“A revolution in how we produce the stuff of life”: cosmolocalism gets its first full reader, launching next week

At A/UK, we use the idea of “cosmolocalism” politically - a vision of local communities aiming to live within planetary boundaries, but drawing support and expertise from others across the world, downloading best practice from, and making relationships through, the Cloud.

But it’s good to be reminded that cosmolocalism had a specific origin - as a way of thinking about how we could use advanced technologies to “DGML” - that is, design globally and manufacture locally.

A great occasion for this is the launch next week (sign up here) of The Cosmolocal Reader - a rich book of essays and case-studies of cosmolocal practice, edited by leaders in the field like Michel Bauwens and Jose Ramos.

From their blurb:

The Cosmolocal Reader features 50 chapters documenting and discussing theory and practice. From modular automotive manufacturing, to agri-robotics and peer to peer farming, community driven wind power and housing construction… to biohacking, furniture fabrication, upcycling, prosthetics, and disaster relief. It’s 38 cases and examples from around the world providing a foundation to consider what exists and what could be. 

Humanity is at a crossroads, and the challenges we are facing - with the climate emergency, ecological overshoot and an equity crisis - are asking for bold and transformative thinking and strategy. 

Cosmolocalism stands for a revolution in how we produce the stuff of life. Cosmolocal strategies and approaches have the potential to address many of these challenges.

But it is a contested space with no guarantees. There are patent wars and appropriations of IP, the challenges in building and financing open source and open design start ups, creating ecosystems of value exchange, and in transforming urban forms.

But we see the possibilities for change being born. We hold new technological potentials, creative human labor that can be globally mutualized, and new modes of economic, political and cultural organization.

The ingredients for transformation are sitting before us. In this book we bring many of these ingredients together for us to consider how to use these to shape the world we want to be.

More here. It may be interesting for you to look up some of these stories about cosmolocalism in practice, enterprise by enterprise:

Let there be light: IIT Bombay’s SoUL Project to Energize
Rural India
Raji Ajwani Ramchandani and Snehal Awate

Rural Dynamism in the Digital Age
David Li

An Open Source Preemptive Strike in the Coming War Over The Freedom to Make Your Own Products
Joshua M. Pearce

Utopia Maker
Chrystèle Bazin

AgOpenGPS and DIY Open Farm Innovation: An Overview
Chris Bennett

Chang’an: 3D Printing Cyberpunk Town on Pearl River Delta
Vicky Xie, David Li, and Kangkang Zhang

Wind Empowerment, Pico-hydro and Nea Guinea
Vasilis Kostakis, Kostas Latoufis, Minas Liarokapis, Michel Bauwens

Farm Hack: A Farmer-Driven Platform for Knowledge Exchange
Chris Giotitsas

L’atelier Paysan: Peasants Building Their Own Tools
Chris Giotitsas

Open Bionics
Vasilis Kostakis, Kostas Latoufis, Minas Liarokapis, Michel Bauwens

Sensorica
Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros

Tzoumakers
Alekos Pantazis and Morgan Meyer

MuSIASEM: Accounting for material/energy flows and their limits
Michel Bauwens and Alex Pazaitis, with additions from Gien Wong

FabChain: Linking advanced research to urban metabolisms and mainstream production
and manufacturing
Michel Bauwens and Alex Pazaitis

FairCoin and FairCoop: Tools for a cosmo-local, open cooperative
ecosystem
Michel Bauwens and Alex Pazaitis

Envienta
Gabor Kiss

Holochain: An alternative to a global distributed ledger, based on biomimicry
Michel Bauwens and Alex Pazaitis

AbilityMade
Jose Ramos and Melissa Fuller