested in exploring how we might activate Oxford’s urban commons together to address some of our city’s most pressing needs. Please bring your enthusiasm, ideas, and any examples of projects you’re already aware of to share and connect with others.

This event is in partnership with the Solidarity Economy Association, an Oxford-based organisation supporting the growth of the UK’s solidarity economy through education, research, and awareness raising projects. The solidarity economy is made up of grassroots organisations, informal meetings, local community groups, co-operatives, associations and networks of organisations in every sector of our economy. They have been created to meet a need within their community, or broader society, that isn’t being met by our mainstream economy, or because those needs are being met in unethical or unsustainable ways. These initiatives all share a set of values that include equal decision-making, equity, sustainability, pluralism, and solidarity, and they are working towards a just and sustainable world, one that puts the real needs of people and our planet first.

The post Sharing Oxford – Activating our Urban Commons with Tom Llewellyn appeared first on P2P Foundation.

For years, I’ve been looking beyond the technical and economic limits which we’ve developed during our fast few decades of personal computing and digital networking.  I’ve looked at co-creative potentials envisioned by Internet pioneers, and added ideas on the basic nature of communication and community.  This book reflects all of that research– but in most ways, it’s just a beginning.

Co- creating tech and culture

We can rebuild communications technologies (tools, techniques and systems) to foster the emergence of communities and inter-communities of autonomous peers. It’s an immense challenge, however, because we must displace corporations which marry communities to software platforms based on financially extractive models.

We can foster just and effective dialogue between tech and culture with these open tech goals:

1. All globally valuable communications software should be, or become, freely available to diverse digital networks.

2. Network participants should be able to use any software which meets systemic specifications for protocols or APIs.

Humanity first

I believe that p2p networking technology is crucial to a sustainable future.  However, it won’t get anyone out of the creative and social work we need to do together.

Communication and collaboration are deeply human. People must share ideas and activities to discover common interests, to plan and work fairly together, and to develop true community.

Putting humanity first, we won’t predetermine social tools and techniques according to currently usable software, including our evolving programming languages.  However, we’ll always need to refine tools and techniques through shared experiences with usable software.

Software applications and functions

Many processes described in Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking could be integrated into a small set of signaling and storage applications. However, they’ll probably be explored in various networks before they’re fully realized anywhere. Also, complex projects require coordinating functions which my book doesn’t yet mention. For instance, I’m developing a fractal process management system for objectives with unlimited levels of complexity.

I’m drafting a new paper on the open ecosystem of tools and techniques we need to support p2p organizing, including essential systems such as notifications, scheduling and calendars.  Designers can directly integrate such systems with this book’s networking models.

Coordinated Goals

I’ll openly develop Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking based on feedback, and I’ll use Agreement-Based Organization to help build co-authored versions of its networking models.  Ideally, participation will be open to all sincerely interested people, via distributive network management principles.

Agreement-Based Organization will always be separately available, and both documents will always be licensed for sharing and adaptation.  However, I believe that some form of agreement-based organization will receive increased attention as a component within a co-authored p2p networking model.

I’ll coordinate my goals with harmonious efforts in existing projects and communities such as Value Flows. We’ll only need a small fraction of our co-creative resources to develop open technologies for all people.

How you can help

I want and need feedback on Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking.  I’d especially appreciate if feedback reflects these framing questions:

1. Does this technology create ability for people to communicate or organize?

2. If this technology restricts ability to communicate or organize, should that be a technical standard or a community standard?

Maybe you have ideas I haven’t encountered before!  Feel free to comment directly on the document or email me, and share your thoughts on how we can emerge into an Information Age.

The post Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking: How the Internet Should Work appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Networking locally through WiFi is the objective.

Their approach to the problem is rather unique. They have developed software that virally creates a local network, providing mesh-network connectivity to the local cloud.

“A download of the software qaul.net on wireless-enabled computers, tablets and mobile phones is sufficient in order to participate. The structure of the network and the exchange are managed directly by the tool qaul.net: the software is passed from device to device via a WLAN like a virus. Computers within range can be connected through qaul.net and thereby make the connection to the mesh network. Anyone with a Wi-Fi enabled device can expand or consolidate an existing network, or create their own.

The open source project ‘Freifunk’ / ‘Funkfeuer’ and the aid program ‘One Laptop per Child’ use a mesh network. qaul.net takes these developments further by combining the server and router software with the applications on the devices themselves. Event the access to the network is no longer tied to a central entity, so the network can spread as quickly and easily as a virus.”

Participation in the Network

qaul.net is different because it does not distinguish the difference between a parent network, the infrastructure, and the individual use of the function. In the qaul.net, every device is part of the network, while it is at the same time working as a functional input and reception tool. The application software is directly coupled with the server and router software. Instead of functioning with only certain brands or systems, qaul.net establishes ONE network between ALL kind of wireless devices.

Open Source

The software will be released under the GPL (Gnu Public License). This “viral” open-source software license guarantees permanent, free availability of the software and its further developments and improvements. A community of developers shall be built for the purpose of maintaining, modifying, and enhancing the software.

The term qaul is Arabic and means opinion, say, talk or word. Qaul is pronounced like the English word ‘call’. Using the arabic word is a hat tip to the uprisings in the Middle East.

I recommend reading the whole qaul.net project description here… 

Should you get impatient for technical details, you can skip ahead to “The Dream of a Free Network” 

The post Qaul net beta – Automatic viral mesh networking between wifi enabled devices appeared first on P2P Foundation.