Imagine going to a shop, borrowing anything you like, and returning it when you're finished. This is the idea behind SHARE: a Library of Things. Opened in late-April in Frome, a town in northeast England, the aim of SHARE is to enable people to spend less, waste less, and connect more. The first of its kind in the U.K., SHARE has already sparked interest from other communities.
Have you started a summer reading list? For those of us interested in the sharing economy, there is no shortage of great reads. Whether your interests lie in collaboration, sustainable cities, community-building, simplicity, or work in the new economy, there is something for everyone. We’ve rounded up the top 21 books for summer to inspire, empower, and inform.
Today’s continuing revolutions in digital technologies are constantly changing the options for how government can be organised, with new tools ranging from sensors and machine learning, to predictive algorithms and crowdsourcing platforms.
Today’s continuing revolutions in digital technologies are constantly changing the options for how government can be organised, with new tools ranging from sensors and machine learning, to predictive algorithms and crowdsourcing platforms.
Governments around the world are facing significant political turmoil and enormous economic stress as they struggle with an alarming and unprecedented array..
This new phenomenon represents an opportunity to revolutionize the current state of play of the society, economy, institutions and law. This new social, economic, institutional and legal paradigm is going to characterize the 21st century as the “CO-century,” the century of COmmons, COllaboration, COoperation, COmmunity, COmmunication, CO-design, CO-production, CO-management, COexistence, CO-living. For all these reasons, it is urgent to design the rules and institutions of this new century. LabGov.it is working on this frontier and is doing it together with experts, organizations, and individuals that represent what we think is a newly rising social class, a class of economic and institutional innovators.
How far can the peer-to-peer revolution be pushed? It’s time we start to speculate, because history is moving fast. We need to dislodge from our minds our embedded sense of what’s possible.
Originally published on Loomio's blog. Heather Marsh is a human rights and internet activist, programmer, political theorist, and former Editor in Chief at Wikileaks Central, and the author of Bind...
Neil Thapar first encountered seed issues in law school when he worked with the Center for Food Safety against genetically-modified food. But it was a season spent working on an organic farm in Santa Cruz, California when he began to understand, first-hand, the importance of seeds as a foundation of our agricultural system. He explains, “When I came off the farm I said, ‘If I’m going to be a lawyer, I’m going to be a lawyer doing things that I think are making a positive difference.’”
Last week, commons advocates the P2P Foundation, Guerilla Translation, and their partners launched Commons Transition, a public forum to further commons-oriented policy-making. Commons Transition is based on the groundbreaking work of the Free/Libre Open Knowledge (FLOK) Society in Ecuador.
In many states, IT planners in health and human services have sought ways to bridge the divide, gathering data from disparate sources across government to inform the public, drive better policy and improve social outcomes.
There’s a prevailing narrative about innovation in America today, one so familiar that it is rarely questioned. It goes something like this: Innovation happens in the private sector. The public sector is a sort of encumbrance that is necessary for serving the public good and fixing market failures, but by and large it’s a drag on the economy and a hamper on innovation.
The TransPacific Partnership is being negotiated in secret among a few countries that are most heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists. Lobbyists who sign a non-disclosure agreements get seats at the negotiating table, but members of Congress, the press, and normal humans are kept in the dark. Congress is being asked to "fast track" the process, short-circuiting the open and transparent democratic process in favor of one in which corporations influence the fine print on a document that gets and up or down vote once it finally disclosed and too late to change anything. The only reason for secrecy is fear that an informed democratic society would reject it. That's why we, the people, must know, and we must know now. Humans are not an inferior race to corporations.
Today’s continuing revolutions in digital technologies are constantly changing the options for how government can be organised, with new tools ranging from sensors and machine learning, to predictive algorithms and crowdsourcing platforms.
In this interview, Neal Gorenflo (founder, Shareable), Michel Bauwens (founder, P2P Foundation), and John Restakis (author, Humanizing the Economy) speak with Enric Duran. Duran is a Catalan anti-capitalist activist, best known for his act of “financial civil disobedience” announced on September 17, 2008, in which he took out half a million Euros in bank loans and distributed the funds to anti-capitalist movements. As it was never his intention to pay these debts, but instead to stir debate about the unfair legal advantages afforded to the powerful financial elite, he was soon labeled “Robin Banks,” and faced with a lengthy prison sentence. The resulting legal actions and his subsequent seclusion have left him living virtually underground, although he maintains selective contact and has stated that he may return, contingent on a variety of factors. Despite his precarious legal status, his work continues undiminished in the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC), which describes itself as a “transitional initiative for social transformation from below, through self-management, self-organization, and networking.” Here is Enric Duran talking about his work and life.
Amid government crackdown, seed libraries expand biodiversity and food access. Photo: Betsy Goodman of the Common Soil Seed Library. Credit: Associated Press It’s easy to take seeds for granted. Tiny dry pods hidden in packets and sacks, they make a brief appearance as gardeners and farmers collect them for future planting then later drop them into soil. They are not “what’s for dinner,” yet without them there would be no dinner. Seeds are the forgotten heroes of food—and of life itself.
Article cross-posted from Bollier.org. It is always refreshing to read Peter Linebaugh’s writings on the commons because he brings such rich historical perspectives to bear, revealing the commons as both strangely alien and utterly familiar. With the added kick that the commoning he describes actually happened, Linebaugh’s journeys into the commons leave readers outraged at enclosures of long ago and inspired to protect today's endangered commons.
BOOK REVIEW OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOK =--- Where to buy this book? ISBN: 9783662442531 Book Review of Beyond Market and Government: Influence of Ethical Fact...
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