[p2p-research] Fwd: Seeking feedback: The Ten Most Important Shareable Events of 2009

Sun Dec 27 02:31:50 CET 2009

draft version

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeremy Smith <jeremy at shareable.net>
Date: Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 3:41 AM
Subject: Seeking feedback: The Ten Most Important Shareable Events of 2009

Hi folks. This is Jeremy at Shareable.net. I hope everyone has had a good
holiday season so far. Many of you have already provided feedback to us on
our two books lists. I've also been creating a list of the ten most
shareable events of 2009, to which several of you have already contributed.
I took those thoughts and synthesized them into the following, which I'm
submitting to the group for feedback. Note that this is a first draft; I'll
be revising it right up to the moment of publication early Wednesday
morning, and probably after. What I'm looking for now is big-picture
feedback: Are these indeed the ten most important events in sharing in 2009?
Are there pieces missing within each item that deserve a mention? Anything
else? It would be ideal to hear from you by Monday afternoon, pacific
standard time, so that I have time to revise for Wednesday publication.
Thanks so much, and have a happy new year. Let me know if you have any
questions.

Here's the list:

*The Copenhagen Climate Change Protests*

On October 24, 2009, hundreds of thousands of people around the globe came
together for the 350 Day of International Climate Action, asking their
governments and nations to embrace a more sustainable way of life. They
shared the same purpose, but interpreted it in their own locally relevant
way all around the world, from Sydney to Hanoi to Mumbai. Then in December,
thousands of individuals and groups converged on Copenhagen for the UN's
Climate Change Conference, meeting each other again or for the first time,
engaging in conversations and debates that are unprecedented in human
history. The event made it clear that we still have a ways to go: the social
movements that converged on Copenhagen don't yet have a unified or coherent
alternative to present, except for a generalized devolution to re-localized
economies, and a demand for “system change, not climate change.” And yet,
these days of action gave a global voice to tens of thousands of local
efforts that have had a hard time being seen or heard, but are unmistakably
giving shape to a new, shareable way of organizing both society and daily
life.

*The Complete Streets Act  *

For most of human history, everyone shared the streets. They were a commons
where kids played and neighbors chatted. Today, legally speaking, the
streets still belong to us all; but in reality they have become the
exclusive property of motorists. And when traffic proliferates, streetlife
disappears and our lives suffer, too—crime rises, pollution increases,
social connections decline and we have fewer transportation options.
Thankfully, the Complete Streets movement has emerged reclaim America’s
roads for everyone: pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, the disabled,
old people and children, as well as drivers. Local organizations and the
National Complete the Streets Coalition[link:
http://www.completestreets.org/] are pushing for new policies that make
streets safe, accessible and convenient for all. The Complete Streets Act of
2009 is now before Congress, and nine states and many localities have
recently enacted complete streets legislation. Meanwhile, in 2009 the Obama
administration quietly infused cities with funds for public transit, green
building and retrofitting, and education, creating new possibilities for
renewing the urban commons.

*The First Global Meetings for a Shareable World*

Around the globe in 2009, people met to discuss how to build a culture and
economy based on sharing. In July, leaders came together in the UK for the
Crottorf Consultations on the Global
Commons<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/reporting-on-the-crottorf-consultations-on-the-global-commons/2009/07/10>,
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/reporting-on-the-crottorf-consultations-on-the-global-commons/2009/07/10.
In September, the World Commons Forum met in Salzburg, Austria [
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-commons-as-a-new-narrative-for-the-21-century/2009/10/07].
The October, participants at the Free Culture Forum in Barcelona created
the “Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge.”
http://p2pfoundation.net/Free_Culture_Forum. In December, James Quilligan
and Lisinka Ulatowska initiated the creation of a UN lobby for global
governance of the commons, a which they intend to repeat May 3-14 in 2010 [
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/creation-of-a-un-lobby-for-global-governance-of-the-commons-by-the-people/2009/11/14].
And at a conference in Manchester, England on November 3, participants
discussed a new distributed infrastructures for manufacturing, based on
shared designs. Will all these meetings add up to a new global movement for
sharing and the commons? It’s too early to say, but we hope so.

