Digital Commons

"I’m interested in the blockchain (or blockchain-based technologies) as one tool that, in a very pragmatic way, could assist with cooperative activities—helping us to share resources, to arbitrate, adjudicate, disambiguate, and make collective decisions. Some fledgling examples are La’Zooz, an alternative ride- sharing app; Swarm, a fundraising app; and proposals for the use of dis- tributed ledgers to manage land ownership or critical infrastructures like water and energy. Many of these activities are difficult outside of local communities or in the absence of some trusted intermediary. However, I also think that much of the current rhetoric around the blockchain hints at problems with the techno-utopian ideologies that surround digital activism, and points to the assumptions these projects fall into time and again. It’s worth addressing these here."

Esta obra es el resultado de un estudio llevado a cabo por el Insti-
tuto de Gobierno y Políticas Públicas ( igop ) de la Universitat Autò-
noma de Barcelona, por encargo del Smart City Expo World Con-
gress ( scewc ) y del Ajuntament de Barcelona.
El objetivo del trabajo ha sido ofrecer algunas sugerencias sobre
posibles innovaciones en el diseño y la organización del evento en
torno a la Smart City, que se celebra anualmente en la Fira de Bar-
celona. La investigación presenta una realidad poco visible desde
la lógica en la que se ha movido el scewc hasta ahora. En particu-
lar, pone énfasis en empresas, modelos de negocio y proyectos
que se caracterizan por adoptar modelos abiertos y colaborativos,
y que se basan en la generación de bienes comunes digitales.
El estudio ofrece una panorámica de un entramado de prácticas
e iniciativas concretas que se mueven en Barcelona y en su área
metropolitana en el campo de la innovación tecnológica y digital
desde una perspectiva colaborativa y abierta. También presenta
algunos elementos de análisis del ecosistema de innovación local
y hace algunas sugerencias sobre cómo, dando más espacio a
estos modelos de innovación, fortaleciendo el papel de los actores
públicos y estableciendo mejores relaciones con los actores y no-
dos locales, el scewc y el Ajuntament de Barcelona podrían abrir
nuevas perspectivas de innovación y desarrollo para la ciudad, el
propio scewc y el ecosistema de innovación digital local.

Early 20th century birthed a radical phenomenon across several cultures and nations- the demarcating of certain public space for primarily leisure purposes. From India to the United States, urban parks became a symbol of democracy, openness, and freedom as they emerged from a protracted struggle to shift from the hands of the State or imperial power to that of the masses. There was much euphoria about their unregulated and public character, reflecting a new age of modernization and civilization. Yet, over time, it has been revealed how contentious the process of shaping, regulating, and sustaining of public parks can be as well as its pluralistic and transcultural nature. Interestingly, the 21st century is celebrating the birth of another leisure space that shares this rhetoric of being open, free, universal, non-utilitarian, and democratic: social network sites. As the Net shifted from the hands of the State to that of the user, its leisure spaces have been looked upon as sites where regardless of gender, age, and/or culture, people can commune, browse aimlessly, socialize and share their views openly. Yet, important concerns are emerging on what constitutes as openness, universality and democratic as governments to corporations are finding ways to architect and manage these virtual geographies and, users are harnessing these sites for a range of activities.

Thereby, by drawing parallels between urban parks and social network sites, this project aims to highlight the historical aspect of leisure spaces and provide a much needed rootedness in this highly speculative media discourse. The historical and comparative investigation to parks is innovative, as it will debunk much of the hype surrounding social network sites as a novel and unprecedented space for communication. Given that social network sites have a short and primarily Western-centric history of usage, the development and evolution of parks across nations allows for a fresh and transcultural perspective to this topic. Methodologically, using this real/virtual comparative strategy has become an essential means to understand online spaces. In fact, it is impossible to not evoke physical spaces to conceptualize virtual spaces. So we find ourselves on the information highway, at the electronic frontier, chatrooms, home pages, to MUD lobbies. In fact, this project builds on the popularly accepted parallel of the Net as the digital city, propositioning thereby, that its common public leisure areas are its virtual parks.

While the project strives to critique the public, democratic and free for all notions of contemporary leisure spaces, online and offline, for feasibility purposes, it focuses specifically on 3 areas of timely importance: (a) open and closed systems (b) private and public domains, and (c) work versus play dimension to leisure sites, emphasizing notions of corporatization, commercialization and the privatization of leisure spaces. Also, the diversity of parks such as industrial parks, theme parks to community parks will emphasize the pluralistic aspect of social network sites. Further, this project brings together disciplines of media studies and history of technology through an original avenue of urban planning, emphasizing the spatial aspects of technology and media practice. Given that most studies on new media spaces are artifact oriented, ahistorical and Western-centric, this project will provide a unique lens through its historical and transcultural approach.

