Michel Bauwens

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Read the my full bio

Hello,

My name is Michel Bauwens, 47, and I'm living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I teach and devote time to research on P2P, through my newsletter, and through my manuscript (book in progress), which is posted on this site, or in a shorter earlier version.

I'm a Belgian national, and before my move to Thailand I was active as a 'dotcom entrepreneur' as well as ebusiness strategy director for Belgium's largest telco, Belgacom.

It is my aim to develop a 'P2P Theory' which adequately describes and explains current trends, to propose, in dialog with others, sustainable strategies for political and social change, i.e. to achieve a 'commons-based society' that can operate within a reformed market and state.

This 'virtual' foundation is my attempt to link up with others, and to develop a resource that can be of use to a commons movement, along with the many fine resources already developed by others. However, I devote most of my energy today to the newsletter and manuscript, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated.


More formal bio

"Michel Bauwens (born 21 March 1958) started his career as information analyst and reference librarian for the United States Information Agency (1983-2000), worked as information manager for British Petroleum (1990-1993) (where he created one of the first virtual information centers and is credited for coining the concept of cybrarian), and is former editor-in-chief of the first European digital convergence magazine, the Dutch language Wave. He created two internet start-ups, the intranet/extranet company E-Com (sold to Alcatel) and the interactive marketing company Kyberco (sold to Tagora holding). He was European Mgr. of Thought Leadership for MarchFIRST, and ebusiness strategy director for Belgacom, Belgium’s leading telco (1999-2002).

With Frank Theys, Bauwens is the co-creator of a 3 hour documentary TechnoCalyps, an examination of the 'metaphysics of technology'. He taught and edited two anthologies on the Anthropology of Digital Society, together with Salvino Salvaggio.

Bauwens is the founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives, which researchers peer production/governance/property and the open/free, participatory, and commons-oriented modes of human cooperation. He is one of three co-founders and partners of the Commons Strategies Group, with Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, organizing global conferences on the emerging field of commons-oriented economics. He is the author of a number of on-line essays, including a seminal thesis Peer to Peer and Human Evolution and The Political Economy of Peer Production (CTheory).

For the P2P Foundation, he functioned as community manager responsible of an ecology of collaboration consisting of: A wiki which reached 20,000 pages which were viewed 22 million times; a blog with a Google PR rank of 7 and 2,000 readers per day; and various social media feeds and mailing lists where the community interacts.

He has taught courses on the anthropology of digital society to postgraduate students at ICHEC/St. Louis in Brussels, Belgium and now lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he has taught related courses at Payap University, Chiang Mai Universitya and Dhurakij Pandit University. He is a Research Fellow with the Primavera project at the University of Amsterdam and outside expert with the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008, 2012). He is member of advisory boards such as the Union of International Associations, Shareable magazine, ShareLex, and others.

In 2014, he functioned as the research director of the FLOK Society transition program in Ecuador (floksociety.org), establishing 15 policy and legal framework proposals for a transition to a open commons-based knowledge society".

More Information

  1. Bibliography of Michel Bauwens
  2. Bio
  3. Testimonials