By Jessy Kate Schingler, Primavera de Filippi, Tony Lai and Lou Viquerat “It seems to me, what you’re trying to do is not to provide a scientific framework, but to provide the components of a normative framework… what you’re looking for is advice for people trying to build collective action.”…

Web3 is a new world of technical capabilities and social ways of organizing, based on blockchain and other decentralized protocols. Engagement is high, money is flowing, and lots of experiments are being conducted. I work with several nonprofits as well as self-organized community initiatives that don’t easily fit into traditional…

As our planet gets more connected, and humans more mobile, we are experiencing growing challenges around coordination and governance, and many of our traditional tools are failing. At the UN—our de facto global governance body—countries come together as peers in attempts to coordinate without an overarching authority. Enforcement mechanisms are…

By Jessy Kate Schingler and Primavera de Filippi Extitutional theory is an emerging field of scholarship that provides a set of conceptual tools to describe and analyse the underlying social dynamics of a variety of social arrangements, such as communities, companies, organisations, or any other types of institutions. Extitutional theory…

At the Embassy SF our goal is to manifest community as a platform, and to continually be pushing the boundary of new ways of sharing and transparency. Part of that means redirecting any surplus income back into the community. Historically, that would have meant that a small group would make…

We have an exciting new coliving house opening next door to Embassy SF, and one of our guests will be moving into this house. Yesterday we stood around the kitchen and discussed whether there was any “hard” advice for starting a successful community. …

When you seek for a project to be collaboratively governed, there is an initial contradiction. Those who start the project inherently have more information and usually more power. In a hierarchical environment, removing yourself from the power role can be addressed by hiring someone(s) and “assigning” that power. …

Excellence, Scarcity and Exclusivity — We have a pervasive notion that excellence requires exclusivity. This probably comes from a time when opportunity really was scarce, and, as a result, did require some amount of exclusivity. We built not only institutions around that fact, but narratives. And after narratives, identities. Today, access to opportunity is everywhere…

July 3rd, 2013 3 minute read I never thought I would have a strong opinion about affordable housing, but I’ve been really surprised time and again to see people dismiss “affordable housing” in favour of “Affordable housing.” We live in a house where there is a mix of income levels…