Michel Bauwens
Belgian activist
Michel Bauwens (born 21 March 1958) is a Belgian political theorist, writer, and conference speaker on the subjects of technology, culture and business innovation. A leading thinker in the emerging field of peer-to-peer (P2P) theory, Bauwens founded the P2P Foundation, a global organization of researchers working in open collaboration in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has authored a number of essays, including his thesis The Political Economy of Peer Production.
Biography
Bauwens regularly lectures internationally on P2P theory, the commons, and the potential for social change. His contributions to the field were detailed by George Dafermos in chapter 7 named Prophets and Advocates of Peer Production of The Handbook of Peer Production.
In 2014, Bauwens was the research director with the FLOK Society (Free Libre Open Knowledge) at the National Institute of Advanced Studies of Ecuador (IAEN). The FLOK Society developed a first of its kind Commons Transition Plan for the Ecuadorian government. Over fifteen policy papers, the plan outlines policy proposals for transitioning Ecuador to what is described as a social knowledge economy based on the creation and support of open knowledge commons. One version of the plan is available online.
In the spring of 2017, Bauwens advised the city of Ghent, in northern Belgium (Flanders), on a similar Commons Transition Plan.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michel Bauwens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.