Having re-watched the webinar on Catalysing Collaboration at Scale I wondered if it might be possible to identify some of the key themes of collaboration.

Truly effective, synergistic, collaboration is an elusive beast at the best of times and the idea of making it work at scale, for decentralised projects and organisations, is possibly the essential challenge of our times.

If we want to work out how to work together more effectively, to build an equitable and abundant world for all, it seems important to recognise, what hinders collaboration, to identify great examples of effective collaboration and to at least attempt to identify if there are any key themes which we can build on and incorporate into our work.

I’m especially interested in what Group Works call the magic which sometimes happens at particularly effective meetings, which they describe in pattern language for bringing life to meetings and gatherings:

“At certain moments, something beyond the group emerges, accompanied by a sense of awe . . . and resulting in a unanimous feeling of astonished accomplishment. Conditions inviting Magic include shared passion, urgency, openness, energy and trust–yet the quality is always mysterious, never guaranteed.

Participants are not always sure why it happens. You can plan for it all you want and you may not get it, or it can sometimes emerge with no planning whatsoever. After it occurs, people are likely to have a variety of theories of what led to it. The most unified thing about it is that usually, when it’s present, people will agree right afterward that it was – even if they call it different things!”

That magic feeling – and the emergent, synergistic outcomes it can deliver – is the holy grail of collaboration. When we achieve that feeling, through the effectiveness of all our intra and inter-group work we will, presumably, feel more rewarded, be more effective and ultimately be heading for the synergy we need to break free from the competitive mind-set.

But, as the quote above mentions, collaborative magic can be elusive. Shared passion, urgency, openness, energy and trust can help it appear but don’t guarantee it happens… So I combed through the discussion on Catalysing Collaboration at Scale in an attempt to identify any other key ingredients. I started to assemble these into themes – but on closer inspection they turned out to mainly be subsets of a larger, over-aching main ingredient: the need for deeper, trusting relationships.

What follows are the themes, and the quotes from the panelists which describe them… plus some conclusions about possible routes to more effective collaboration.

The Key Themes of Collaboration

1. Understanding / Alignment / Resonance / Relationships
Collaboration requires understanding, both of the people and groups that are working together, but also of their shared objectives.
Understanding each other, and aligning to the point of resonance requires well formed and trusting relationships.

“The forming of relationship provides ways to collaborate in the future…”

Collaboration requires:

“…lasting relationships of meaningful solidarity…”

“…Face to face experience – recognising each other – coming into relationships…”

“…Creating an atmosphere to bring people into emotional resonance…
or at least so we are neutral – so we’re no longer potential competitors…”

“We don’t need alignment across the whole group – only those that are in a relationship…
We can be in alignment with others in different ways… this create flows of richer ecosystems”

“Coherence requires coming into alignment”

2. Recognition / Shared understanding / Definition of “The group” / “The self”
Collaboration requires we recognise who “we” are, who we are working with and where our goals align and diverge

“Who are “we”? – where does “our group” start and end…? Who does it include and exclude?”

“…Power and privilege is THE issue – There is no one size fits all answer…”

“…The individuals involved need to be able to define their own answers…”

“… a fluid boundary of self – enables us to come into alignment…”

“…In murmurations – we should be able to experience our own integrity…
to respond to the big ideas – without losing the tune that is “me”…”

“…There are no boundaries – everything is interacting with its environment, in a dance, of things which are themselves dances…”

“…Boundaries have a role – to help us see we’re not the same – and we peruse different goals – but we should be careful when defining them…”

3. Shared Purpose / Values / Vision
Collaboration requires a shared purpose. It is the goal of the collaboration.
Shared purposes, mission statements and values should be carefully developed, with the input of everyone involved.
Beware of any top-down mission or values which are imposed from above – they rarely help produce alignment.

“…We had a set of words – but we didn’t agree about the meaning of the words…”

4. Context / Place in space and time
Collaboration only ever exists in some type of context – and that context affects the best way/s to collaborate.
Just like nature, contexts constantly evolve, so methods of collaboration need to be fluid and adaptive.
Maps can help, but only within particular contexts and points in time. By default centralised maps are out of date.

“…collaboration is always in context … What comes before and after matters…”

“…It’s not a static thing – its not objects… collaboration is flows or dances…”

Check out these useful thoughts on mapping the space to get collaboration flowing much more smoothly and naturally, from Maptio who define initiative mapping as an enquiry into:

• how the overall vision breaks down into the ever smaller ideas which contribute to it;
• who has taken responsibility for each part;
• and who is helping with what.

There’s also some useful mapping examples from the Real Economy Lab, listing initiatives and perspectives around the idea of what a better economics might look like, as well The Open Co-op’s own Mapping working doc, where you can collaborate directly.

5. Glue / Gravitational pull / Cohesion
Collaboration requires cohesion above that which can be articulated through shared purpose.
Effective, on-going collaboration, is held together by the people who provide the glue within any endeavour.

Collaboration requires…

“…Recongising the value of the glue in the fabric… that supports a community…”

“…distributing the invisible glue evenly…”

“…We should recognise it and surface it…”

6. Communication / Grammars / Patterns / Protocols
Collaboration requires clear communication. You can’t have collaboration without communication.
So, effective collaboration requires a shared language and grammars via appropriate mediums of communication.

“…The architecture of how we communicate sculpt the possibilities of what can be done…”

“…Every interaction is a communication, which alters you…”

What stands in the way of collaboration?

The webinar panelists also identified a range of factors that can hinder collaboration… this is not an exhaustive list.

“…So much: our minds and thinking and our emotions…”

“We’re sub divided into representations – broad blokes backed up by ideologies which people haven’t had a chance to contribute to developing…”

“…centralisation, to some degree, is a way of preventing other forms of centralisation… so we should be more intentional about building these institutions…”

“…Beware of the top down, enforced taxonomy – Categorisation is useful for the party that is doing the naming…”

See also Nathan Schneider’s Co-ops Need Leaders, Too… and thoughts from Ethereum about Distributed governance as well as systems…

Examples of collaboration in action

The following are just a few examples of successful collaboration that were mentioned in the webinar:

Linaro – collaborative engineering

“… it’s like a “club good” – all the collaborating companies benefit… That’s what collaboration is!”

Associated press – one of the most powerful media co-ops – founded by competing news papers

“…They found they could be more efficient together – on a narrow overlap… It’s powerful – creative competitiveness + Alignment of collaboration…”

Rural electricity co-ops – powering 80% of the US

New Economy Coalition – Build diverse networks – that would otherwise be separate

Giveth.io – A Community of Makers… Building the Future of Giving

Collaboration in practice – requires a genuine shared need

The final words of the webinar came from Ben Roberts, from the Thriving Resilient Communities Initiative in the states. Through his work he has experienced the difficulties of increasing collaboration first hand, and that experience seems especially pertinent to others working on the challenge of ‘networking the networks’.

At the Thriving Resilient Communities Initiative they asked

“How do we do this across the states…? Like minded organisations should be working together more… They ought to be collaborating…”

So they set out to catalyse that – and found it was really hard. They discovered that, If the organisations they wanted to collaborate together had more capacity (in terms of time or money) they would simply do more of what they know works already, rather than collaborating. After all, if you have something that is working and delivering a positive difference, it makes sense to do more of it, rather than explore more complex challenges with no guarantee of results.

So, instead of trying to force collaboration – which is really hard – they identified that cooperating and coordinating can be easier and more powerful. By simply sharing information about what each organisation is doing, about their events and activities, they could start to grow more solid bonds, through which possibilities for collaboration might arise.

As a result of the increased coordination, and the identification of a shared need for income, the organisations in their network started thinking together about how to manage grant money.

“Suddenly we had a collaborative activity which really mattered to everybody”

What emerged from that was a genuine collaboration, with a direct incentive for participation. Organisations in the network started writing each other into their grant proposals – including people outside their “normal membrane”.

This is a key point:

suddenly, through the coordination work and the deeper relationships and understanding that evolved because of it, the definition of “self” changed.

The individualistic, “My organisation only”, mentally dissolved and was replaced by a wider definition of “self” which included other organisations and people. A genuine evolution of perception which paved the way for effective collaboration.

“…So we are now collaborating in more organic rather than forced ways…”

Once the organisation were collaborating in one way, via agreed communication channels with a shared language and shared understanding, they were able to explore other options for co-creation more effectively, by asking themselves:

“…What can we do that nobody is doing yet?”

The results became more distributed – collaboration became not only more possible but more effective at any scale.

“…This was happening at a national level – but it changes at a community level – so now we have regional scale relationships so new projects are showing up which build on the relationships – bringing in partners – to meet shared needs and goals – because its all there as an ecosystem…”

The conclusions:

• Collaboration is hard – you can’t force it.
• There are some key themes – and it pays to understand them and work with them…
• But effective collaboration only really happens when there is a shared need…
• And the best way to identify shared needs is to be aware of, and understand each other…
• Which requires building trusting relationships…
• So, before you try to launch a collaborative endeavour, it pays to work on coordination and cooperation, as stepping stones to future collaboration.

If you’re interested in building deeper, trusting relationships with other people and organisations that are building the collaborative, regenerative economy, please join us in London this summer at the OPEN 2019 Community Gathering.

For more background and further reading around collaboration see also:

Corina Angheloiu’s Weaving networks — when we all need to be spiders

“We’re at a point in time where different networks working towards systemic change are starting to see the need for deeper and more strategic collaboration to increase our reach, impact, access to audiences and funding.”

TRANSIT has mapped out 20 case studies of prefigurative translocal networks which ‘embody their ultimate goals and their vision of a future society through their ongoing social practices, social relations, decision-making philosophy and culture’.

Wise Democracy Project’s patterns to “further the development of wiser forms of self-governance.”

Group Works, “pattern language for bringing life to meetings and gatherings”

“Decentralized Thriving” a free e-book from DAO Stack – “A digital anthology from 19 innovators on the forefront of decentralised governance”

The post The Key Themes of Collaboration appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This first event of OPEN 2019 covers the ideas behind The DNA of Collaboration and Harmonious Working Patterns to explore ideas which might help all the people, communities and organisations working on creating a new, decentralised, regenerative economy collaborate better to produce more impact.

Panelists:

• Indra Adnan from The Alternative
• Nathan Schneider from the Platform Cooperativism Consortium
• Matthew Schutte from Holochain
• Laura James from Cambridge Computer Laboratory
• Josh Fairhead, author of Harmonious Working Patterns
• Oliver Sylvester-Bradley from The Open Co-op

Follow along with the chat below the video and dig deeper – there are some valuable links to other articles on catalysing collaboration and related subjects.

Notes from the chat during the discussion:

16:47:37 Nenad Maljković : Interesting article in this context (4 minute read), for later, of course  https://medium.com/enspiral-tales/a-trickle-becomes-a-river-64893418a769
16:52:47 Trevor: Economies of scale and division of labour
Nenad Maljković : This makes very much sense from the permaculture (and living systeems) point of view!
16:57:37 From vivian : To me it sounds more like an argument for free markets, coming from the right of the political spectrum. the first is all about lots of autonomous utility-maximising agents (in an economic jungle) with no overall purpose
16:57:55 From vivian : Some of the interactions in a forest are pretty brutal!
16:59:13 From Nenad Maljković : Any group of humans is complex, adaptive system.
16:59:43 From vivian : Yes but many groups have a “purpose” and can plan together. That’s inherent in a democracy
17:00:53 From Dil Green : Forest participants and humans are different – because humans will always have some conceptually stated purpose (unless they are a zen master).
17:01:01 From Nenad Maljković : Vision, purpose… obsolete in groups that collaborate based on intrinsic values (first hand experience with transition town initiatives on the ground – they don’t waste time on defining purpose or vision
17:01:55 From Dil Green : For me, forests are fine (great!) in and of themselves – because the participants don’t have conceptual approaches.
17:02:40 From Nenad Maljković : For me (with permaculture glasses on) there is coordination >>> cooperation >>> collaboration succesion
17:02:51 From vivian : For me, defining purpose and vision are the most powerful democratic things to do in an organisation. In my experience, in groups where there is nothing like this going on, there’s usually one person or a small group in charge. Others might accept this for a time but it usually breaks down/
17:02:54 From Dil Green : It’s when humans try to act like forests that things get strange – because concepts cannot capture complexity – and complex relationships are what makes forests capable of building carrying capacity.
17:04:34 From Nenad Maljković : @vivian: group / team / organisatiom / network / “platform” / “ecosystem”… all are human systems, but different.
17:08:29 From Nenad Maljković : Oh… that’s not “community”…
17:09:11 From Ben Roberts : Re “Telegram hell:” “The small group is the unit of transformation” Peter Block
17:09:24 From Dil Green : @Nathan blockchain people obvs didn’t read the ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness’ in time…
17:09:58 From Dil Green : @ben nice distillation.
17:10:58 From Dil Green : Drawing appropriate boundaries and understanding that boundaries are spaces of exchange rather than barriers seems key.
17:15:40 From Nathan to All Panelists : @dil Actually at the meeting I was describing they were referencing “The Tyranny of Structureless” to describe their condition.
17:15:47 From Nathan to All Panelists :
17:16:03 From Ben Roberts : If we were sitting together, Matthew wouldn’t be on his phone like that!
17:16:17 From Nenad Maljković : Of course not – any mediated communication is 2nd grade communication… or worse
17:16:40 From Ben Roberts : And I wouldn’t also be working on a Google doc.
17:17:06 From Nenad Maljković : Focus Ben, focus!
17:17:13 From Simon to All Panelists : You think so ! ?
17:17:18 From Dil Green : https://medium.com/@joshafairhead/harmonious-working-patterns-2788d1523106
17:17:24 From Nathan to All Panelists : At the very least distract yourself with FLO software!
17:18:13 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Harmonious Working Patterns: https://medium.com/@joshafairhead/harmonious-working-patterns-2788d1523106
17:19:03 From vivian : @Indra I like your analysis of how people interact with ideologies and the connection you make with concepts of identity. In the present political situation we have a classic case study of how people with insecure identities cleave to apparently powerful “ready-made” ones which are really crude vehicles for manipulation and control.
17:20:21 From Nenad Maljković : Hear, hear… (coming from an oralist)
17:20:50 From vivian : Arguably many externally-defined forms of identity (countries, brands for example) fall to a greater or lesser extent into this category.
17:21:31 From Dil Green : @Vivian Agreed
17:21:44 From Nenad Maljković : By the way, some good practical tips on… collaboration… here (there’s also part 2): https://medium.com/the-tuning-fork/hierarchy-is-not-the-problem-892610f5d9c0
17:22:06 From Nathan to All Panelists : I love that article, @Nanad. Thanks for sharing it.
17:22:06 From Dil Green : @Nenad – great stuff.
17:22:33 From Nathan to All Panelists : A corollary of mine: https://medium.com/medlab/co-ops-need-leaders-too-c78a303cd16ea
17:22:49 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Thanks!
17:22:58 From Nathan to All Panelists : Sorry https://medium.com/medlab/co-ops-need-leaders-too-c78a303cd16e
17:23:19 From Dil Green : Rich and Nat capture something that panellists here are not talking about – which is scale. ‘How many people in the group?’ ‘What is the right size of group for this intent?” seem to me to be very important early questions.
17:25:38 From Nenad Maljković : What Matthew describes is how things work anyway… We are all associated – as individuals – with more then one “organisation”, etc.
17:26:50 From Dil Green : @Nen – I think he is saying that the protocols for collaboration in those forms of org are over-conditioned by the learned cultural modes of top-down hierarchy.
17:27:06 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : Cohesion – steer towards average position of neighbours
Separation – avoid crowding neighbours
Alignment – steer towards average heading of neighbours
17:27:13 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : https://open.coop/2019/03/07/defining-dna-collaboration/
17:27:23 From Simon to All Panelists : Is this aimed at corporations . . . who pay fat consultancy fees?. Personally can’t we just close them down?
17:27:37 From Ben Roberts : Never mind the GHG emissions associated with in-person meetings!
17:27:40 From Oliver Sylvester-Bradley : lol!
17:28:31 From Nenad Maljković : Extroverts and introverts keep their differences on video too
17:28:56 From vivian : @laura vulnerability is strength! (although I’m conscious I’m just sending text messages and you’re the one on the video! )
17:30:04 From Ben Roberts : So interesting to hear Laura say she “hates video.” The three ways of connecting–in-person, live virtual (video/audio), and asynch/text– each have benefits and limits, and each appeal/repel different people in different ways. Deep collaboration will leverage all three and have them synergize in ways we are still just starting to figure out.
17:30:21 From Ben Roberts : Yay NEC!
17:33:56 From Nathan to All Panelists : Thank you Laura for sharing that.
17:34:59 From Nenad Maljković : If viewer is focused enough on video listening can be as good – it’s a skill to acquire, in my experience.
17:35:20 From Laura James : Great point Indra about tech privilege. Virtual environments, especially without video, can be empowering for people with disabilities whose voices are not heard in the same way in face to face meetings. For scale we need to centre inclusivity
17:35:25 From Nenad Maljković : Live video is not the same thing as watching TV
17:35:29 From Nathan to All Panelists : One board I’m on requires members to stay unmuted on calls to enforce attention.
17:37:59 From Nenad Maljković : @laura: yes, fully agree + what Ben Roberts wrote above: “The three ways of connecting–in-person, live virtual (video/audio), and asynch/text– each have benefits and limits, and each appeal/repel different people in different ways. Deep collaboration will leverage all three and have them synergize in ways we are still just starting to figure out.”
17:41:34 From Nenad Maljković : Voting is out of date. We use consent decision-making (not even consensus, that’s also out of date).
17:44:57 From Nenad Maljković : Re. foking in collaboration – doable even without devices!
17:45:57 From Dil Green : imho democratic tools have appropriate and inappropriate contexts. So that voting can have its place (a quick workplace decision among 50 people as to a wildcat strike), consensus can have its place (a group of three choosing where to go for a meal), deliberative democracy… and so on.
17:49:40 From Nenad Maljković : @laura: thanks for sharing this, very useful!
17:50:49 From Matthew Schutte : Gregory Bateson’s critique of Conscious Purpose:
17:50:50 From Matthew Schutte : http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/Gregory_Bateson.pdf
17:51:49 From Matthew Schutte : And published yesterday: Gregory’s daughter, Nora Bateson’s article on “Tasting Textures of Communication in Warm Data”
17:51:49 From Matthew Schutte : https://medium.com/@norabateson/eating-sand-e478a48574a5
17:53:54 From Matthew Schutte : Nora’s wonderful recent 8 minute video that touches on the challenge that humanity faces today and the different ways of THINKING that may be required to actually surface solutions:
17:53:55 From Matthew Schutte : https://vimeo.com/310626097
17:55:20 From Nathan : Join us later! https://ethicaledtech.info/wiki/Meta:Inaugural_Edit-a-Thon
17:57:49 From Wes, Somerset UK to All Panelists : Really great session, thank you everyone!
17:59:13 From Dil Green : These ‘names’ are nicely captured by the concept of ‘patterns’ – identified recurring conditions in complex systems which are recognisable – although each instance is unique (in space and time), we can nevertheless useful name them.
17:59:49 From Ben Roberts : I’m not with you fully, @matthew. Sure, you can note how any boundary is permeable, or even arbitrary. And yet collectives DO exist in nature and are essential building blocks for its complex capacities for collaboration.
17:59:57 From Dil Green : Pattern languages allow us to trace systems of relationship between patterns that embody the complexity of the interactions.
18:00:13 From Simon to All Panelists : Interesting that Oliver insisted that everyone start by explaining ‘how they make a living’, & that Matthew lived in his car. Progress will be made when we don’t have to make these ridiculous choices. What will that take?
18:00:28 From Ben Roberts : It’s not just about giving something a “name.”
18:02:11 From Dil Green : @ben agreed – understanding a pattern and being able safely to interact with it design it requires a great deal of investigation, learning, documenting, mapping connections to larger and smaller contexts…
18:06:08 From Nenad Maljković : “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”
– Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, 1977
18:07:00 From Nenad Maljković : Might work in similar way in social systems… I think.
18:07:47 From Dil Green : Thank you Nenad! Chris alexander student/practitioner here.
18:08:38 From Ben Roberts : Here’s a pattern language for group engagement that I love to use in various ways: https://groupworksdeck.org/
18:09:00 From Dil Green : I am working on building pattern language authoring tools for all sorts of domains.
18:09:47 From Ben Roberts : There’s a new pattern language for “Wise Democracy” too: https://www.wd-pl.com/
18:10:58 From Dil Green : know the group works one, but nice to have this democracy one. Thanks
18:11:08 From Matthew Schutte : An interesting blogpost on Dyads and Triads (similar to some of Josh’s comments) by the co-creator of SSL the most widely used security protocol on earth:
18:11:08 From Matthew Schutte : http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2013/04/dyads-triads-the-smallest-teams.html
18:11:14 From Ben Roberts : One of its categories is Collaboration
18:11:29 From Ben Roberts : I can speak to one version of an answer to Nenad
18:12:11 From Ben Roberts : Cooperation is another C word to include
18:16:52 From Ben Roberts : I can also answer Nenad’s question re the various C-words with a story about what we’ve learned in the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory
18:20:13 From Nenad Maljković to All Panelists : Maybe give Ben a chance to answer my question?
18:20:14 From Matthew Schutte : Yes! We need to give ourselves and one another AUTHORIZATION to show up as full humans — with the complexity of other contexts — not just as our “role” in the organization!
18:20:53 From Matthew Schutte : Nora Bateson has designed a wonderful process called a WARM DATA LAB to foster this kind of experience — and result in transformative shifts.
18:21:57 From Ben Roberts : I’m eager to try a warm data lab with Nora using Zoom (and maybe some asynch tools and perhaps even a network of in-person groups too).
18:22:28 From Matthew Schutte : Nora spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco yesterday. That recording should be on NPR radio stations around the US (and elsewhere soon) and will probably be available online in the next few days:
18:22:29 From Matthew Schutte : https://www.commonwealthclub.org/videos
18:25:10 From Dil Green : Ben this is fascinating – thank you.
18:26:10 From Nenad Maljković : Thank you Ben!
18:26:14 From Dil Green : Is this documented / described anywhere?
18:26:25 From Indra : share your links Ben?
18:26:25 From Ben Roberts : www.thrivingresilience.org
18:26:27 From vivian : Thank you Oli!
18:26:32 From Dil Green : thanks!
18:26:51 From Nenad Maljković : Thank you all + Oliver and Dil
18:27:04 From Trevor : Thanks everyone!

The post Catalysing collaboration at scale appeared first on P2P Foundation.

When: Wednesday, 3 April
4:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Add to: iCal – gCal

(See OPEN COOP website for map and further detail)

Could we model a formula for organisational collaboration on three simple rules?

1. Cohesion
2. Seperation
3. Alignment

…and define a protocol to aggregate, visualise and disseminate the resultant murmurations?

This free webinar on “Catalysing collaboration at scale” is the first even of OPEN 2019 organised by The Open Co-op exploring ideas around The DNA of Collaboration and Harmonious Working Patterns.

We have convened a panel of community builders, technologists and collaborators to explore ideas which might help all the people, communities and organisations working on creating a new, decentralised, regenerative economy collaborate better to produce more impact.

Everyone is welcome to log in and listen to a discussion and participate in the Q&A.

We will be hearing from:

• Indra Adnan from The Alternative
• Nathan Schneider from the Platform Cooperativism Consortium
• Irina (Ira) Bolychevsky from Redecentralize
• Matthew Schutte from Holochain
• Laura James from Cambridge Computer Laboratory
• Oliver Sylvester-Bradley from The Open Co-op

The panel will explore questions such as:

• What examples can you give / have you seen of group and intergroup collaboration working well?
• What do you see as the key ingredients / tenets / requirements for successful collaboration?
• Once collaboration is working within our groups, how do you think we could encourage more inter-group collaboration to achieve wider systemic impact?
• Plus, the concept contained in the posts on The DNA of Collaboration and Harmonious Working Patterns and examples and ideas from the panels’ projects.

The webinar will be held on Zoom – you will need to download the Zoom package and then click on the link to Join the webinar – there is no need to register in advance.

Where: Online, Webinar, Zoom

Categories: Beginner Collaborate Discuss Intermediate

The post Catalysing collaboration at scale – The Open Co-op appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Nathan Schneider kicked things off with an excellent introduction explaining some of the history of cooperative ownership. Nathan also questioned where our movement sits relative to the mainstream, for-profit startup world, and in what way the development of platform co-ops and member owned businesses are disruptive …

Lynne Davis, CEO of the Open Food Network UK, introduced their growing platform co-op and explained how they now share the cost, and responsibilities, of developing code across several federated organisations throughout Europe.

Maru Bautista, Director of the Cooperative Development Program at the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn, New York, introduced Up&Go, the immigrant-led cleaning services worker cooperative in NY which, unlike regular capitalist platforms, delivers 95% of its income to its workers.

Peter Harris, the Founder of Resonate – the excellent music streaming co-op, explained how he might be their first CEO but also hopes to be the last, by putting the members in complete control.

Alexandre Segura and Lison Noel from Co-op Cycle shared their inspirational journey to develop an open-source alternative to Deliveroo made up of a community of couriers in cities throughout France and Belgium. Aside from all the presentations on the Main stage, the workshop sessions and the open space gatherings the main benefit, that people who attended highlighted, were the connections that were made at the event. Our mission brings together so many people from inter-related fields and networks, who predominately work remotely or in distributed teams, so simply being in the same physical space initiated numerous face-to-face meetings between people that have communicated, planned, plotted and schemed, as well as worked together, online – but never met before – and a multitude of new connections and interactions.

