Jean Monnet Project (Erasmus+) “4th Industrial Revolution: Changes and Opportunities for Europe”

Member of the Academic Committee of the ENA FORCE ‘4th Industrial Revolution: Changes and Opportunities for Europe’ (2020-2022), Jean Monnet Project (Erasmus+). Coordinator of the sector ‘Governing Knowledge Commons into the Framework of 4th Industrial Revolution’.

https://enaforce.eu/academic-committee/

Project FORCE | Interview with experts |

Interview with Dr. Theodora Kotsaka, Member of the FORCE Academic Committee, Co-ordinator of the Observatory on Commons & P2P Production, ENA Institute for Alternative Policies [01.12.2021]

POLICY PAPERS

Th. Kotsaka, ‘Governing Knowledge Commons into the Framework of 4th Industrial Revolution’, Force Project, Ινστιτούτο Εναλλακτικών Πολιτικών, 2021.

In this paper, Dr. Kotsaka attempts to highlight the role of commons within the scope of the 4IR and the ensuing changes in the production model. As the technological transition of the 4IR offers the opportunity for the expansion of commons processes to a wider sector of the economy, Dr. Kotsaka explores the potential impact of commons, digital and knowledge commons and P2P networks, on social environmental and economic issues especially in light of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic Moreover the present papers aims to place emphasis on the significance of institutional and regulatory frameworks, developed for the support of a respective transition to a collaborative economy within the EU.

 

 

FORCE CONFERENCE – July 8, 2021

Session 4

Knowledge commons, open access and social innovation

Moderator: Dr Theodora Kotsaka Guest Speakers: Dr. Bauwens, Dr. Kostakis

Dr. Dora Kotsaka
Dr. Theodora Kotsaka

Dr. Theodora Kotsaka

Dr. Theodora Kotsaka Member of the Academic Committee of the FORCE project, opened the session presenting the key-issues examined in the FORCE working paper “Governing knowledge commons into the framework of 4th Industrial Revolution”.

Dr. Michael Bowens, is the Founder of the P2P Foundation and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. Dr. Bowens raised the issue of the ecological degradation resulting from the prevailing business models which fail to account for the non-market contributions in a production network, making the argument that to achieve sustainability, a different approach should be adopted in the governance of production. Considering the lack of global scientific institutions that monitor the consumption of resources and the fact that large technological players operate on global scale while local societies experience their ecological impacts, the perspective of productive communities is necessary, to ensure social, economic and ecological justice. Ensuring resource consumption remains within the planetary limits and implementing a more fair distribution of profits to all the members that contribute to the added value of a production network, may be achieved by adopting increasingly expanding forms of accounting such as “contribution accounting”, “flow accounting” and in particular “resources, events agents models (REA models)”, and “thermodynamic accounting”. This integrated accounting system is a physical-cyber infrastructure for human production that may achieve permanent circularity or “perma-circularity”. This approach can be extended in the way we view the world economy as a whole, through “cosmo-localism”, i.e. spatially distributed production based on global, open knowledge commons. Dr. Bowens also proposed a mechanism for economic coordination based on stigmergic collaboration and generative market mechanisms along with thermodynamic accounting for resource and material planning.

 

Dr. Kostakis

Dr Kostakis, Professor of P2P Governance at TalTech and Faculty Associate at Harvard University, presented the two prevailing ideas regarding technological progress. The first is the notion that high technology will address the key issues experienced by societies in a global manner. The second, on the contrary, focuses on the local level using low end technological solutions that may be easily learned and disseminated. Dr Kostakis argues that there is an alternative which he calls “the mid-tech solution” which has a cosmo-local focus. This alterntive utilizes the capabilities of the digital commons and open design to enable global knowledge transfer for the production of local applications that are simple to produce and cost efficient.

Dr. Kostakis
Dr. Kostakis

Dr Kostakis then went on to offer a few examples of global cosmolocal mid-tech synergies and applications where organisations and communities have used knowledge commons in the development of local solutions, i.e. production of low cost prosthetic limps based on digital commons, production of equipment for agricultural communities, etc.

FORCE WORKSHOP – November 3, 2021

Conclusions of the FORCE event on Work in the 4th Industrial Revolution

ENA_Event 2_ Workshop.jpg

In her speech, Dr Theodora Kotsaka, following Mr Smyrnaios’ last remark on Platform Cooperativism, focused on the continuously expanding possibilities in wider economic sectors acquired by the commons during the 4 th Industrial revolution and the changes that the latter brings to the production model (economy of knowledge-intensity and digitalization).

First, Ms Kotsaka referred to the fact that the commons’ applied attempts in the economic field remain indeed fragmented (with the exception of digital commons) and function almost exclusively on a small scale. In order to achieve an escalation, the appropriate institutional and legal framework is required, and this cannot happen unless we take seriously into account the role of the EU and member states as regulators. Today, transformations of exceptional importance are taking place not only on the production level but also on the model of value production. This historical process is known as ‘value shift’ and, at this stage, it is characterized
by an increased ability to create value through practices of Commons Based Peer Production (CBPP) and various applications of cooperative economy. It is described as a transition from ‘extractive’ models and practices that generate wealth for someone to the detriment of another, towards models of reproduction of value and practices that generate wealth for communities and ensure sustainability of resources. This is a development with serious implications for the current economic system and the accompanying model of creation of value.

Ms Kotsaka underlined that knowledge commons are a recurrent topic in the public discussion and that it is gradually revealed that they can contribute into giving answers regarding technology, artificial intelligence (AI), data management, biotechnology and climate change, i.e. regarding fields that are at the core of the 4 th Industrial Revolution. New forms of ownership, new types of lending, new forms of legal contracts and licenses are emerging. A new innovative economical sub-culture has been created; however, we are still at a stage where we are trying to describe it using terms such as ‘commons’ and ‘peer to peer production’ (P2P). For the ‘official’ economic science, all the above are difficult to include in the category of ‘economic activity’.

According to Ms Kotsaka, this is a crucial point. These socio-economic practices exist because they manage to give answers to specific social problems in crucial times. They are functional because the logic governing them is compatible with the structures and values created during the 4th Industrial Revolution, such as openness, sustainability, networks, resource sharing (goods or services). It is also particularly interesting that in the political culture created by the commons, emphasis is shifted from the fight for ownership -a cornerstone of capitalism and legal culture on which it is based- to management. Commons movements place
the emphasis on the right to use and the access to a good or service and not on the ownership of them.

Ms Kotsaka continued saying that, in the context of the conditions created by the pandemic and the pressure on healthcare systems, it was made clear that the current model of research and development, pricing and distribution of medicine, vaccines and health supplies was unable to respond to the needs that had arisen. The business model applied to the provision of health services has undermined its ability to deal with emergencies. At the same time, the pandemic crisis gave birth to numerous initiatives of solidarity and mobilized all movements of makers and peer to peer production, which were activated to such a degree that they were largely promoted for the first time by the media. On a global scale, there was great activity in connection with commons practices, such as open research and science, the use of open source software and hardware, data sharing, etc. The crisis caused by Covid-19 made visible the remarkable initiatives of helping each other as well as the ability of these movements to offer solutions where the state and the market fail to do so. Moreover, the lack of protocols for the cooperation between the state and the commons (such as Public-Commons Partnerships) when they were urgently needed was also made clear. Ms Kotsaka stressed that peer to peer production is compatible with the type of economy under development in the context of the 4 th Industrial Revolution: it maximizes the benefits of networks between peers and modularity and it strengthens openness and circulation to the highest extent. At the stage of economic development that we are today, abusive enclosures and privatizations of all possible resources constitute an obsessive and harmful practice, in particular as regards the abilities to produce value. This means that their role is also harmful to the operation of markets. However, openness, peer to peer production and commons are not able to protect themselves against corporate greed, monopolies and extreme deregulation. Grassroots innovation is firmly connected to new institutions and new rights. In human history, communities had to defend over and over again their right to land, natural resources, handicrafts, language, culture, etc. Nowadays, it is imperative to find an equivalent to science and information, a new principle against new enclosures. Due to the lack of the appropriate legal framework and the necessary institutional supervision, the more open and accessible data and information are, the more they function to the benefit of the big stakeholders in the market. At this point, the crucial importance of regulation is made clear.

Analyzing further the issue of regulation, Ms Kotsaka stressed the importance of the state as a regulator in regard to the productive transformation towards the economy of the commons. The backbone of the plan for the transition to Commons Based Peer Production is the Partner State Model and the establishment of the relevant legal and institutional framework that will allow the latter to function. In order to implement policies oriented towards the commons, there are specific tools that may be utilized by the Partner State that have resulted from emerging projects in various parts in the world, such as: licenses protecting the commons, i.e. GPL and Creative Commons licenses, cooperative banks, P2P Accounting, Public Commons Partnerships (PCP) instead of Public-Private Partnerships. This kind of policies can reduce the damage caused to intellectual property by monopolies and the overextensive use of patents. Applied policies on the commons and peer to peer production may be used as a tool by the EU and member states in order to control digital monopolies.

Closing her speech, Ms Kotsaka underlined that a wide approach and a political strategy is necessary as regards the State Partner model that will be accompanied by the appropriate legal forms of common ownership and supervision. The above constitute new emancipatory tools that the EU may have in its toolbox. It is a model of a targeted, active entrepreneurial state ableto assume risks and to create highly networked systems of actors, harnessing the best of the private sector for the national good over a medium-­‐ to long-­‐term horizon.

 

Conclusions and policy proposals

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Κατηγοριοποιημένα ως English, Research On topic Technology & Knowledge Commons