The undertaking of this project is deeply relevant given that as leisure becomes central to the 21st century economy, corporations to the State are greatly vested in the understanding of these spaces. The dominant idea of its unprecedented novelty can be misleading and have damaging consequences on shaping policy and practice. Overall, the goal of this project is to leverage on real-virtual comparisons to develop a more integrated understanding of contemporary leisure, a prime space of digital residence in the 21st century.

This issue of Uplink analyzes four indie videogames created between 2017-2019, showcasing how digital artists, transnational audiences and fan communities are beginning to leverage the institutions of the digital commons to create works of art superior to those of vastly larger videogame studios with far greater financial resources. While the contemporary revolution of indie videogame production is still in its first decade (it began in 2013), it has already shattered the three-decade monopoly of large-scale media corporations over the circuits of videogame production, distribution and consumption, and opened the door to new types of democratic cultural production and audience participation.

A basic premise underpinning the new research paradigm presented in this thesis and demonstrated by the FLAX project (Flexible Language Acquisition flax.nzdl.org), is that open data-driven language learning systems design as an approach is learner-centric and operates with the interface to the learner. Whether the learner is operating fully online in non-formal or informal learning mode or in a blended modality that is based both within and beyond the formal language classroom, this approach requires that the tools and interfaces, and indeed the corpora, be openly accessible and remixable for development or adaptation to meet this specific learner requirement. This method is different from existing data-driven learning (DDL) approaches which assume specialised knowledge or experience with DDL tools, interfaces and strategies, operating on mostly inaccessible corpora in terms of cost or design, or alternatively assuming training to, hopefully, compensate for this lack of knowledge and experience.

From a research and development (R&D) standpoint, the paradigm presented here also operates with the interface to knowledge organisations (universities, libraries, archives) and researchers who are engaging with open educational practices to push at the parameters of open policy for the non-commercial reuse and remix of authentic research and pedagogic content that is increasingly abundant in digital open access format for text and data-mining (TDM) purposes. This open access content is highly relevant to learning features of specialist varieties of English from across the academy but is otherwise off limits for development into proprietary learning materials by the commercial education publishing industry. Indeed, the open corpus development work presented in this thesis would not have been possible had it not been for the campaigners for copyright reform, the Internet activists, the open policy makers, the open-source software developers, and the advocates for open access, open data and open education that have made these resources available for reuse and remix.

This paradigm leads down several paths, including research into understanding how users actually perceive, appropriate and use the approach based on the open tools and resources provided. This inquiry informs their design and development, in an R&D process that is presented here through the methodological lens of design-based research and design ethnography. This approach will be fundamentally different than if we assume the user is actually a DDL or linguistics expert or that such an expert will be the learner's interface to the system, by preparing output for the learner to experience and learn from. This approach will also be necessarily different than if we assume the user is always a formally registered student at a university with access to English for Academic Purposes (EAP) support that may or may not offer DDL or linguistics expertise for learning the language features of specific discourse communities from across the academy.

The assumption behind this new paradigm that the right tools and resources can allow the end-learner to drive the processes autonomously is fundamentally revolutionary. This premise goes to the original contribution to knowledge of this thesis, but also challenges and directs researchers and practitioners in the field to consider and take up this new direction with open data-driven language learning systems design for applications that can be scaled in higher education to meet the increasing numbers of learners who are coming online. 

The focus on domain-specific terminology learning support via data-driven approaches is of course also decidedly different from the current EAP paradigm which in mainstream practice has been steadily evolving away from its roots in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), domain specificity and DDL processes towards the generic skills and knowledge programs currently in vogue that are arguably being steered by generic EAP course book publications from the commercial education publishing industry. Thus, this is also a new paradigm based on DDL approaches, driving domain-specific terminology learning support for EAP across formal, non-formal and informal learning modalities in higher education. It will transform, potentially, the focus of DDL systems design developments in language support and learning in general toward the non-specialist end-learner, but also hopefully help re-establish the centrality of language specificity to the field of EAP.

The new paradigm is necessarily rooted in greater inter- or multi-disciplinarity. Given the goal of facilitating, in particular, the increasing number of learners who are coming online, and users of large-scale MOOC platforms who are trying to function in domain-specific subject areas that are invariably offered in the English language, the approach requires collaboration and cooperation among platform providers, subject academics and instructors, educational technologists, software developers, educational researchers, EAP practitioners, linguists with expertise in corpus-based and DDL approaches, and policy makers in knowledge organisations (libraries, universities, archives).