The 26th and 27th of July were some of the hottest days of 2018 in London, so a lot of interaction took place outside the venue. It may well have been cooler in Red Lion Square under the trees but there was widespread agreement at the event that we all need to do more to address global warming.[/caption]

Ambassadoring

At events like this there is always talk of “setting up a new network” but, being wary of this, I brought up the ideas of Joshua Vial – Founder of Enspiral, who recently suggested that instead of founding new networks, we need to find ways to connect all the existing networks by developing more and better ambassadors to circulate ideas and updates. This came up in Francesca Pick‘s section of the Networking the Networks session, in which she introduced the idea of “ambassadoring” as a verb; something which all of us can do. We agreed it’s an ugly word, but an essential concept for the development of our movement.

Ela Kagel, Co-founder of SUPERMARKT in Germany, Indra Adnan of The Alternative UK, and Ruth Potts from Schumacher College and Red Pepper, discussed the latest developments and outcomes from their work, CTRL Shift, Transition Together… and the general need for societal transitions and systems level change

Alice Casey from Nesta, who work covers areas such as how technology is transforming communities and civic life, kept things on track in the workshop space, together with David Brent and Simon Borkin from Co-op UK – check out all the videos from the Workshop space and Open space.

Iris Schönherr led a workshop on ‘Everyday Participation’, based on the New Citizenship Project’s toolkit which introduces Seven Modes of Everyday Participation. See the video, and download your copy of the toolkit from everydayparticipation.info

Rich and Nati from Loomio and The Hum ran an excellent workshop on Patterns for decentralised organising.

Rich and Nati bringing the group back together after much discussion.

At the end of Day One, (from left to right) Nathan Schneider, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, whose forthcoming book is about “Real” Democracy as expressed, demanded and manifested in Spain from 15-M to Podemos, Cadwell Turnbull, and Francesca Pick explored the transformative power of narrative in creating a world of abundance and inclusivity.

Framing, values and a new ontology – Politics is about caring

As part of the session on ‘The transformative power of narrative’ we discussed our use of language and methods of using stories instead of “us vs them” framing. This dovetails with the ideas we have been discussing with Indra Adnan who, through her work with The Alternative, is helping people develop a “series of values and ideas, methods and practices they buy into – a new community oriented political culture.”

We also explored some of the ideas from our work on creating a new ontology, in which we argue:

If we want to change the way the world works, and address the inequalities and suffering from a systemic level, we can not build ideas and ‘further reasoning and arguments’ on an invalid axiom, and a broken ontology. We have to start afresh and build upon new foundations.

Laura James makes a great point in her write up on OPEN 2018 that:

Collaboration is not always built on a shared discursive framework, but might involve parties with very different world views and ways of communicating.

Too true, we need to constantly be aware of that whilst we work on developing a more unifying world view, (possibly one based on the idea that ‘people and planet come before profit’?) in order to create the world we want.

Another take-away for me was the concept that Cristina brought up a few times, which has been brought to light by both Manuela Carmena, the Mayor of Madrid who often reminded voters “To govern is to listen” during her campaign, and Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona who both propose a more feminine politics. Both women have put forward the idea that “politics is about caring” which is not only a far-cry from the male-dominated ideals of Westminster but, somewhat uniquely for a politician’s phrase, makes perfect sense. Everyone at OPEN 2018 seemed to agree; we need more of that.

Gary Alexander kicked off Day 2 with a session on ‘A shared social vision’, including a few instant polls to get a sense of where those present agreed and disagreed about ‘what our collaborative, sustainable society might look like’, ‘how a global cooperative might be structured’ and ‘what we might need as the initial platform offerings…’

During OPEN 2018 we used Slido to survey attendees about their values. The above represents the values which people selected as being important to them…Louis Cousin from Cooperatives Europe, Laura James Co-founder at Digital Life Collective, Colm Massey from the Solidarity Economy Association, and Tom Ivey from domains.coop discussed mapping projects. This introductory session provided the overview of mapping objectives and the challenges many groups have already experienced when trying to “map the ecosystem”. The session continued in workshop space – see the video. We will continue to monitor and report on progress from the various mapping projects.

The shift from Platforms to Protocols

We introduced the Platform Co-op concept and were treated to presentations on the Open Food Network, Up&Go, Resonate and Coop Cycle, all of which demonstrated great progress through making members owners of their businesses.

But a real ‘wake-up call’ for me was the seemingly unanimous agreement that we should be moving away from platforms in favour of shared protocols. This is an essential concept – and one that we have very possibly been slow to realise, as it is a subtle but significant difference. The basic premise is that, although platform co-ops are a step in the right direction, which make members owners and place them at the heart of decision making within commercial organisations, they limit progress by maintaining the role of the ‘middle-man’. By comparison and, more importantly in terms of a completely liberated peer to peer economy, open protocols connect different services and networks and enable truly distributed communication and collaboration at scale.

Claire Tolan dumbed-down her inner-geek to explain how Rchain, (a cooperative building a blockchain platform and tools to enable social coordination in robust, secure, and scalable ways) works and relates to what they are building at Resonate.

Mark Harding from Minds presenting their work on developing a new, open source, social networking platform.

Mayel De Borniol from Social.coop explained some of the challenges they have faced setting up a truly federated alternative to twitter…

I put the question “should we be moving away from the idea of platforms, towards protocols instead?” to the panel of the Open source social networks, protocols and platforms session and was surprised to get a swift and resolute “Yes” from each of the participants; Claire Tolan from Rchain, Mark Harding from MINDS and Mayel de Borniol from Social.coop – which seemed especially promising since they are all working on significantly different projects but recognise the need for deeper inter-connectivity.

Growing the co-op economy – incubators, equity and tokens.

As part of his excellent introduction explaining some of the history of cooperative ownership, Nathan Schneider questioned where our movement sits relative to the mainstream, for-profit startup world. The development of platform co-ops and member owned businesses are certainly disruptive in comparison to the standard VC model of business growth but not necessarily in the same way as we have come to use the term. If we are going to succeed we need to grow the number and size and reach of cooperative businesses and the movement has clearly recognised this by founding a number of cooperative incubator projects to help provide funding and startup support to aspiring platform co-ops and businesses: Platform6 (see the open space video explaining this new platform), start.coop, incubator.coop, Solidfund (which provided bursaries to help people get to OPEN 2018 for free), CoopStarter, UnFound (from our friends at the excellent STIR mag) and more. Hopefully this will provide fertile ground for more cooperative seeds to flourish.

Emma McGuirk, a social anthropologist from New Zealand, offered some really interesting perspectives on timebanking including how they often die out – and are often perceived to have failed – when in reality the people they initially connected often become friends who start doing favours for each other, and hence no longer need a timebank.

Michael Linton, designer of LETSystem presented his ideas about “circular money” and how this could facilitate a new economy.Matthew Slater, Co-Founder of Community Forge polled the room to ascertain interest in establishing an ethical credit exchange in the UK, and sources of seed-funding for this… which delivered some interesting results. If your organisation would be be interested in finding out more about trading via mutual credit please contact us for an update on the latest developments.

To my mind, one of the most productive sessions was led by Vivian Woodell, ex CEO of The Phone Co-op and now head of The Foundation for Co-operative Innovation, to tackle “The capital conundrum” (see the last of the videos from the workshop space). The session questioned methods and strategies for financing platform co-ops, which are not compatible with VC funding, and explored ideas to help co-ops attract the number of users and market share required to get to scale. Numerous ideas came out of the session (all of which are openly available in the notes) including; ‘Fostering clusters of cooperatives that support one another’, ‘running ICOs that blend equity and tokens’ and ‘rethinking the meaning of ‘value’ and the purpose of investment…’ because ‘Money is not value, it’s a claim on value. We need to renew traditional forms of exchange…’

Francesca Pick, Co-founder of Greaterthan & OuiShare Fest, led a deep-dive into people’s personal relationship with money. The Money Game was invented by the Findhorn Community in the highlands of Scotland and has been played around the world as a way to help people think about and deconstruct their relationship with money.

Since OPEN 2018 several organisations have approached us that are working on the Tokens concepts including the intriguingly named Co-opCoin – A decentralized Asset-Based Token platform which “helps to create and manage non-fungible ERC Tokens (Asset-Based Tokens, similar to a Security Token) representing real-world assets in a legally binding way.” Their ideas seem to offer one solution to the “capital conundrum”, which dovetail with our musings from last year about a possible co-op coin and we’ll report more on this as things develop.

Matthew Brown, Cabinet Member for Social Justice, Inclusion and Policy at Preston City Council discussed the latest advances and successes of “the Preston model” which works to keep money circulating in a local economy, delivering huge benefits for both the people and organisations in the community.

Emma Hoddinott, Labour Cllr for Wickersley Ward Rotherham and Local Government Officer for the Coop Party gave OPEN 2018 her thoughts on “the Preston model” and how other local government strategies could be deployed to create a thriving cooperative economy across the UK.

Developing an open app ecosystem

In parallel to trying to figure out a more unifying politics OPEN 2018 got hands on with the tech, and we’re proud to have brought together people from CoTech, the Free Knowledge Institute, happy-dev.fr and others from the Open App Ecosystem Loomio Group, many of whom had never met before. The discussions span out from the working and open space sessions into Red Lion Square outside the venue and involved several other groups who are interested in developing a suite of open source, cooperatively owned and managed tools to rival Google and Apple; a shared technical infrastructure to enable co-operators to move away from the standard data harvesting monopolies.

In 2007, Art Brock (above) and Eric Harris-Braun formed the MetaCurrency Project in order to apply insights from nature to the design of software and social patterns, so that we can enable the next economy — one that is distributed, equitable, and regenerative. At OPEN 2018 Art ran a very well attended 1.5 day session on building apps on Holochain and the Holo project.The Square Pig provided the venue for a Holochain introduction and exploration into how this new, mutual-credit-based, peer-to-peer, app hosting framework, paves the way for an entirely new, agent-centric design for the decentralised web. Our discussions with Art Brock since the event have confirmed Holo as a definite ‘one-to-watch’, alongside Rchain who, as a co-op, are also offering a fundamentally more progressive approach to creating distributed systems than pretty much every other “crypto” / ICO project we’ve seen. Stay tuned for more on both of these.

Reflections

Before the conference, in the preview, and in the introduction to the event, I explained that:

OPEN 2018 is not just about platform co-ops. It’s about the ownership revolution and forging a path to a collaborative, sustainable economy.

I said:

It’s about creating new organisations which are member owned and democratically governed so that we, the people, have control over the institutions we rely on.

What I’ve realised since the event is that a lot of people really agree with that objective – but a lot more have no idea what I am on about.

So, I want to try and explain a few of the basic ideas and objectives of The Open Co-op and a few of the concepts and technologies which we are working on in order to create the world we want.

Why are you doing all this? What is The Open Co-op and OPEN 2018 all about?

We’re seriously worried about the state of the world and its fundamental, systemic problems. We recognise that humanity faces a multitude of inter-related issues such as climate change, inequality, poverty, species extinction and environmental destruction and are trying to encourage systemic solutions.

We are trying to encourage fundamental systems change in the inter-related fields of ownership, governance and economics *at the same time*, because none of these can be “fixed” without addressing the others.

We believe that open source, decentralised technologies provide some of the best tools available to disrupt the present corrosive systems. Our present systems of governance and economics are built on out-dated and exploitative protocols (official procedures and rules) which benefit the ‘haves’ more than the ‘have nots’ and pay no credence to planetary or environmental limits whatsoever. Money itself is just another ‘protocol’. So we advocate the development of new, inclusive, open and fair protocols which define the rules of a new, collaborative and inclusive economy. Software, especially the kind used to run platforms, where people interact and trade, often ‘encodes’ specific protocols (e.g. who can do things, who owns things and who gets charged etc) so we see the development of new software as essential to our mission.

In short:

We’re trying to layer the cooperative principles on top of the development of the decentralised web. We see this as the best possible route to a truly democratic and inclusive economy.

If you’re not sure exactly what it is and why it’s important read this Guardian intro to the decentralised web, and then imagine that the majority of organisations transacting there are cooperatives, of which anyone can become a member, and you should get an idea of where we’re trying to get to.

The purpose of The Open Co-op, defined at our outset in 2004, is: To build a worldwide community of individuals and organisations who are committed to creating a collaborative sustainable economy.

OPEN 2018 was our second attempt to bring people together into one place with the specific objective of growing and strengthening that community, and to discuss the ideas outlined above.

Just some of the people at OPEN 2018 – the ones that stuck it out to the end. The rest were mostly already in the pub…

Where is all this heading? What do you hope to achieve?

In the preview and the intro to OPEN 2018 I said:

Our vision is of a world in which people and planet come before profit. It’s a vision of a generative economy supporting a world of abundance in which common resources are ethically and equitably stewarded for the benefit of all.

I asked people at the event if they had a better definition of our collective vision and was surprised and encouraged by the overall enthusiasm and unity behind a “a world in which people and planet come before profit”.

But I worry that people struggle to identify with “a world of abundance in which common resources are ethically and equitably stewarded for the benefit of all.” We’ve all been born into a world with a shared ontology based on the ideas of scarcity and competition, which is why part of our work, and discussions at OPEN 2018 focuses on “the changing narrative”. We want to encourage a new ontological framework, a new world-view, in which the ideas of equity and abundance are as common as capitalism is pervasive today.

In his article on “Why today’s internet is broken — and how we can do better next time around“, Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood explains how, as the global economy went online, we replicated the same social structures that we had before. The same ontology and the same capitalist thinking was used to create privately owned, un-democratic, monopolies as we had in the real world. But the internet doesn’t have to work like that. It could be designed as a decentralised, cooperatively owned, democratic and inclusive system which works for the benefit of all people, not against them.

Our best attempt to outline what this world might look like is encapsulated in PLANET – our vision for an open source operating system for your mobile phone. Since people are used to navigating the world through their phones we’ve attempted to outline our vision through a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to give an idea of what it might be like to live in a world in which “we, the people, have control over the institutions we rely on”.

If we could make one thing happen we would love see PLANET, or a system like it, become a reality. PLANET incorporates all of the elements of democratic, member-owned, governance and economics that we hope to see become reality. It is a conceptual vision of a system built on fundamentally different protocols, designed specifically to encourage a world of abundance in which common resources are ethically and equitably stewarded for the benefit of all.

Matthew Schutte, Director of Communications at Holochain, delivered a thought-provoking presentation on Holochain, the distributed peer-to-peer framework his team are developing. Holochain has huge potential for the cooperative economy. With it’s agent-centric architecture, mutual credit system and distributed app marketplace it could be the perfect framework on which to build a system like PLANET – to enable decentralised cooperation at scale…

Conclusion – lessons learned

If you’re trying to encourage fundamental systems change in the inter-related fields of ownership, governance and economics at the same time, it’s never going to be easy. We attempted to address the challenge by curating a highly specific series of presentations and debates from experts in various fields. In retrospect, what we learned at OPEN 2018, is that the people who can and will make the system change are coming from many different perspectives. And many of the voices that should have been represented, those from marginalised and un-represented communities, were not. People need time to meet each other face-to-face and talk. Coming together, in the real world, is what this is all about after all – and we should probably have allowed more time for that than prescriptive sessions. The value that is generated through spontaneous meetings and group work was not liberated as well as it could have been by pre-organising the open space sessions.

I also hogged the mic way too much – and would have enjoyed being involved in other open space groups as much as the audience would have no doubt enjoyed hearing from another voice on stage.

But, that said, we have had amazing feedback about OPEN 2018 – on average people rated the event 8.5 out of 10, and 90% of people said they learned something at OPEN 2018 which will allow them to improve their business / projects, so we don’t feel like we did a terrible job! If you attended and have not left feedback please do so here.

As promised you can find all the notes from the sessions online – and also the list of questions that were asked on Slido – some of them did not get answered but, they paint an interesting picture of the thoughts in the room, and if you really want an answer to any particularly burning questions just let us know and we will do our best to help. There’s also this interesting little snap shot of the most popular questions.

We will continue to plan and plot and progress our key projects and would love it if you want to collaborate on any of these.

There are some other great write-ups about OPEN 2018 on Coop News. We will be thinking hard about the lessons we learned at OPEN 2018 and working out how best to put them into practice for OPEN 2019 which promises to be a very different and hopefully even more inspiring and impact-full event.

Thank you to everyone who came, supported, sponsored, exhibited, facilitated, chaired, volunteered, spoke and listened – you were all amazing, especially Thomas Heiser from Focalpoint.events, without whom OPEN 2018 would not have been possible. All photos are by Jon Craig.

In our final session at the end of Day 2, Niki Okuk, the Founder of Rco Tires and Guy Watson, the Founder and Chair of Riverford Organic discussed ideas to challenge the dominant model of capitalist business and the de facto pyramid structure of management in order to enable a more equitable society. We heard how Guy is handing over Riverford to the employees – having resisted the best efforts of the VCs – and how Nikki has built a thriving, carbon positive business which is owned by its members. Despite coming from very different backgrounds and working in distinctly different sectors and geographies, both speakers had arrived at the same less-capitalist, more cooperative conclusions – They are the proof that a more ethical, more equitable economy is not only possible, but is on its way.

The post OPEN 2018 – Review appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Laura James: OPEN 2018 last week was an exciting event, not only because of the incredible people the organisers brought together, but because it felt like something new was starting to take off.

There were people from many different organisations, sectors, and backgrounds, and they found sometimes unexpected things in common with each other. Although we heard some big ideas from the stage, it felt like most attendees were actually working on things, and had practical questions and collaborative opportunities they wanted to discuss. To me, the diversity and the blend of pragmatic action and shared big vision feels like a new movement getting off the starting line.

But what is the movement? OPEN 2018 has “platform cooperatives” next to the logo and yet a lot of the most interesting conversations weren’t actually about platform co-ops. It felt like a melange of several things:

• internet technologies
• open source
• open standards and protocols (as distinct from open platforms)
• commons (not just of code, but of knowledge, public space and more); a mixture of collective goods, and public goods (echoing the Public Stack Summit)
• co-operatives, the co-op principles, and the broader co-op movement
• entrepreneurship — people trying new ideas and ventures
• networks and ecosystems of mutual support
• a desire for impact at meaningful scale (looking beyond local activities)
• resilience and distributed systems (in the technical sense)
• equality and fairness, specifically around technology and data

This is a powerful set of ideas.

They are things I’ve been thinking about and working on in different ways for some time, but I didn’t have a clear sense of them as a group or a coherent whole until now.

I wonder whether others would recognise this list as the facets of OPEN 2018?

It all fits together quite coherently, to me at least, although we’ve no catchy phrase to explain it as a whole. “Platform co-operatives” doesn’t quite do it. “Collaborative technology for the cooperative economy” is the event byline, which is good, although maybe not quite the visionary call to action a movement might coalesce around. Oli Sylvester-Bradley talked in his thoughtful introduction about “people and planet before profit” which seemed to resonate with many of us as a grand vision, although it’s perhaps a little vague? Or maybe it sets out a general dream, without defining what this particular community is doing to achieve it. Gary Alexander talked about a movement and a shared vision too: working together for mutual benefit rather than competing; a society organised for the wellbeing of people and planet (not for money and profit). He also helpfully checked what the audience thought about this (positive, but a little mixed), and admitted some of this may be too much like “new age bollocks.” Recently John Elkington, creator of the triple bottom line (where social and environmental factors are considered alongside economic ones), announced earlier this year that it was time to review whether it is still fit for purpose. So maybe we need to thrash out some more specific, compelling and useful framing…

Part of what made it feel like the emergence of a new thing was that, whilst there is a big vision for a new economy, fit for the internet age, still a little vague in some details, it didn’t feel like a hyped up rally where we all unhesitatingly cheered. Even on the main stage, as well as in smaller conversations, critical questions were posed which we do not have answers to. And there was an energy and a focus on practical action as well as reflection and learning.

Of course, there were ways the event could have been better, and I’m sure 2019’s equivalent will be different, more diverse, and maybe more interactive. But it’s quite something to convene across interests in this way and to frame an event which felt so special. Huge thanks and congratulations to Oli, Thomas and the Open.coop team!

Nathan Schneider had questions about the cooperative side of things. Are we using the language of commons, or the language of ownership? Are we escaping ownership, or doubling down on it? As I feel I’m barely on the edge of the cooperative movement, still figuring out how it works, and its relationship to technology, Nathan’s musing on whether this community is part of the traditional co-op movement or something new and different was interesting. I remain astonished how many co-operatives there are around us. In the UK there’s the Coop Group, John Lewis (as I think John Bevan said, you can take a radical stance just by getting your groceries at Waitrose), but also many others such as dairy co-ops. I learned at OPEN2018 that in the US, a surprisingly large proportion of electricity cable networks are co-operatives. I hadn’t realised that Visa and Mastercard were mutuals until early this century. But they are pretty much invisible in everyday life, in conversations about economic growth and enterprise. Cooperatives UK’s 2018 co-op economy report highlights the scale and scope of co-ops in the UK.

Nathan also talked about where we all sit relative to the mainstream, for-profit startup world. Are we doing entrepreneurship but a bit differently? Or are we doing something radically different, entirely away from concepts like disruption?

One of the things I found really encouraging at the conference was the number of enthusiastic initiatives setting out to make it easier to set up and grow co-operatives, with different combinations of toolkits, mentoring, and funding (Platform6, start.coop, incubator.coop, Solidfund, CoopStarter, and more). And boy, are there more ways to get risk financing in the co-op space than I’d realised. There’s paying a regular cash return, investment from other co-ops, token issues, specialist investment houses such as Purpose Ventures; and depending where you are, tax breaks and specialist co-op startup funds. I was surprised how different the co-op startup financing environment is in different countries. Regardless, platform co-ops are out there already, and in diverse sectors — eg. Stocksy, Savvy.coop and Arcade City. There are more tools than ever before to support scalable co-ops too, with collaborative budgeting (eg. Cobudget), decision-making (eg. Loomio), and day to day participation. There are co-ops you can work with on technical stuff, such as Outlandish or the other denizens of CoTech, and co-ops who can help you with other things such as working openly. Coming soon there will be new ways of distributing computing, organised by co-ops like RChain. Of course, there are also support networks and communities of practice, such as Enspiral.

Cristina Flesher Fominaya talked about the words we use, in a great session on narrative and the importance of stories. In particular, she highlighted that some of the most successful campaigns and movements avoided using the words that one might expect to define them; instead, focussing on stories, and getting away from polarising framings such as anti-capitalism (maybe a story about corruption might be more persuasive?). Cristina also highlighted a point I tried to make in my talk earlier that day, that collaboration is not always built on a shared discursive framework, but might involve parties with very different world views and ways of communicating.

I’m delighted to hear there will be an OPEN 2019, and looking forward to it already. (This is also motivating me to make sure that I can show up next year and feel I’ve done something useful in the interim!)

A note on hyphens: I’m sticking with “co-op.” I can’t bring myself to say “coop,” like a place chickens might live, and I think I know enough people who, like me until very recently, don’t know much about co-ops, and would be confused by coops in this business context

Some rights reserved – CC-BY-SA 4.0

Laura James  is the editor of Digital Life Collective

The post Thoughts on OPEN 2018 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Photo by torbakhopper

The post Holochain – The commons engine for cooperation at scale appeared first on P2P Foundation.

By Oliver Sylvester-Bradley

Holochain is a new technology project with huge potential for the cooperative economy.

Members of The Open Co-op have been promoting the idea that new software could, potentially, revolutionise both our failing democracies and our predatory capitalist economies, since 2004. Back then we weren’t quite so clear on exactly how the required information architecture should be designed – but we knew what we wanted it to do and how it should work. In 2004, I published a paper entitled Participatory Democracy Networks, which explained how I thought some new information architecture could facilitate participatory democracy worldwide.

The above diagram illustrates the undemocratic nature of the current system and the required power relationships of a truly democratic system. The extent to which any ‘player’ controls any other is represented by the extent to which its colour encapsulates any other. For example, in the current situation individuals influence business to some extent (by buying things) and the government to some extent (by voting) but do not control them, individuals only control the NGOs.

Not long after that we founded The Open Co-op and designed some screenshots of our “dream communication system” which we called PlaNet, to illustrate how the new software we wanted might work, and developed a presentation using some fictional cartoon characters to illustrate how a system like PlaNet could help people live together in a collaborative sustainable economy.

In 2017 we updated the PLANET screenshots – presenting the idea as An open source operating system for a collaborative, sustainable economy incorporating a range of interlinked apps on a smart phone. PLANET is still not a software project, it remains a vision which aims to illustrate some of the concepts and advantages of a collaborative, user owned and managed economic platform.

The purpose of the PLANET concept is to illustrate, through a Graphical User Interface, what it might be like to interact with a new economic system which has been built collaboratively as an open source project. PLANET would be owned and controlled by its members, giving them complete control over how it is run via proposals, and votes on other members’ proposals. PLANET incorporates concepts such as: Agent-centric architecture, Personal data licenses, Portable reputation, Alternative currencies, Group management, Local relevance and Delegative voting – all the same ideas we were proposing in 2004 to help build participatory democracy networks.

So, for 12 years PLANET has remained a dream. And then we discovered Holochain.

Whilst everyone has been getting very excited about the potential of blockchain we have remained skeptical for a variety of reasons;

1. You cannot store all the data in the world in a blockchain
2. The blockchain is a spectacular waste of energy that could instead be used to improve the quality of life for millions of people around the world – just see the insane energy consumption of Bitcoin. If growth continues at the present pace, researchers estimate that Bitcoin mining alone would consume more power in 2020 than the entire world does today.
3. A system that is designed to enable total anonymity is actually not very appropriate for building collaborative, trust-based systems and organisations.

