critique ← P2P Lab

Ongoing projects

Jul

14

2021

The P2P Lab is working on the following projects: “Cosmolocalism” – A European Research Council project (site) “Exploring a post-growth political economy” (site soon) “Distributed Design Market Platform” – A Creative Europe project (site) “Centrinno” – An H2020 project (site) “Smooth” – An H2020 project (site) “T-Factor” – An H2020 project (site) “ComPra” – An Erasmus+ ...

Open-source technology in agricultural production

May

19

2016

Summary: This project attempts to explore the open source technology (with a focus on hardware) for agriculture emerging from a mode of production different from the capitalist one, that of commons-based peer production. There are indeed several existing open source projects in relation to the primary sector of the economy, and particularly agriculture. This project ...

The emergence of urban makerspaces

May

19

2016

Full title: “Making (in) the smart city: The emergence of makerspaces”, co-authored by Vasilis Niaros, Vasilis Kostakis & Wolfgang Drechsler. Summary: The criticism on the smart city is used as a starting point to highlight the promises of makerspaces, that is to say, those emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices; exercise community-based forms of ...

P2P: The commons manifesto

Jan

28

2016

Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis and Alex Pazaitis are writing a new book to be published by Westminster University Press (low-cost paperback, free ebook). Moreover, previous versions of it have been published in French (Manifeste pour une véritable économie collaborative, Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer editions, 2017) and Dutch (Peer-to-peer: Manifest voor een commons transitie, Oikos, 2017). This is also ...

Towards a new reconfiguration among the state, civil society and the market

Jul

9

2015

This essay tries to outline the general aspects of a political agenda for a gradual transition to a commons-oriented, social knowledge economy. In doing so, we first articulate some transitional proposals concerning both the micro-economic and the macro-economic levels, shedding light on the concept of the “partner state”. Next, a discussion follows that attempts to ...

Design global, manufacture local: Exploring the contours of an emerging productive model

Jul

8

2015

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on post-capitalist construction by exploring the contours of a commons-oriented productive model. On the basis of this model called “design global-manufacture local”, we argue that recent techno-economic developments around the emergence of commons-based peer production and desktop manufacturing technologies, may signal new alternative paths of social ...

Commoning the “smart city”

Jan

14

2015

Full title: “Introducing a taxonomy of the ‘smart city’: Towards a commons-oriented approach?“, written by Vasilis Niaros. Summary: During the last decade there has been considerable debate over the relatively vague concept of the “smart city”. Nowadays, the smart city has crystallised into an image of a city permeated with top-down and centrally controlled technological ...

Should law keep pace with technology?

Jan

14

2015

Full title: “Should law keep pace with technology? Law as katechon“, co-authored by Wolfgang Drechsler & Vasilis Kostakis. Summary: It is a commonly held belief that the law is unable to keep up with the fierce technological development and innovation that denotes our times. The current essay attempts to show that this characteristic of the law ...

The materiality of the immaterial: ICTs and the digital commons

Oct

27

2014

Special issue for tripleC: “The materiality of the immaterial: ICTs and the digital commons“, co-edited by Vasilis Kostakis & Andreas Roos. Summary: With an escalating environmental crisis and an unprecedented increase of ICT diversity and use, it is more crucial than ever to understand the underlying material aspects of the ICT infrastructure. This special issue ...

A P2P approach to energy production

Jun

10

2014

Full title: “A peer-to-peer approach to energy production“, co-authored by Chris Giotitsas, Alex Pazaitis & Vasilis Kostakis. Summary: This paper strives to provide a theoretical study for energy production and distribution. We thus examine and discuss the evolution of energy systems technologies and their impact on the global socio-economic structure. We critically analyze the evolution ...