A new VICE Special Report: The Future of Work premieres April 19 on HBO.

This video has been reposted from the HBO youtube channel.

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The trend goes by several attractive names, like “smart” farming, “precision” or digital agriculture. The vision is common though: a ‘technocentric’ approach, including gradual to extreme mechanization of farm management supported by algorithmic, data-driven procedures and sophisticated tools, like cloud computing, specialized software, drones and Internet of Things.

The agri-industry and policy makers are majorly implicated in this new digital era: Giant agri-corporate mergers, like Bayer/Monsanto, develop a very strong parallel agricultural data-science agenda and market policy, buying smaller companies which specialize solely in data management related to soil, irrigation, weather or climate, like Monsanto did with start-up Climate Corp. Another mix of smaller, ambitious, and often opportunistic entrepreneurial players enter as well the agricultural sector with a multitude of promises on digital solutions to important agricultural and environmental issues.

Both EU and global data economy policies back these efforts by facilitating the creation of a market players’ ecosystem, including corporations, researchers, developers and infrastructure providers, in order to ensure that value will be extracted by data and a novel economic sector will rise. Of course, this new business expresses a genuine market-oriented and neoliberal approach, for delivering profits and entrepreneurship opportunities from new topics.

But, before evaluating the effectiveness of such solutions, we must identify the well- documented problems, stemming from the modern food production system. What is taken for granted both by scholars and international institutions like FAO, is that combating the scarcity of resources, the reduction of soil and water pollution, the greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of species and habitat are major issues that have to be managed quickly. It is also undeniable that this kind of global change requires developing much more sustainable agricultural systems, which will depend less on high synthetic inputs and fossil fuels and will be characterised by efficient resource use, low environmental impacts and, last but not least, climate change resiliency, in order to produce sufficient and healthy food.

So, can digital and (bio)technological innovations really meet these goals? Despite the hype, it appears not to be the case. The paradigm derived by such approaches is largely conceived to aim only at a “weak” ecological modernisation of agriculture, as many scientific authors suggest. Their effect is restricted to a partial increase in the efficiency of inputs and resource use and some decrease of production costs, which are however accompanied by the high costs of farm management’s mechanization. Often these tools developed ignore main ecological processes, under whose principles the agricultural ecosystems function. In a better case scenario, these innovations may just lead to partial substitution of inputs with some short-term positive effects on the sustainability and stability of the food system. And that’s it. They fail to address serious concerns on the structural weakness of the modern food system, which generates a major part of the negative impact to environment and society.

Another key issue is the problematic innovation process followed. In the above mentioned approaches, the narrative and practice of innovation is restricted to a framework of economically driven developments promoting technological solutions. The innovation transfer’s mode mainly follows a top–down procedure towards the end users, farmers or agronomists. Under this framework, as innovators are regarded only the scientists and agricultural advisors, who design and promote tools and practices, and companies, that develop and provide the technological solutions. Technological development is mostly out of reach to any but the agTech giants, as highlighted in the debate’s opening article. Suddenly sort-of-solutions become ‘one size-fits-all’ recommendations: farmers then must follow strategies and practices that evolve along with their research outputs and corporate technologies. In other words, these are innovation processes that create vertically developed and hierarchically-based tools, obviously fitting to serve better an industrially-scaled and profit-oriented farming system and the market itself.

Of course, the above criticism does not suggest some kind of agro-Luddism approach condemning advanced technologies, which are here already – like it or not. It has been already recognised that alternative examples of digital or analogue agricultural innovations that support the transition towards truly sustainable food systems can exist and are not inherently incompatible with the framework of an agroecological approach. The examples of open source agricultural technology initiatives, like farmhack in US, collaborative projects for the creation of technology solutions and innovation by farmers, as l’Atelier Paysan in France or international research projects, like Capsella. As many times described, agroecology is an emerging concept which provides a holistic approach for the design of genuinely sustainable food systems. It does not simply seek temporary solutions that will improve partially the environmental performance and productivity of the food systems. It stands mostly for a systemic paradigm of perception change, towards a full harmonization with ecological processes, low external inputs, use of biodiversity and cultivation of agricultural knowledge.

