„From each according to his ability, to each according to his need“ – Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
Since one and a half years around 70 people are involved in a post-capitalist farming experiment. Situated in the middle of Germany a collective of 5 growers is feeding around 65 supporters, year-round with a full supply of vegetables. The production is organised along the needs and abilities of the community.
The english partner book of the german »Commons – Für eine neue Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat« has been released! The book was edited by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich. I like the english title which is »The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State« focussing on the new world to be created and not primarily on new politics to be made. However, this is only a personal remark. I am happy that Christian Siefkes‘ and my contributions are part of the german as well as of the english book, and I think we will republish our english articles here.
The articles of both books are not identical, the editors arranged some different mixtures depending on the german and english speaking audience. Both books are definitely worthwhile to read. The book content was released under CC-by-sa license and can be downloaded (stepwise) or bought.
[deutsch]
Elinor Ostrom and others have formulated eight design principles for the shared use of resources. They distill the lessons of a huge number of case studies from around the world. They are written from a scientific perspective and continue to be of great significance for the commons movement.
We approach the commons from the perspective of active commoners, meaning the people who create and maintain working commons. We are more concerned with creating spaces for community and cooperation than with institutions. As for the resources themselves, we are more interested in how to preserve and use them, than in making distinctions between material and non-material, traditional or new commons. We therefore refer to all types of commons here.
[English version of the original german article, translated by Pauline Schwarze — thanks a lot!]
“Have a lot of fun” is the legendary hacker greeting. Having fun? Isn’t that the epitome of our meaningless and dump “fun culture” of comedy & Co? Not at all. The greeting refers to the motivation of committing oneself to a complex and self-imposed task – such as software development or other nice and useful things. Voluntariness in these things is of the essence. Wanting to commit to a self-imposed goal is the purpose as well as an end in itself.
Song by Nathaniel James:
Craigslist Joe is a documentary film produced by Zach Galifianakis that follows filmmaker Joseph Garner for 31 days and nights as he tries to find everything he needs off of Craigslist. Today the movie starts in theaters in the US. Here’s the trailer:
Watch this great talk of Massimo Banzi about Arduino giving lots of examples.
Stephen Murphy made an animated video about the results of the first 3D printing survey ever:
Filmmaker Sam Muirhead from New Zealand is living in Berlin, and he is going to live »open source« for one year. What does this mean? It does not mean »without money«, but it means »no proprietary products«. Open source everthing. Every day.
Read more on this project on ITWorld and Shareable and Indiegogo.
A talk from Michel Bauwens at Open Source Conference + Hacklab »Move Fast and Break Things« on the 22th September 2011 at IT-University in Copenhagen. He explains the principles of the developing Peer and Sharing Economy and its potentials to deal with emerging crises.