Gratipay and Liberapay are open source tipping systems for developers and creators who contribute to the commons. They have had their fair share of trouble. In the beginning, Gratipay was called Gittip, and Liberapay is a very recent fork. Legal concerns are being ironed out, and funding is now for groups rather than individuals … Gratipay 2.0 Payments… Continue reading
According to Carson, the problem with the theory of catabolic collapse is that it ignores what he calls “one of the most central distinguishing characteristics of our technology: ephemerality.” The classic example from Buckminster Fuller, he writes, is the replacing of “a transoceanic cable system embodying God only knows how many thousand tons of metal… Continue reading
Are people not united? Do they distrust each other? You don’t need courses, you need causes. You don’t need deep, emotional introspection, you need to distribute responsibilities and get to work. In times of decomposition, culture turns dark, it’s taken for granted that’s “every man for himself (or woman for herself),” defeatism is embraced, the… Continue reading
When I met biologist and ecophilosopher Andreas Weber several years ago, I was amazed at his audacity in challenging the orthodoxies of Darwinism. He proposes that science study a very radical yet unexplained phenomenon — aliveness! He rejects the neoDarwinian account of life as a collection of sophisticated, evolving machines, each relentlessly competing with maximum… Continue reading
On Tuesday night I attended a Democratic caucus in a ballroom at the University of Colorado Boulder, where hundreds of college students rallied for the man they hope will become the oldest president in history. Speeches for Hillary Clinton received polite applause, while any reference to Bernie Sanders caused a short period of rapture. Those students… Continue reading
I first learned about place-making from Mark Lakeman at his office in Portland. In addition to running an architecture/design business, (Communitecture) Mark co-founded City Repair Project. City Repair takes a hands-on approach to placemaking by sponsoring the Village Building Convergence (VBC). Hands-on placemaking programs like VBC provides three benefits: A live project brings together organizations. (see #1. North… Continue reading
Extracted from James Howard Kunstler‘s book “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape“, pages 26-27. Individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in selfishness. — Alexis de Tocqueville This is embodied today… Continue reading
This work by Alice Meniconi is an expression of the Near Future Education Lab experience in Florence, when a group of students under the leadership of Salvatore Iaoconesi and Oriana Persico, re-designed their education as a commons, faced with the crisis and closure of their institution (ISEA Firenze). It has forewords by Jon Husband of… Continue reading
Originally published on Shareable, Ann Marie Utratel of Guerrilla Translation and the P2P Foundation describes the thoughts that led to developing the #ThinkGlobalPrintLocal project. Have you ever wanted to share an inspiring book that you thought could help people and communities elsewhere, but in another language? Have you thought about combining decentralized online and offline… Continue reading
* Article: The uneasy transition from supply chains to ecosystems. The value-creation/value-capture dilemma. Soumaya Ben Letaifa. Management Decision, Vol. 52 No. 2, 2014pp. 278-295 From the Abstract: “This paper uses the multidimensional definition of value – ecosystemic value – and employs lifecycle theory to identify the different stages of evolution of value-creation and -capture processes… Continue reading
The commons offers a framework and a process for effectively and equitably stewarding the resources communities need to live in dignity. Last August, 200 people from across Oakland, California came together to envision and design a development plan for a small parcel of public land. For months leading up to that day, community members and… Continue reading
In the age of ubiquitous Internet connections, smartphones and data, the future vitality of cities is increasingly based on their ability to use digital networks in intelligent, strategic ways. While we are accustomed to thinking of cities as geophysical places governed by mayors, conventional political structures and bureaucracies, this template of city governance is under… Continue reading
I was allowed by Bjørn Andreas Bull-Hansen to publish the first half part of this extraordinary interview with who is in my eyes the most important female thinker of Norway. I was lucky to meet Janne Eikeblad at the Scandinavian Permaculture Festival back in 2013. Read Eikeblad’s own introduction to the interview at her blog here…. Continue reading
We invite all people interested in data visualization and the collaborative economy to showcase their creativity! Participants should develop visualizations which allow identification of new relations among data gathered around the Commons Collaborative Economy in the P2P value project (and also the recent Catalan version of the directory). It will be a space to highlight your skills, give visibility to… Continue reading
As there are two models of productive communities –one that sees itself as a “society of friends” and one that defines itself as a “collectivist germ”-, there are basically two models of community growth. In the “society of friends” model, the procedure is “experiential”: the community’s growth starts from and relies on those who share… Continue reading
If you watch the mainstream cable news networks and news analysis programs, you’ve no doubt seen, many times, talking head commentators rolling their eyes at any proposal for reform that differs too radically from the existing institutional structure of society. That much of a departure would be completely unrealistic, they imply, not only because it is an arrogant… Continue reading