Sometimes technology gets over-hyped and there’s a growing body of evidence explaining why you don’t need to use blockchain. This paper by Karl Wüst and Arthur Gervais from the Department of Computer Science in Zurich, gives a good outline of whether a blockchain is the appropriate technical solution to solve a problem.

Whilst blockchain has and is being used on some great projects, this amazing story from inside a Jordanian refugee camp that runs on blockchain to help Syrian refugees regain legal identities that were lost when they fled their homes, is the perfect example of how the technology is failing to deliver. To quote the conclusions “the transactions were slow and the fees were too high” … ” so “Instead of cutting the banks out of the equation, [the World Food Programme] has essentially become one”. Haddad, who runs the programme acknowledges that—“Of course we could do all of what we’re doing today without using blockchain…”. But, he adds, “my personal view is that the eventual end goal is digital ID, and beneficiaries must own and control their data.”

Owning and controlling your own data. That’s what we want. That’s the fundamental idea behind PLANET.

But trying to force a system like blockchain, which was designed to enable anonymous transactions, to help you own and control your own data is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Wouldn’t it be better to start with a system which is specifically designed to enable you to own and control you own data? That also, by design, encourages trust between peers and, as well as that, enables giant volumes of transactions at low transaction costs?

That’s what Holochain does. And it does it very well.

Whilst some people have been embarrassing humanity by creating mind-numbing concepts such as Crypto-kitties and trying to force tomatoes on a blockchain, the team at Holo have been figuring out the fundamental information architecture for a new, sustainable, collaborative and cooperative economy. Such a valiant and laudable mission is clearly not for the faint-hearted and the Holo team brings together brains such as Eric Harris-Braun, Arthur Brock, Jean Russell, Jean-François Noubel, and Matthew Schutte to name just a few. They are an incredible group of system-thinkers whose ideas have evolved out of the metacurrency project and CEPTR and synergised as Holochain, a new applications framework that they are giving away to the world for free.  To help subsidize that effort, they are also launching the first flagship application built using Holochain, a peer-to-peer web hosting platform, confusingly named Holo host, for which they recently raised over $20 million through a crowdfunding campaign and an Initial Community Offering.

In order to explain what Holochain is, how it works and why co-operators everywhere should take note, we interviewed Matthew Schutte, their Director of Communications.

OSB: What is Holo in layman’s terms?

MS: Holo is a peer to peer app hosting marketplace. Today app hosting is the domain of big business. If a developer builds an app, they serve it via a hosting company like Amazon or Google and pay to use their big data warehouses – huge sever farms which present the app to end users. Holo makes it possible for normal folks to make use of the idle storage and processing capacity on their computers to get into that business… For example, when I’m writing an email, my machine is doing some work but it has the capacity to do 1000 times more work – so HOLO enables you to rent some of that extra capacity.

OSB: OK, that sounds great, but I can imagine people worrying it might slow down their computers. Is that something users will need to think about?

MS: You can set your own parameters. You can specify the settings for how much of your machine you allocate to Holo – Our goal is to prioritise your use over Holo’s use (although this may not be included in the initial version at launch) so you never get slowed down. Some people will be dedicating whole machines to Holo hosting… but if you’re using Holo on your main computer you don’t want it to be annoying… you just want it to make use of the spare capacity. If it’s reducing your quality of life – that’s not a cost most people are going to be willing to pay.

OSB: Will it be secure? I can imagine people worrying that if a Holo service or app is running in the background on their computer then maybe it can access parts of their machine that they don’t want people to see.

MS: Yes, it’s secure. It only has the ability to interact with certain parts of your computer. This is similar to the way in which a web site can change pixels on your screen but can’t read your private files. Technically it’s called “sandboxing”. Holo will use a cordoned off section of your computer. We’re not inventing new stuff there, the technology to do this securely has existed for a long time.

OSB: Will people need a special computer, or a certain specification of computer to run Holo?

MS: No. Any Mac or PC, desktop or laptop will work but mobile devices are slower and so not so suitable for serving websites to others.

OSB: Why would someone want to host HOLO apps on their computer? How is that going to help build a collaborative, sustainable economy?

MS: It’s kind of like the way AirBnb and Uber work. Their model enables them to make use of spare bedrooms – to help people pay off their mortgages. Holo makes use of the spare space and processing power of your computer to help you pay for your internet connection and maybe even the cost of the computer itself…

There is a massive amount of unused computing power in the world, more than any one company controls… Amazon is king of hosting at the moment, though there are others that are neck and neck, like IBM and Google.

Amazon is the third most valuable company on the planet and their web hosting division, Amazon Web Services (AWS) makes up 10% of Amazon’s revenues but more profit than the entire rest of the company combined. App hosting is the cash cow of the third most most valuable company on the planet!

Holo is aiming to do to Amazon’s cash cow what Uber did to Taxis – but instead of taking 20 or 30% of the money from the drivers (like Uber does) with Holo 99% of the revenues go straight to the host who’s computer is doing the work.  Holo takes a 1% or less transaction fee.

OSB: I see, so Holo has the potential to disrupt the hosting industry and divert money back to the people who join the network and host apps on their computers. But, if you’ve invented a way to do that why wouldn’t you take more than 1%?

MS: We don’t need it – because we’re distributing everything… just like Airbnb was able to grow from two guys with air mattresses to a company that books more rooms than any other… because they didn’t have to build and own locations – we’re catalysing existing assets instead. We’ve invented a really efficient accounting system – and a 1% transaction fee is our business model for Holo. And that helps subsidize the larger Holochain ecosystem. This is just a first step in a larger plan to shift how humanity communicates.

OSB: OK, I thought so – there’s clearly more lurking under the hood! But before we dive into that I want to take a step back and try and get a real understanding of what Holochain is and how this idea works. You’ve told us a bit about Holo, which is a Holochain app.  Can you explain the technology behind Holochain itself a bit more?

MS: Sure. Peer to peer app hosting is not a new idea. Just like BitTorrent offers peer to peer file sharing, Holochain makes use of some of the same technology.

A few decades ago people realized that it would be useful to be able to store a file on a network of computers, but not have to depend on having any single computer be up and running at a particular time in order to access them.  Note that with the web, when you look up a website, you are looking up content based on which machine it is stored on. That means that if that machine goes down, you can’t access that content. That kind of sucks. It’s also a major reason why most people don’t host their own websites anymore.  If for any reason your computer goes down, no one can reach your website. This “server maintainer as second job” thing was a pain in the neck, so most folks opted to pay others to “do that hosting work.”

With BitTorrent, it’s different. When you reach out for a file, you don’t ask for a specific machine. You ask for the file. Other machines on the network share information about which files are stored where. Within a split second, you’ve got your file (or at least have started to download it). This even works if every computer that originally received the file has since gone offline.  That’s because if a computer notices that one of its neighbors has gone offline, it starts making backups by recruiting new machines to hold onto a copy of that file.

For example, if I send a tweet – it might get stored by 200 different computers. If one drops offline, the system looks for others to make backup copies to ensure 200 copies remain online – these nodes are “gossiping” with each other – if they don’t hear back when they check in with the ‘Oli node’, they say “oh no, we lost him!” and then look for the next nearest node (what “nearness” means is a bit too technical for this interview). Jimmy is the nearest – so they get Jimmy’s node to make a copy to ensure 200 copies stay online. It’s like a self healing network.

That’s great for file storage – but not to run apps, you can’t run Airbnb like that. You can’t run Uber like that.  Apps need to build sets of relationships and transform resources. Holochain takes the file sharing concept and adds more functionality. Borrowing from three different technologies in the process:

1. From BitTorrent – self healing storage, the Distributed Hash Table (DHT)
2. From Blockchain and other things – the concept of an immutable, unchangeable, tamper proof data log. A hash chain.
3. From Git, the most widely used system for collaborative software – the Agent centric model, where there is no one global truth.

In the Git world, I have my version of the code. If I make a copy and add a green button, altering the code, I can suggest the change to you. If you like the change and accept it, you sign it with a cryptographic key, just like track changes in a Word doc. When you suggest changes it shows them to me. If I accept this change, and I sign that acceptance with my cryptographic key, it updates my chain to include the changes I accept. But you can’t change my stuff. I have to update my stuff. As a sovereign agent.

Holochain is an agent centric model which is very different to the data centric model of blockchain. There are no miners, and no company in the middle deciding and enforcing the rules.  Instead, the participants of a particlar of the network running it as a community. By pooling together our computing resources we make possible an entire network of distributed apps that are free from centralised, corporate control. By putting that scale of control back into the hands of users, we enable humanity to access entirely new possibilities for how we do economics, governance and community.

By putting that scale of control back into the hands of users, we enable humanity to access entirely new possibilities for how we do economics, governance and community.

OSB: That’s awesome, it sounds like you’ve developed a system to run something like PLANET, the open source OS we’ve been thinking about for so long. But if this is going to work the peer to peer network will need to grow pretty quickly, is that where the HoloPorts come in?

Aside:

As well as running possibly the world’s first ever ethically (rather than purely finically) motivated ICO, which raised £20 million, the Holo team also recently closed a crowdfunder for Holo ports, which raised over $1 million. The supply of ‘Holo Tokens’ which were sold in the ICO was calculated by a fixed formula based on data from the crowdfunding campaign for HoloPorts. HoloPorts are “plug and play” devices which come with software already installed and are optimized to run Holo. When they arrive with the 2114 users who purchased them through the crowdfunder people can just plug them in, follow the instructions, and start hosting the network and earning Holo fuel.

MS: Holo is a bridge between the old internet and the new internet. The people who are running holo are the bridge builders who get paid for building the bridge. So, normal internet users don’t have to do anything new – they might not even know that when they visit a website, on the backend, there is a community rather than a company.

OSB: I love the fact that Holo’s currency, Holo fuel, is both backed by computer processing power and designed to work as a mutual credit system.

MS: Holo also provides a new accounting process, which solves two problems: giant volumes of transactions and low transaction costs. We don’t even need to own the structures to do the accounting – we’re using a distributed app for that too – a payment system, so we are able to offer payment processing as well as hosting – for less than anyone currently offers. We’ll be able to process millions or billions of simultaneous payments – and have them work even when the transaction value is 1 cent or less. I’m not going to send you 2p if it costs me 20p to do so… We think we’ve solved an important issue.  The cost of accounting needs to be far less than the values exchanged.

OSB: Absolutely. I’ve seen that very problem plague existing blockchain projects, so I really hope it is something Holo solves. Speaking of finances, you seemed to take great care to ensure the ICO was ethically managed and you’ve now raised a huge amount of money! What are your first plans with your new resources?

MS: Our goals were clear:

1. Get this off the ground – launch the change
2. Make sure the humans get taken care of for their part in that…

It’s a principle we’re going to follow with the whole community of hosts, and ICO investors. We’ve been trying to design the architecture so people end up better off by participating. We’re taking care of our staff and the community that are trying to get the software built. But we’re not trying to become billionaires.

Our people have been living on $1000/month stipend and volunteering their time.

Two years ago I was sleeping in my car to be able to work on this full time. I hard to rent out my bedroom on Airbnb, so I could work on this without having to work on other stuff.  That generally meant that I would sleep in the car. Now our project has market cap worth hundreds of millions. But we’ll let that happen… it’s just people betting that we’ll be successful. The point is that now we have the resources we need, the ability to pay people and pull in deep knowledge.

OSB: How is the Holo organisation going to evolve?

MS: We’re in a transition period. We didn’t do anything in the normal way. We didn’t give any equity in the company to investors. We didn’t even give equity to the employees. I don’t have equity, for instance, because our intent is to hand over control of the resources to the community over time.

We’re aiming to start by using a CoBudget-like process so that our community will control 1 to 3 % of the revenue. There will be a learning process, so the community can build up it’s ability to make decisions and exercise judgement about how to allocate resources, towards training / UI / development / security tools etc. Over time the plan is to increase the amount of the revenue which the community controls until the community controls all of the revenue.

We’re also launching a Trust that controls Holochain. That trust receives 50% of Holo’s revenues and that will help to support Holochain and nourish the growth of the network. Basically we’ve managed to hack together a funding mechanism for Holochain, despite the fact that we are completely giving Holochain away for free.

OSB: So, do you think Holo will help liberate decentralised co-operation at scale?

MS: We’re hacking business structures in order to try to change what types of business models are possible in the world.

We’re hacking business structures in order to try to change what types of business models are possible in the world.