*Elinor Ostrom Wins the Nobel Prize in Economics*

Sharing is widely seen as a virtuous trait on the personal level, but naïve
and impractical on the larger scale of economics. For decades, the most
influential economists have championed private property and the
individualized pursuit of wealth as the path to progress. So it came as a
shock this year when Elinor Ostrom—a political science professor at Indiana
University whose work examines how people collectively manage natural
resources—won the Nobel Prize for Economics.  Her research refutes the
long-held theory (“The Tragedy of the Commons”) that private property is the
only way to protect finite natural resources such as grazing lands, water
resources or forests from overuse and degradation. Ostrom’s field work in
Switzerland, Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala proves that communities routinely
create their own systems to preserve common resources. Her prize is a
ringing endorsement that cooperation for the common good is a legitimate
economic strategy.

*The Number of Tweets Exceeds the World Population *

On December 19, 2009, the number of tweets passed 6.8 billion, exceeding the
world population [http://mashable.com/2009/12/19/tweets-world-population/].
Meanwhile, the number of Facebook members reached 350 million
members<http://mashable.com/2009/12/02/facebook-350-million-users/>—if
Facebook were a country, it would be third in population, right behind China
and India. Why does the rise of social media matter? Let’s start with
concrete examples. Social media helped get President Obama elected, and in
2009 politicians started announcing their candidacies to their “friends” and
followers over Twitter and Facebook first, in advance of news conferences.
In Iran, social media enabled anti-government activists to bypass state-run
media and speak to the world; indeed, mainstream media around the world
relied on Twitter and Facebook as sources, and the U.S. State Department
actually asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled service outage so that
Iranian voices could continue to be heard. The democratic possibilities
suggested by social media are influencing the possibilities we see in other
spheres of life. “The people who create Facebook not only believe in what
they’re doing but are on the leading edge of Generation Open,” writes open
source activist Chris Messina in Shareable.net. “It’s about having all your
references come from the land of the internet rather than TV and becoming
accustomed to — and taking for granted — bilateral communications in place
of unidirectional broadcast forms… But it’s not just that the means of
publishing have been democratized and the new medium is being mastered;
change is flowing from the events that have shaped my generation’s
understanding of economics, identity, and freedom.”

*The Obama Administration's Open Government Directive *

In recent years, the Government 2.0 movement has advocated for local, state,
and federal agencies to adopt social media and open source technologies. The
movement’s ideas didn’t get much traction with the Bush administration. Then
the new Obama administration appointed Vivek Kundra as the White House’s
first information chief. "My first approach coming into the public sector
here in D.C. was to take as much data and put it out in the public domain as
possible,” said Kundra. “I had three goals in mind: No. 1 was to drive
transparency; No. 2 was to engage citizens; No. 3 was to ensure that we were
lowering the cost of government operations.” Under Kundra’s leadership, the
White House took small steps like putting 216 real-time feeds on its website
and switching to open-source platform Drupal. But on December 8, 2009, the
administration took a giant leap, issuing the “Open Government Directive,”
which ordered executive departments and agencies to identify and publish
online in an open format at least three high-value data sets; create an Open
Government web page, and respond to public input received via that page; and
to develop and publish an Open Government Plan that will describe how they
will improve transparency and integrate public participation and
collaboration into its activities. Will the directive be followed and its
promise fulfilled? It’s certainly a step in the right direction.

*The Election of the First Pirate Party representatives to the European
Parliament*

The Swedish Pirate Party was founded in 2006. Its goals: to open up
copyright <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright> and patent laws,
strengthen the right to privacy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy> on
both the Internet <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet> and in everyday
life, and foster
transparency<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(behavior)>in
government. By May 2009, its membership surpassed those of the Green
Party <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_(Sweden)>, the Left
Party<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Party_(Sweden)>,
the Liberal Party<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_People%27s_Party_(Sweden)>,
the Christian Democrats<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democrats_(Sweden)>,
and the Centre Party <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Party_(Sweden)>,
making it the third largest political party in Sweden. In the 2009 European
Parliament elections<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2009_(Sweden)>,
the Pirate Party received over seven percent of the total Swedish votes,
which gave it 18 seats in the Swedish parliament and two seats, filled
by Christian
Engström <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Engstr%C3%B6m> and Amelia
Andersdotter <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Andersdotter> (both
pictured at left), to the European parliament. “We are very strong among
those under 30,” Engstrom. “They are the ones who understand the new world
the best. And they have now signaled they don't like how the big parties
deal with these issues”—meaning issues of Internet sharing and privacy.
Pirate Parties have emerged in 33 other countries—including the United
States—cooperating through the Pirate Party International. Even if every one
of them ultimately fades away, they have already succeeded in pushing
twenty-first-century ideas of technological transparency and sharing into
government.