This doctoral thesis presents three studies in collaboration with the open source FLAX project. This research makes an original contribution to the fields of language education and educational technology by mobilising knowledge from computer science, corpus linguistics and open education, and proposes a new paradigm for open data-driven language learning systems design in higher education. Furthermore, the research presented in this thesis uncovers and engages with an infrastructure of open educational practices (OEP) that push at the parameters of policy for the reuse of open access research and pedagogic content in the design, development, distribution, adoption and evaluation of data-driven language learning systems.

Digital Transitions explores the relationship between technological changes and the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts in which these changes occur. Digital technologies have moved into every corner of life and the classic separation between work and non-work has become
obsolete. The digital economy has become indistinguishable from life in the digital age. This is a book about the merger of economy and life, about life in digital capitalism. It explores four moments of digital transitions: The first chapter  explores transitions of sharing, both as a concept or an
ideology and as a social practice. The second chapter explores a transition in the political economy of media and communication and its recent turn to the work of Marx. The third chapter focuses on the building of the digital commons and its very particular economy of contribution. The final
chapter turns the light on academic cultures and inspects the activist turn in academia.

Executive Summary

The success of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is a phenomenon that has not still been adequately studied and elaborated in economical and political theory. Yet FOSS has proved to be a laboratory of social, economical and institutional innovations that seem to have a great relevance for the informational paradigm.

Not only did FOSS emerge in the software, that is in the core technology of the ICT revolution, and is about to become the standard model of production in this industry, but its innovative arrangements have also inspired emulations in many other domains.

The most distinctive  feature of FOSS is that it is organized around a commons: that is, a resource that is governed by licenses which  allow anyone to access, use, copy, modify, develop and redistribute the software. This characteristic has many important implications in the modalities of governance and in the forms of generation and appropriation of value.

FOSS is the clearest evidence of the potential role that new types of common goods are about to play in the emerging digital networked economy and society. Similarly, its surprising trajectory sheds new light on the newly established field of study that has developed around the rediscovery of the notion of the commons in recent decades.

In this sense, while the first wave of studies on the commons has been engaged around the definition of the commons as an autonomous sphere distinct from the market and the state, the evolution of FOSS indicates the importance of studying the governance of these new commons within hybrid configurations, as for example in their modulation with markets.

The successful integration of FOSS in the market and in the capitalistic competition requires a review of the first approaches to this model of production. For example, the experience has shown that FOSS can be used to strategically achieve new forms of centralization and concentration of power and value. Likewise – despite its idiosyncratic form, which does not allow any form of exclusive appropriation - FOSS has demonstrated that it can expand in parallel with new markets.

In order to visualize the relationships between FOSS and markets, a synthetic framework is proposed, that is organized through three concepts: semi-commons, infrastructures and ecosystems generation. Each allows to visualize a different way to modulate a multi-layered structure of regimes of property and value production and appropriation.

While the transition to FOSS in the market is consolidating, public administrations and public policies are still struggling to find a way to engage productively with this new model of technological development and production.

Public policies promoting FOSS have begun early and have not been few. Yet so far no clear model has emerged and the setbacks have not been few.

The rationales for the public administrations to support the use and development of FOSS are both economical and political, as FOSS promises to reduce costs and risks, and increase independence and transparency in the management of critical resources, services and infrastructures.

Public policies so far have underestimated the obstacles generated by the legacies of the past, the lock-in mechanisms produced by the integration of ecosystems of hardware and software producers in previous proprietary platforms and the fragmentation of alternative solutions, undervaluing the costs of integration and maintenance of isolated systems in an environment of hardwares and softwares extremely dynamic.

However, a reversal of the trend is taking place, as FOSS is becoming the new standard approach on the frontiers of innovation (Cloud, Internet of Things, Data centers, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain). As a result, a strong trend towards its use and development in public policy is spreading worldwide. Hundreds of public organizations are currently engaged in a process of practical learning by doing in FOSS development.

As FOSS will play a central role in the new generation of software services, public administrations should not overlook the risks of new traps and dependencies. Even more so, as the FOSS ecosystem has entered a consolidation phase.

EU policy based on abstract principles such as technological neutrality, open standards, impartiality in public procurement has proved difficult to apply and ineffective in preventing the capture of public administrations by private monopolies and lock-in strategies by suppliers.

The increasing role of FOSS in the provision of critical infrastructure and its maturation as a production system will push further institutional innovations in the FOSS ecosystem. One of the most important areas of innovation could come precisely from a greater involvement of public actors.

Three directions can be glimpsed as emerging fields of innovation in public policies:

- An active policy of standardization, as a lever for governance and productivity generation;

- The modulation of mixed forms of governance blending state, market and commons based mechanisms;

- The development of new forms of public-public cooperation.

This is an article about digital production and the crisis of capitalism. It is about production in the digital commons and its implications for the building of alternatives to a commodified world. As digital production is at the very heart of cognitive capitalism the digital commons is not just any other disruption of the process of commodification. This is the field of a fierce struggle over the future of the internet and the future of capitalism itself. It is potentially the moment which moves back the frontiers of measurement, value and quantification toward qualities, values and an expansion of the gift economy. For this potential to unfold it is vital that those who are giving, sharing, and contributing for the benefit of humanity are supported by global policies that enable them to do so. They have to be supported because their gifts are not based on reciprocity and the obligation to return the gift. This is an argument about the future of digital labour. The article concludes that this could be achieved through a global basic income scheme.

Previous literature on democratic quality of political actors website and on the governance of online communities did not take attention to the role of infrastructure for collective action online.
This paper presents an empirical analysis (based on 50 cases of online creation communities) on how infrastructure governance shape the community generated. First, the paper presents a mapping of online creation communities according to their infrastructure governance. The main axes of order in the infrastructure governance are open versus closes to community involvement in the provision organizing. Then, the other significant axes is knowledge policy which in term of
infrastructure governance influences the level of freedom and autonomy of the collective action in regards to the infrastructure. According to these two axes five models of infrastructure governance resulted: corporate service, university network, representative foundations, mission oriented enterprises, and assamblearian selfprovision.
Second, the research provides an empirical explanation of the governance models which are most likely to succeed in creating large-size collective action in terms of the dimensions of participation and complexity of collaboration.
Infrastructure governance based on closeness to community involvement in the platform provision and for profit strategies generates bigger communities. Instead, open to community involvement and nonprofit generates smaller communities, even smaller if they are informal. Conditions which favor community freedom and autonomy generate smaller communities also, but interestingly, they resulted to be the conditions that increase collaboration among the participants.

Abstract
Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alternative economies. In this article, however, we argue that the digital commons cannot by themselves constitute genuine forms of resistance for they are vulnerable to what we call ‘the illusion of the digital commons’, which leads to a form of ‘false consciousness’ that Sloterdijk designates as deep-rooted cynicism. This cynicism, we argue, ties in with the contemporary discontent with practices in the ‘sharing economy’, in which we pay particular attention to the practice of hospitality exchange on platforms such as BeWelcome, Couchsurfing,
and Airbnb. We utilize Georg Simmel’s theory of money to explicate how exchange relations are mediated by technologically enabled explicit and implicit price mechanisms. Accordingly, we argue that the technologically mediated practice of digital commoning can constitute the ‘illusion of the commons’, an apparent form of commoning through digital exchanges that is inherently vulnerable to foster non-emancipatory practices. We argue that this results in a form of cynicism:
of commoners that are disillusioned by ‘the power of things’. Only a ‘politics of the digital commons’, a democratic governance that keeps a check on the vulnerability of digital exchanges, and a free relation to technologies can help in avoiding the illusion of the digital commons.

Keywords: Alternative economies, capitalism, cynicism, digital commons, false consciousness, postcapitalism

Hospitality exchange (HospEx) networks – online platforms facilitating the connection between a traveler and a local resident – embody many of the cyber-utopian promises intrinsic to the Web as it started out 25 years ago. Such sites have often been conceptualized as a new and daring trend in a booming ‘sharing industry’ and have been researched for topics such as trust, reputation, and online identities. Yet, a more critical look uncovers that crucial issues of ownership, power, digital labour, and organizational structures have often been left out.
To fill this gap, this thesis investigates upon the antagonistic struggle between the commons and processes of commodification in the light of critical theory and political economy. The research shows that examples with characteristics of both concepts are manifested in the niche social networking space of HospEx platforms. The biggest of those platforms, Couchsurfing.org, changed its organizational orientation from a non-profit, commons-based project towards a for-profit company in 2011 – an instance of commodification. An analysis of both quantitative and qualitative community data shows that the transformation consequently concerns a member on multiple levels. The structural change of ownership results in a loss of transparency and privacy, an alteration of the platform’s integrity, a sacrifice of the ‘uniqueness’ of the community, and a differing relationship between the user and the platform.
To shed light on an antagonistic force and suggest an alternative, community-based governance approach, the work further explores the specifics of a platform guided by the logic of the commons. Interviews with volunteers of the non-commercial, non-profit HospEx platform BeWelcome.org helped to deepen an understanding of how a digital commons can be sustained and what challenges they face. The thesis concludes that the developments observed on Couchsurfing are not an exception but rather characteristic and part of a broader trend manifested in all areas of digital media, and indeed modern society in general: commodification processes frequently jeopardize the commons and incorporate them into the logic of capital.