This concept of putting users in the middle will completely shift how co-ops can function. It will enable them to make use of the advantage that they have, which is diversity. What we are calling platform co-ops and protocol co-ops – coming together in alignment to create an ecosystem rather than just a network. So we can try new things and if they prove useful, they can propagate across the community and perhaps beyond. The “beyond” comes from the fact that users can bridge between different networks.  That means that I can draw data from 5 or 10 apps and combine them together to create a more coherent user experience for myself. And I don’t need anyone else to agree to also use that particular configuration. If it works for me, I can put it to work. No group meetings and voting required (for that sort of issue, anyway.),

No more top down, or one-size fits all application experiences, that’s centralised corporate architecture. New ways of digital commutation are going to harness the diversity of co-ops and help give them a learning advantage. This will allow them to experiment and learn faster than centralised organisations – a collaborative advantage in a world that changing fast.

Part 2 of this interview – exploring more of Holo’s plans to enable decentralised co-operation at scale is coming soon…

Matthew Schutte and Art Brock from Holochain will both be speaking at the OPEN 2018 Platform Co-ops conference in London in July – as well as running hands-on workshops on how to download the source code and design apps to work on Holochain.

We’re not the only people who are starting to get excited about Holochain, the concept has caught many other eyes. With developers like Nicolas Luck explaining how Holochain is reinventing applications and how it “works and performs better than Ethereum by several orders of magnitude”, and Jean Russell sharing 5 Ways Holochain can save democracy, momentum is starting to build.

In his post about Holochain reinventing applications Nicolas shares his vision, explains the shift from data-centric to agent-centric architecture and proposes building a Holo browser:

“I am talking about a browser for the Holochain app ecosystem that is not opening HTML documents but instead is facilitating communication between the user and other users, groups, teams, organizations and the network as a whole. Think: decentralized WeChat. Basically a very generalized address book/team chat/social network/collaboration UI with no specialized functionality as that is to be filled-in by those many apps which are meant to work together as micro-services.”

That is exactly what we have tried to illustrate with PLANET, which is why this is all so exciting. If the users co-own and co-design the browser which Nicolas describes we will finally have a framework within which we can build a democratic, collaborative, sustainable economy – the perfect framework for decentralised cooperation at scale.

Cross-posted from open.coop

Read part II of the interview: “Holochain – The commons engine“

Photo by torbakhopper

The post Holochain – the perfect framework for decentralised cooperation at scale appeared first on P2P Foundation.

But what does this mean for fans of cooperation and a more sustainable, steady state, or circular economy? Is this is an opportunity to rebuild the resilience and community bonds that the original co-op coins offered our societies, by utilising new digital technology?

These days, the term “crypto currency” seems to have become synonymous with blockchain based currencies and the idea of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) seems to be seen as a way to raise millions in “investment” from nothing more than a website and a white paper. At the Open Co-op we’ve been talking about alternative economic models, and digital currencies, for decades because we believe an alternative economy, which places people and the planet before profit is an essential part of the future. If the neoliberalist capitalist system remains the only option the future looks very bleak indeed. So we’re excited about all the experimentation that’s going on – and the range of alternative currencies being created. But we’re equally worried about the “crypto bubble”, sordid speculation and the insane energy consumption of Bitcoin, which has been (possibly dubiously) estimated to consume more power in 2020 than the entire world does today.

To be clear, a crypto currency does not have to based on the blockchain. A crypto currency is simply a currency that is cryptographically encrypted (meaning: encoded) to make it secure. So when we talk about crypto currencies here we do not just mean systems that use the blockchain, we mean any alternative, digital currency.

Equally, an ICO does not have to aim for wild increases in valuation, it’s simply a term that is used to describe the initial launch and distribution of a new, alternative currency. So when we talk about ICOs here we do not mean “ponzi schemes” or a means of raising huge amounts of money through crowd funding via speculative tokens, we mean launching and distributing a new, alternative currency.

These distinctions are important because if alternative currencies are to be taken seriously and facilitate a path to a more sustainable, steady state and circular economy then it is essential that these terms don’t get totally tarred by the Bitcoin bubble and blockchain brush.

A well designed Co-op Coin could catalyse the co-operative economy

The idea is simple; to run an ICO and create a co-op coin, with the specific purpose of facilitating the growth of the commons and the co-op economy.

There are so many alternative currencies out there already it seems important to do a quick review of the existing options:

• RChain co-operative is is building a platform for ‘scalable blockchain applications’. The Co-op is the organisation that develops the open-source RChain platform software, whilst RChain Holdings is a for-profit entity whose mission is to grow the ecosystem around the RChain platform.
• Colu Local Network is a blockchain based payment network that allows communities to issue their own currency and use it to incentivise merchants and consumers for buying and selling with fiat currency.
• Steem is an incentivised, blockchain based, public content platform. Their first app, Steemit, is a blogging platform featuring tokens which are distributed to content creators and curators daily as rewards, based on community voting.
• Slightly more on topic, Boyd Cohen is working on an ICO for the Collabor8 token with the goal of raising funding to create major platform coop infrastructure that can be used by platform cooperatives to shorten the runway to viability. The collabor8 ‘social currency’ seem particularly  interesting because it includes an element of social reputation…
• Bill Olivier also seems to cover a lot of the right ground in his doc on Co-operative Exchange Token, although he seems hampered by the belief that ICOs (as they commonly work) are not a plausible option for co-ops, whereas we believe an ICO can be designed to work ethically.
• FairCoin is one of the more ethically minded alternative currencies, which aims to “implement fair value exchange on a global level” using a unique “proof-of-cooperation mechanism”. Again, this is a blockchain based system but one which uses “collaboratively validated nodes” (CVNs) to secure the network. It’s a clever system but one which is still prone to speculation which undoubtedly undermines their proud claim that “FairCoin now is the the most ecological and resilient cryptocurrency”! Since their “air drop” (basically, dumping a load of coins around the internet to be picked up by whoever gets there first, with some limitations on claims per person) the “value” of a Faircoin has increased hugely and the community “claims” one Faircon is now worth €1.2. These claims about Faircoins’ value must be decided at  a General Assembly via “consensus reached through an open, participatory process of discussion. Not the invisible hands of the market…” and the other Fair ventures like the marketplace and their growing community of local nodes do make this a valid and vibrant economy. But since everyone involved in Faircoin obviously has a vested interest in its increasing valuation and since Faircoin can be traded on at least two exchanges it is just as prone to speculation as gold, or Bitcoin. In fact, their page on “value” includes a slightly humorous request for speculators to leave Faricoin alone: “If you just want to get rich soon and intend to “pump and bump” – please consider other AltCoins to speculate on.” Not the most robust means of securing a stable, inflation and speculation proof system!
• Coinsence is a platform for social collaboration that aims to “empower social and ecological engagement and support [by] building a collaborative, fair and sustainable economy”. Coinsence is new and only has a small community at the moment, but they seem to have a identified a clever model via which they issue different tokens to represent community currencies, voting rights and asset shares. Tokens can then be allocated by communities to provide incentives for ‘projects’, as well as being used as a means of exchange. These ‘social currencies’ have a limited store of value (making them less prone to hoarding and speculation) since they include high demurrage and transaction fees. The fees can be democratically re-invested into selected community projects. It’s not entirely clear how Coinsence secures the transactions, or if their technology is at all scalable but their model includes a lot of the right ingredients for a vibrant co-operative economy.
• Duniter is a crypto currency software system, which means it provides the ability to create currencies. Again, it’s blockchain based but its’ currency code includes a Universal Dividend (for currency creation and distribution) and is based on a clever concept; a Web of Trust via which each member is recognised (its identity is trusted – not its actions) if they satisfy the WoT rules which require the members to have enough signatures (links) from other members. These signatures (links) expire over time so the WoT is a clever way to ensure that people are who they say they are via social validation.

Then there’s a range of other middy interesting (again, all blockchain based) crypto currencies which are ‘backed’, or at least vaguely related, to other assets like solar panels and mangrove trees:

• Solarcoin is issued to owners of solar PV systems, for free, for every 1MWH (Megawatt hour) of electricity their PV system generates. Anyone can register their solar PV system with the SolarCoin Foundation and a typical 4kW domestic PV system could expect to earn just over 5 SolarCoins a year, every year over the 40 years the project will run. As government support for feed-in tariffs are withdrawn SolarCoin could become an important incentive to help encourage people to adopt greener energy – and/or another means to engage in wild speculation.
• The HCP coin for mangrove trees was helped into life by an ex JP Morgan banker and a guy who runs a “net positive” surf board company that is buying HCP coins to help his company become carbon positive. It’s another novel idea with clear, carbon reduction objectives but with worrying possibilities given a companies ability to ‘cash out’ from their carbon reducing investments.
• There’s not really anything co-operative, or particularly sustainable, about the TIME token but a list of this nature would not be complete without making reference to ChronoBank, who raised $5.4 Billion via their ICO. Aiming to “disrupt the HR / Recruitment industries” with a crypto currency based on the blockchain, they claim that “labour is abundant enough for everyone to have access to it, yet scarce enough to be valuable. It is the most tradeable resource in the real economy. Labour Hour tokens will tokenise this resource. Because they are backed by real labour, they are absolutely inflation-proof and have next to zero volatility” At the time of writing an hour of TIME was worth about $36 but the day before it was worth $32… Looking at the fluctuating value of the token over time seems to slightly undermine their “zero volatility” claim.

If you’re aware of other crypto currencies which are of interest to the co-op economy please let us know in the comments below.

What is clear from this list is that creating crypto currencies does not seem too hard. We can dream up a million ways to ‘back’ or link a currency to something, and there are just as many ways to distribute.

The hard part of currency design seems to be incentivising the type of economic activity which leads to the kind of world we want to live in and avoiding hoarding and speculation. The list above does not seem to include a single currency that is “speculation proof” or many ideas to addresses the speculation issue, other than Coinsence’s mention of high demurrage, which can cause other issues.

What’s wrong with speculation anyway?

Fans of crypto seems to be missing the fundamental point that any increase in value (of any cyrpto currency) is not really “money for free”. It is money we are borrowing (yet again) off the planet and future generations.

OK, so this “money” is not created as interest bearing debt (like most “normal” money) by banks. It is created by human perceptions instead. The global mindset imbues these newly created digital assets with virtual value via our subconscious belief in scarcity and our grotesque affinity for greed.

But when we “cash in” those perceptions by converting our digital coins to GBP or USD and spend them on (often finite) resources like land, or building materials, or solar PV – all of which have an environmental impact – we are using up those resources, quicker than we would have been able to do without crypto currencies.

You could argue that Solarcoins are incentivising the installation of PV, and that is a good thing

but, when their value increases, they are still extorting real tangible, natural, value (things like birds and forests and trees) into a mythical pool of financial value – and ultimately that will only ever speed up the destruction of the natural environment.

So let’s not get too hasty about imagining a scenario where PV is “more than free”. All our actions in the real world have environmental impacts and just because crypto currencies have found a new way to externalise those costs it does not mean we should be slapping ourselves on the back about it! It is our children and grandchildren that we are forcing to pay for this new, naked emperor.

It is essential to keep the true “costs” (including the power consumption issues) in mind when thinking about ethical alternative currencies.

Beyond blockchain – thinking outside the blocks

Of all the current crypto currency options Holo stands out because it based on the Holochain (a more efficient way of encoding transitions)  and it’s currency is not only going to be based on “mutual credit” but its also going to backed by computer processing power. It’s well worth watching this great video from Philip Beadle to get an idea of how blockchain works and the differences between Bitcoin, Etherium and Holochain – especially from an app building point of view.

Holo are just concluding a very successful crowdfunder which aims to provide the ‘bridging technology’ to bring holo into the mainstream. The ‘hosting boxes’ (holo ports) people have bought through the crowdfunder will allow non-technically minded people to simply plug a spare hard drive in to their router to provide storage capacity and processing power on the Holo network.

The Holo network is nothing short of true peer-to-peer. Meaning that users can access each others computers directly, without the need to go via Google’s or Amazon’s servers. In fact, they can host and runs applications on the Holo network, in much the same way as BitTorrent works. This provides incredible opportunities for scaling (as more peers join the network, everyone benefits from ‘the network effect’) and, equally as importantly, the opportunity to re-define how the applications that run on the network are designed to work; it solves the entire “net neutrality” issue completely. Holo, and the people behind it, have designed the Holo network to work in a more “user centric” way than the way the web works today.

The Holo ICO is a very HOT topic. Art Brock, one of the founders of the project, has written about building responsible crypto currencies and agrees that

Cryptocurrencies do not have to be gambling tokens created from nothing. They can be responsibly connected to assets, promises, or real-world value. They don’t have to re-create all the speculative money problems that they were supposed to be solving.

Currencies can be optimised to be a useful means of exchange, or a useful store of value, but rarely work well when trying to be both at the same time. “Holo fuel” (also known as HOT, or Holo Tokens) are designed to provide a medium of exchange on the Holo network. Their ICO requires users to buy HOT with ETH (another crypto currency).

