Posts tagged commons

The Forest Charter was about restoring and preserving the right to common, the rights of commoners and their right to the commons. Of course, it was incomplete in all respects, and is hard to read, with words and concepts that have drifted into history, such as agistment (right to use the commons for livestock) and pawnage (right to pasture your pigs). Even the great verb ‘to common’ is scarcely recognised today, though users of it have a twinkle in their eyes in perceiving a revival. What the Charter did was nothing less than provide a legal foundation for living, by asserting the commoners’ usufruct rights, the right to subsistence, on common land and water. It also asserted the right to reparation, if the high and mighty encroached on the commons, through commercialisation of its products, enclosure or encroachment.

via https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/celebrating–800th-anniversary-charter-forest/

Given this trend of rising corporate and central banking interest in blockchain technology, it’s inevitable that the first widespread mainstream adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency will be driven primarily by the existing status quo and power brokers. […] Business models which operate on artificial scarcity simply cannot exist alongside a reality of public blockchains. Even if a group did attempt to deploy a for-profit protocol on a public blockchain, the code by default is opensource and thus it’s trivial to copy the code, lower the fee and then redeploy. Public blockchains are owned by nobody, controlled by nobody and can never be shutdown. Smart contracts can be owned by nobody, controlled by nobody, and execute as coded every time. The result is a blockchain commons; a universal common resource which renders old-world business models obsolete, and ushers in a new foundational paradigm on which to create value for all of humanity.

via https://medium.com/peerism/blockchain-commons-the-end-of-all-corporate-business-models–3178998148ba

In a recent Future Design Intensive at the Dubai Future Academy, one [team] focused on Health futures, and one on Energy futures, had just this experience. From a health point of view, climate change is likely to have a range of potentially negative impacts: increased epidemics due to ecosystem disruption, increased deaths from temperature extremes and destructive weather, threats from dislocation of populations and resources, a rise in stress due to these disruptions, and more. From an energy point of view, climate change is a driver for a more rapid transition to sustainable energy production, a spur to innovation, but also a resource and infrastructure disrupter via flooding, sandstorms and other environmental swings. The implications for both teams have overlaps and connections, but also significant differences.

via https://medium.com/@changeist/connecting-perspectives-to-enrich-common-futures-f48188070a4a

The war for the open internet is the defining issue of our time. It’s a scramble for control of the very fabric of human communication. And human communication is all that separates us from the utopia that thousands of generations of our ancestors slowly marched us toward — or the Orwellian, Huxleyan, Kafkaesque dystopia that a locked-down internet would make possible.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand what’s happening, the market forces that are driving this, and how you can help stop it. We’ll talk about the brazen monopolies who maneuver to lock down the internet, the scrappy idealists who fight to keep it open, and the vast majority of people who are completely oblivious to this battle for the future.

In Part 1, we’ll explore what the open internet is and delve into the history of the technological revolutions that preceded it.

In Part 2, we’ll talk about the atoms. The physical infrastructure of the internet. The internet backbone. Communication satellites. The “last mile” of copper and fiber optic cables that provide broadband internet.

In Part 3, we’ll talk about bits. The open, distributed nature of the internet and how it’s being cordoned off into walled gardens by some of the largest multinational corporations in the world.

In Part 4, we’ll explore the implications of all this for consumers and for startups. You’ll see how you can help save the open internet. I’ll share some practical steps you can take as a citizen of the internet to do your part and keep it open.

via https://medium.freecodecamp.com/inside-the-invisible-war-for-the-open-internet-dd31a29a3f08

Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto outlines his vision for a centralised global colony ruled by the Silicon Valley oligarchy. I say we must do the exact opposite and create a world with individual sovereignty and a healthy commons.

via https://ar.al/notes/encouraging-individual-sovereignty-and-a-healthy-commons/

The Governance of Common Pool Resources. Ostrom begins by noting the problem of natural resource depletion—what she calls “common pool resources”—and then goes on to survey three largely complementary (“closely related concepts”) major theories that attempt to explain “the many problems that individuals face when attempting to achieve collective benefits”: Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons,” the prisoner’s dilemma, and Olson’s “logic of collective action.”

http://c4ss.org/content/23644