This doctoral thesis presents three studies in collaboration with the open source FLAX project (Flexible Language Acquisition flax.nzdl.org). This research makes an original contribution to the fields of language education and educational technology by mobilising knowledge from computer science, corpus linguistics and open education, and proposes a new paradigm for open data-driven language learning systems design in higher education. Furthermore, the research presented in this thesis uncovers and engages with an infrastructure of open educational practices (OEP) that push at the parameters of policy for the reuse of open access research and pedagogic content in the design, development, distribution, adoption and evaluation of data-driven language learning systems. Study 1 employs automated content analysis to mine the concept of open educational systems and practices from qualitative reflections spanning 2012-2019 with stakeholders from an on-going multi-site design-based research ...

Tania Lewis offers the first critical account of the impact of digital information, media, and communication technologies on the topic of food. Lewis critically analyzes how our relationship to food consumption, production, and politics is being re-mediated through digitally connected electronic devices, practices and content. By drawing together the world of food and the digital, the book speaks to a number of pressing contemporary themes including the tensions around digital engagement in increasingly commercialized spaces; the changing nature of politics in a social media context; the growing naturalization of digital devices and related practices of data monitoring; and the role and impact of digitization on social relations.

At the forefront of critical new research, and written with a student readership in mind, this text is essential for scholars interested in media studies, cultural studies, food studies, and cultural geography.

Infinite Fall's "Night in the Woods" (2017) was the first videogame created by a US studio which forged a progressive interactive realism for transnational audiences. It also signaled a revolution in the field of videogame production, as digital artists and audiences have begun to employ open source tools and strategies of peer production to create works of art superior in quality to those created by transnational corporate monopolies. Note that this essay was originally published as a three-part series in Uplink 002, 003 and 004, and its reproduced in its entirety for your convenience.

Presentation at the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Environments held in Athens, on July 16 2013, as part of the workshop "Intelligent Environments for Creative Learning".

Abstract. At the threshold between the industrial and the digital crafting era, this paper discusses the notions that both today’s designers and users are grappling with. Learning from pre-industrial design and crafting environments, considered as ‘intelligent’ due to their responsive results, mostly achieved using empirically-oriented methods, we envision the creation of a new environment, this time in the age of scientific, technological and computational applications. Based on interdisciplinary collaboration and global data collection and analysis regarding crafting materials and methods, this environment acts both as a design tool and a knowledge-propagation model among digital communities: simulating the complex behaviors and properties of matter through a user-friendly, real-time computer interface, this environment educates and assists users in the creation and manipulation of their personal -optimized to local conditions and needs- artifacts.

This paper explores the ways in which a theorization of heritage as a commons complicates the relation of heritage and identity. The paper analyzes how cultural heritage management and theorizations connect with the “old” vernacular commons in rural Europe, communist ideologies, Hardin’s and Ostrom’s theories, and finally with Hardt and Negri’s ideas. Can heritage managers and scholars work as mediators between the global flows of value and local communities, promoting redistributive policies and identity building capacities in the face of overarching commodification processes? How can the notion of a “shared” heritage be mobilized by local communities to implement politics of redistribution and rethinking of ownership against an alienated “world heritage” that frames itself as a globally “shared” common heritage of humanity? What are the consequences of treating heritage as a commons for identity politics?

The goal of this article is to inform practitioners and researchers alike about the emerging practice of collaboratively mapping alternative economies. The paper draws from an inventory of over 200 maps, action research, and semi-structured interviews to explore how collaborative mapping – a practice that is largely citizen-driven – may be leveraged for the co-production of (scientific) knowledge about alternative economies. An array of real and ideal types is proposed in order to help navigate the various dimensions of collaborative mapping. Four lines of discussion are proposed: (1) what can we learn from maps when reframed as mappings – as processes? (2) How performativity may bring light to evaluating the transformational nature of knowledge derived from collaborative? (3) How does collaborative mapping offer avenues for rethinking empowerment of citizens in producing knowledge about alternative economies? And, (4) what new challenges are emerging from acknowledging digital knowledge as a commons?

