Alice Meniconi

Tesi di Diploma di 2 livello

A.A. 2014-2015

The future of Education is a Commons

RELATORE: Salvatore Iaconesi

CORRELATRICE: Oriana Persico

To my grandmother Rita
Alice Meniconi

Tesi di Diploma di 2 livello

A.A 2014-2015

RELATORE: Salvatore Iaconesi

CORRELATRICE: Oriana Persico
KNOWPEN FOUNDATION LOGO BY:
Siresia Bagnoli, Anna Di Santi, Giacomo
Equizi, Laura Maltinti, Pierluigi Oliveiro,
Giulia Querci, Isabella Peruzzi, Federica
Pietrafesa, Riccardo Sartori

INDEX

Introduction

p. 8

By Salvatore Iaconesi, Layne Hartsell, Jon Husband, Michel Bauwens

1. What is Knowpen Foundation and how we got there

p. 35

2. How Knowpen Foundation works

p. 75

3. Making Knowpen accesible to anyone

p. 97

About this project

The future doesnt exists. Its a performance.

We are living in the era of exponential change, an era in which
we need to start from the observation of the present to build
our preferable future(s). The Near Future Design methodology
combines multidisciplinary fields to examine the seeds
(tendencies) of the future implanted in the present. It performs
the possible futures in the now, it fosters global discussions and
shifts the perception of possibility to identify which path would
be better to follow.
Nefula is a distributed laboratory focused on the Near Future
Design methodology that was born in this setting, gathering
two teachers and eight (ex) university students. Nefula works
with governments, organizations, companies and activists, to
help them navigate these times of exponential transformation,
which are affecting society, the environment, cultures, the
modalities of production and consumption, at local, global,
trans-local and transglobal levels. In fact, Nefula recognizes
that exponential transformation requires radical changes in
the ways in which scientific research, design, strategy-building,
policy-making, decision-making are performed, to keep track of
the extremely rapid change of these transformations, allowing
its partners and clients to create scenarios for a better, more
just society, by designing and producing innovative strategic
and business models, technologies, services and models for
citizen organization. Nefula acts through education, design,
communication, implementation.
Education is one of the main interests of Nefula, that believes
it should be based on people and their desires, on collaboration
and participation, afar from the scholastic standards we are used
to. We are facing an urgent need of developing new education

methods and approaches: thats why Nefula is working in this

way. We care to mention that Nefulas commitment about new
ways of teaching and learning is focused on two directions: firstly,
Nefula is working on a education provided that offers and shares
information and knowledges about the Near Future Design
methodology through inclusive, collaborative, experimenting
processes; secondly, Nefula is working on the previous Near
Future Education Labs project, born in 2014 with the aim of
redesigning the future of education system. This project took us
to the definition of Knowpen Foundation, that we will discover
and expand through this text.
This work is composed by two different phases: the first
(chapter 1, 2), the research phase, will identify the context, gain
important elements from the already existing research and show
the project hypothesis describing in a theoretical-conceptual
way the creation of the project as we know it today. Well
describe the entailed social and technological implications,
inspired by evolutions of digital cultures, new horizons opened
by new systems for knowledge sharing, alternative currencies
and possibilities to build big relational networks. The second
phase (chapter 3), based on the outcome of the first one, creates a
communication design project to let this contents accessible and
comprehensible to anyone, using the tools offered by Speculative
and Near Future Design.

SALVATORE IACONESI
Interaction designer,
robotics engineer, artist,
hacker.

As human beings, currently, we are loosing an incredible

opportunity.
The world has changed, economies have changed, production
has changed, scientific research has changed, jobs have changed.
Information and knowledge have incredibly changed, in quality
and quantity, and in how both are created, communicated,
experienced, shared, and used.
In this ubiquitous shift (in paradigm, someone says) everything
tends to move from the physical domain to the digital one:
everything is transforming into information.
This is not a new concept: everything IS information, as we
know from DNA, from epigenetics, from epistemology, from
Einstein, Schrdinger, Shannon, Gdel, Davies and, well, from
any sincere and competent scientist
In these years, this concept is reaching new grounds: with the
advent of data (possibly of the Big kind), the possibilities for
understanding massively complex relations (between human
beings, organisations, substances, places, cultures...), with 3D
printing (which is now reaching the scale of molecules) and
with the wide presence of ubiquitous technologies which are
augmenting our bodies, places, spaces, times, offices, homes,
schools, cities and environments, this transformation is
becoming something which leaves the laboratory and enters our
everyday life.
We seamlessly can pass from files to objects, from bodies to
data, from large social interactions patterns to data, from data
to national policies, from data to things happening in our city,
office, home, body.
In this transformation two processes, in particular, happen:
data becomes part of our perceived landscape; and all industries
tendentially become cultural industries.

The first: data has started shaping how we perceive and

experience our environment. This is a clear fact which is widely
understood (maybe without realising it) by most people. You
experience data (through social networks, reviews, maps,
augmented reality, GPS navigators, wearable technologies and
more) and your experiences and actions in the world mutate. This
also has extreme consequences. In February 2016, the New York
Times has published (Ignore the GPS. That Ocean Is Not a Road
by Greg Milner, 2016, nytimes.com) an opinion article which
describes many examples of how multiple human beings have
placed more trust in their GPS than in their own eyes, believing
what the onboard navigator described as a road and, instead, was
an ocean, or a hole, or a cliff, with disastrous consequences. Data
is not truth, but is starting to seem like it, ever more. For sure,
data shapes our environment, so much that it has become part
of our environment, creating new possibilities for human beings,
plants, animals, organisations, trees, mountains, buildings, which
can now communicate and be perceived in different ways.
The second: all industries are progressively becoming cultural
industries. With the transition from atoms to data (and back, we
might add), all industries (have to) start dealing with information,
knowledge, communication, human networks and how they
relate, what unites them and separates them. With culture,
practically. It is becoming every industrys main occupation.
Whether it is a chemical industry or a communication agency.
This is why, for example, the European Commission has
launched in 2016 the STARTS program: Science, Technologies
and the ARTS. Because engineers and scientists are not really
used (yet) to this transformation. They are not used to being
cultural operators, they do not understand or know how
to operate with social data, with cultural interactions, with

psychology, anthropology and with the emergence, tactics and

creativity of peoples everyday lives. They know how to handle
data, not this form of ubiquitous, cultural, social, emotional and
emergent data which is now becoming our world, whether you
serially produce objects in a Chinese factory or working in a
research lab.
This fact had been described in Pines and Gilmores Experience
Economy: they noted how arts and creativity were progressively
becoming an expected asset in any workplaces, as all production
was transforming into cultural production, through the need to
produce experiences, the only valuable product in the world.
(what happens when I can copy/reproduce/make anything at
home with a 3D printer? It happens that the object looses any
value, and the only thing left with value is the experience)
Hans Magnus Enzensberger described it in its
Industrialization of the Mind, in which he explored the ways
in which organizations needed to start understanding how to
deal with troublemakers (that is the word he used in his texts),
those extremely creative people who were able to subvert, to
radically innovate, to disrupt.
The solution?

for engineers to collaborate with artists, chemists to work with

designers, accountants to construct with information visualisers,
bankers to work with poets, politicians to make decisions with
hackers. In this scenario, everyone will be learning and teaching
something at the same time, all the time. And new, more
fundamental, conceptions of trust, reputation and relation will
need to be formed. Because very different people will need to
work together, if they want to achieve something fundamental,
valuable and meaningful. This will require new economies
to be brought up. Also counting on the fact that all of these
collaborations will just not work if they are not based on shared
values, objectives, interests: art and creativity are not mere
decorations in this context, they are fundamental parts of the
concepts and of their implementation.
This, in practice, is what Knowpen is about: a cultural
organisation which becomes an environment, an ecosystem. It is
a new type of university which is also a complex ecosystem, with
all the characteristics highlighted in the previous paragraphs. For
this reason, it is of fundamental importance, as it is the (near)
future of education, production, economy and, maybe, also the
ways in which we could build meaningful human relations.

The solution is to create new forms of organisations which are

environments, ecosystems, not hierarchies.
The organisation of the near future is focused on information,
knowledge and on the possibility for free, unrestricted flow of
information and knowledge. On top of that, it is an environment,
an ecosystem, in which the kernel of the environment itself
information and knowledge is a commons, shared among all
the ones who take part in it, just like we (should) share air, water,
space. Furthermore, in this ecosystem, it is not really defined
who does what. It is a situation in flow, deriving from the need

10

11

LAYNE HARTSELL
Researcher at P2P
Foundation for
Alternatives.

