Calendars:Networked Media Calendar/Networked Media Calendar/02-12-2016 -Event 1

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Outside event: *MoneyLab #3 Failing Better Day 2 of 2 *Conference: Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam (NL) Cabaret: TBD, Amsterdam Afterparty: Roest Bar, Amsterdam

URL: http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/

If there's enough of you interested in going PZI may be able to pay 15 euro's of a 30 euro 2-day pass. Start signing in under the sessions or per day at the bottom of the page:

  • Friday 02 Dec: Failing Better Afterparty - Roest, Amsterdam
  • 9:30 – 10:00 – Registration
  • 10:00 – 11:15 – Session 7: Co-operatives and the Commons featuring Trebor Scholz, Sito Veracruz & Arthur Röing Baer
  • 11:15 – 12:30 – Session 8: Big Pocket is Watching You! featuring Austin Houldsworth, Nathalie Maréchal, Emily Rosamond & Brett Scott
  • 12:30 – 13:30 – Lunch Break
  • 13:30 – 15:00 – Workshops
  • Session 9: Blockchain Governance by Bitcoin Wednesday
  • 'Session 10: Flexonomix District Currency Game by NetHood
  • Session 11: Role Play Your Way to Budgetary Blockchain Bliss

15:00 – 15:30 – Break

  • 15:30 – 17:30 – Session 12: UBI: For One and for All? featuring Tori Abernathy, Dmytri Kleiner, Johannes Ponader & Patrice Riemens
  • 19:00 – 23:00 – Failing Better Afterparty
  • Day ticket

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  • Session tickets

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  • Session descriptions
  • Session 6: Save the Last Dance?

The music industry is still in repair after the initial disruption of digital downloads and streaming sites in the mid 1990s. Traditional rights management laws continue to restrict the creation, distribution and profitability of music. In addition to this, public performances are now monetized with the use of audio recognition technology in music venues, turning bars, clubs and festivals into sites of data-based economic revenue for major publishers and labels.

How does this play in the ever-growing festival and club scene? What are the goals for a global industry that now relies on counting streamed playbacks and selling hand-made band t-shirts? Can the outcry for alternatives be met with distribution platforms that disrupt the dominant players and reach larger audiences? And how is the club scene itself being affected by the ongoing real-estate boom in the metropolitan areas, usually seen as the birthplace of new music currents?

  • Session 7: Co-operatives and the Commons

There is fresh interest in initiating and maintaining a digital commons to provide vital restbite against the wave on demand mobile apps and share economy services. This can be witnessed in tech start-ups and entrepreneurs shifting towards a co-operative business model, in what has been named as platform co-operavatism. The introduction of unions and crowd-owned companies, not only attempt to secure some stability for the precarious worker in the digital economy but also attempt to move towards a more circular economy over the dominant extractive monopolies such as Uber and Air’n’b.

The platform co-op movement opens up the possibility of collective ownership to re-instate shared common resources within circular economies. The ideas are already beginning to take hold in cities that have already been damaged by the affects of share economy businesses such as Berlin, which has a strict limit on Airbnb rentals, and Rio de Janeiro, which banned Uber all together last year. In areas such as these, where the repercussions of unregulated digital platforms have already impacted social welfare, the platform co-op may offer a promising sanctuary from the destructive expansion of on-demand capitalism.

  • Session 8: Big Pocket is Watching You!

The explosion of new forms of alternative currencies and the persistent refusal to do away with physical cash indicates growing public concern over the way in which electronic money enables large scale data surveillance. In a world without cash, every payment becomes traceable, allowing for unprecedented amounts of citizen spending data to be collected. As more and more shops and retailers in large cities reject cash in favor of electronic money, important issues regarding privacy, data and surveillance become central to the future of money. These concerns echo wider debates around data and surveillance – the Apple vs. FBI backdoor case has highlighted the mounting tensions between commercial and governmental data surveillance. The implementation of crypto currencies by some of the worlds leading banks is a worrying advancement that refits the anonymity of bitcoin into the largest consumer database.

What alternatives to electronic money can prevent citizen surveillance and inspire radical visions of the future of money? What does the commercial adoption of bitcoin indicate for citizen privacy? How will consumer data be managed in the future of electronic cash?

