michel on protopia ness
michel bauwens on protopia
via tweet [https://x.com/mbauwens/status/2082870165553746356?s=20]:
This was the preparatory talk for my presentation yesterday:
* Protopia Interview with Michel Bauwens :
how to build a commons / p2p ‘scenius’, so that many ‘genial’ seed forms can emerge
notes/quotes from 19 min video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLryrd-yR6U]:
Protopia Interview with Michel Bauwens via agora citizen network .. Interview with Michel Bauwens, the founder of the P2P Foundation, for “Prototyping the Future,” an event on March 19th 2026 in Paris.
In collaboration with the Learning Planet Institute, RadicalxChange Foundation, and 706.
[all via transcript since health ness]
My name is Michel Bowens. I’m a Belgian. I was the founder of the P2P Foundation, which is an observatory of all things econdspeer-to-peer. And I mean translocal self-organization.
translocal org: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
So the the capacity to create non-physical cooperation and commons if we do this through the digital that we are stronger if we have mutual resources common knowledge common open source code common designs that we can rely on together. So peer-to-peer in the comments is what we look at and how that influences everything.
1:06 – I was the first and last person outside of the cyberpunk mailing list that talked to Satoshi Nakamoto.
you referred to this concept of seniors.. I personally learned about it from Brian Eno and Kevin Kelly. And Brian Eno was the musician that worked with David Bowie and Kevin Kelly was the first editor of Wired magazine. And so they’re they’re they kind of were saying that, you know, if you have a Michelangelo or Leola da Vinci or the Beatles that they they’re not just individuals, they actually come from a a culture, a supportive culture. And that’s what they call seniors. So genius depends on seniors.
to me.. intellectness as cancerous distraction.. need all of us for the dance to dance..
2:00 – the example they give.. rock music.. really came about according to them because there was an unemployment but also unemployment money at the same time in the 1960s in England and so that gave these young people the time to actually be creative otherwise they would have you know just gone from job to job…so it’s a bit of an accident that that you have these seniors. You need some kind of surplus in your society. . it’s an emerging phenomena.
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. perpetuating survival triage.. for (blank)’s sake..
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
It’s like music.like a hit song right now? You can analyze..know what they do now with these hooks with when they make music with a computer. The thing is you can do it two or three times and then people are already tired of it..same with seniors. There’s no secret sauce.
3:00 – but you need an openness in your culture.. in Mai where I live in in northern Thailand..whole history of being open people from from abroad… again a bit like in England in 1960 it has a very cheap way of life in Paris even though it’s an attractive world city but it’s very expensive. People don’t have place..it’s busy.. but we all have to try/find what that source is in a particular place.
to me.. the ‘source’ in all the places.. that we keep missing..is the itch-in-the-soul.. what’s already on each heart
Maybe I want to tell you a second thing is that of course now we live in the time of the internet. And so maybe there’s a different way of looking at seniors than in the past, right? In the sense that maybe we can have distributed seniors. It’s worth thinking about where you know you have like a mini seniors in Paris and then you have a many seniors over there and a mini senior over there, but they’re somehow interconnected.
or rather.. that all/none of us are ‘seniors’.. again.. because we need all for the dance to dance.. more about listening/being that rhythm than any ‘senior’ intell/wisdom/whatever
4:00 – And I often refer to Jordan Hall who has a concept called the civium and his claim is that because of digital technology we don’t need cities necessarily to create a seniors.. that network effect .. could do it outside of a city.
jordan (green)hall.. jordan on civium project.. jordan on civium vs city.. et al
I think it’s important to think of seniors as not just something physical but also something that can reinforce each other translocally .. cosmo localism is the idea that what is heavy should be local and what is light should be global and shared.. neoliberal global system not viable in long run because we use too much resources.
cosmo local ness.. michel on cosmo localism.. et al
5:00 – so the extractive is not in balance with the regenerative and *so we are going to need to do much more local production closer to to where people .. where does our food/energy come from and it should be more local but we should work together on a planetary level around **science technology learning knowledge
*rather.. need 1st/most: means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening – so we can hear what’s already on each heart as global detox in order to org around legit needs
once we listen that deep.. once we org around legit needs.. we’ll let go of all the irrelevant s.. all the cancerous distractions that are starving us to death.. since that day
**everything/knowledge/data/whatever to date has been non legit.. need to try self-talk as data
mufleh humanity law et al
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
6:00 – so you have an eco village doing some kind of farming/permaculture but they’re *learning from the 2,000 permaculture centers in the whole world not just from themselves.. an ecological accelerationism you know it’s like a regenerative accelerationism.. **Benjamin life talks about it regenerative accelerationism .. ***ideal synthesis between people who are embodied, you know, in their territory like in a bio-regional context, but their brains and their cooperation is at a global level.