The transition towards a cognitive and post-industrial economy has led to the emergence of new strategies of capture of the immanent productive capacities of the social forces. Heritage entities are subject to, and also participate in, processes by which common creativity and knowledge are being harnessed by novel forms of rent and control. The objective of this paper was to show that conceiving heritage as a common situated in specific contexts rather than as a universal essence can open up novel epistemological spheres of communication between different knowledge practices. Also, it can help bridge some ontological gaps among the various stakeholders in the arena of heritage, such as academics, managers, architects, local communities and market forces. This entails considering heritage as an emergent material and immaterial construction process involving many different agents. Currently, these processes tend towards the privatization of common values and the shattering of local communities. Normally, this situation entails a fundamental alienation between objects and subjects, and the reification of heritage. This paper suggests that considering heritage as a common could provide a different perspective to tackle this crucial problem. Accordingly, scholars should not only be bound to a critical discursive stance, but should also commit to ‘ontological politics’ that would situate them as mediators between the global hierarchies of value generated by heritage and the common productive potential of local communities.

Knowledge is increasingly thought of as a common good. This is exhibited in the fact that
many central economies are moving towards economic paradigms where knowledge plays a
fundamental role. This paper explores the confluence between both processes, asking in what
ways an economic model based on the knowledge commons can open up new socioeconomic
scenarios in the face of overwhelming neoliberal financialization.

Several thinkers mention internet space, cyberspace, as a place where discussions, deliberation, proposals or policy implementing actions are being held by citizens. This space is replacing the traditional places for the exchange of views, being necessary to study the special problems posed by exercising fundamental rights with informational substance (freedom of expression, right to information or participation, etc.) within private environments where ordinary rights, like intellectual property or telecommunications law, govern.

Peer production communities are based on the collaboration of communities of people, mediated by the Internet, typically to create digital commons, as in Wikipedia or free software. The contribution activities around the creation of such commons (e.g., source code, articles, or documentation) have been widely explored. However, other types of contribution whose focus is directed toward the community have remained significantly less visible (e.g., the organization of events or mentoring). This work challenges the notion of contribution in peer production through an in-depth qualitative study of a prominent “code-centric” example: the case of the free software project Drupal. Involving the collaboration of more than a million participants, the Drupal project supports nearly 2% of websites worldwide. This research (1) offers empirical evidence of the perception of “community-oriented” activities as contributions, and (2) analyzes their lack of visibility in the digital platforms of collaboration. Therefore, through the exploration of a complex and “code-centric” case, this study aims to broaden our understanding of the notion of contribution in peer production communities, incorporating new kinds of contributions customarily left invisible.

The definition of open source hardware (OSH) is focused on electronic or mechanical hardware but less is known about the OSH subset that is neither electronic nor mechanical. In general, the OSH theoretical framework is summarised as the imposition of open source software's (OSS) licensing scheme on conventional design workflow, omitting the fact that the license is not the only difference between open source and proprietary code. Also, the OSH definitions overlook the broader context related to hardware's material nature as illustrated by the socio-technological implications of digital fabrication. Based on a hybrid quantitative-qualitative analysis of three case studies from the less examined OSH's subset, we manage to: i) demonstrate the limited applicability of current OSH definition and describe the points that lack specificity, ii) propose an optimized and detailed definition based on the pre-existing framework, and iii) reveal structural inconsistencies of OSH theory and highlight emergent practices that may constitute a hopeful future answer. As more and more researchers realize the catalytic potential of the open source methodology, but at the same time refer to the non-automatic process to turn open source everything, it will be indispensable to design a thoughtful and motivational OSH theory.

This chapter addresses the governance of a specific type of constructed common­ pool resource, online creation communities (OCCs). OCCs are communities of individuals that mainly interact via a platform of online participation, with the goal of building and sharing a common­pool resource resulting from collaboratively systematizing and integrating dispersed information and knowledge resources. Previous research of the governance of OCCs has been based on analyzing specific aspects of the governance. However, there has been a gap in the literature, one of lacking a comprehensive and holistic view of what governance means in collective action online. This chapter provides a set of dimensions that define the governance of OCCs. Particularly, most previous work did not consider infrastructure provision in their analysis. This chapter challenges previous literature by questioning the neutrality of infrastructure for collective action. The governance of OCCs is here analyzed through the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, building on Madison, Frischmann, and Strandburg's (2010) adaptation of this framework to constructing commons in the cultural environment. References to Schweik and English's adaptation of IAD to free and open source communities will also be made. The empirical data are drawn from a statistical analysis of 50 cases and four case studies on OCCs (Wikipedia, Flickr, Wikihow, and Openesf). The empirical analysis results in a set of models of OCCs governance. The conclusions provide an assessment of the utility of IAD in the analysis of OCCs, and Madison, Frischmann, and Strandburg's adaptation. Additionally, it ends by addressing the defining characteristics of digital commons.