The Near Future of Education: A way forward

In spring of 2014, the P2P Foundation and Korea Center for
Digital Humanities participated in a series of video meetings
with the students and professors from Florence and Rome to
explore the Near Future of Education. The participants were
numerous students, media artist Don Ritter from City University
of Hong Kong, Michel Bauwens of P2P Foundation, Jon
Husband, developer of Wirearchy, Leif Edvinsson from Lund
University, Bonnita Roy a systems philosopher at Alderlore,
Salvatore Iaconesi professor, engineer, and hacker and Oriana
Persico, an artist and professor, both from the design school in
Florence, and myself. The platform was hosted by Living Bridges
Planet and Bert-Ola Bergstrand from Gothenberg, Sweden.
Our major observation or premise was that education was in
a crisis, which was resulting in two serious consequences. One
was the fact that students were simply consumers of a product,
a degree process, which is aimed at producing themselves for
the market. Iaconesi and Persico indicated that such a process
is not a real performance in life. The second was that fewer and
fewer students could access education due to skyrocketing costs
as states were withdrawing support for national education, in the
West. As universities gave up various courses in the humanities,
or cut back severely, the technology areas were well funded, and
this aspect was global, we considered about the possibilities
for a better educational system and the emergent ubiquitous
commons of code, design, and knowledge. Here I will give the
reasons for education, a comment on open knowledge, and then
a possible direction for solutions.
The first observation is the term of education itself, or whom
it is for and what does it mean. In other words, education for
whom and for what? I rely almost wholly on what I consider to
be one of the most remarkable events in history as a matter which
concerns all of humanity, and that is the Enlightenment. The
reasons are numerous but generally follow the fact of openness

12

in knowledge, freedom of person and of thought, equality, and

justice as fairness. In the society of the late Renaissance, these
values form a thread that runs from Copernicus to Kepler
to Bruno and finally fully evolving in Galileo by the time of
his trial in 1633. This thread would form the basis for a fully
developed education for all in national systems, which Wilhelm
von Humboldt would enact in the 19th century in Prussia. Later
the same system would be copied over to the United States, a
place which until then was highly religious in education, a milder
form of the Scholastics with which Copernicus and Galileo
were in conflict. Not long after Galileo, Hobbes would also add
that he thought all human beings could be educated in what
was called at the time, philosophy. Natural philosophy was what
we call science today and then social philosophy or ethics and
then metaphysics were other branches. Religious knowledge was
thought to be its own area and dealt with revelatory knowledge.
The better values of the Enlightenment were not idle thoughts
but had been put into action by the late Renaissance, which
led to the direct application of full-scale realization in modern
science and eventually affected how modern governments would
operate. Education was to be for all, including the savages
according to Hobbes enlightened thinking, and going back
to Copernicus and Galileo there was to be open dialogue on
knowledge development creating a system which was antiauthoritarian (not anti-authority) and thus anti-elitist. To get
an idea of how concrete such an open system was asserted and
practiced, think of Galileo in 1633, by then nearing 70 years old
and infirm, being physically walked through the torture dungeon
to view what was in store for him if he would not abdicate.
It has been hard for many today to realize the value of that
period of history, up until recently, I suppose due to the fact
that many of us in developed countries have been born into
semi-democratic systems which had great push back against

13

authoritarianism from the education and the labor movements,

and with great success. I write, up until recently because
over the past few decades that particular system of education
has been largely eroded. Therefore, to answer the question of
education for whom, we can rely on Galileo et al. education
and participation is for everyone, which in general terms means
full space for ones creative capacity, and society benefits from its
investment in those who want to learn.
Von Humboldt was in a position of setting up a national
system and though he had written his Limits of State Action
(1792) a virtual anarchic statement on minimal government
and wide personal freedoms, he also thought that to guard
personal freedoms and to increase culture it would be necessary
for the overall good if the people should pool their money in
the governance structure and provide for national education, or
what I will call the commons of knowledge for all. The university
was a knowledge commons protected by the community, nation,
and state. This investment by society was the essence of Mary
Wollstonecrafts (1759-1797) argument that it would include
women. The values of freedom and equality in governance and
the social contract came after, not before, Copernicus, Galileo
and the emergence of modern science. Von Humboldt argued
that both theory and practice should be in the same location,
whereas, elitists argued that they could just teach theory and
students would have to accept their authority on practical
matters. In structure, the modern university was essentially
a community of learning where professors set up class and
students formed community around that knowledge center, or
what I call a knowledge rich environment. Thus was born the
modern university. At about the same time in the U.S. there
were two major arguments on education which were made.
If one wants to avoid slavery, then education is the way to
combat slavery this message came through clearly in David

14

Walkers (1796-1830) Appeal to Colored Citizens of the World and

Notes on the State of Virginia, and Frederick Douglasss (18181895) autobiography. These are major works on the value of
education and freedom. Then, came Emerson and Thoreau with
the necessity of both physicality and intellectual development
in education; and through education we could resist the vulgar
prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism. Education was
the path to resist slavery of person and the slavery of vulgar
prosperity or what Adam Smith called the vile maxim, which
was accumulation to the detriment of others. In the U.S.,
education and scholarship was to mean that the educated person
was embedded in the world, in everyday life and physically
active. This modern educational system led to some of the
greatest scientific and cultural advancements as a contribution
to humanity via theory and practice within an open knowledge
community. Unfortunately, its a legacy now being mostly denied
to young adults today who are wondering what has happened to
society (and to nature). Why should they or anyone have to pay
such a price?
When I think of this modern system, I think of Jonas Salks
polio vaccine, which was funded by the people and then made
available for everyone who needed it. Or, I think of the precursor
to the Internet we know today, which started as the ARPANET,
all funded/developed within the university system. I can
remember when I was doing medical research, I would write to
a friend at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver through this
extraordinary thing we called email. Today, using P2P networks,
new forms of teaching are already beginning as teachers circles
are forming which provide access to knowledge. Students realize
that they can pay teachers directly and get an education which is
affordable, since the other way or marketized university is either
closed to them or they will go into tremendous debt and end up
with few opportunities and with little culture. Why go through

15

a non-caring, uninspiring repetitive system, amass oppressive

debt, and still not be able to find a job? Why not just by-pass
that and get a real education and participated in the excitement
of building up an open knowledge system? I think what will
happen is that the combination of these peerist learning circles
and social organizing will push the system towards a better
arrangement for all who want education, which I will discuss
below.
The next point is what is education? Here Wollstonecraft
would enter the debate in the late 18th century and give a
scathing critique of the rote education system of the time and
add her powerful argument that women are essential to the
nation and need education because they have the children and
teach them Vindication of the Rights of Women. The idea from
that time, especially with von Humboldt was to show a path and
then the student or learner will, through his or her own instincts
and curiosities, explore self and world. There is a path there with
a guide, but it is not fixed. In the past, the student might have
been studying how to do art, but with the teachers guidance s/he
was learning both theory and then practice in the laboratory of
how to mix various minerals and chemicals together to produce
paints; and then how to apply them to the canvas. Once the
theory and basics are known, there can be near infinite creativity
which could come out of learning as the student moves on to
more intensive graduate study and produces work which is
additive to humanity and its knowledge. Schooling, as opposed
to education, on the other hand was associated with virtual
slavery and known to guarantee that things would stay about
the same as they were in the past. This was because in schooling,
the student learns quickly that to survive they are expected just
to reproduce the mind of the professor. If we read the leading
thinkers of the Enlightenment their writing would be along
the lines of our use of profanity today they hated the soul

16

crushing system of rote and authoritarianism. Later in the 19th

century, abolitionist and writer, Mark Twain said that he refused
to let school get in the way of education. The militancy at the
time around freedom and creativity was quite strong, because for
society to have a real culture, people have to be educated the
theme which I chose as recurrent through this essay.
Today, many are asking how to educate but I think the von
Humboldt system is fine and thus I mentioned organizing as
the way to fix that system. I think people are actually trying
to find out how to exercise the ICT enablement of learning
in the digital age. The information and knowledge we have is
extraordinary, and it is equally extraordinary in how we can
access it making access to essential technology a matter of human
rights, in my view. With a little handheld device connected into
the technosphere, we can access virtually all of the knowledge of
civilization. And, with a small handheld projector, I could hold
a class virtually anywhere in the world complete with theory,
diagrams, pictures, video, and audio. Full curricula, and in fact,
entire open universities could be created using digital resources
from the Internet Archive, Project Gutenburg, Google Scholar,
Google Cultural Institute, Open Culture, Wikipedia, Sci-Hub,
and then curated work at the P2P Foundation and others.
There are plenty of resources for the continued push for open
knowledge and better education.
Education is also vital as a matter of how to study and
create knowledge. The major hurdle is how to determine rich
information from poor information; how to discern information
and create useful knowledge. For a practical example of the
consequences facing counties, the heavy manufacturing countries
in East Asia did not transform to the knowledge economy and
societal innovation and have fallen into a phase of decline as
their workforce ages and innovative capacity lacks. Japan has

