Wednesday -- 4.30.14 -- Commons Festival, Crete, Greece -- Presentation &
Discussion -- Week 19
CONTENTS:
0. About Thursday
1. On Commons Fest
2. Suggested Readings
3. Related links
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0. About Wednesday's Common(s) Course
What: Common(s) Course Meeting / Presentation & Discussion
When: Wednesday, April 30th, 5:30PM
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor
Who: Free and open to all
This Wednesday we will have a discussion (video call) with Dimitris
Koukoulakis, member of the organizing team of Commons Festival in Crete,
Greece. The festival has served as a shared ground for a diverse set of
groups and individuals, integrating local premises of political struggle
with broader attempts for autonomy and self-sufficiency that range from
open source labs to agriculture networks. The discussion is not an attempt
to delineate any model. Instead, it is an opportunity to address through
the intricacies of this commoning effort issues such as: how a
commons-based network could be more than management of resources,
calculation of value and reciprocal exchange, either this refers to direct
exchange between objects (e.g. bartering) or between labor-time (e.g.
time-banking).
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1. On Commons Fest
CommonsFest is an initiative to promote freedom of knowledge (or free
knowledge) and peer-to-peer collaboration for the creation and management
of the commons. A philosophy that has spread through free software
communities and extends to many aspects of our daily lives, such as the
arts, governance, construction of machinery, tools and other goods.
Through an exhibition, talks, screenings and workshops, the aim of the
festival is to promote the achievements of this philosophy to the public
and become a motive for further adoption.
In Detail
Today a world exists where the freedom of knowledge and art is a reality,
and where opinions are expressed and discussed freely so that decisions
are taken collectively. A world where the common good is more important
than individual profit, where there is respect for natural resources and
for human dignity, a world where money is not the only means to cover our
needs. In this world, you can freely grow your food, remix a song, tell
your opinion about a movie script, improve plans of a tractor design,
write an entry in an encyclopedia, participate in a process of political
decision making or freely attend university courses. A world where you can
build a house and cover your needs by exchanging goods and services with
your friends.
In recent decades, the development of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS)
communities have grown new ways to creativity, based on collaboration and
on exchanging knowledge freely. Later the management of open peer-to-peer
(p2p) communities gave the impetus for the expansion of these ideas into
many aspects of life outside the digital spectrum. This has shown that the
peer-to-peer model can provide a more equitable and more efficient
management in everyday life. This model is based on some essential
characteristics of these communities. The most important are,
contribution, sharing and collaboration on a framework for covering needs
where every participant contributes according to his/her abilities and
receives according to his/her needs, leading as well to an establishment
of knowledge which is available to all for common good. Another important
characteristic, to which the creation and development of the Internet has
played a key role, is that the communities do not need a common location
but they may extend to all corners of the globe. This way people from
different locations can collaborate on a common project by digitally
communicating with each other.
Working in a process of non-hierarchical decision-making counteracts the
concentration of power within few individuals and all the problems that
this entails. This peer-to-peer (p2p) method of management has created
many goods that are characterized as being neither privately owned nor
state owned. The name given to these goods are commons. These commons are
freely available to anyone, based on a set of permissions governing their
use, such as the Creative Commons (CC) or the General Public License(GPL).
Some examples of the extension of this open-source and peer-to-peer
production beyond the line of digital goods are the freely available
designs of the machines that are offered by the Open-Source Ecology
project or community designed printers for 3-dimensional objects like the
Rep-Rap. Free plans for simple to build housing like theWikiHouse and the
extremely efficient car like the Wikispeed are further examples, as well
as the patent-free recipes for beverages like the free beer and the
open-cola.
The effort to rescue traditional seeds and the detoxification of chemical
fertilizers and pesticides has developed a framework of knowledge that
everyone can follow to meet his nutritional needs respecting the natural
environment and human labor. Turning back to a more natural way of
building, coupled with research into renewable energy sources, opens new
horizons for the construction of eco-friendly and energy-autonomous
houses, making one step further to create sustainable communities. If we
add the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement to all this, then one can see the
plenty of knowledge available to produce goods that can easily fill a
large part -if not all- of our everyday needs.
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2. Suggested readings
Interview with Dafermos, a FLOK researcher at Ecuador
http://commonsfest.info/en/2014/sinentefxi-me-ton-ellina-erevniti-sto-ekouador/
Introduction from the pamphlet of Platform for Autonomy, Self-sufficiency,
Equality
http://www.pdf-archive.com/2014/04/28/introduction/introduction.pdf
The hacker movement as a continuation of labour struggle
http://opensource.gr/people/dafermos/texts/hackers_labour_struggle.pdf
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3. Related links
Commons Fest:
http://commonsfest.info/en/
http://commonsfest.info/en/schedule/
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16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th fl.
New York, NY 10004
for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org
TRAINS:
4,5 -- Bowling Green
2,3 -- Wall Street
J,Z -- Broad Street
R -- Whitehall
1 -- South Ferry