The important thing about agroecological design of the food systems is that they emphasize independent and participatory experimentation and not the reliance on high technology and external suppliers, with a high degree of dependency on additional support services. Therefore, it becomes obvious that hi-tech and any other technological solutions can stand as a complementary element to agroecological innovation processes, and only when the development of innovative tools includes a peer-to-peer planning framework and user involvement within the reach of an economy of the commons, as the above mentioned examples do.

Thus, the main issue is related to the way innovation processes evolve – in whose interests, and with who’s participation, do they emerge? We should realise that innovation lies in the creative process, not only in the generated tool itself. Bearing this in mind, it becomes evident that it is the lack of autonomy that matters – in other words, the absence of the end user’s engagement in the technology’s development. Appropriately used, technology can share power with all actors collectively involved in developing the innovation. And this appropriate use of technology allows us to democratize knowledge.

Vassilis (Vasileios) Gkisakis, Agronomist (MSc, PhD): Vassilis specialises in Sustainable Agriculture and Agrobiodiversity, with a background in Food Science. He worked previously in the organic farming sector, while he has collaborated with several research groups across Europe on organic farming/agroecology, olive production, biodiversity management strategies and food quality.

He is a contracted lecturer of i) Organic Farming and ii) Food Production Systems in the TEI of Crete and visiting lecturer of Agroecology & Sustainable Food Production Systems in the Agricultural University of Plovdiv. He is official reviewer in one scientific journal, Board member of the European Association for Agroecology and moderator of the Agroecological Network of Greece and also the owner of a 20 ha organic olive and grain farm.

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By this time many know about the hyper-exploitative business models of companies like Uber or TaskRabbit. Or about how AirBnB has heavily reduced housing stocks in cities worldwide. But in his new book, Keith A. Spencer goes further than just picking on a few high profile companies. He lays out an argument for why Silicon Valley, at its core, is a highly exploitative and problematic industry. With a look at the tech world from the vantage point of the marginalized and oppressed—those who have not benefited from the incredible wealth bubbling up in the valley—”A People’s History of Silicon Valley: how the tech industry exploits workers, erodes privacy, and undermines democracy” presents a damning thesis for why this new world of addictive gadgets and union-busting is increasingly undemocratic and dangerous.

The book is published by Eyewear Publishing.

Upstream producer Robert R. Raymond spoke with Keith A. Spencer at the offices of Salon in San Francisco, where Spencer is an editor.

Intermission music is by The California Honeydrops.

Upstream is an interview and documentary series that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. Weaving together interviews, field-recordings, rich sound-design, and great music, each episode of Upstream will take you on a journey exploring a theme or story within the broad world of economics. So tune in, because the revolution will be podcasted. 

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This opinion piece by Boyd Cohen explores how a new blockchain layer for mobility could allow shared mobility startups to quickly launch their services and have immediate access to a network effect. Cohen is the co-founder of IoMob, which combines open source and blockchain technology to decentralize mobility, and the dean of research at the EADA Business School in Barcelona.

Boyd Cohen: Shareable readers are well aware of the overlapping interests between the blossoming sharing economy and the need to support the urban commons and Sharing Cities.

Luckily for us urban dwellers, a growing array of sharing economy projects have emerged to help, at least in some cases, reduce our resource consumption, and shift to circular and shared access models. Perhaps no part of the urban landscape has been more embraced by sharing economy entrepreneurs than mobility. And with good reason. Our cities have become all too congested and contaminated by the 70 percent of vehicles commuting as the single occupied variety. Our cities’ physical infrastructures and investments have been spent on enabling personal vehicles to travel, park, and refuel (with fossil fuels for the most part), instead of allocating such precious resources to other and better uses.

The shared mobility space is huge. We have witnessed in recent years all kinds of business models for shared mobility such as bikesharing (municipal or P2P), carsharing, carpooling, parking space sharing, shared access to EV charging stations, and more. In fact, in Barcelona alone, according to Sharemrkt there are more than 50 such shared mobility operators in the city.

The question we ask ourselves at IoMob however, is how can this growing number of shared mobility startups compete with the entrenched larger and multinational mobility companies (Uber, Cabify) and even the more benign, larger peers like Zipcar or municipally run bike-sharing schemes? The current shared mobility marketplace requires that each startup build their own underlying tech for handling payments, user registration, reputation management and the like, while also spending their scarce resources to build their brand and user base. It is an uphill battle for sure.