Given that buying in to the Holo ICO with ETH will be at a specific price, we were keen to understand how the value of HOT has been calculated, how it hopes to avoid being linked in value to ETH and other crypto currency prices in the future, and how HOT will avoid suffering from speculation? We put the question to Jean Russell, project lead for the Holo ICO, who answered as follows:

HOT is set as 10k x ETH for the launch. But that is just the initial set. Once the network starts, then 1 HOT = 1 Holo fuel. And Holo fuel is about the value of hosting in Holo.

Surely there will arise an exchange that will convert ETH to Holo fuel, so they will be relational in some way. However, even if the Ethereum system collapses, Holo can continue and the value should not be negatively impacted. We believe that we will be much more than 10,000x faster/cheaper than Ethereum (mostly because that system in some ways was designed to be difficult and slow as part of the security). Our system is designed for scalability and resilience (DHT) so it should get better as it scales. Anti-fragile in fact.

The initial price (and the practical network value the community gives it) will be a gap that speculators can guess at. Thereafter though, it should remain fairly stable as it is really about the asset and the value of that asset in the marketplace.

I can’t give the deep philosophical explanation that Art can, but what I hear from him is that mutual credit along with asset-backing pretty much assures that it can’t be a gambling game of high stakes. Those who invest early when there is high risk of the platform getting off the ground will gain some benefit, yes. But then it should achieve a meta-stable state.

We have high hopes for Holo. With Holochain offering a viable alternative to blockchain it should, naturally, benefit from “second mover advantage” by learning a lot of lessons from its predecessor. The way it has been designed from a holographic, and sociocratic perspective seems to fit the requirements of a co-operative economy which distributes ownership and governance to the lowest possible levels.

If their ICO, which they are calling an “Initial Community Offering“, goes well it will be very interesting to see how this first major alternative to the blockchain based systems develops.

Launching a Co-op Coin?

If Holo is successful and a vibrant peer to peer community emerges, perhaps the Holo Network would be the place to launch a dedicated co-op coin? Much of the hard work, in terms of underlying infrastructure, will have been done so a launching a co-op coin on holo should not be as hard as starting from scratch. The main issues would be achieving agreement between a sufficient number of stakeholders about a co-op coins parameters, mainly it’s issuance and the management of supply and demand.

It seems to make sense that a co-op coin could only ever be spent at co-ops, thereby facilitating Principle 6 (co-operation between co-ops) by giving co-ops a specific currency in which to trade. Mutual credit also seems to provide a sensible means of managing supply and demand.

One idea for co-op currency creation could be to issue a set amount of Co-op Coins each month or year, to every member of every co-op that registers with the coin issuer. This would mean the coins are created and distributed as far and wide as possible, and provide a basic “co-op citizen’s income” whilst, at the same time, it would create a global directory of co-op members – something which would massively benefit the co-op economy.

Another, additional, idea to create co-op coins would be to issue an amount of co-op coins (again, to every member of every co-op that registers with the coin issuer) which have to be ‘spent’ into existence. If these coins could only be allocated to commons-building and co-op projects the Co-op Coin would incentivise the growth of co-ops and the commons. And once Co-op Coins have been “earned” in this way, the workers who completed the projects’ tasks would be able to spend the coins in any co-op, breathing further life into the co-op economy.

There are probably other, better ways to issue Co-op Coins and we’d be interested in your thoughts.

How should we enable the creation and distribution of new currency within the co-op economy?

Avoiding the speculation issue seems the hardest nut to crack. Even if there is no way to “cash out” a Co-op Coin via a currency exchange hungry co-operators might still look to exploit discounts on goods they could buy with co-op coins and sell elsewhere in traditional currencies. The only sure-fire way to avoid speculation seems to be for an economy to be ubiquitous and all encompassing, by providing everything a person needs and a method of transacting that is more efficient than all other options. Designing complimentary currencies, which satisfy the different needs to provide a “store of value” and a “medium of exchange” which work together in efficient symbiosis also seems essential for a sustainable economy.

With the right design it seems clear that a well managed ICO for a Co-op Coin could provide incredible funding opportunities for the co-operative economy. Imagine if the surplus of every co-op was converted into Co-op Coins and allocated to co-op building and commons-creation projects… Together we could create an alternative economic model to the extractive version that exists today; a clear path to a more co-operative world. Ignoring the possibilities of crypto currencies is no longer an option for anyone with an interest in a better future.

Photo by mulberrymint

Originally published in The Open Coop

The post Thinking outside the blocks: What would a co-op coin ICO look like? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Michel Bauwens is a theorist in the emerging field of P2P theory and director and founder of the P2P Foundation, a global organisation of researchers collaborating in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has authored a number of essays, including his seminal thesis, The Political Economy of Peer Production.

In the run up to the Open 2017 – Platform Co-ops conference in London, Oliver Sylvester-Bradley, from The Open Co-op explores some of Michel’s ideas.

Avoiding the exploitation of the commons and open source peer production

OSB: At The Open Co-op we believe that open source software is an essential component of the Platform co-op / solidarity economy. However, some of the developers I speak to are now less inclined to publish their code openly, since they have seen large corporations incorporate their code and go on to build multi million pound businesses… This makes me wonder if there is a need to move on from simply “open source” by creating a new licensing system, similar to the Creative Commons for artistic works, in order to ensure that developers can stipulate the ways in which their code may be used, and by whom, in order to ensure the commercial world does not exploit open source.

MB: This is of course a very valid concern. But we have to ask a few questions. First, we have to recognise that people have to make a living and free software developers, like others, can be paid for their work as employees or freelancers, independent of the ‘open’ nature of the code. 75% of Linux Core developers are paid for example, and the Fair Use Economy report calculated that one sixth of GDP and 17 million workers are making a living around shared knowledge economies. That’s not trivial.

My point is that work is a rival good, and has a price, but that knowledge is naturally abundant and thus privatising it is inherently problematic.

Which is why we propose a novel solution, one which combines both a full commitment to share knowledge, and a demand for reciprocity towards the commons in the case of commercialisation. This is what we call the ‘copyfair’ principle, and it avoids the reality of free software, which is that, ‘the more free the license, the more private the economy around it’.

To my mind, we thus continue to write shared code, but we create ethical business coalitions around it, and we re-introduce reciprocity into the private market mechanisms.  Examples of this are the practice of the FairShares Association, which has one CC non-commercial license for everyone, and a commercial license for those who pay a membership fee (this is their ‘reciprocity’ requirement).

The Peer Production License used by some publishers is another. I take this as an ethical requirement: while we all have to make a living, and I respect the freedom of everyone to use moderate IP protection as a free choice, I believe that withholding vital productive knowledge for humanity is not the right thing to do.

OSB: OK, some people get paid to write open code – others do not, but I believe for open code to flourish we need to actively encourage developers to publish openly and that is not going to continue to happen if their work gets blatantly exploited for financial gain by others.

Having read more about the PPL now I understand its structure and objectives and admire the way it aims to encourage reciprocation if a conventional capitalist business reaps financial dividends from the open source work. I also understand the valid objections to limiting the flow of ‘free knowledge’ and information.

However, I personally feel we are in a kind of battle here, to either fix, out-evolve or supersede the ‘extractive’ economy asap, if we do not want humanity to become extinct. And I do not see the elites that wield power today giving up on their vested interests any time soon so, to me it seems, we would be wise to place limits on how, and where, and in exchange for what, our work can be used.

As Nathan Schneider put it to me in a recent email:
“as long as there have been commoners, they have had to protect their commons from the greedy hands of the lords.”

We need to organise ourselves so that the ‘value’ of our work can be re-invested in our livelihoods, communities and resources. 

MB: We have to be defensive, but I think more importantly we need to organise ourselves so that the ‘value’ of our work can be re-invested in our livelihoods, communities and resources. This is why it can never be a purely defensive game, or even trying to get more of the piece of the pie, but it requires a reorganisation of our modes of production and exchange.

Our proposal at the P2P Foundation is threefold at the micro-economic stage: first, we need to build productive communities around our commons, and declare our value sovereignty; this means deciding to distribute value differently, ‘generatively’; this requires a second step, creating generative entrepreneurial coalitions, so that we are commoners adding to the commons, but also cooperators making a living. And this requires also of course building meta-networks, between them.

Obviously, this takes time, and it took capital 400 years to consolidate itself with all the institutions it needed. The problem of course, is: we don’t have that time, but perhaps, because of the acceleration of learning through mutual networks, we can achieve it in 40.

It’s clear from this, given the urgencies of climate change and ecological destruction, that we can never wait for these prefigurative processes to go on on their own. This is why we also need to ally the prefigurative forces with social movements and emancipatory political forces, and we need to infuse them with the models of the commons, and ‘liberate’ them from their exclusive reliance on private vs state.

By building such an alliance we can then also politically transform social and economic institutions and have them evolve in the direction of the prefigurative society that we are building. Free knowledge is hugely important in this context, because under capitalism, we treat rare resources as if they were infinite, and we treat abundant resources, as if they were scarce. So we destroy the planet, but withhold the knowledge necessary to solve the problems thus created.

Think of how patenting of solar and electric cars led to a 30 year stagnation of their necessary development. This is why we have to square the circle, continue to share code, but create vehicles for livelihood creation around it. We must also transform the institutions so that we can have a ‘partner state’ which can ’empower and enable personal and social autonomy’, just as the FLOSS Foundations are doing that at the micro-level. We need commons-based, commonified public institutions. Nobody said it would be easy.

Under capitalism, we treat rare resources as if they were infinite, and we treat abundant resources, as if they were scarce. So we destroy the planet, but withhold the knowledge necessary to solve the problems thus created. 

Can Co-ops create increased value?

OSB: I was inspired to hear you talk about the increased value that can be generated by co-ops and platform co-ops when members are all owners and value is not syphoned off, and away from the organisation, by third parties such as external investors. To me this is one of the main benefits of platform co-ops which I feel has not been adequately explained. Do you know of any real-world examples that prove this to be the case?

MB: Yes, I fully agree with that basic premise that we need platform cooperatives that are generative towards their community and commons and the resources they draw from. Cooperatives of course have a long history of proving they work and employ more people worldwide than the multinational enterprises, and we also know from studies that cooperative startups do a lot better than venture-based startups (who, for each unicorn they produce, destroy 99 other companies). This being said, platform cooperatives are very new and so it is still difficult to say with confidence how they will work. But Nathan Schneider’s Internet of Ownership site identifies more than 250 of them, and, to take just one of them,  Stocksy, a platform co-owned by professional photographers, seems to do quite well.

So, it needs to happen, and the established cooperatives and ethical and solidarity finance absolutely needs to wake up to the necessity of playing a vital supportive role. I stress another condition though, which is the concept of ‘open cooperatives’. My critique is that traditional coops end up working for their members in the competitive capitalist economy, and tend to slowly take over the practices of corporations, up to the point of being demutualised sometimes.

An open cooperative in contrast, would be multi-stakeholder, which means that a ride-hailing coop might be co-owned and governed not just by the drivers, but also by the users and other stakeholders; that it actively (through its own statutes and rules) is engaged in producing common goods (not just the platform itself, but say a commitment to open source code for example); and that it has an outlook and structure committed to achieving some social or environmental purpose.

Marjorie Kelly, in her book on the ‘Emerging Ownership Revolution’ has outlined five major characteristics of ‘generative enterprise’ that I think we should be heeding.

She writes that:

“In ownership design, there are five essential patterns that work together to create either extractive or generative design: purpose, membership, governance, capital, and networks.

• Extractive ownership has a Financial Purpose: maximizing profits. Generative ownership has a Living Purpose: creating the conditions for life.
• While corporations today have Absentee Membership, with owners disconnected from the life of enterprise, generative ownership has Rooted Membership, with ownership held in human hands.
• While extractive ownership involves Governance by Markets, with control by capital markets on autopilot, generative designs have Mission-Controlled Governance, with control by those focused on social mission.
• While extractive investments involve Casino Finance, alternative approaches involve Stakeholder Finance, where capital becomes a friend rather than a master.
• Instead of Commodity Networks, where goods are traded based solely on price, generative economic relations are supported by Ethical Networks, which offer collective support for social and ecological norms.”

I think that is an excellent summary of where we need to be heading.

Inter Co-op cooperation and decentralised, distributed currencies

OSB: Principle 6, co-operation between co-ops, seems to provide huge scope for recycling the value that is generated within the co-op community, but doesn’t seem to have been particularly effective to date. Do you have any thoughts on why that might be and how co-ops could improve inter-co-op cooperation?

Relatedly, in a recent article for oD I suggested that “Decentralised distributed currencies will change the way our economy works by re-routing flows of capital. For example, if I could earn “co-op coins” in one co-op and spend them in the next, as a co-op member I would be incentivised to do so, since I also receive a share of the profits.”

How practical do you think that idea is? And what role do you see for decentralised distributed currencies in a new, generative economy?