In recent years, critical scholarship has drawn attention to increasing power differentials between corporations that use data and people whose data is used. A growing number of scholars see digital data and information commons as a way to counteract this asymmetry. In this paper I raise two concerns with this argument: First, because digital data and information can be in more than one place at once, governance models for physical common-pool resources cannot be easily transposed to digital commons. Second, not all data and information commons are suitable to address power differentials. In order to create digital commons that effectively address power asymmetries we must pay more systematic attention to the issue of exclusion from digital data and information commons. Why and how digital data and information commons exclude, and what the consequences of such exclusion are, decide whether commons can change power asymmetries or whether they are more likely to perpetuate them.

Networked commons-based peer production, as in Wikipedia or in open source communities, has occasionally been depicted as a revolutionary socio-economic system with fundamental consequences for the future of capitalism. These conceptions are, however, often prone to neglecting the material boundaries of the economy. In a "digitalist" utopia (Pasquinelli 2008), production is portrayed as a pure symbolic exchange, independent of the physical, biological, financial or socio-cultural conditions for its reproduction. With the current growth in the networking infrastructures, it is becoming more obvious that the so-called immaterial economy is tightly connected to the constraints of the finite planet. In my presentation, I will examine the political ecologies of immaterial commoning by focusing on one of its material boundaries: data storage capacity. By following the events and discourses unfolding from the 2011 Thailand floods that caused an unforeseen shock in the data storage markets, I seek to illuminate some more general interlinkages between the practices of immaterial commoning and its material underpinnings.

Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alternative economies. In this article, however, we argue that the digital commons cannot by themselves constitute genuine forms of resistance for they are vulnerable to what we call ‘the illusion of the digital commons’, which leads to a form of ‘false consciousness’ that Sloterdijk designates as deep-rooted cynicism. This cynicism, we argue, ties in with the contemporary discontent with practices in the ‘sharing economy’, in which we pay particular attention to the practice of hospitality exchange on platforms such as BeWelcome, Couchsurfing, and Airbnb. We utilize Georg Simmel’s theory of money to explicate how exchange relations are mediated by technologically enabled explicit and implicit price mechanisms. Accordingly, we argue that the technologically mediated practice of digital commonin...

Online hospitality exchange (HospEx) platforms—essentially facilitating the connection between a traveller and a local resident—embody many of the cyber-utopian promises intrinsic to the Web as it started out 25 years ago. This paper investigates upon the antagonistic struggle between the commons and processes of commodification in the light of critical theory of social media for this niche social networking space and introduces two relevant examples. The biggest of those platforms, Couchsurfing.org, changed its organizational orientation from a non-profit, commons-based project towards a for-profit company in 2011—an instance of commodification. An analysis of both quantitative and qualitative community data shows that the transformation consequently concerns members on multiple levels. The structural change of ownership results in a loss of transparency and privacy, an alteration of the platform’s integrity, a sacrifice of the “uniqueness” of the community, and a differing relationship between the user and the platform. To discuss an alternative, community-based governance approach, the paper further explores the specifics of a platform guided by the logic of the commons, the non-commercial and non-profit HospEx platform BeWelcome.org.

Thumfart, Johannes: „Francisco de Vitoria and the Nomos of the Code: The Digital Common and Natural Law, Digital Communi.aton as Human Right, Just Cyber-warfare“, in: Beneyto, José Maria and Corti, Justo:  At the origins of modernity: Vitoria and the new world, New York 2017; pp197-217

Este artículo pretende caracterizar teóricamente la idea de los comunes y señalar los motivos de su auge en años recientes. Partiendo de dos de sus definiciones más extendidas, la expuesta en Governing the Commons por Elinor Ostrom y la desarrollada por Peter Linebaugh en Stop Thief! The Commos, Enclosures and Resistance, se sostiene que los comunes hacen referencia al singular ensamblaje de recursos, colectividad y formas de gobernanza. A partir de esta caracterización, el objetivo de este artículo es subrayar que los comunes en el entorno digital plantean un reto a dicha definición pues no presuponen la existencia ni de un bien escaso ni de una comunidad definida de antemano. Se concluirá que es el hacer común de una pluralidad heterogénea el que instituye una “comunidad postindetitaria” unida no por lo que comparte sino, paradójicamente, por lo que no posee.

