Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation

15Jan09

I met Michel Bauwens, the founder of the P2P Foundation, at UrbanLabs which took place at Citilab in Cornellà, Barcelona. He kindly agreed to record an interview for the PodCamp Barcelona Podcast, but due to his hectic schedule it was impossible to do until recently. I finally caught up with Michel when he was in Amsterdam and we recorded this conversation over Skype from his hotel room. I think the recording provides a very good introduction to the work of the P2P Foundation and Michel’s vision.

About the P2P Foundation (from the P2P Foundation wiki)

We function as a clearinghouse for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives.

We aim to be a pluralist network to document, research, and promote peer to peer alternatives. Our political aims could be summarized under the following maxims:

ending the destruction of the biosphere by abandoning the dangerous conceptions of pseudo-abundance in the natural world (i.e. based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite);

promoting free cultural exchange by abandoning the innovation-inhibiting conceptions of pseudo-scarcity in the cultural world (i.e. based on the assumption that the free flow of culture needs to be restricted through excessive copyrights etc…).

For more information, or to get involved with the P2P Foundation, check out these sites:

p2pfoundation.net

blog.p2pfoundation.net

Michel Bauwen’s extensive collection of bookmarks http://delicious.com/mbauwens