MB: Cooperatives that compete, with each other and other private companies, and for the benefit of their own members, have historically adapted to capitalist practices, and they had to, given that capitalist competition drives down the cost and prices of the products they need; this has made inter-cooperative cooperation difficult to achieve, with some exceptions. I don’t think it can improve in the same context. But making cooperation ‘commons-centric’ changes the logic, since such commons increase the productive capacity of participating cooperatives. This is why capital has moved massively to the platform models and why it has been such a historical mistake of the cooperative movement to have missed the boat in this shift.

I also believe distributed currencies may play a role in this shift. The way I see it is the following: cooperative commons coalitions need to declare their ‘value sovereignty’; this means that, even as they may be dependent on external capital logics, internally, they can change the mode of distribution of value according to their own value logics, using contributory accounting mechanisms. And within this context, they can express their own new value logics, using new types of currencies, like for example backfeed.cc aims to do. I recommend your readers to check out our latest report on ‘Value in the Commons’ which analyses developments in open and contributory value accounting, based on 3 in-depth case studies.

OSB: The terminology you use here is a little new to me. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that, even though a co-op may generate income in GBP, for example, they can derive their own methods of distributing value (above and beyond just the GBP) to their members and other stakeholders, using their own distributed currencies. Is that what you are saying?

MB: I am saying two things. First, coops indeed need sovereign currencies as income, which they can distribute not just as wages, but also as contributive income, according to their own rules. Second, and complementarily, they can also recognise other value than what is recognised as ‘commodity’ or market value by the external market, and create other tokens for that, which can be used in inter-cooperative networks. These tokens are similar to complementary currencies that are used locally, but in this case, we are speaking of ‘territories of value circulation’, that are not geographically determined, but exist through the network of value exchanges over the network.

OSB: I read with interest how Open value Networks present a viable model for profit sharing in which a ‘value accounting system’ computes equity in proportion to contributions automatically, removing the pain from the profit sharing process. Could that be another example of “declaring value sovereignty” you describe above?

MB: Sensorica is indeed an example of value sovereignty, and there can be other forms, and of course, that is the point of value sovereignty, that it can be diverse. Sensoria’s aim is to create a much more direct linkage between commons contribution and market income. My own preference though is to create cooperatives around the commons, as an intermediary institution.

Is the blockchain really the holy grail for distributed organisations and currencies?

OSB: backfeed.cc seems interesting, and especially powerful if it can be understood and deployed as intended, but I am not convinced that the blockchain is either required, or the best underlying infrastructure, for new forms of distributed currency. For example, the block chain goes to great lengths to anonymise transactions, so that trade made may be conducted anonymously but, as we have seen so clearly in our modern economy (and as the Prisoners’ Dilemma illustrates so well), people do not behave so well in one-time, anonymous transactions.

On the contrary, when transactions are with real people, that we grow to know, people tend to behave more co-operatively and even develop deeper, more valuable ties based on mutual aid and solidarity. Reputation seems like the key ingredient here, as opposed to anonymity. What do you think about the current obsession with basing all these types of new, distributed, organisations and systems on the blockchain? And what do you think about the idea of an alternative system, based on open identity and reputation being more suited (and potentially more valuable to) the p2p / collaborative economy?

MB: I agree with your critique. The blockchain, let’s not forget, comes from the design of the Bitcoin currency, which is an anarcho-capitalist, “austrian economics” inspired design. It represents ‘ultracapitalism’ if you will, the urge to commodify everything. It presumes atomised and isolated individuals that contract out with each other, and dislikes any collective governance. So, while I think the blockchain can be inserted in other designs that do not make these limiting assumptions about human nature and motivations, it is not absolutely necessary.

My own beef with backfeed is that it assumes human work needs incentives, but the key assumption I make is the opposite, i.e. that commons work is driven ‘intrinsically’, and so there is a danger, that incentivising may actually ‘crowd out’ commoning behaviour to replace it with competition for scarce tokens. But of course we need to experiment, and backfeed is versatile enough to allow for very different designs adapted to various communities.

Ownership is directly related to the real value of an organisation

OSB: I developed the diagram (below) during discussions with Douglas Rushkoff, which attempts to illustrate the direct relationship between ownership and “real” value of an organisation to society. How true do you think this illustration is?

MB: The graphic is fine for me, in my own language, which comes from Marjorie Kelly’s ‘Emerging Ownership Revolution’, which we discussed above, I distinguish ‘extractive’ from ‘generative’ approaches; this could be added to the graphic. For example, the VC model extracts value from human communities and natural resources, for the benefit of a minority of shareholders (example, Uber destroys the potential of ride-sharing to diminish the numbers of cars, by making drivers compete for customers); while cooperative models attempt to add value to the communities and resources they work with.

What is democracy and how can we make improve on the present, undemocratic system

OSB: You seem to be a fan of democracy, as am I, however, I’m not sure I have ever experienced it. What do you think real democracy is?

MB: I think there are two competing visions of democracy, one which is rule by the people directly, as in the Athenian model (though it was restricted to male citizens), the other is through a set of institutions which have the contrary aim of actually restraining such direct power, as documented in the book by Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, “Athens on Trial: the Anti-Democratic tradition in Western thought “.

My focus is on the first model. The problem is that after 200 years of the second model, the primary areas of our life, like school and work, are not democratic, and so the basic problem is that we expect democratic behaviour from people (citizens / residents) who have basically never exercised it. This is one reason I favour the commons model, because it is based on self-governing communities, so it is a training school for democracy like no other.

OSB: When you say ‘the commons model’ what exactly do you mean? Where can we see a commons model acting as “a training ground for democracy like no other”?

MB: I follow the traditional definition of the commons, i.e. a shared resource, managed by a community according to its own norms. There are plenty of physical commons in the Global South, i.e. 85% of Africans still depend on them, less so in the West, but there are in fact more than we think. In Galicia, Spain, one third of the land is still commons and run by commons associations. But today, we see the explosion of digital commons (shared knowledge resources are the basis of one sixth of GDP in the US economy), and urban commons. There has been a tenfold increase of citizen initiatives in Flanders in the last ten years, and a similar exponential explosion in the Netherlands, and many of these initiatives involve creating commons as part of their practice. Guy Standing’s book on the precariat, has documented the deep linkage of precarious workers with networks characterised by commons.

I do not believe a complex society can solely run on direct democracy, and it is not realistic to demand of people to be involved with everything.

The innovation of peer production moreover, which is now actively pursued in the Italian model promoted by LabGovand LabSus, is the realisation that not everybody has to decide on everything, we simply have no time to be involved in everything at the personal level, but to give privileged space to the already engaged citizens, with the appropriate control mechanisms by other stakeholders, including ‘society’ as a whole.

OSB: So do you favour liquid democracy, or any kind of delegative democracy?

MB: I favour a mixture, which needs to be experimented with. I do not believe a complex society can solely run on direct democracy, and it is not realistic to demand of people to be involved with everything. Thus we need to build new layers of deliberative democracy and participation, on top of improved representative democracies, which can also include new lottery systems for such presentation, as for example presented in Melenchon’s proposal for a newConstituent Assembly and 6th Republic in France.

Right now, we (the human race) are at the cusp of combining the old representative model, which is no longer functioning for different reasons, and an added layer of experimental more direct democratic models. See also what is happening in Voralberg, the Austrian region, with civic councils for examples; or the Bologna Regulation in Italian cities, which gives citizens direct policy power to instantiate commons governance projects.

I think the essence is now experimentation, and different regions/countries/cities might opt for different contextual mixes of collective decision-making. Of course, I am also very aware of potential counter-tendencies with an authoritarian capitalism under the leadership of right-wing radicals such as the Trump-ian forces. It’s going to be a context between the two models, while we know the status-quo is no longer functioning.

OSB: Since members of co-ops and platform co-ops get to vote on everything and anything by which they are affected, a society populated by a multitude of co-ops might provide an alternative system of governance.

A co-op of co-ops could perform organisational duties at any scale whilst ensuring democratic governance by pushing decisions down to the lowest possible levels. What do you think about the possibility of a completely new system of democracy, like the above, superseding the existing system?

MB: I think we should be wary of uniform systems, since, if anything goes wrong with it, there is no backup. This was the argument of Rosa Luxemburg against the abolition in Russia of the parliament (during the Russian Revolution), she realised that if anything went wrong with the worker councils, there would be no other power able to create a balance, and she was proven right. The model you describe is being experimented in Rojava I believe.

But the cooperative model has its limits in my view, in that it easily functions as private property or ‘worker capitalism’, in relation to the rest of society. This is why I stress the model of open cooperatives, in which coops are also directly aligned with the production of common good, in the form of ‘commons’, through their own statutory obligations. In general, I favour a pluri-form model of democracy, in which cooperative democracy has its place, along with others, to make sure there is institutional diversity.

OSB: So, would I be right in saying you think that the most practical way to expand democracy is for citizens to propose solutions and organise around areas of shared interest (or physical or digital commons), to make their voices known and to influence our existing ‘representative democracies’ in the hopes that our representatives make better decisions?

Democracy has to be first of all a practice that is integrated in our lives, not something just like an election, which is like electing which elite is going to govern us.

MB: No that is not entirely correct. On the one hand, democracy has to be first of all a practice that is integrated in our lives, not something just like an election, which is like electing which elite is going to govern us (election = elite, both words have the same roots, and the greeks saw elections as the aristocratic principle and the lottery as the democratic principle); the commons, defined as shared resources that are governed by communities according to their own rules and norms, are a good way to achieve this, i.e. as we learn and work, we practice democracy.

Representative democracy needs to exist to cover wider territorial and functional units, but we are at the threshold where mere representation is no longer enough, and so this is the time to augment it with new techniques, to be experimented with, and this may involve participatory, deliberative, liquid feedback type, lotteries etc.

 John Heron explains well what chance of change I believe we can achieve, he once wrote:

“There seem to be at least four degrees of cultural development, rooted in degrees of moral insight:

1. autocratic cultures which define rights in a limited and oppressive way and there are no rights of political participation;
2. narrow democratic cultures which practice political participation through representation, but have no or very limited participation of people in decision-making in all other realms, such as research, religion, education, industry etc.;
3. wider democratic cultures which practice both political participation and varying degrees of wider kinds of participation;
4. commons p2p cultures in a libertarian and abundance-oriented global network with equipotential rights of participation of everyone in every field of human endeavour.”

Heron adds that “These four degrees could be stated in terms of the relations between hierarchy, co-operation and autonomy.

1. Hierarchy defines, controls and constrains co-operation and autonomy;
2. Hierarchy empowers a measure of co-operation and autonomy in the political sphere only;
3. Hierarchy empowers a measure of co-operation and autonomy in the political sphere and in varying degrees in other spheres;
4. The sole role of hierarchy is in its spontaneous emergence in the initiation and continuous flowering of autonomy-in-co-operation in all spheres of human endeavour”

Visions of the future

OSB: Finally, I’d like to ask about your vision. We are often exposed to the vision of a world full of hate and extremism and scarcity but rarely hear about a positive alternative. If you were in charge, what changes would you make to help speed up the transition to a collaborative, generative, sustainable, economy?

MB: I have a rather tragic vision for change, i.e. change happens when we must. At this stage where we have a world civilisation which is based on extraction, where social inequalities lead to authoritarian right wing populism and the planet is endangered in all kinds of ways, humanity will do what it has always done, i.e. create popular and spiritual movements that aim to limit extraction and discipline the extractors.  Mark Whitaker, who has done a 3,000 year comparative review of how civilisations react to meltdowns shows a pattern. This means going to a system that stabilises social unrest. This is where peer to peer dynamics come in today, and that needs massive mutualisation ( = pooling, = commons) of physical and knowledge resources.

Thus any successor system will need to comprise revived commons as a way to drastically reduce the material footprint.

If the medieval monks mutualised knowledge and infrastructure through monasteries and feudalism re-localised production, so today we have free software / open design, the sharing / access based economy to mutualise idle resources and recycle / upcycle and distribute local manufacturing based on demand, to relocalise.

You know the analogy of imaginal cells in the caterpillar; the cells who identify with the caterpillar are in panic, because the system is dying, but the cells who identify with the butterfly and carry its DNA know that it is a transition. Similarly today, we see seed forms emerging to solve the systemic crises, and the P2P Foundation is dedicated to observing them, analysing them and to think through where this can lead us, and be a catalyst for that change.

OSB: That’s a great analogy. The Open Co-op has similar objectives and we will be discussing all of the above themes at Open 2017 in London In February. Thank you for your time and all your thoughts Michel, you are an inspiration and the P2P Foundation is an amazing resource for the anyone interested in the transition to a more equitable, sustainable society.

This post was originally published on OpenDemocracy.net. 

The post Representation is no longer enough – A Q&A with Michel Bauwens appeared first on P2P Foundation.

We’ve never hear an UK MP speak so candidly about utilising online tools to enable mass participation in the democratic process and are very excited about what this could mean. John McDonnell will be at the OPEN 2017 – Platform Co-ops conference to learn more about how to make this happen.

Join John McDonnell at the conference and have your say.

Cross-posted from The Open Coop

Photo by digital.democracy

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