This article explores some of the consequences of open access (OA) for scholars in the global South, centring on what constitutes their equal participation in the global circuit of knowledge production. Building on critical reflections by contributors to the 'Power Shifts' project within the From Poverty to Power blog, the limitations of the OA model are shown to be tied to a series of structural features characteristic of the twin systems of academic research and publishing. What the challenges faced by many scholars in the global South demonstrate is that 'openness', or inclusion in this format, is not yet the guarantee for equality that many had hoped. The article frames this as a systemic knowledge issue at a global scale that cannot be remedied by a simple reform to academic publishing. The article points to some creative efforts by scholars to forge alternative models for scholarly communication that move away from a marketized and restrictive model of knowledge production, and towards epistemic justice. The authors conclude that while OA represents a positive step forward in making knowledge a public good, it is no substitute for a more comprehensive rethink to pluralize our ways of knowing.

This article explores the legal structure of small-scale entrepreneurial digital commons. It links digital commons with the organizational innovations of digital economy and the findings of network theory, since networking forms the backbone of digital commons. The organizational structure of digital commons, founded on three pillars, the Productive Community, the Commons Oriented Entrepreneurial Coalition and the For Benefit Association, is associated with the network structure adopted by such projects, broken down to a decision-making and a value network.

When we embark on studying digital culture, there is an assumption of novelty to this new terrain. However, there is no such thing as absolute novelty. The fact is that we continue to conceptualize digital culture through metaphors to make the unfamiliar familiar to us. To understand the changing dynamics of digital culture today, it is worth considering the shifts in the way we speak about these internet spaces through specific metaphors. In doing so, we will recognize how the complex history of social practice comes to play in comprehending the diverse and vibrant digital geographies and the challenges we face with these new spaces of inhabitation.

The Internet has indeed matured. The nature of this transformation is both social and technical in nature, marked by a plethora of digital platforms and user-generated content. The shift in emphasis is from access to connectivity. In the nascent years of social media, there was much celebration of these spaces as democratic, open and non-utilitarian and in fact, leisure-oriented. Interestingly, similar rhetoric was used to describe the rise of the public park in the late 18th and early 19th century, a time where carving such spaces for the masses was seen as radical and a signal for a new age of egalitarianism and democracy.
Urban parks emerged from a protracted struggle with the state and imperial powers. There was much euphoria about these urban commons and their seemingly unregulated and public character. The parks heralded modernity and a new age of civility. They were places where all classes of people could congregate, serving as a unique albeit temporal terrain for social equality. Yet, on further examination, it was a contentious process to shape, regulate, and sustain the public character of the urban commons, much like the digital commons today.

By revealing the spectrum of tensions in the makings of the public park, this essay draws parallels to persistent political and socioeconomic challenges surrounding digital cultures today. In particular, this essay focuses on three contemporary challenges – surveillance, corporatization and political disruption by delving deeper into three types of urban parks –walled gardens, amusement parks and protest parks respectively. By viewing digital cultures through the lens of these parks, historically, transnationally, and transculturally, this essay reveals the complex polity of creating and sustaining such spaces. Furthermore, the aim here is to disrupt the popular notion that leisure is largely non-contentious, with little overt economic, utilitarian, and predetermined goals.

As privatized platforms like Academia.edu look to monetize scholarly writing even further, researchers, scientists and academics across the globe must now consider alternatives to proprietary companies that aim to profit from our writing and offer little transparency as to how our work will be used in the future.

Peer reviewed submission to the 9th Intelligent Environments International Conference.

Abstract. At the threshold between the industrial and the digital crafting era, this paper discusses the notions that both today's designers and users are grappling with. Learning from pre-industrial design and crafting environments, considered as 'intelligent' due to their responsive results, mostly achieved using empirically-oriented methods, we envision the creation of a new environment, this time in the age of scientific, technological and computational applications. Based on interdisciplinary collaboration and global data collection and analysis regarding crafting materials and methods, this environment acts both as a design tool and a knowledge-propagation model among digital communities: simulating the complex behaviors and properties of matter through a user-friendly, real-time computer interface, this environment educates and assists users in the creation and manipulation of their personal-optimized to local conditions and needs-artifacts.

Media contents have undoubtedly modified their status because of the technological innovation and the digitization processes. But how and why did this happen? In order to find an answer to these questions it is useful to make reference to an objective taxonomy of goods nowadays widely accepted. This taxonomy draws a distinction among private, club, common and public goods.