Peer2Politics

In the Free Software and Education conference I attended in Quito, Ecuador last month, I met a most interesting person, GianMarco Schiesaro, who gave a very interesting presentation, entitled: Free Software and Human Rights. I’m not aware that this particular relationship has been investigated many times.

“What we need to aim for is not only public-social partnerships but also commons-university partnerships moving to concepts of communiversity. During the late 1970s and up to 1985 before Reagonomics secured a strangle hold on thinking, there were something akin to ‘communiversity partnerships’ then co-developing the paradigm shifting ideas of Ivan Illich and Schumacher and these hubs were linked to Alternative Technology Networks. In the USA I was in the 1970s a member of the Union of Radical Political Economists and when I came to England in 1978 involved with several of these networks that actually helped found NEF in 1987. Robin Murray was very involved with these Technology networks both through Sussex University and when working in the early 1980s as the lead economist with the Leader of the Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone. However 1989 as a turning point snuffed out this connectivity to the academies.