Blockchain technology offers a powerful alternative to this scenario by engaging a range of mobility stakeholders and an open-source set of technologies for startups. Larger companies and public transit operators — any shared mobility service operator, really — once validated as complying with local laws, could be made visible to any user who uses apps that are connected to the protocol. Instead of requiring each mobility provider to launch their own apps, the Internet of Mobility (IoM) allows for an open ecosystem of operators to share access to infrastructure and user bases. You may ask, for example, why would a larger operator be willing to share their users with a shared mobility startup? For a couple of reasons:

1. It supports customer retention by ensuring customer needs are met.

2. A previously established agreement between the providers — or one approved instantaneously — allows the provider offering access to their user to get some revenue based on previously agreed relationships with mobility providers. This would establish how much commission is transferred for each shared customer.

We don’t believe all mobility providers will embrace an open, transparent ecosystem, at least not in the beginning. But you can imagine over time the network effect for having a range of public and private mobility services sharing users in a city.

One step towards this has already begun, and is referred to as Mobility as a Service (MaaS). MaaS models are great in that they aggregate a set of public and private mobility services in a package for residents who can pay a monthly fee for a set amount or unlimited amount of services in a given month. We embrace MaaS models, which can easily be connected to an IoM protocol, as a great improvement over existing models. Yet, blockchain and IoM allows for an even better model. Embracing open protocols and open source software, shared mobility startups and established mobility providers can share access to users and the base tech in a way that is not exclusive. MaaS models tend to be run by private companies using proprietary software and partnering with the largest mobility services in the city. This leaves little room for mobility innovation or for the startups to gain access to the local mobility market.

We have even begun envisioning how you could blend MaaS and our open IoM thinking in the following way: Any validated mobility operator could work with an open hub aggregator to develop a monthly pricing package based on each user’s personal travel patterns. In this model, a new user could go to a website, either describe their travel patterns or have the system track them for a period of time, and then discover any mobility service, large or small. A drop-down menu would give users the option to pick and choose any service and see how much it would cost to add that service to a monthly package. Think of it as a Personalized Mobility as a Service (PMaaS).

Blockchain technology poses the potential to decentralize and democratize our economies. The Internet of Mobility could significantly enhance urban mobility users’ experience, while creating a vehicle for shared mobility startups to launch innovative services more rapidly and gain democratized access to urban mobility users.

Graphic courtesy of Boyd Cohen

Photo by mripp

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Tom Llewellyn: The People’s Disruption: Platform Co-ops for Global Challenges kicks off this weekend at The New School and Civic Hall in New York City, New York. The annual event — now in its third year — will bring together a diverse group of experts who are pushing the platform co-op movement forward. While past conferences have sought to popularize the concept of platform co-ops and develop an ecosystem to support their growth, this year the goal will be to “zero in on ways that platform cooperatives can help to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges.”

What exactly is a platform co-op? It’s a digital platform — a website or mobile app that is designed to provide a service or sell a product — that is collectively owned and governed by the people who depend on and participate in it. That includes those who deliver the underlying service by contributing labor, time, skills, and/or assets. Where corporate “sharing” platforms extract value and distribute it to shareholding owners who seek a return on their investment, platform co-ops distribute ownership and management of the enterprise to its participants — those working for the platform or those using the service. You can read more about it in our in-depth explainer. We also published a feature story this year that explored the emerging funding models for platform co-ops.

There’s still time to buy tickets to the conference. Key events at this year’s event include:

Friday, Nov. 10:

Lecture: Joseph Blasi: How to reform existing Federal and State tax and credit policies to encourage new broadly owned businesses. | 2-2:45 p.m. ET

Public Event: “What happened to the future?” A discussion aimed at reclaiming a story of the future, economic justice, and a social economy built on platforms we can co-own and co-govern featuring Alicia Garza, Douglas Rushkoff, Felicia Wong, and Yochai Benkler. | 7-9 p.m. ET [This event is free and open to the public]

Saturday, Nov. 11:

Lecture: Juliet Schor: Surprising new findings from in-depth interviews with earners on six platforms. | 9-9:45 a.m. ET

Panel: Next Tech: AI and Big Data | 10-11:30 a.m. ET

Panel: Next Labor: Designing platform cooperatives in a worker-centered way | 1:30-3:00 p.m. ET

The full schedule can be found here: https://platform.coop/2017/schedule

The post Join Us at the Platform Co-ops for Global Challenges Conference appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In this episode we speak to Michel Bauwens, a Belgian Peer-to-Peer theorist and cyber-philosopher.

