Category: Ethics

Introduction to P2P and the Commons as the new paradigm of change

When: Sat, December 10, 10am – 11am

To succeed in social change, I believe we need 3 things.

* a genuine mass movement. As the first native movement and great hope of the digital age that is what #ows is all about.

* concrete alternatives that can change our lives and allow us to live our values right now. This is what commons-based peer production provides – a new way of producing value.

* the ability to be able to stop bad policies, and propose new ones that allow alternatives to survive and thrive, for which we need true democratic processes.

A ‘commons’ rather than ‘market state’ orientation is a fruitful way to think about solving humanity’s problems in a new way.

Michel Bauwens is founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives , a global collaborative researching peer production that maps the thousands of p2p projects being created to achieve mutual alignment and a growing counter economy that can co-exist and perhaps even supersede the today’s dysfunctional one. He is also a partner of the Commons Strategies Group which seeks to seed conversations around the new commons paradigm.