No Open Society without Open Knowledge, no Open Knowledge without Open Infrastructures
Truly producing, sharing and building on open knowledge requires an infrastructure, whose design and invisible architecture must not be in full control of social forces that do not share the desire and focus on creating a free society based on knowledge sharing. The good news is that despite the corporate control and government censorship of internet infrastructure, many individuals and collectives are building tools and resources that are appropriate for the free sharing of knowledge. In the lecture, we will propose an integrative vision with a visualizing of such open infrastructures, show how they are related to each other, and stress that they are in fact also tools that generate a profound transformation of social processes and value creation. The bad news, that many elements of such an infrastructure are still missing or controlled by unfriendly institutions, plays a signalling function as regards to what still needs to be done, in terms of an appropriate social, technical and institutional infrastructure that can promote and maintain social sharing.
by Michel Bauwens, June 30th at 18:00, Track I
Michel Bauwens is an active writer, researcher and conference speaker on the subject of technology, culture and business innovation. He is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has been an analyst for the United States Information Agency, knowledge manager for British Petroleum, eBusiness Strategy Manager for Belgacom, as well as an internet entrepreneur in his home country of Belgium. He has co-produced the 3-hour TV documentary Technocalyps with Frank Theys, and co-edited the two-volume book on anthropology of digital society with Salvino Salvaggio. Michel is currently Primavera Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and external expert at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008). Michel currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, assisting Richard Hames with the development of the Asian Foresight Institute. In Thailand, he has taught at Payap University, CMU, and Dhurakij Pandit University’s International College. He is a founding member of the Commons Strategies Grou
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