  • Session 9 (workshop): Blockchain Governance

The simultaneous rise of digital currencies and the widespread failure of our political and financial systems is hardly a coincidence. Seven years of innovation and millions of dollars of investment have led to a proliferation of blockchain solutions designed to reduce dependence on authorities like governments and banks. What might sound like science fiction is now happening: self-executing, decentralized networks in which ‘trust’, ‘governance’ and ‘consensus’ are coded into protocols. To what extent have they succeeded? Where have they failed and what challenges do they face? What alternatives for governance do these new technologies offer? How will they affect our world? Will we soon see smart contracts, Swarms and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations replace traditional, centralized bureaucratic powers? How can we best use them to enable new governance systems while balancing public and private interests with fundamental individual rights?

This session explores the subject from different perspectives: from the small core of developers who make crucial decisions on system architecture, from the users and from other stakeholders like, for example, miners who play a key role in the power structure.

This session is organized by Bitcoin Wednesday, the pioneering conference series held on every first Wednesday of the month since its genesis in 2013.

  • Session 10 (workshop): Flexonomix District Currency Game

The Flexonomix District Currency Game introduces a currency for housing cooperatives. The Flexonomix workshop will experiment with how a district currency can be implemented in housing co-operatives and lead to a commons based community currency. By inhabiting the role of a co-op member, participants will be asked to improve living conditions for the district using the skills and requirements of the community. At the end of each round, new decisions will adjust the process. Commoning through a currency incorporates the abilities, needs, freedoms and obligations of the individuals, as well as the effect of the collective community. The question of how to realize such a currency will be challenged through this workshop and different opportunities or threads might be explored further.

It has been said that in terms of its ecology of tools and infrastructures, the blockchain is at the same stage of development as the World Wide Web in the late 1980s. Since 2013 blockchains have become a focus for investment by world banks, fintechs and corporations who predict a fourth industrial revolution of super-automation and hyperconnectivity that will increase global inequity. In this version of the future, code replaces legislation. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) route around systems of regulation and taxation via immutable smart contracts. Those that grew up with the www know that decentralized infrastructure does not equate to decentralized power. Therefore it is crucial that people from diverse disciplines and backgrounds are involved when working out how blockchain technologies can be shaped in the interests of more diverse needs and interests.

This workshop invites you to role play the formation of a DAO for solidarity and a commons for the arts in the age of networks. Experience and debate the hopes and tensions; work through the asymmetries, dramas, inequities and politics of coalitions across difference... starting with the budget! This activity is a precursor to a series of smart contract role play and design activities for people of all backgrounds and disciplines – lawyers, philosophers, economists, financiers, artists, designers, developers – where participants will write social relations into code as a basis for debate.

  • Session 11 (workshop): Role Play Your Way to Budgetary Blockchain Bliss

It has been said that in terms of its ecology of tools and infrastructures, the blockchain is at the same stage of development as the World Wide Web in the late 1980s. Since 2013 blockchains have become a focus for investment by world banks, fintechs and corporations who predict a fourth industrial revolution of super-automation and hyperconnectivity that will increase global inequity. In this version of the future, code replaces legislation. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) route around systems of regulation and taxation via immutable smart contracts. Those that grew up with the www know that decentralized infrastructure does not equate to decentralized power. Therefore it is crucial that people from diverse disciplines and backgrounds are involved when working out how blockchain technologies can be shaped in the interests of more diverse needs and interests.

This workshop invites you to role play the formation of a DAO for solidarity and a commons for the arts in the age of networks. Experience and debate the hopes and tensions; work through the asymmetries, dramas, inequities and politics of coalitions across difference... starting with the budget! This activity is a precursor to a series of smart contract role play and design activities for people of all backgrounds and disciplines – lawyers, philosophers, economists, financiers, artists, designers, developers – where participants will write social relations into code as a basis for debate.


  • Session 12: UBI – For one and for All?

Universal Basic Income has re-entered the debate in a response to increasing austerity measures and welfare cuts offering a possible exit strategy for citizens struggling in the free market. Although basic income is an attractive prospect for anyone facing redundancy from increasing automated workforce some argue that distributing ‘free money’ is a shortsighted solution to extreme poverty and will only benefit the creative class. Although only 23% of the Swiss population voted in favor for a national basic income an overwhelming 80% believed that there would be further referendums on basic income in the future. If the debate is only beginning than there should be more discussion about how Basic Income will unfold. Should the control of distributing free cash be given to the state or can we start crowdfunding schemes to initiate Basic Income for ourselves? Can the distribution of free money offer progressive models for financial and social inclusion? Or is basic income a way to achieve maximum employment for the creative class?