*The Rise of a Sharing Industry***

This year saw the founding of services like Rentalic, Share Some Sugar, and
Neighborgoods—all of which rely on the web and mobile technologies to
facilitate neighborhood-level sharing. In 2009, the ridesharing service
Zimride allied itself with the carsharing service Zipcar, both making
extensive use of social media and mobile technologies. Similar synergies
emerged in citywide bikesharing programs: The Spanish company Onroll, for
example, runs bike rental and return in 28 cities through text messaging. A
company called Planet Metrics <http://www.planetmetrics.com/> created
software that allows “retailers, product manufacturers, and consumer
packaging manufacturers to see their supply chain carbon
emissions<http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/12/demanding-broader-carbon-footprint-calculations.php>and
easily identify ways to reduce the footprint of their products or
services”—often by sharing resources. Meanwhile, architects, urban planners,
and real estate agents are starting to talk about “open source” homes and
streets, and they’re using social media tools to open up planning processes.
Writers and publishers are experimenting with a range of shareable
platforms, from Cory Doctorow’s Creative Commons book launches to one
project (launched this year by former Punk Planet editor Dan Sinker) that
shares short stories on cell phones. Zipcar founder Robin Chase sees
cross-platform, cross-industry sharing as the wave of the future. “Thanks to
technology, sharing transactions are easy and low cost,” Chase says in a
Shareable.net Q&A. “And the demand for sharing is rising as prices go up and
budgets fall or stagnate. Innovators are working every day at exploiting the
possibilities offered by mobile technologies to meet the needs and solve the
problems of the market.”

*The Emergence of an Equally Shared Parenting Movement***

Most items on this list involve governments, technology, business—global,
traditionally male domains. But what about sharing at home? The idea of
shared parenting is not new; for decades, feminism has pushed men to do more
around the house. But Father’s Day 2009 saw the emergence of a new
generation of fathers promoting the shared parenting ideal along with women.
Through a blizzard of media coverage in outlets that ranged from USA Today
to NBC News to NPR, male writers and activists asked other men to share the
joys and burdens of parenting with the women in their lives—not out of
guilt, but because they have found sharing at home to be a more meaningful
and healthier way of life. The number of 2009 books that tackled this topic
from both male and female perspectives is staggering: Manhood for Amateurs,
Bad Mother, The Daddy Shift, DadLabs Guide to Fatherhood, Home Game, One Big
Happy Family, Home Game, Men and Feminism, and The 40-Year-Old Version, to
name a few--and the shared parenting ‘zine Rad Dad won Utne Reader’s 2009
Independent Press Award for best ‘zine. This was also the year that social
scientists (such as Steven Greene and Laurel Elder) discovered new links
between sharing at home and shareable social attitudes, suggesting that how
we structure our family lives and raise our kids might be key to gradually
building a more shareable society.

*The Health Care Debate*

Everyone agrees that the health care situation in America is a mess. Among
industrialized nations, we rank at the top of wealthy nations for health
care costs and near the bottom for health care quality. But the 2009 debate
about health care reform revealed deep fissures in American ethics and
morality, pitting shareable, commons-based thinking against its opposite. In
our view, it was an uneven debate—Republicans articulated a clear
philosophical vision of heath care as privilege that each individual is
responsible for obtaining, while Democrats were too often muddled in saying
why we should expand health care to include the 48 million Americans who
don’t have it.

What was missing in this debate? The idea that health care is commons,
something all people should share, just the same as air, water or other
things essential to life. Looking at the health care debate from a commons
perspective would have made a number of things very clear: 1) That we have a
moral obligation to ensure that all citizens have access to quality health
care, whether through for-profit companies, non-profit cooperatives or
government programs. 2) That government funding for health research should
not become the private property of pharmaceutical and other companies; it
should be offered to the public at low costs. 3) That, in the age of H1N1
and SARS, our health depends upon the health of everyone else, so we imperil
ourselves when others can afford to see a doctor.     **

At this writing, it looks as though we’ll have a bill would add 15 million
people to Medicaid and subsidize private coverage to low-and middle-income
people. The bill improves a bad situation, but it falls far short of the
ideal of the commons. Looking ahead to 2010, the challenge now is to
articulate the idea of health care as something that everyone should share,
like police and fire protection, parks, transportation facilities, and
schools. This is a slow, even glacial process, one that involves building a
sharing mindset on the ground level, in our daily lives, and then works its
way up, from the ways we design our streets and institutions to how we run
our businesses and government.

-- 
Best,
Jeremy Adam Smith
Editor, http://shareable.net
Designing a more shareable world since September 2009!

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
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