Panel Statement
Panel: Re-rooting Digital Culture: Media Art Ecologies
Bauwens argues for a provocative double (hypo)thesis, namely that for-profit production based on proprietary knowledge is inherently unsustainable, both at a micro, and a macro level, because it is designed to ignore negative environmental externalities, and mobilizes many different strategies, such as planned obsolescence, to achieve this end. By contrast, commons-oriented production that is centered around business ecologies working with open communities, is inherently sustainable. Open communities have no incentive to design unsustainable products, and the business ecologies working with them, have to build their for-profit activities on this foundation. In addition, non-proprietary design has a deep impact not just on the products, but on the very machinery of production (through the development of open and distributed manufacturing) and on consumption (through product-service ecologies that are specifically designed for sustainability and re-use). In this presentation, Bauwens will unpack the characteristics of peer production that are transforming production and consumption processes towards sustainability.
- 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, NL, and external expert at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008). Michel currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand.