Vasilis Kostakis is the Professor of P2P Governance at Tallinn University of Technology and Faculty Associate at Harvard University. He is the founder of the P2P Lab and core member of the P2P Foundation.
Why ‘Game of Thrones’ was about Ecomodernism
Game of Thrones was arguably about climate change, but the HBO series turned this narrative around by presenting a last-minute technological solution as magically saving the day, the planet, and existence.
July 11, 2019
Peer-to-Peer: A Commons Manifesto
Peer to peer (P2P) is a type of social relations in human networks, as well as a technological infrastructure that makes the generalization and scaling up of such relations possible.
May 6, 2019
New Technologies Won’t Reduce Scarcity, but Here’s Something That Might
The intuitive belief that technology can manifest from money alone, anthropologists tell us, is a culturally rooted notion which hides the fact that the scarcity experienced by some is linked to the abundance enjoyed only by a few.
September 18, 2018
When does the Commons Transition begin?
All of the above form a strategy for a multi-modal commons-centric transition, offering a positive way out of the current crisis and a way to respond to the new demands of the commons-influenced generations. The Commons and the prefigurative forms of a new value regime already exist. The commoners are already here, and they’re already commoning; in other words, the Commons transition has begun.
July 6, 2017
The Emergence of Makerspaces in the Smart City
Makerspaces, this essay argues, can serve as hubs and vehicles for citizen-driven transformation and, thus, play a key part in a more inclusive, participatory and commons-oriented vision of the smart city.
June 1, 2017
Cooperativism in the Digital Era, or How to Form a Global Counter-Economy
The concept of open cooperativism has been conceived as an effort to infuse cooperatives with the basic principles of commons-based peer production. Pat Conaty and David Bollier have called for “a new sort of synthesis or synergy between the emerging peer production and commons movement…and growing, innovative elements of the co-operative and solidarity economy movements
March 29, 2017