Roberto Verzola
= author, SRI-Pilipinas coordinator, and Philippine Greens member; researches the topic of Abundance
URL = http://rverzola.wordpress.com/
(participant in Asia_Commons_Deep_Dive, Oct 12-14, 2012; Bangkok, Thailand)
Bio
Roberto Verzola has been a social activist since his college days in the 1970s. He was a political prisoner for three years (1974-1977) of the Philippine martial law regime. Educated and trained as an engineer, he has worked closely with social movements and civil society organizations on issues ranging from nuclear power, intellectual property rights, information technology, genetic engineering, environmental issues, farming methods, and election automation. He also ran an email service for NGOs for almost a decade (1992-2000), getting an industry award as “father of Philippine email”. He is a founder of the Philippine Greens (1996), of which he remains an active member, and author of the book /Towards a Political Economy of Information/ (2004). He continues to work with environmental and farmers' groups, coordinates the rice farming network SRI-Pilipinas and the Philippine election watchdog Halalang Marangal, actively participates in the international CopySouth Research Group, and is currently writing a book on the political economy of abundance.
Publications
Representative pieces:
Towards a Political Economy of Information /(Constantino Foundation, Quezon City: 2004) (http://rverzola.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/towards-a-political-economy-of-information-full-text/)
"Undermining Abundance" in Kapczynski and Krikorian (eds.), /Access to Knowledge in the Age of Property/ (Zone Books: 2010)
"System of Rice Intensification: Practices and Results in the Philippines" (http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/countries/philippines/philverzcf.pdf)
"Double-Entry Accounting Provides Software-Independent Algorithm for Confirming the Integrity of Automated Election Tallies", paper accepted at the 4th International Conference on Electronic Voting, Bregenz, Austria, July 21-24, 2010.
"Toward Global Knowledge Sharing: Examples from the Philippines" (http://www.scu.edu/sts/nexus/summer2005/VerzolaArticle.cfm)