Protocols for Transformation: Ecologies of the Commons and the Futures of Solidarity

In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee and his team at CERN came up with a language to create the internet, HTTP, or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. The innovation allowed one computer on the internet to talk to, or link with, another one, such that over time, as websites proliferated, they could be connected into what we know today as the world wide web. We tend to look at the web as the fundamental innovation, but it was this hyper text transfer protocol that allowed this web to emerge in the first place. Today we are facing a multitude of crises and challenges and similarly, when we think about the diversity of issues we are facing, we understand that these are not segregated issues but rather connected at the systemic and even epistemological levels (related to how we understand knowledge, truth and reality). For example we know that the challenge of addressing climate change is technical but also related to political will, how the media portrays or makes invisible the climate emergency and to what extent political systems are controlled by special interests. Increasingly we also understand the various issues we face through the language and ideas of the “commons”. <a href="https://off-planet.medium.com/protocols-for-transformation-ecologies-of-the-commons-and-the-futures-of-solidarity-a501af4fc3ce">Read More</a>