Michel Bauwens is a theorist in the emerging field of P2P theory and director and founder of the P2P Foundation, a global organization of researchers working in collaboration 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.

You can find out more at p2pfoundation.net/

21st Century Design is a research podcast by Engage by Design (Rodrigo Bautista) and Regenerative Design (Jan Leyssens), in which we ask designers, tech-experts, writers, theorists, academics, activists and campaigners 5 questions on the future and role of design in creating the 21st Century.

Subscribe for the podcast through iTunes or Soundcloud, or look us up on our home on the web www.21stcenturydesign.org.

– Music: www.bensound.com
Photo by smoMashup1

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Shareable’s Neal Gorenflo recounts the high points of the recent Somero 2015 event in Gijón Spain. Here’s the original article

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The post 3 Highlights from the Somero Sharing Cities conference 2015 in Gijon, Spain appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A guest post by Alexa Clay.

This past weekend at the Berlin Future Forum (BFF), a conference bringing together creative artists and entrepreneurs, technologists and spiritualists, an agenda crystallized for me that has been nagging at me for some time: what are the conditions for a more intentional technology movement?

As some of you know, for the past few years I’ve been wandering around start-up conferences dressed up as “The Amish Futurist” prodding digital technology evangelicals with moral and Luddite instincts around the “why” of innovation. Through gentle, Socratic probing I’ve heard many first hand accounts of the errors of the Silicon Valley elite, confessions of techno-phobia from some of the most advanced start-up founders, and first-hand user accounts of the ills of modern technology on wellbeing.

For a summary of some of these explorations, please see inspiration below:

Searching for the Soul of Startups: “At times, the startup scene seems utterly myopic: everyone trying to imitate a tired Zuckerberg-inspired formula: drop out of school, wear a hoodie, learn to code, start a company. But beneath the surface there is actually quite a real culture war going on, a war between those founders truly trying to change the world (and leave humanity better off) and those merely riding the wave of the tech bubble.”

Link: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3027874/futurist-forum/searching-for-the-soul-of-startups

The Power of Buttermilk: “We are being forever driven forward by technological advances. But is the use of technology sustainable for our psyche? What if some technology could help keep us grounded in our more human-centric roots? Even if we simply ignore the increasing stresses of constant digital accessibility on our iPhones, at Twitter or Facebook, the eventual consequences will be felt. The Amish Futurist looks at the impact that technology is having on our minds, emotions, relationships, sense of place and purpose. She shares her perspectives on buttermilk, technology fears and phobias, and her search for the soul of the startup scene.”

Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1qvV9Rc73w

Moreover, within the sharing economy movement, there’s been backlash that’s pointed out the undemocratic and old power principles that companies like Uber, AirBnb and TaskRabbit employ. For a wonderful forthcoming discussion of some of these challenges see an upcoming event on Platform Cooperativism: http://platformcoop.net/

To this end, I believe a greater community of practice needs to emerge to help bring critical thinking and reflection to the start-up community. While some of this activity is emergent, what I’ve tried to do is sketch out a framework for thinking about what a more intentional technology movement could look like?—?what are it’s key challenges and interventions. This is an invitation to you to help think through a framework that could provide a meeting point of different actors working on this agenda. I welcome your thoughts.

Here’s a mock-up of what I’ve got …

THE SCAFFOLDS OF INTENTIONAL TECH?—?A POTENTIAL FRAMEWORK

A framework for thinking about interventions within an “intentional technology” movement. Initiatives can be mapped against barriers and strategies.