17

had a number of recessions and the Abe administration has been

trying to reverse this trend which has unfortunately turned into a
decades old crisis, and South Korea and China will follow as they
begin to show strains. Not many countries are actually doing
well, however, the Nordic countries I think are worth considering
and supporting.
For the process of learning, it will take a certain amount of
guidance help the student to know what to look for, and to not
fall off into erroneous information. It is like an explorer starting
up a mountain but s/he has no guide and simply cannot find the
trailhead. Too much fumbling around wastes time and energy.
And, even if a teacher points out the beginning of the trail, there
are no assurances that the explorer will be able to stay on the
trail without encouragement, and also without falling off a cliff
or wandering somewhere else. So, in the world of knowledge the
teacher shows the student the trailhead and guides the student
on the way. The teacher admonishes the student to not go too
near the cliff, for example, indulgence in conspiracy theories, or
to not wander off of the trail, which might waste a lot of time.
Eventually the student reaches higher levels and then can begin
to see farther. At this point, education is its own gratification and
carries the student to the summit where on the way, they might
experiment and find through their own developed knowledge and
creativity a new and better way to do things. Then, they become
a teacher. Lifelong learning, which was another Enlightenment
idea, is when the student sees other peaks stretching on into
the distance. More learning to do. Therefore, the reason or the
why of education is for the humanity of the student and greater
culture through their own free expression. All benefit and in
the advanced technological civilization of today, such training
is essential. I would imagine that the jobs today and of the near
future will be ones where critical thinking and knowledge are
key and thus the marketized university is actually making itself

18

obsolete.
The current planetary movement for open knowledge and
education is, I think, simply basic or innate human interests
pushing against a rapacious, contemporary capitalist system,
which has worked to marketize virtually everything in peoples
lives. The university began to degrade into the marketized trade
school, churning out a paper mill for jobs and with value being
defined narrowly in market terms. When I was an undergrad
we could see this happening, so the term paper mill has been
known for a while. At the same time, I was fortunate enough to
attend one of the great land-grant universities and also science
and technology centers Virginia Tech. I feel a great sense
of gratitude to the faculty and university and pass this on to
students in the only way such great debts can be repaid to those
who took time to teach me and to discuss outside of class. I still
maintain a friendship with my mentor and past vice president
of the university who retired recently. It is certain that any of
my professors were smart enough to go to Wall Street and make
money, but they chose physics, chemistry, biology, philosophy,
and to promote knowledge and culture which radiated out from
the university community. Today, the university center can
be radiating from anywhere due to the ubiquity of technology.
Quite astounding, I think, as the basis for the opportunities of
the Near Future of Education is already in place.
When we hear the term open science or open knowledge, we
should see that the adjective open is simply a cognitive necessity
for dialogue under current conditions, since in the actual case, by
definition going back to Galileo, knowledge and science are just
that openness. By the late Renaissance in Venice and Florence,
the printing press had transformed society. All matters were being
discussed due to dissemination of knowledge and thus modern
science emerged rapidly in this way since people at the time

19

would copy diagrams or drawing of mechanics and would travel

around discussing and debating all matters. Though the Church
is criticized, rightly, it was also fairly open to new developments
at this time in Italy. Since science was a mechanical endeavor
at the time, there were two ways to do science. If one could
demonstrate a principle, then that was to be shown directly such
as Galileos pendulum experiments using a string and a weight
through which observation of gravitational force was seen. A
direct connection such as this object has to directly touch that
object had to be demonstrated for accuracy in the mechanical
understanding of early, modern science. However, they realized
most proofs were too big for direct demonstration, so diagrams
were accepted as proof. And, since diagrams could be copied,
then all could participate as these diagrams were disseminated
so as many eyes as possible could evaluate them. Herein is the
democracy inherent in science. The current militarization of
science and fetisization of technology is not Galileo and modern
science but technification or some kind of obsessional technics.
Another topic.
Importantly, in the middle to late 20th century the
postmodernists would point out, accurately, that no body
of knowledge seems to get the whole picture. Karl Popper
(1902-1994) said that science is always value-laden; and then
came Kuhns Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Today, it is
generally accepted that science is be value-laden, but the actual
epistemology is able to give us a best estimate of reality, and
here I mean empirical reality being that nature has uniformity
and consistencies in it. Think of the difference between the
constructed traffic light at the intersection or red for stop
(culture), and then the outcome of two cars in collision as they
go through the red light and try to share the same space (laws
of physics). Both are reality, but the red light is far more relative
whereas the laws of physics follow the uniformity of nature. The

20

traffic light for stop might be red in the U.S. but blue in China,
however, the fact of collision of the cars will happen if the driver
confuses cultural location. The postmodernists also rightly, and
harshly, criticized the lack of openness and the power structure,
which opened a serious sociological critique of science. I think
this to be the most important of postmodern critiques and it is
one which is alive today as there are still few women in the science
or STEM disciplines. This most revealing charge that there are
few women in science also includes few women deciding on
what science is to do. For example, a mixed group of women
and men are far more likely to vote for funding for scientists to
produce vaccines for children or for a cure for malaria than they
are to fund 25 different male baldness drugs. The postmodernists
were echoing the early thinkers who argued for full participation
since no one individual or group would be able to understand
fully; here again the maxim of we need as many eyes on reality
as possible revisits. Instead of STEM, in contrast, for many this
acronym has been changed to STEAM with the A being arts.
Maybe an N should be added for nature making the acronym
STEAMN. Finally, for epistemic accuracy, Elizabeth Pollitzer
at Portia, which is a group that studies gender and science, has
shown that mixed research groups are the most effective at actual
scientific accuracy.
Incidentally, the mechanical model is the most stringent of
scientific models and by the time Galileo wrote the Dialogue
in later life, he would realize that the matter of understanding
might be beyond the grasp of humans. This can be seen when
he said essentially that gravity and nature are just placeholders.
Gravity is what we call when things go down, and nature
is what we call when we throw a stone in the air and after it
leaves the hand, it keeps going. Later, Newton would come to
the realization that the mechanical model was out as he and
everyone else were stumped by action at a distance, which drew

21

harsh criticism from Leibnitz accusing Newton of regressing into

the Scholasticism of the past. Today, there is a massive effort to
seek for gravity, which could provide some answers. I think that
what happened between the time of Newton and Hume was that
the limitations of mechanical models and human understanding
were beginning to enter in as scientists and philosophers
evaluated the principles and empirical findings or inability to
produce empirical findings. The mechanical model was in trouble
by the time of Hume (1711-1776), and by the time of Mach
and Einstein the mechanical model was gone for good. Today,
when we use the term physical we are using a placeholder, as
neutral monism has given way to what we are finding through
emergence studies, which Im seeing in some of my work. One
way to understand emergence is given by Sandra Mitchell in her
example of the beehive which shows a high level of emergent
complexity and yet with downward causation on each individual
bee in the hive through various signals such as nectar load in the
cells or how long a bee has to wait to unload nectar and so forth.
Emergence challenges a strict reduction to or from components
but not to take away anything from Jaegwon Kims necessary
discourse on the problem of the term, emergence. Another
extremely complicated example is quantum entanglement where
components are put together but the emergent outcome doesnt
reflect at all, any of the components. Then, there is spooky action
which physicists talk about. All of this is quite exciting to learn
about.
The rough plan that I give for the near future of education is
to strengthen the social democratic aspects of the current state
system and make sure funding is there for national education.
To do so will take people organizing and maintaining solidarity
and not becoming distracted. They will need a better organizing
system than what Occupy experimented with, and better focus.
For example, Id recommend a grassroots delegate system out of

22

various groups or neighborhoods which would delegate members

to a larger assemblies. Delegates would be mandated to do the
wishes of their group and delegates could be recalled at any time.
This system for organizing can make use of workgroup software
and ICT to increase efficiency. For complicated social systems,
the Occupy model proved to be too tedious and inefficient
leading many to be discouraged with direct democracy. I dont
think they should lose hope but to organize better. Then, for the
actual educational system the sheer fact of open source can be
additive to the new, emergent system. The best lecturers in the
world can be watched through MOOCs and those can be viewed
by students outside of class, whereas, in class the time is opened
up, like in the past, both in the Enlightenment and also from
ancients, going back to Socrates direct discussion with students
and facilitation of learning by the teacher. In class, discussion can
range from casual conversation to the more combative debate
and it is the teachers role not to tell people what to think but
to facilitate discussion, to interject new ideas such as what ifs,
and then to correct any errors. Since education is free and not
graded, the teachers are free to discuss their ideas about society
also, without students feeling threatened. Personally, I engage in
debates directly on Facebook and then in cafes typically using
a method of asking a person to make a valid argument and to
give evidence. Trust me, these days teachers cant make very
many errors because everyone has a smart phone and are looking
information up in real time! At other times, I might meet with
students and we draw or do calligraphy, or discuss various topics.
Through ubiquitous software like Slack or Scrum, learning
groups can be formed outside of class where students can create
further richness and sharing of information. The students groups,
I think are crucial to learning. Say if I am a student and in a
group of four people, then we can expect that one of us got the
right information from class or from the MOOC, and also out of

