» Régine Debatty

With the motto “taking the Internet to the streets” and inspired by the way the web works, Barcelona-based group Platoniq explores alternative models to distribute, shape and share information, knowledge and cultures. The models they propose are both innovative and built upon a tradition based on political, social and cultural movements that started thirty years ago. But while in the past such projects and structures were mostly the isolated doings of so-called anarchists, punks, and evangelists of ’skillshares’, nowadays they are connecting local structures and processes with global dynamics and networks.

Platoniq gained world fame when they launched Burn Station , a mobile self-service system for searching, listening to and copying music and audio files with no charge. Legally and under a Copyleft Licence. Launched in 2003, Burn Station has met with an enormous and worldwide success. Its system and structure has been autonomously reproduced in schools, social centers, libraries and universities in Europe and South America, demonstrating its value as an educational tool.

Video documentation of Burn Station.

Platoniq’s latest endeavour is the Bank of Common Knowledge , a lab platform that engages with new ways of enhancing the distribution channels for practical and informal knowledge. Stephen Downes believes that : The greatest non-technical issue is the mindset. We have to view information as a flow rather than as a thing. Online learning is a flow. It’s like electricity or water. It’s there, it’s available and it flows. It’s not stuff you collect….

Could the same philosophy apply to the knowledge that does not flow in the digital space?

The Bank of Common Knowledge exports the dynamics of Free Culture and the Copyleft philosophy to processes of knowledge generation and transmission among citizens.

The contents generated are Copyleft, and can be copied, redistributed or modified freely. Based on the organization of meetings among citizens, the Bank of Common Knowledge experiments with new forms of production, learning and citizen participation.

For more details check the video presentation.

Platoniq has organized several free knowledge markets over the past two years. As a member of Platoniq recently explained me, their activities cover an extensive range of topics: The Bank of Common Knowledge Markets are made possible through the offers and requests that BCK receives from citizens: How does a consumer cooperative function?, How can i share wifi with my neighbours?, Is it possible to earn money through collaboration instead of competition?, Is it possible to unfreeze patent-protected scientific knowledge? What can we learn from traditional cultures in the economic context? How can we regularize immigration documents in Spain? How can we set up a wiki without computer?

The exchanges generated during the activities are recorded and published online under a copyleft license in order to guarantee that knowledge keep on circulating.

Video of the Cambridge’s market

Video of the Lisbon edition.

In order to make BCK truly public (in the sense that its appeal should go beyond the usual copyleft and the free culture crowd), Platoniq is testing various knowledge transmission and communication formats, such as games, demos, workshops, first person experiences, challenges, first aid kits or take away theory. These activities are documented in a set of  video manuals or knowledge capsules produced for inclusion in the Bank of Common Knowledge.

The main goal of the project is not to build an online video archive, even if that would end up being one of the consequences , says Platoniq. The real challenge for the Bank of Common Knowledge is to build a model of transmission and free exchange whose social organization and self-training strategies can be easily replicated.

by Régine Debatty

It is particularly challenging to be asked to reflect on the future of currency and economy in a time when credit crunch is expected to bloom into a full-scale recession. The financial crisis is going to have many consequences I’d rather not think about right now. But from what I can observe, the alarming forecasts are dividing the population into two main groups. A vast majority believes that they should try and understand the difference between a credit card and a debit card, cut out the coupons that will get them a fifth sausage for the price of four at the butcher counter and brace themselves for better times to come back. Then there are the others, those who believe that the crisis is a sign that the economic models we used to thrive on are leaking from all sides and that instead of trying to patch up the haemorrhage as best as we can, we should just accept that the system is fucked up and time has come to look around us for alternatives.

The so-called ‘developing countries’ haven’t waited for the credit crunch, banking bail-out plans and other crumbling down of the markets to come up with models we might want to reflect upon.

Take Brazil, a country famed for the way most of its 180 million inhabitants thrive on music. Yet, last year Sony/BMG released only a dozen new compact discs, a ridiculous number for such a succulent market.  So where has the Brazilian music gone?

The answer is easy and almost obvious: the music scene is out there in the street, outside the distribution systems sternly controlled by the major labels. Its most celebrated offspring is the tecnobrega a style of music born in Belém a city of 1,500,000 inhabitants located in the northern part of the country. The name comes from the ’80s techno music beats and from ‘brega’, which could be translated as ‘kitsch’ and ‘cheesy.’ Tecnobrega churns out about 400 new CDs and 100 new DVDs every year. None of them can be bought in stores.

Let’s leave aside the music itself and explore the business model that underpins it. The adventure typically starts in the studio of the music producer. The studio is often a small room with a computer and a few affordable pieces of equipment. Musicians are invited to come in, record their tune and that’s it for now. This music is delivered to street vendors, the kind who’d sell a pirated copy of a Hollywood blockbuster for a few dollars. They are in charge of replicating the CD and selling them to passersby. The vendors keep all the money for themselves.

But the street vendors have an important role: they act as promoters of the music, they advertise it, and the more CDs they sell, the more popular a tune becomes. In parallel, vans and bicycles carrying huge speakers broadcast the music as they drive through a neighbourhood.

Now the way musicians make money is by giving concerts and performances. The most popular artists attract tens of thousands of fans who not only will pay a modest fee to attend the ’soundsystem’ party, but will also want to remember the event by buying another CD of the band. It’s a different CD. This one is recorded during the show, is ‘legitimate’ and sold at the exit. To make it even more attractive, the musicians will greet the audience during their performance, shouting the name of the neighbourhoods in the area. The CD people buy at the exit has then gained some sentimental value.

Would tecnobrega musicians swap this business model for an ‘official’ one? Not necessarily. The concerts of the most popular band in Brazil Banda Calypso attract hundreds of thousands of fans. Which of course makes them extremely appealing to the music industry. Alas for them Banda Calypso systematically refuses any offer, convinced as they are that the tecnobrega model is far more lucrative and flexible for musicians.

Further readings:

La cultura después de la piratería , by Jose Luis de Vicente.
Estrelas de Belém , by Vladimir Cunha.
Tecnobrega: A música paralela , by Hermano Vianna.
We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin , by Julian Dibbell.
Brazil’s two music industries , by Sam Howard.

And a video: Good Copy, Bad Copy.