A note about methodology: The Discovery Framework is a tool that we use to use when I worked at Ashoka to help map systemic problems as well as distil concrete strategies social entrepreneurs were using to overcome these challenges. I found the framework methodology useful because it focuses your attention only on defining barriers that are “moveable.” So rather than talk about something like “capitalism” or “inequality” I am forced to frame problems in a way that makes them hack-able. Hacking inequality is massive and overwhelming, but hacking an entitlement culture or short-term investment products becomes more actionable.

As this framework evolves you could see how particular initiatives could map as interventions against a specific barrier and strategy. You then can begin to see where interventions are taking place and where more activity might be necessary. It becomes a heat map of systemic action. That said, these are just some early thinking on what those barriers and strategies would be. I’ve explained them in a bit more detail below, but you might have other ideas.

BARRIERS to INTENTIONAL TECHNOLOGY

1. Short-termism

· Success becomes defined by money and “exits” rather than craftsmanship

· Promotes copycat start-ups that appeal to investors

· Scaling imperative and growth paradigm e.g., capital doesn’t work for the long-term interests of society

2. Founder dependency

· Power maximized in the interest of a few

· Enterprises and organizations dependent on “visionary” model of leadership

3. Entitlement

· Bro-culture

· Less tolerant risk appetite for women and minorities

· Beta masculinity & geek patriarchy?—?what to watch out for

4. Privatization of resource & infrastructure

· Exclusivity; environments not designed as commons

· Tech hubs not open to other types of “entrepreneurs”

· Tech communities have no social contract for general welfare or for maximizing benefit to local communities

· Proprietary nature of information reduces pace of innovation

STRATEGIES for INTENATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

1. Conscientiousness & existential awareness:

· Boot-camp approaches e.g., Y-combinator for how not to be an a**-hole start-up founder, diversity training for start-up founders, cultural and political theory for start-up founders

· Self-knowledge and awareness of privilege; wisdom training e.g, lose your ego.

· Existential reflection?—?connected to a bigger “why?”?—?making sure your start-up has a higher purpose

2. Platform cooperativism & participatory control:

· Decentralized model of leadership & participatory ownership

· Bringing democratic principles into entrepreneurship

· Shared profit structures; not extracting values from users, not centralizing power from workers

3. Humanistic engineering & design:

· Tech that amplifies the best of what it means to be human

· Targets real human needs

· Non-addictive technologies

· Building end-users and marginalized communities into design

4. Patient capital:

· Long-term financing

· Investment that preserves ownership

· Hybrid financing techniques; built it fiduciary responsibilities to local communities

5. Open source and collaborative entrepreneurship:

· Abandon “lone ranger” cowboy script of entrepreneurship

· Shared R&D and design for acceleration of innovation

· Decouple innovation and proprietary ownership

· Community and collective models of enterprise development

· Start-ups ecosystem become IP free zones and nurture relationships with local communities

· Constitutions and democratic principles to govern collaborative venturing

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, an intentional technology movement would depend on choreography between these different strategies. Change won’t come from any one point of leverage. It won’t be born through consciousness alone (the Enlightened start-up founder) or through correcting perverse investor incentives. As a result, it requires a greater coordinated community of practice.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

· Does the “intentional tech” framing work for you? Is this a movement you would support?—?why or why not?

· Who is practicing “intentional tech” at the moment? Where do you see traces of this emergent philosophy?

· Is “geek patriarchy” a thing? Have you experienced this personally? I’m very interested in new economy masculinity and ways in which old power might be perniciously introducing itself.

ACTION CONSIDERATIONS

· Would you be interested in starting up an “intentional technology” boot-camp for start-up founders and investors?

· If we were to start an intentional technology reading list?—?what articles or book or general literature would you recommend?

· What else? Interested in ideas folks have …

The post Scaffolds of an Intentional Tech Movement appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Young wannabes doing their thing at a Techcrunch Disrupt conference in 2012. Photo via Flickr user JD Lasica

At the Powell Street BART station in San Francisco, ads for Oakley sunglasses are everywhere. “Disruptive by design,” they declare—or, rather, #DESRUPTIVEBYDESIGN. Behind those words are gray images of blueprints and lasers and factories with big bolts like in Charlie Chaplin’s spoof Modern Times. Fittingly, the campaign is a collaboration with Wired, the foremost media enterprise devoted to the worship of all things new. In the Silicon Valley lexicon, disruption is such an overused incantation that it’s almost dull. Now even sunglasses can do it.

The truth, however, is that disruption is not boring at all. It impacts people’s lives every day—though much more often the lives of vulnerable working people, rather than those of the complacent fat cats all this talk of “disruption” is supposed to threaten. We need to be a lot more careful about how we throw that word around and, much more importantly, how we actually disrupt.

Jill Lepore’s recent essay in The New Yorker, “The Disruption Machine,” offers an important intervention. She questions the economic logic of the gospel of disruption being taught at business schools and startup accelerators—that forever disrupting the way of things means endless innovation, growth and progress. Lepore points out that this worldview overlooks the great bulk of the economy that rests on relative stability and rather marginal improvements. Compared to them, disruption is a bit of a sideshow. Even in tech.

A good way to start thinking about disruption is by asking questions like this: Who is being disrupted most? And who really benefits? 25-year-old startup CEOs—the people we hear talking about disruption the most these days—come and go. Some of them will manage to make a living on the basis of their disruptive ideas, and a few will get very rich, but most will end up going through cycles of boom and bust, disrupting themselves until they wind up working for someone else. The venture capitalists who fund them, and who so eagerly egg on their disruptive talk, hedge their bets and diversify their portfolios and will probably end up with plenty of money no matter what.

The most serious disruption of our economy in recent memory, the 2008 financial crash, is a particularly troubling example of this pattern. What caused the crisis? A financial industry gone recklessly amok, disruptively innovating complex instruments like derivatives and new ways of packaging mortgage-backed securities without regard for the consequences. Who suffered those consequences? Some well-paid bankers were laid off, but millions of people across the United States lost their homes, their jobs, or both.

A bailout arrived for the banks, and soon they rehired most of those who’d been laid off and kept—or even increased—their stratospheric executive bonuses. For people in other sectors who were able to get back to work, it was generally to lower-paying jobs. Foreclosed homes in many communities were acquired by big companies on behalf of Wall Street, rather than being bought back by individuals and families who lived in them. That disruption, in the end, only helped the fat cats.

No matter who causes a disruption—or, in some respects, even what kind of disruption it is—those who are best prepared to take advantage of it are the ones who win out. In 2008, the banks had lobbyists and PACs and their own former co-workers at the highest levels of government. The people left homeless or jobless, meanwhile, had little recourse but silence and a misplaced sense of shame. Disruption, then, tends to make our rampant inequality even worse.

Another kind of disruption is that of a resistance movement. We all watched, often with surprise and dismay, what happened in the wake of the 2011 uprising in Egypt. The initial pro-democracy wave created a massive disruption and forced a ruler from power. But the democratic forces were fairly marginal in Egyptian society, and that was just about the last we heard from them. Soon, the Muslim Brotherhood took power, having joined the protests only reluctantly. The group won elections not because its members sparked the unrest, but because for decades they had been building formidable networks throughout the population. Before long, they were crushed by the military, a vast apparatus fueled by billions of dollars in aid from the United States. Once again, entrenched power prevailed over the agents of disruption, and those who’ve suffered most have been working class Egyptians.

Disruption is essential, and a fact of life. This is a world rife with injustice and cruel inertia, and we should definitely explore creative ways of resisting those tendencies. We should be in the streets protesting when we need to, and we should be creating new kinds of organizations that push the boundaries set by old ones. But disruption, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily a good thing unless those who are most vulnerable in society are poised to benefit.

There are ways communities can make that happen, or at least make it more likely. They can build strong, disciplined coalitions. They can organize workers and develop habits of self-reliance. An important recent conference in Jackson, Mississippi, for instance, focused on building resilient cooperative enterprises in black communities, which were especially hard-hit by the 2008 crisis. African Americans in the South know this lesson well. Decades earlier, the civil rights movement turned its disruptions into victories because of tight-knit networks like churches and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Disruption is not a word we should use lightly, or cynically, or in order to sell more eyewear. It is not a mere business model. Perhaps it should be treated more like a swear word, in the sense of being especially potent and rather seldom used. We draw our swear words from sexuality and religion—important things that can have dire consequences. Disruption is important and dire, too, and it’s time we talked about it that way.

Originally published in VICE

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