23

four students in a group, various new ideas and experiences will

enter and be shared. Finally, research tasks can be divided up into
a flexible division of labor.
A new development at your school in Florence is the Koinoos
or Knowledge coin, which are a unique invention by Iaconesi
and Persico and would be a great experiment to try in student
directed groups. For instance, if I am in a group and I need a pdf
which I cant find, but someone else has it and will send it to me,
I can send them a Koinoo. The Koinoo is a knowledge currency
and not pegged to the actual monetary currency. Koinoos are
not accumulated, but are used as simple recognitions of sharing.
I suppose upon enrolling for the school, each student is given a
certain number of Koinoos, then the value is created in the block
chain, which records these transactions. The block chain would
be a record of knowledge transactions and could be studied
as part of the new library science. It think the Koinoo could
be a tremendous addition to education if it passes empirical
application. The other remarkable asset there with Florence and
Rome is the Rural Hubs you have, such as with Alex Giordano.
Those Hubs can be developed further for integration with the
educational system. Perhaps a connection with Slow Food in
Italy might be an option. The Italians have worked ceaselessly to
maintain their food culture in the face of the massive onslaught
of fast, cheap food and inevitable physical suffering and cultural
degradation that follows. Regular contact with nature is a
necessity for an integral educational program, as is some form
of travel and contact with cultures different than ones own.
Therefore, the true scholar is not a brain walking around with a
body dangling under her or him, but a regular person exploring
self and world.
When these student led learning groups aggregate back into
the classroom to meet the teacher each week, then at that point

24

is where the refinement occurs. The student also learns about

plurality and a certain reasonable tolerance, at least to hear
people out, and also, to rely on argument and explanation rather
than rhetoric and personal attack. Another basic practice is to
quote what someone said before we respond to them; and in the
same manner another practices is to provide evidence for our real
world claims. At this point, I can pre-empt some student concerns
because, rightly so, a student might want this type of system I
describe but feels either overwhelmed with part time jobs and
then competition to get the grade. Students will thus spend a
lot of their creative energy just figuring out which professors are
more lenient, and then how to do the bare minimum to get the
best grade, including cheating if necessary. This large inefficiency
takes time and energy and is detrimental to the student and to
knowledge. There is also the socialization aspect of the university
years (~17-21 year olds), which impede development of young
adults due to strains of grade competition, and trying to make
ends meet. These two concerns can be solved by free tuition and
open enrollment, which means no grading structure. Certainly
students should be evaluated but not through a grading system
which is oppressive to their actual learning and creative, free
expression. And, since there is no tuition and open enrollment, if
a student doesnt pass the class, since standards would be strict,
the student could just take the class again. In mathematics and
science, it would be easy to do evaluations since, for example,
either the student can give the theory and then demonstrate the
Pythagorean theorem or not; set up a distillation experiment or
not. Overall, grading should be done in a far more wholistic way
such on a series of linear accomplishments to recognize progress
in certain areas but intuited as a whole spectrum of development
in a final synthesis.
Such a program as I describe of open enrollment and free tuition
could be affordable to any major state and I think the Nordic

25

countries are a good model, but also less affluent countries like
Mexico are doing this, for instance, the major universities, and
one of the best in the world, Universidad Nacional Autnoma
de Mxico (UNAM), provide free or significantly reduced
tuition. Mexico has more than 100 years of solid educational
commitment going back to the 1917 Constitution and with
Minister of Public Education Jos Vasconcelos. There is plenty
of wealth around, so funding is not the problem of the current
global crisis in education. As a matter of fiscal conservation, I
think it possible to reduce the number of years down to three
years of undergrad. The curriculum would have the first year
focused on critical thinking, applied ethics, science literacy and
the arts. Then, in the second and third year can come the full
arts and sciences along with a semester of travel and a thesis or
project. For graduate and professional training, these are trade
schools where I think it necessary to have grades for those levels
due to the need for the best talent to be in the right place in
society. For example, if someone has excellent motor skills along
with mathematical ability, solid memory, and abstract, mental
spatial ability then they would excel in neurosurgery or in being
a pilot. For those kinds of expert systems, there should be refined
training and competitive grading.
Therefore, the way forward is multivariate with a plurality
of thinking which is able to meet the particular conditions,
even though this is a global or universal matter. Students and
communities can take over the university of today and make it
into a more fully democratized place. As they say, Occupy It,
and while doing so continue to create a planetary ubiquitous
digital commons of knowledge, while dissolving the mental and
knowledge barriers between the Global North and South. As
indicated, organizing is necessary for moving the state toward a
partner state and then people can work together to fully realize
the development of the knowledge commons for everyone to

26

participate in if they wish. Today, there is a whole system of

exclusive knowledge, which was previously behind a pay-wall,
all leaking out. The tank preventing people from accessing the
much needed water is cracking all over the place. Millions of
scientific studies have been released online in the information
wars showing that we are at a point where we need a better
system of access to knowledge. Here I might be slighty more
conservative than the hackers and pirates in the sense that I
think to destroy the current journal curating system we have is
an error, though leaks are going to happen and can be seen as
necessary if they serve openness. I think the system of curation
needs to be rethought and reformed and what better way to do
so than to involve the open art, science, and code community
through the interaction with current expert systems (official). I
know that professors who do readings and commentary are not
paid for this work, and thus, I think a reasonable reform would
be welcome within the academy also. How the system of curation
of knowledge and how education will occur is essentially up to
people working together and I hope from the values I mentioned
in the opening arguments. The digital age has fully arrived with
plenty of opportunities, and as I have said before, if central Italy
was the landrace for the applied values I described above, then
why not it being the place for a further emergence for planetary
society based on real education?

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JON HUSBAND
Creator of the concept
of Wirearchy, an
ecosystemic p2p model.

Its too elitist, because it uses a complex language and it gives too
much information at the same time. You are not really including
anyone, as you are expecting to.
[referring to a recurring criticism directed to this project]

The viewpoint expressed in the above quote may in turn also

be too elitist , as it suggests sotto voce that existing structural
and decision-making systems do not really need to be changed
in any significant way. Including stakeholders in significant
change or transformation requires making those stakeholders
aware of and familiar with the context and landscape of the
changes occuring in the domain(s) in which they are involved.
However, it seems clear that there is a critical need for substantive
visible and tangible change and that this need is growing, notably
in the domain of post-secondary education. There are important
reasons and strong forces that have led to the development of
new means of education such as; a vocational orientation to the
curricula at many post-secondary institutions that has led or is
leading to a withering of funding for humanites, art and cultural
studies, MOOCs, curricula that do not include lecures or class
time and (in North America at least) burgeoning bureaucratic
structures and dynamics that are placing significant financial
pressures on the costs of acquiring a credentialed education.
Pedagogy and educational institutions are undergoing
massive changes due to a number of key factors. Many of the
conventionally-accepted reasons for pursuing an education in a
given field are beginning to seem less and less releavant to new
graduates who have to make their way in a turbulent world.
It is no longer a secret nor is there lack of awareness that
today and for the foreseeable future the conditions for using
information and acquiring and using knowledge (key aspects of
obtaining / undergoing an education in a discipline or field) are
new and different than has previously been encountered in the
history of humankind.

28

The interconnected Knowledge Era is truly upon us. It is not

going away. Hyperlinks, search and platforms where people
connect and exchange information of all sorts have rapidly
become ubiquitous. They represent the substrate and the tools
people use to educate themselves and others.
While some of the terms emerging in use are new, or are
neologisms, it is clear that all domains of human activity are
feeling the impact of digital social networks, huge amounts and
flows of easily-accessible information, and scale and reach such
as has never been encountered before in human history. Thus,
it has often been suggested that the widespread and ubiquitous
presence of things digital demands, or will demand, new
vocabulary and new concepts.
It is also the case that coming to terms with rapidly-increasing
complexity demands experimentation to probe and sense what
may work and what will not work in order to respond more
effectively to the complex conditions. New realities and new
pressures require new ways of going about things and, often
enough, new ways of describing initiatives that are seeking to
come to terms with the new realities and pressures.
Language creates reality, and languages are living systems
that evolve with and within new conditions. In our opinion
it is entirely reasonable that the kinds of changes facing the
Near Future Education Lab and the Knowpen Foundation will
generate new or emerging concepts and practices, and it is
also entirely reasonable that there will be new words and new
ways of describing the changes, possibilities, opportunities and
challenges that face students and professionals in the field of
post-secondary education. Indeed, failing to recognize this
can be seen as a significant obstacle to experimenting with and
engaging in meaningful and constructive change.

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MICHEL BAUWENS
Founder and director
of P2P Foundation for
Alternatives.

