Ongoing projects

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+ ...

Assessing the democratization, innovation and sustainability potential of “design global, manufacture local”

Summary: The goal of this multiphase, pilot-driven project is to explore the contours of an emerging mode of production that builds on the confluence of the digital commons of knowledge, software, and design with local manufacturing technologies (e.g. from 3D printing and CNC machines to low-tech tools and crafts).  This convergence could play a key role in ...

Transvestment: Value and cooperation in the digital commons economy

Transvestment describes the transfer of value from capitalism to the commons. Thus transvestment strategies aim to help commoners become financially and socially sustainable and autonomous. This project includes: a research article/case study on the blockchain-based start-up, Backfeed (published); a research article/case study on the Enspiral Network (published); a chapter in T. Scholz’s and N. Schneider’s collective book on ...

Open-source technology in agricultural production

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 ...

Think global, print local

Summary: This article discusses an intrinsic case study which demonstrates the convergence of decentralized online and offline ways of sharing knowledge. We describe a new techno-economic form of value creation and distribution in relation to the knowledge commons and the publishing industry. Moreover, the dynamics and challenges of an emerging commons-based copyright license, named Peer ...

P2P: The commons manifesto

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 ...

The potential of digital commons to spur technological advance

Summary: This project will include two in-depth case studies of prominent digital commons cases which have arguably propelled much innovation and entrepreneurial activity. First, we will study the Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) patent which expired in 2005 and has widely been used in the 3D printing industry. A comparative data analysis before and after the ...

Digital commons, local manufacturing and sustainability

Full title: “The convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing from a degrowth perspective: Two illustrative cases”, co-authored by Vasilis Kostakis, Minas Liarokapis, Kostas Latoufis & Michel Bauwens. Summary: The emerging discussion about the sustainability potential of distributed production is the starting point for this paper. The focus is on the “design global, manufacture local” model. This ...

The materiality of the immaterial: ICTs and the digital commons

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

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 ...