P2P Foundation's blog » Blog Archive » The FLOK Society Project: Ecuador commits itself to a open commons-based knowledge society

“'The FLOK Society welcomes Michel Bauwens to Ecuador. Bauwens, a founder of the P2P Foundation, flew into Quito on Sept. 17 to begin collaborating towards a fundamental reimagination of Ecuador. Bauwens will lead a research team that is proposing to unleash a participatory, global process with an immediate implementation in Ecuador. The process will remake the roots of Ecuador’s economy, setting off a transition into a society of free and open knowledge. In the first semester of 2014, Bauwens will assist in setting up a global network of transition researchers. The P2P Foundation is a global network of researchers that is documenting the shift towards open, participatory and commons-oriented practices in every domain of human activity, but especially also the shift from collaboration on open knowledge and code, towards cooperation in open design, open hardware, open science, open government, and the shift towards open agricultural and open machining practices that have great potential for increasing the productivity and sustainability of farming and industrial processes. Ecuador is the first country in the world which is committing itself to the creation of a open commons knowlege based society. In order to achieve the transition to a ‘buen saber’, or ‘good knowledge’ society, which is an extension of the official strategy towards a ‘buen vivir’-based society, the Advanced Studies Institute (IAEN by its ]Spanish initials) in Quito, Ecuador, led by the rector Carlos Prieto, has initiated a strategic process, called the FLOK Society Project, which aims to organize a major international conference in March 2013, and will produce 10 strategic documents proposing transition policies towards the good knowledge society, which will be presented to the Ecuadorian citizens through intensive participatory processes, similar to those that took place for the establishment of the new Constitution and the ambitious National Plans, which set the guidelines for government policy ...'"