Educational Renaissance
Every civilization needs an appropriate education system. In
this transition period from a unsustainable extractive system to
a hopefullly sustainable system, we are apt to see the germs of
the next educational system.
Before we look at this, it may help do to a quick tour of
European educational history, and show that indeed, successive
forms of civilization did spawn eductional reforms.
Lets start with the Roman and Greek academies, which were
really a lot more like the ashrams of the East than wed like
to think. When the Roman empire disappeared and its cities
collapsed and emptied, so did also their educational institutions,
which gave way to the rural monasteries of the Christian monks,
which became the key to the knowledge transmission in this
period, roughly dominant from the fifth to the tenth century.
After this period of ruralization, the First European Revolution
took place, in which the monks of Cluny, in alliance with the
poor masses, imposed the Peace of God charters that imposed
the first regulations and limitations on the extraction of the
warlords, eventually created the new feudal social contract,
which eventually would give rise to the rise of the new cities,
a doubling of the European population for the next three
centuries, and also, a new educational institution, i.e. the peer to
peer university which started in Bologna in the 12th cy., where
the student nations hired and managed their teachers and
teaching, and which would eventually crystallize in the great
christian institutions of learning. By the 15th century, the cityzens managed to escape the dominance of the one christian
church, using the printing press to diffuse the new independent
interpretations. During the three centuries of religious civil
war that were sparked by this new situation, the universities
became sectarian and ceased to play their progressive role. This

30

is why the 16th but especially the 17th century, saw knowledge
transmission move to the informal sphere of the Republic of
Letters, through which the new intellectual elite of independent
scholars would correspond with each other, using letters,
magazines, and forewords and afterwords of books to transmit
the new vital knowledge. Eventually, this would be consolidated
and mainstreamed in the Royal Academies until in the 18th
century, the new capitalist realities created the basis of a new
educational system, based on the universities as we knew them,
developed by Prussian reformers, and with the labs, PhDs and
the trappings we are familiar with.
Its probably fair to say that after the heyday of the
democratization of this type of education in the sixties and
seventies of the last century, its started being destroyed with
the conservative and neoliberal counter-revolution that started
in the eighties with Thatcher and Reagan. From now on,
universities had to become businesses, education an investment
in ones future marketability, knowledge privatized through IP,
and professors competing most of all with each other for the
scarce research funding that was no longer available for simply
deep and fundamental research. This neoliberal barbarism has
fundamentally undermined the role of universities in knowledge
transmission and hence it is not a accident that a new Republic
of Letters arose with the second phase of the democratization
of the internetworks which started in the 90s. Just as the new
medieval city-zens massively jumped at the technological
affordance that was the printing press, so the first democratically
educated generations of youngsters, flocked to the internet as
the chance for permissionless communication, self-organisation
outside the state and corporations, and joint value creation.
So today we have again to competing spheres of knowledge

31

creation and transmission, one is the decaying and calcifying

university system which is no longer affordable without students
going into massive debt dependencies; and a vital sphere of
internet based co-learning, where the important transition
knowledge is created and diffused.
This has created a great contradiction between a not yet
legitimated sphere of informal learning, that evolves at an
incredible speed, and the slower sphere of official legitimate
formal knowledge. The big netarchical corporations of our
new era have already understood where the real dynamism and
expertise lie, seeking and mining open source depositories like
github to find the real talent. But they are still the extractive
business models that our era wants to go beyond, and needs to
go beyond, to get at generative entities that can create livelihoods
for all those citizens who contribute to the joint creation of
shared resources that are available to all.

So follow our young heroes as they are inventing

the educational system of tomorrow!

So this is where the context of the following study comes in

and why it is of great interest. The old is not yet dead, and the
new is not really born yet, so in this transitional state, everything
needs to be experimented, so as to determine which of the
new seed forms will be most appropriate for a sustainable,
commons-based society and economy, which no longer destroys
our biosphere and does not create permanent social instability
because of its unacceptable levels of inequality.

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33

1.

What is Knowpen Foundation and how we got there

the

Future

does not exist

i t s a p e r f o r m a n c e

What if school becomes an ubiquitous process?

What if any place in a city a park, a supermarket, your favorite restaurant can
be transformed into a classroom?
What if a group of students and professor decide to face increasingly financial cuts
to public education systems, by unite themselves into a foundation? To reinvent
the future of education, to get out of the constant state of emergency and the
usual rules of the protest, and implement a model in which students participate
in the co-creation of their future and of the future of the school?
Knowpen Foundation is an ongoing global effort to reinvent the future of
education involving thousands of students, activists, researchers and organizations
all over the world sharing a few simple assumptions: education is a common and
anyone in the planet needs to access to it. Anyone can contribute to it.
It concerns all of us, as society and individuals.
Education is the basis and foundation of our future(s).

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35

1.1 How it has started: the Near Future Education Lab

What happens during a crisis? Transformation. Necessary change.

This is what happened at ISIA Firenze, a design school in Florence, where
the students are leading to a disruptive effort to co-create their own future of
education.
Luca De Biase, Nva journalist, Il Sole 24 Ore

The starting point of the project took place at ISIA Firenze, a design school based
in Florence which I attended for five years. During november 2013, the school started to face a crisis due to financial cuts and an imminent eviction. The risk of closure
brought to a massive student mobilization: we organized flash mobs, we created
communication campaign, we asked the institutions to listen to us (especially to
the Municipality of the city, to the Province and to the Ministry of Education). The
story of the protest is documented on a Tumblr1.
I - as someone who participated actively to this protest - watched its high and lows,
while I was really hoping that what we were doing could lead to a solution. But in
the end, I had the confirm that this kind of actions (even if spontaneous, legit and
important) brings only to the starting point, always.
When our teachers, Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico, suggested to dedicate
our Near Future Design course to the redesign of the future of the school, I saw
a different way to get over the crisis we were going through. After a few hours of
discussion in the classroom, the decision was made: we started to work on the Near
Future of Education. This choice entailed a lot of excitement among my class: we
had the chance to be designers and students at the same time, finally able to carry
on our protest with a new point of view and alternative instruments. We were going
to apply what we were learning in that very moment (the Near Future Design
methodology) to a concrete and significant issue. Soon enough, our project and our
voices started to spread outside the walls of the precarious building we were going
to be evicted from.
Thats how the Near Future Education Lab was born: its a group of students, teachers and researchers that want to change the future of education.
We consequently create an open Facebook group2, that is still active nowadays, and
a twitter account3 to let our idea spreading.

36

37

1.1.1 The Lab set its objectives

Before starting the concrete act of redesigning, the preparatory step was the definition of our objectives:

to design the Near Future of the education system in order to shift the perception of possible;

to design (and create) an independent juridical entity that could assure us a

safe environment to enact our project: a Foundation.

We had to find a way to set us as peers among the other public or private entities involved. At first, we focused on the constitution of an association, then discarded for
an ideal legal status: the Foundation. This passage was extremely important because,
through the Foundation, we would have moved the goalposts and also obtained
a real autonomy. The Foundation is indeed the container of the project, but also an
instrument that allows us to be considered as peers in comparison of any other part
involved.

1.1.2 How we got organized

As soon as our aims were set, we split into working groups in order to develop various aspects of the project. Five working areas were defined:

Future map: this group worked on the visual representation of the Near

Future of education, built on the study of the state of arts and technologies
and on the ethnographic observation of the emerging rituals;

Organizational Models: this group worked on the analysis and definition of

the suitable organizational model onto which the Foundation would have
been built on;

Calls and Partners: inside this group we looked for suitable european calls

that would have helped to finance the project and, furthermore, we identified private or public subjects that (for strategic interests or vocation) could
have been potential partners of the Lab;

Community: this group worked on pinpointing the communities, groups

and opinion leaders as points of reference in the educational field;

Identity: this group created the brand identity and all the communication
aspect of the Foundation.

Herein, well give a general overview of what we did in order to define Knowpen as
we know it nowadays. The work done inside the Identity and the Calls and Partners
groups will not be deepened any further due to the need of focusing on different
aspects of the project.

The Near Future Design class at work.

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39

1.1.3 The need of communicating our vision

We immediately understood that, in order to make this project real, we would have
had to spread it outside our classroom: the first step we took in this direction, was
the presentation of the project to the whole school. This happened during the school assembly occurred on the half of January 2014, where I participated as a speaker
along with other school mates. We tried, above all, to communicate the most important message: the desire and the possibility to turn ourselves into an active and
independent subject, able to co-create the future of education. This matter involved
a lot of people, not only my class. In our future, we all wanted to keep on living and
not just surviving. Meanwhile, we kept on working on the Near Future of education.
In the following section we are going to document this process that took us to the
definition of the core project: Knowpen Foundation.

The school assembly occured on January 2014.

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41

1.2 The Near Future of Education

1.2.1 The Near Future Design methodology
To better understand the purpose of this paper, its necessary to investigate the methodology that lays behind its outcome. The main steps will be explained as follows4:

[Step 1] Consensual Reality

We start from the observation of what we call the Consensual Reality.

