Research Methdolology

= The Research Blueprint for the Transition Plan =

The Research Methodology


The figure consists of four rows, of which the second is primordial.

The remit of our FLOK Society project is to create a open-commons based knowledge society.

Our first task therefore is to imagine society as driven by a series of commonses in which the social, technical, scientific, and cultural value is 'deposited', and brought at the disposal of the civic, productive, and public forces to create the social and economic activities of their choice. All human activities require knowledge and therefore, it is easy to understand that every domain will have one or more commons at its disposal.

So, in terms of the organisation of social life, one should have an open education commons, an open science commons, open productive commons for agriculture, industry, and services, and an open civic commons to deploy civic activities. Creating health and dynamic open knowledge commons, that can be deployed for good living, is the aim of the transition policies that will be deployed. It is of course important to understand that their will be a multitude of interlocking commons, created by the citizenry, the market and the public sector. The infrastructure of these commons can be cooperatively managed by for-benefit associations that democratically represent the commons contributors.

Let's now turn to the top row. There can be no commons without feeding mechanisms, i.e. without open input. Legal framing and regulation must assure the possibility and health of these feeding mechanisms.

For example, there can be no open education commons, if there can are no open textbooks and open courseware. One of the roles of state policy will be to enable the production of open textbooks and courseware. There can be no open science commons without open access publishing, i.e. the freedom of researchers to publish their results so that they are available to all, and not privatized. There can be no open commons for appropriate farming technology without enabling for example open agricultural machining commons, i.e. open design communities that work on appropriate machines for small and indigenous farming. Similarly there can be no open civic commons, without the availibililty of open government data, and mechanisms such as participatory budgetting and legislation.

But feeding mechanisms alone are not sufficient. Open knowledge commons, and their feeding mechanisms, need both material and immaterial conditions that enable their good functioning. This is the purpose of the third and fourth row.

The third row illustrates the necessity of material infrastructures that make the emergence and thrivability of open commons possible. For example, if we want open access publishing to create an open science commons, in what conditions to these scientists work? In the context of privatized labs using privatized laboratory instruments, very few students and scientists have access to the material conditions that enable them to produce scientific knowledge. But the creation of open laboraties that work with open hardware instruments and sensors, specialized open computers using Arduino motherboards, and open 3D Printing machines, can dramatically decrease the needed investments in such science labs, or dramatically increase the number of participating students. Open agricultural machining can only show its true benefits if local agrarian communities can have access to microfactories in which these machines can be self-assembled. Energy autonomy of communities can only be realized if the open technical knowledge commons on renewable energy are matched to the local capacity to install distributed renewable energy, which also requires a adapted national grid. What about the creation of a network of rural hackerspaces, that enables the production of local renewable energy and localized production machinery?

The fourth row illustrates the necessity for immaterial infrastructures that enable the emergence of open productive commons. Let's take the example of the open source car Wikispeed, which achieves five times the fuel efficiency of industrial cars. One of the key problems of the Wikispeed community, which wants to create a commuter car after the successful design of a road-ready experimental racing car, is the lack of investment to scale. The reason is that traditional shareholding capital is not interested in IP-free, patent-free designs, which do not allow it to extract the super-rents that come from IP protection, and hence, it cannot accept the lower profit returns. Thus the necessity of 'open venture funding' as an 'immaterial infrastructure' to enable the creation of open-knowledge commons and their associated productive capacities. Or what about new types of value accounting systems that can recognize open contributions to a commons, in order to insure a fair distribution of value to such contributors?

The aim of the research process is to pay attention to all such aspects and enabling/facilitating mechanisms that can insure the creation and success of open knowledge commons in every field of human endeavour, and to propose integrative feedback mechanisms that can insure their social and economic viability.



= The Research Strategy and Process Explained=





The Input Phase
The FLOK Society aims to get the best knowledge, globally and locally, both from scientific and local communities.

The partners cooperating behind the project explicitly are asking the global community of commoners and experts to contribute their views, experiences and proposals to the project. At the same time, the local Ecuadorian civic society will be asked to input their views, demands and proposed solutions. It goes without saying that the global input needs to be confronted and put in dialogue with the concrete local conditions.

The input phase therefore consists of both scientific and civic input, from the global and Ecuadorian sphere.

For the global scientific input, we distinguish the following type of input:

input from high-level global advisers: the project will invite scientists to participate in an advisory board that will provide commentary on the results of our investigations the first dissemination of the project was used to compile a directory of global civic experts that are offering their expertise to the project; the experts are listed in the open research wiki at Research Network in February 2014, 20 experts will be invited to compile 10 draft policy documents based on the recommendations of the FLOK research team

Global civic input will be compiled in the following way:

on December 3, after the arrival of all FLOK research team coordinators, an Open Letter to the Commoners of the World was sent out, explicitly requesting input from the global expert community on the commons Global Advocacy organisations, such as the EFF, will be systematically contacted to obtain their policy recommendations

Civic Input from Ecuador:

in cooperation with a rural-urban activist network, three grassroots location have been selected to organize in-depth visits and to learn about their concerns, as well as proposals for public policy in cooperation with the infodesarollo.ec network, 24 workshops are organized in each of the provinces, in order to obtain input from every sector of civic society

The Process Phase
The aim of the FLOK Society research team is to have an integrative vision of the social, cultural, political and economic change that is necessary to create a positive feedback loop of policy measures that cover the different aspects of the transition.

The process of compiling and interpreting the research, has therefore been divided in five research streams.

Stream 1: Enhancing Human Capacities for Commons-based Collaboration
The first stream concerns human capacity building, i.e. individual and collective cultural change. Co-creating and participating in the construction of an open-commons based knowledge society and in the social and solidarity economy indeed requires certain capacities, which may not always be available, but which can be learned, and this will require policy support.

Stream 2: Commons-oriented Productive Capacities
One of the priorities of the current government of Ecuador is to halt the dependency of the economy on the export of finite material resources and to transition to an economy that is fed by infinite immaterial resources such as knowledge, science, and culture. The productivity of traditional sectors such as agriculture, industry and services can be infused with productive knowledge sharing.

Stream 3: Social Infrastructure and Institutional Innovation
Moving to an open-commons based knowledge society requires new institutional forms, to protect the open knowledge pools from private appropriation and protect the inclusivity of the research. What are the new forms of licensing, governance and property that can protect the commons and stimulate its uses by social, enterpreneurial and public actors?

Stream 4: Open Technical Infrastructures
Co-creating commons requires collaborative platforms and the freedom to communicate and cooperate, but the current technological infrastructures are often dominated by strong geopolitical players and their mass surveillance. What kind of internet and web, and associated internet user rights does Ecuador need to enable and empower the collaboration of its citizens.

Stream 5: Commons’ Infrastructure for Collective Life
Open-commons knowledge needs physical commons. For example, the energy autonomy of citizens requires a smart grid that allows citizens to share or exchange their surpluses; Open design commons in agricultural machining require a network of micro-factories; affordable housing for commoners depends on protecting housing from financial speculation. There are many infrastructural commons solutions that can augment the productivity of immaterial knowledge commons and create fruitful synergies. The aim of this stream is to propose policies for commons in the physical world.

The Output
Based on the preparatory framing and research of the FLOK Society research team, 20 experts will convene in February to prepare at least ten concrete policy proposals.

At the end of May 2014, a final conference, likely attended by President Rafael Correa, constitutional lawyers, civic and public representatives, members of the National Assembly, foreign experts and the research team, will discuss, modify and improve the policy proposals, and put them in a final form for legislative action by the National Assembly.

Summary of the Research Process


Plan de investigación