Telling Stories on Commoning with Design of Models and Simulations

Abstract

This talk focuses on commoning as practice, or rather the research project Thinking Toys for Commoning as a practice in understanding commoning, and its complicated relationship with technology. We explored this relationship through making of agent-based models, workshops on tech and commoning, and documenting the relationship between commoning, degrowth, technology, hegemony and making of (computational) toys. We focus on searching for a commoning way to think about technology and the digital in the context of housing cooperatives. I present here in detail two stories that we explore with the computational toys - agent-based models built from the information we gathered from workshops with the coopeartives. The stories are attuned at exploring the entanglements of labour with value extraction in commoning activities and demonstrating the power of convergence of actors around shared interests.