Given a certain culture, historical era, or context, the Consensual Reality
is constituted by all of those things for which there is a shared, common,
understanding for.
It is our normalcy field. These are the things we think we understand and
for which we perceive our understanding to be not too different from the
understandings of other people in the same context.
It is about the ways/times in which we go to work; where/how/when we do
our shopping; how we entertain ourselves; how we establish relationships;
where we get our energy; how we eat; how we cure ourselves; and more.
This is an interdisciplinary observation, which is context-driven (but with
potentially global implications) and which involves anthropology, psychology, sociology, technology and more.
[Step 2] Curious Ritual

Consensual Reality is dynamic: it changes according to the transformation of our communities, cultures, technologies and organizations.
How do they change?
To understand that, we observe what we call the Curious Rituals.
Curious Rituals may be large or small, disruptive or moderate, local or
global, fast or slow.
They are the things which people and organizations are doing now, in our
present, but for which we dont have a shared, common and easy understanding yet.
Is someone doing curious things with technology? Is someone establishing some peculiar eating habits? Is someone organizing the ways in
which they work in peculiar ways? Is someone getting their energy in
peculiar ways? Or initiating peculiar mobility practices?
42

Step [3] The Strange Now

What we described is an ethnographic observation.

Its purpose is to understand how the Consensual Reality is elbowing its
way into the future, pushing and pulling towards the future, by trial and
error, by experimentation, by innovation, by establishing new rituals and
practices.
The sum of the Consensual Reality and of the Curious Rituals becomes
what we call the Strange Now.
The Strange Now is the current scenario with all the things we (think) fully understand and the things which exist, but which we dont understand
fully or easily.

[Step 4] Curious Ritual

Then we look at the evolution in technologies and practices, observing the

evolution of the State of the Arts and Technologies.
What are the most innovative technologies? What are the ones which are
more promising, sustainable or pointing in interesting directions?
What are the ones which are more being explored? What are less being
explored? By which subjects?
We add all of these things up (the Strange Now and the State of the Arts
and Technologies) to create combinations and remixes.
These are the Possible (Near) Futures.
Among them there may be really odd futures: innovative ones, conservative ones, dangerous ones, wonderful ones, sustainable ones or disruptive
ones.

[Step 5] New Normals

Among Possible (Near) Futures we choose the most credible ones, no

matter how positive or negative they might be.
We call these the New Normals.
New Normal is an hypothesis of how the next-normalcy field could be or
how the next step of the Consensual Reality might be. Moreover, it concerns all of its implications: how it could affect peoples daily lives or jobs;
what the fallouts on the environment/energy/health might be, and so on.

43

[Step 6] Pre-totypes

POSSIBIL
ITI
URE
T
ES
FU
S T R A N GE N O
W

B
TA

LIS

HED NARRA
TIV

ES

ES

E
TH

CONSENSUAL REALITY

DESIGN
FOR
THE NEW
NORMAL

We give forms to the New Normals using elaborate transmedia narratives,

which seamlessly go back and forth through different media to implement
a state of hyper-reality. Not only designing a prototype of a certain object
or service which will be in the New Normal, but also its manifestations
in our cities, online, in our daily lives, in our work-life, in the environment.
We implement the New Normal using a simulacrum, a hyper-real simulation, using transmedia narratives.
We call these simulacra the Pre-totypes, before the prototypes.
Sometimes they are fully working, sometimes they elaborate simulations,
most of the times they fall somewhere in-between.
Their aim is to materialize the New Normals into the world, making it as
credible as possible they are hyper-real, indeed- together with all their implications, which may be social, political, relational, environmental. They
all regard our daily lives, health, well-being and relations, to name a few.
[Step 7] Engage global collaborative discussions

This action provokes a shared performative space. When faced with an

hyper-real pre-totype, people have to deal with it and with its implications.
At this point discussions and emulations will start. New models will be
discussed and re-invented. Critique and appraisals will take place.
In this phase we design ways which allow us to capture feedbacks aroused
from our Pre-totypes; whether they happened online, in cities, in rural
areas, in conferences or somewhere.
[Step 8] Capture, analyze and share feedback and reactions

Then we make the collection of these reactions available, so that they can
be used to extend the discussion, going beyond the limit of understanding
what the possible futures are, but also discussing what the preferable and
desirable futures are, and for which communities, organizations and individuals.

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45

1.2.2 How we applied the methodology

Now that we found out more about the Near Future Design methodology, we can
focus on the way we applied it to develop our project.
Towards the Future Map
As a real map, the purpose of the Future Map is to orientate us towards the best
direction to follow in order to reach our goal. It's a precious and necessary instrument to rely on. We started to observe the present in order to define a map that was
able to show us various directions to the preferable and most desirable future(s) of
education. The outcome was a visual representation of the future of education as a
result of the information collected, the curious rituals, the tendencies and what is
perceived as "possible", "impossible", "desirable" or "imaginary".
The Future Map, then, describes the possible changes to the education system that
are being identified through Knowpen Foundation.
It is the resulting outcome of two components: the research on the state of the arts
and technologies, and the ethnographical (also digital ethnographical) analysis of
the Strange Now.
In Superflux's words5 the Strange Now are the disruptive forces that are hidden
behind comforting metaphors: recurring behavioral patterns that are progressively
growing in frequency and that are not yet fully comprehended by societies: a shared social/political/economical/psychological meaning has not yet been assigned to
them. They are the emergent behaviors, as they emerge, methodologically observed
to understand hidden potentials.
The analysis started from the observation of global innovation matters related to
education, in order to understand what is the level of development of technologies,
the presence of relevant contexts and the arising tendencies in this particular field.
While analyzing the state of arts and technologies we asked ourselves: which are
the changes actually happening? How are the new technologies and devices changing the education system? How are the physical places where we learn transforming themselves?

On the next page: the Pinterest board,

gathering part of the research to build the Future Map.

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47

With the ethnographic analysis, we observed the human behaviors to comprehend

how knowledge is produced: how we create and share it? What are the emerging human behaviors? Are there cultures that are influencing this process?
The unison of the research on the State of the Arts and Technologies and of the
Strange Now generates the Future Map, a map of possible futures at varying degrees
of likelihood, interconnected to form a network of interdependent possibilities which
are scenario-based.
The Future Map is an Agile object6: it is constantly re-discussed, forked, led through
various paths of parallel, alternative developments, submitted for appraisal to wider
communities (constant beta version), merged when positive outcomes become widely
recognized.

On the previous page: the Pinterest board,

gathering part of the research to build the Future Map.

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49

The Future Map so far.

50

51

The axes of transformation

While focusing on the building of the Future Map, we analyzed the state of arts,
technologies and ethnography. The outcome is the definition of 11 topics that we named "axes of transformation": they represent the directions to focus on to understand
the passage between the current condition to the future of education. These axes constitutes the structure of the Future Map.

[1] Technologies

Ubiquitous technologies; mobile, nomadic technologies; critical technologies;

meshed networks; open hardware and software;
The application of these technologies, such as tablets, digital blackboards,
holograms and augmented reality that will be integrated to physical lessons.
They will create a new concept of educational material.
[2] Architecture

The conformation of space, both physical, digital and across;

How we are going to interact with it? Laboratories, fab lab, interactive libraries, sports, cafeteria, gardens. The conception of "classroom" will radically
change, as open, mutable and full of technologies and ways of interaction.
[3] Infrastructures

Networks, social media, peer-to-peer infrastructures for interconnection, collaboration, participation, accessibility, sharing;
In the era of the Internet, a speedy connection will assure a safe and natural
interconnection between people, items, places, devices.
[4] Methodology and tools

Agile methodologies; social learning; peer-to-peer learning and production;

platforms; ecosystems;
Methodologies will be completely transformed, as new devices will assist
teachers in personalize the study programs for each students. In some case,
teacher could even be replaced by such devices (a controversial point). Schooling will be done at home, with a wide choice of educational plans.

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[5] Time

The flow of time, and its modalities, across learning, teaching, production, private,
social;
We could face a more personal management of time, different paces related
to particular scenarios, desires, activities. Time as an agile, customized, malleable concept that can adapt to each individual.
[6] Identity and sense of belonging

Rhizomatic identity, meaning that everyone involved in some process of the

ecosystem (active participation) is part of the ecosystem itself, and everything reflects it;
The sense of belonging will face a radical change. We won't feel just members of a certain university, we will feel as members of a wider reality: a
community willing to learn, teach, collaborate, research and share knowledge, interests, stories. Age won't matter as a fundamental parameter to aggregate people in these communities. "Classrooms" will turn into a worldwide
network, where everybody is free to change their role as a student, teacher,
researcher and so on.
[7] Participation

Everything is designed for active participation;

Sharing knowledge will involve a wider range of people, not just the students of a university or school. A permeable knowledge that will spread
worldwide thanks to an open online exchange of information. The educational material will be shared freely with anyone, with the possibility to
express opinions, corrections and suggestions.
[8] Commons and intellectual property

Knowledge as a common;
A model in which information and knowledge are shared freely and widely.
Furthermore, this will have to be safeguarded in a certain way.

53

[9] Privacy

Both in physical and digital spaces;

In an environment where communication and the sharing of knowledge are
open to everybody, the concept of privacy ought to be revised. Open lessons,
public materials and other possible factors will make the safeguard of privacy a necessary matter.