*1\ not about learning.. rather.. about listening deep enough to hear/see/be the rhythm of the dance 2\ 2000/whatever isn’t enough.. has to be all of us.. ie: holmgren indigenous law et al.. again.. need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature so we can org around legit needs
**benjamin life.. benjamin (l) on sovereignty and solidarity ness.. /acc ness.. michel on /acc ness.. vitalik on /acc ness..
***aka: the dance
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen (for that dance to dance): the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
7:00 – And to find that the *ideal combination is really what cosmoloism is about..**we have to start thinking in a different way and I think the crisis is going to accelerate the need.
*berners-lee everyone law.. none of us are free.. rumi words law.. et al
**rather start listening in a diff way.. sinclair perpetuation law.. graeber rethink law.. graeber can’t know law.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law.. et al
we need to let go. of all the irrelevant s.. gupta roadblock law et al
8:00 – so what we are proposing with cosmoloism is a different way of thinking about the the world order as an archipelago of regenerative projects.
gershenfeld something else law et al.. ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness).. via 2 conversations.. in the city.. as the day
14:00 – So then the second model is a network nations model which is defended by Primav de Philippe and and a group of research and I sometimes part of it. like I don’t think we need to be in the same physical location. I think we can have a number of villages that do something together.
primavera on network sovereignties,, network society.. et al
Either they do all the same, you know, like Eco Village Federation, or they are complimementaryary to each other, but they create a common digital identity. And this is what I call the archipelago of regenerative projects. I think they will coexist. I don’t think we can abandon geographic existence. You know, we have bodies. We need to be embedded in a bio region or a nation.
liminal village ness et al
16:00 – First of all, I personally think *conversation itself is crucial. .people always think they have to act and to do stuff. But I think to create a common spiritual field is very important and the problem of our era with the digital is automization. We already had it before, but it’s now hyperatomization. So **I don’t know what you know. I don’t know what you’re reading. I don’t know what you’re watching. And the okay, we seem to be able to talk together, but there’s a lot of people I cannot talk to because they ***hear a word and they get triggered by that word and they just assume that I mean something with that word, right? Because in their environment, it’s a loaded concept. ****I don’t know that because I don’t know what they’re reading and watching that makes them think that way. And so the idea *****to create a social coordination mechanism ..is very important.
*but need detox embed.. otherwise just perpetuating whalespeak.. need a means to ‘speak/hear/see/be’ itch-in-the-soul.. ie: tech with detox embed
again.. 2 conversations we need most/1st.. in the city.. as the day.. because since that day all convo/talk/words ness has been non legit ‘data’..
**rather about the itch-in-the-soul and imagine if we ness.. otherwise perpetuate ie: maté trump law et al
***even w/in yourself.. why we need tech w/o judgment to facil a deeper convo the dance.. (to facil the detox to get us back/to the dance).. ie: self-talk as data via idiosyncratic jargon.. via nonjudgmental expo labeling.. as we found with on the ground ness.. otherwise just perpetuating whalespeak
****even if you did.. graeber can’t know law.. paul know\love law.. et al.. but again.. all to date is just flapping.. aka: whalespeak.. we need detox from that embedded intoxication first.. and in sync.. otherwise whac-a-mole-ing ness.. humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync.. the dance
*****indeed.. and org mech we need most/first: a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
17:00 – Now second thing is *decision making ..reason we have a crisis of democracy in my view is not just that we need to renew the voting mechanisms or whatever, we also need to say, well, do we actually have power, right? And that’s why I go back to our previous discussion. **We need to create linkages with power.
*how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
again.. imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
**rather than ‘power’ (one of those words that makes us think of ‘control’) .. i’d say energy.. what we need to ‘link’ most.. the energy of 8b alive people
18:00 – So, we need to think about that and .. about the physical just as much as about how we make decisions and how we talk to each other so it’s a two-level thing..yes, we should talk together..but also we should think about how do we create new forms of solidarity with each other.
again.. how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove
nothing to date (ever since that day) has gotten to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. perpetuating survival triage.. for (blank)’s sake..
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be you. 