On these 11 axes we based the development of Knowpen. We analyzed some possibility of change and improvement for each axis: we made a visual representation
of the effort needed to enact a change on each one. They convert to a central vertex
(representing a value of zero) and grow until a maximum value (representing the max
level of effort needed to enact the change). This visualization is a generative pictures
that variates according to the development of the research around the axes. The picture
below is a still frame of the investigation at the time when the study occurred.

[10] Permeability, boundaries

Blurred conceptualization of boundaries; everyone is part of the ecosystem, through active participation; the ecosystem is open to the city, to other researchers, to businesses, administrations, other universities; the university as a protocol which is
ethical and technical, in which anyone can participate and make;
We'll face a radical transformation of the concept of "boundaries" as we
know it nowadays. Everything and everyone will be free to join multiple
and different environments where any kind of knowledge is shared.
[11] Collaboration, multi-modality

collaboration,
multi-modality
permeability,
boundaries

common and
intellectual property

privacy
identity and
sense of belonging

A project is also an opportunity to teach, learn, dedicate resources to personal interests, to collaborate with the ecosystem;
University will not be just dedicated to its students, but it will be the knot
of an interacting network. Communication towards external environments
will be widen by a different range of collaboration, openness, diversification
of the involved parties.

technologies

participation
architecture
time
methodology
and tools

54

infrastructures

55

1.2.3 The definition of an Organizational Model

The research about organizational models was a fundamental step to identify the
basic structure of the education system that we were thinking; we applied the same
while structuring the Foundation, which represents the operational instrument of
such system. Whats an organizational model, then? It establishes how and in which
environment the processes take place and how these processes are developed. There
is a main distinction between the existing models is: the centralized and the decentralized ones.
In a centralized model, the upper layers role is to manage and control the lower levels.
A clear example is represented by the hierarchy, a pyramidal system. This model is
often used to
coordinate information, but when its applied to companies or institutions, it prevents knowledge to circulate and grow spontaneously.
In a decentralized model, instead, the decision-making is distributed and knowledge
can be shared easily, since we are in front of a p2p process. Our research, then, focused on the existing p2p models that could have helped us to create a permeable and
open ecosystem where knowledge is inclusive.

The research identified seven different p2p models. They are mainly applied in business
environments, but we tried to see them under a different perspective. The description and
features of such models are illustrated as follows:
[1] Self-organising

Essentially having no structure. Employees are encouraged to work on whatever they want
to find the projects that engage them and do the best work of their lives.
Pro: any member is free to specialize in any preferred area of interest without real
boundaries;
Cons: the absence of an organizational structure and managing entities can confuse the members.
[2] Agile-squads

Instead of an engineering department, a design department, and a marketing department

that each collaborate on products with dubious ownership, they organize vertically around
products (or more specifically pieces of products) and traditional disciplines are loosely held
horizontally.
Pro: interconnections among the working groups always keep clear the aims, the
outcomes and the paths of the organization;
Cons: the structure is quite rigid and doesn't give enough freedom to the single
members; roles and area of interests are extremely defined.
[3] Holacracy

Authority should be distributed, everyone should be able to sense and process (solve) the
tensions (ideas/problems) they perceive, roles and employees are not one-to-one, and that the
organization can and should evolve toward its requisite structure (the ultimate structure
for its current environment).
Pro: the organization allows flexible groups where each member is free to operate
according to their skills; members can enact any action to better express their key
role; the organization considers the aim as important as the members;
Cons: the operation is not intuitive .
[4] Sociocracy
The strategic shift we opted for.

56

The sociocratic method is proposed as an ideal way to shape our society. Sociocratic the method
is an empty (or generalized) method. In other words, it can be applied to any type of orga-

57

nization. This method starts from the notion that people are unequal, only people that should
be equivalent from the decision-making process.
Pro: each member represents a different and peculiar "resource"; there is always an
interaction among working groups, even if they focus on different topics;
Cons: decisions are accepted just with unanimity; each working group allows just
two interaction roles.

[a] HOLOCRACY

CIRCLES

semi-autonomous
self-organizing

Each circle is given

a purpose by its
higher-level circle

A lower circle is
always linked to the
circle above

[5] Heterarchy

LOWER
LEVEL
CIRCLE

If hierarchy is the power system of centralized systems, then heterarchical power is the power
system of decentralized systems and Responsible Autonomy is the power system of distributed
systems. This distinction is derived from the work on triarchy.
Pro: there's a network structure with temporary working teams; decisions are distributed among these teams; knowledge is shared and under worker management;
Cons: some assets are redundant.

Individual
actions
If such action goes
against exsisting
policies

Circle
meetings
Tactical
(frequent)

Governance
(less frequent)

[6] Google-cracy

When you give engineers the chance to apply their passion to their company, they can do
amazing things

Wirearchy a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information,

knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology Wirearchy
will continue to emerge and have impact. The generations coming into the workplace have
interactive games, ICQ, Napster and chat rooms under their skin. its second nature to them.
Pro: its horizontal structure highlight the social aspect and the cooperation, improving relationships among the members;
Cons: it may depends too much on the network.

58

Lead link
representative
elected from within
the lower-level circle

Dynamic
Steering

Integrative
Elections

Ristorative
Justice

Never looking for

the best solution
but for a fast,
workable solution

Integrative election
progress after open
discussion

Restorative justices
system rather than
a punitive one

GOVERNANCE
Hierarchy

looks
casual

Hierarchy is present but

employees have much freedom

Collaboration and interaction in

the work team

Operational Principles
motivation, individual idea, collaboration

the last choice is

made by the whole
company

20% of the working time is dedicated to individual ideas or projects

open source

As the project developed, we selected and compared three of the analyzed models. We
chose the ones that could suit our needs better: Holacracy, Google-cracy and Wirearchy.

Rep link

[b] GOOGLE-CRACY

Pro: each member-employee is able to express their opinion on a different company sector; the model gives an important role to the members' ideal mood;
Cons: there's a good consideration for the employees but their highly tied to
Google.
[7] Wirearchy

accountability for
the lower-level
circles results

HIGHER
LEVEL
CIRCLE

open call to professionals

Opportunity

59

[c] WIREARCHY

1.2.4 Wirearchy: an ecosystemic model

OPERATIONS

GOVERNANCE
Horizontal

Establishing connections
Discussions about relevant topics
and issues, knowledge production

TWO DIMENSIONAL
DYNAMIC FLOW

PROJECTS

WORK TEAMS
Share complex
knowledge

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
Operational Principles

Solve problems,
test new ideas

based on

Kno

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Cre
bility
di

e dge
wl

Trus

Increase innovation
through diversity of ideas

THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

60

After comparing the three chosen models, we opted for the Wirearchy. It suited
perfectly the Foundation we intended to build and, furthermore, it represented a
good instrument to set the basis of the relational and interactional system we were
designing for the future of education.
Wirearchy7 is a concept by Jon Husband, that defines himself as a social architect.
Hes a blogger, a strategist and a futurologist focused on the evolution of the working system and the organizational structures. Hes particularly interested in the
changes (socially and anthropologically speaking) that are happening after human
beings faced the digital and interconnected world.
Wirearchy is based on the distribution of a network, a system in which the links
between the individuals have a fundamental importance. It concerns information,
knowledge, trust and credibility. Its better define it as an ecosystem, which intent is
to represent an evolution of the traditional hierarchy model. Theres no true hierarchy, just a co-participation of knowledge. This ecosystem is continuously adapting
according to the live feedback it receives from the constant flux of information,
learning, responsibility that flows through the Social Learning.
Wirearchy works thanks to a bidirectional flux, where the Communities of Practice
and the Work Teams are constantly interconnected: the first ones manage the development of knowledge, the second ones share the outcomes of it (projects, services,
goods, etc.).

61

After we chose and started to look for an application of this model, something
wonderful happened: Jon Husband himself joined the Near Future Education Lab
on our Facebook group. We had the chance to have a direct discussion with him
and solve some of our doubts. This fact represented the very first proof of a growing
"ubiquitous school" which we were already part of.
After the creator of Wirearchy joined the group, an interesting conversation occurred between him and a member of the Near Future Education Lab. He asked about
the concept of "gainsharing".

Jon Husband:
Hi, Bruno. With respect to the next parts of your question using the term Gainsharing in the line Structural change? You may also clarify the role of the binomial Holacracy / Sociocracy in the org design and effectiveness and how these models interact with
the wirearchy system . Gainsharing is a type of remuneration (pay) strategy or philosophy that had a few years of interest/popularity in the late 1980s/early 1990s.
It is of interest, I believe, in the (eventual) re-structuring of organizations because
how people are currently positioned in organizations and paid for their work is directly related to traditional hierarchical concepts derived from Taylorism and Fordism. Given that it appears that more and more people will eventually be working in
interconnected/networked conditions, the traditional ways of paying people based
on hierarchy (of knowledge & skills) and seniority are very likely to come under
increasingly intense questioning and scrutiny. Gainsharing in a nutshell is based on
everyone sharing (via being paid) in the improvements and gains made by an organization based on peoples efforts at work. With respect to Holacracy and Sociocracy,
both of those approaches to organizing work and people are, I think (based on what
I understand so far) a packaging and commercializing of approaches based on the
principles of socio-technical systems theory and/or (in the case of holacracy) the
use of some of the key elements of Elliott Jaques Requisite Organization theory
(which in turn is mainly constructed around his Time-Span of Discretion theory).
Both have some degree of self-management and greater and decentralized decisionmaking autonomy woven into the methods. These are evolutionary. We will see more
such approaches, I believe, which is a good thing. Learning by experimenting! Both,
I think, are also approaches that could have been derived or designed under or using
the notion of wirearchy as an organizing principle (I try to stay away from being
prescriptive about wirearchy), it is in my mind not a solution, prescription or defined
approach, but rather a principle to be used to design based on context and purpose.
I would say that though, wouldnt I? Does that make sense?

The Wirearchy concept will be explored again in the next chapter, in order to give
a better understanding on how we applied to Knowpen (cf. chapter 2, par 2.1.2).

62

63

1.2.5 Community building

In this Near Future Design project, theres a last aspect that is important to focus
on: we worked on the creation of a network that could provide fundamental connections to let Knowpen grow. The research has been done mainly online, where we
identified potential interlocutors and communities interested in the matter of education. Their contributions and opinions about the future of education was relevant
for the development of our project.
In the first phase we identified some keyword that helped us to select different topics
and areas of interest. We started to look for groups, web sites, personal profiles and
organizations related to these keywords. This has been done mainly on Facebook
and Twitter.
The selected keywords are:
education
future of school
teachers
students
innovation
interaction design
future design
futurology
design fiction
knowledge

free software
open source
sharing economy
peer-to-peer
crisis of the educational system
open science
fab lab
hacklabs
intellectual property

In the second phase we listed the communities we found according to the keywords.
We consequently identified one or more influencers inside these groups.
In the third phase we drafted a personalized letter/message for each of the contacts. We then contacted these influencers/communities to inform them about our
project, our aims, our need to enact a global discussion on this topic. Among these
attempts of contacting interlocutors, some positive feedback emerged: we received
opinions, questions, suggestions and a lot of support.
In the next section well give a look about what happened when we enacted our
first global event, which involved people from all over the world who helped and
motivated the diffusion of our vision.

64

1.3 Education is a Commons: how we engaged the first

global discussion
The future does not exist, its a global conversation about what we want,
what we fear, what we expect and the possibilities we can imagine.
Salvatore Iaconesi, The 7 days of the Near Future of Education, AOS

This was the premise on which we launched Education is a Commons, our first global
and interconnected event occurred during June 2014. The conversation lasted for a
whole week though Facebook, live hangouts, chats and other media. Its aim was to
let people know about what we were doing at the Near Future Education Lab and
also to perform a global discussion about education. During the whole week artists,
researchers, thinkers, theorists, performers and students shared visions and ideas
about the future of education, nurturing an exchange of multidisciplinary opinions
and experiences from all over the world. The event was hosted by Living Bridges
Planet, a global facilitator network inspired by strength-based and social approaches
to enable change. It was supported by P2P Foundation, Art is Open Source, ISIA
Firenze, Fake University, The Hub Roma and CS Cantiere / SMS-UniPop. Before
explaining what happened during this week, it's necessary to describe how we got
this chance.
1.3.1 The fundamental role of the network
In this paragraph well explain how we had the chance to attend and organize Education is a Commons. Two international figures played a fundamental role: firstly,
well introduce Michel Bauwens, whose support and participation represented a
gigantic contribution for the success of the event; secondly, well talk about Layne
Hartsell, who let the event concretely happen.
Michel Bauwens is the president and founder of P2P Foundation for Alternatives8.
Hes interested in connecting and documenting projects, communities and researches by people from all over the world who are experimenting new p2p organizational models. He was one of the first ones that supported the Near Future Education
Lab, since its very first steps. As soon as he heard that we were seeking for an alternative solution about the crisis we were going through, he immediately contacted
us and gave us free access to the resources of P2P Foundation: indeed, the project
is actually hosted on the Foundations wiki, in a constant updating. He thinks that
what started at ISIA Florence with the Near Future Education Lab represents an
historical matter:

65

The students themselves took charge and started thinking what is they need
to learn, to live and cooperate in this newly emerging p2p society. In the very
moment I heard what was happening at ISIA Firenze, I thought wow, this
is historic. This doesnt happen every day: these students are not staking over
the building, they are actually rethinking the way they want to be educated
and educate themselves.
This is what Bauwens told us when we had the honor to host him in a live conference from Quito, Ecuador, where hes currently developing the FLOK Society
project9: an historical and gigantic change for a whole country that is switching to
a p2p model of management. Universities were born in Bologna according to the
(future) students action; they are based on a p2p model interconnecting people
sharing the same interest and desire, and today we can see the same process happening in fab labs or in MOOCs. Bauwens himself chose to begin his p2p project in
Ecuador starting from universities and research, since they are definitely the drivers
of change.
His role, then, has been fundamental during the Education is a Commons event, since
he helped to spread our voice and it also highlighted the credibility and the value
of our project.

Live conference Florence - Quito: Michel Bauwens meets the Lab.

66

Korea Center for Digital Humanities and P2P Foundation: a call from Seoul.

Layne Hartsell, USA ( - ), is a fellow at the P2P

Foundation in the philosophy of ethics and technology, and is a visiting scholar
at the Center for Ethics in Science and Technology at Chulalongkorn University.
He is a project scientist at Sensorica Biomedical, co-founded the ScandinAsia Research Group, and is an advisor to the Sweden-based Living Bridges Planet. His
work is in the access to technologies from a framework of global justice and societal
innovation, the development of biological sensors, and open reasoning in the P2P
knowledge commons. He is the co-author of the widely regarded essay Peer to
Peer Science: The Century-long Challenge to Respond to Fukushima. During one
of our lessons at ISIA Firenze, we had the chance to attend a live conference with
Hartsell and some korean student.
Hartsells contribution has been essential for the Lab: he suggested to connect and
start to interact with the Living Bridges Planet group (based in Gteborg), in order
to let them host our project in a global online event lasting a whole week. Thanks
to his effort, we managed to organize Education is a Commons, the Labs first interconnected global event. Hartsell represents an important link for the story of this
project, that reminds us how much collaboration and interconnection are important
to succeed in involving people and let our effort resonate at an international level.
We have been able to attend something that exceeded our expectation: we faced an
incredibly high level of participation and we built important and enduring connections. We received precious feedbacks on our project from different points of view,

67

belonging to people coming from different cultures, professions, areas of interest.

Hartsells reminded us that education is, without any doubt, the device through
which our society can produce ethics and social justice.
1.3.2 Prospecting a crowd-funding campaign
To give a better overview of every step we took during the path that led us to what
is Knowpen nowadays, its important to explain briefly why and how we prospected a
crowd-funding campaign. While working on the project, we realized how ambitious
and complex it was: we definitely needed to raise some funds to make it happen. Also,
according to further aspects that well explain in the next chapter, the campaign was
also needed as a structural start-up to constitute the Foundation. Thats why we added
another step and started to design a crowdf-unding campaign under every aspect. The
designing went through the following steps:

movement design: how do you design and communicate a movement?

getting to know communities (online, offline, territorial...) which are interested
in the same issues, or contiguous ones, to establish contact and relation;
design of the communication strategy;
crowd-funding design: definition of the participant profiles; multimedia, crossmedia and trans-media implementation of the campaign elements (videos,
texts, interventions...).

In order to succeed, any campaign needs to have a network. Thats why Education is
a Commons had a dual-purpose: it was a concrete chance to receive feedback from a
worldwide community interested in the education matter, but it was also an opportunity to build a network caring about our cause, goals, values. We were looking for people
potentially interested in supporting our campaign.
Actually, the crowd-funding campaign was not launched as we planned due to the lacking of resources and a solid network. However, the materials we produced still represent a valid basis for any crowdfunding initiative we may consider again in the future.

On the next page: the mock-up of the crowd-funding campaign.

68

69

LA CAMPAGNA DI CROWDFUNDING
Living Bridges digital-flyer

1.3.3 What happened during this first global event

As already mentioned before, Education is a Commons lasted for 7 days (from June
1st to June 7th, 2014). The main topic was the Near Future of the Education System
and the event featured Michel Bauwens, Layne Hartsell, Anna Blume, Jon Husband, Salvatore Iaconesi, Oriana Persico and us, the members of the Near Future
Education Lab. People joined from Florence, Seoul, Quito, Gteborg, Hong Kong,
Vancouver and many other cities. We faced an incredible participation from five
continents and an wonderful heterogeneity of individuals, organizations, universities, associations, companies, groups and education hackers from all over the planet.
On the 1st and on the 7th of June we had an introductive and a conclusive hangout.
During the week, five were the most discussed topic10. These concepts will be deepened in the second chapter of this work:

70

#knowpen
MICHEL BAUWENS
LAYNE HARTSELL
ANNA BLUME
JON HUSBAND
SALVATORE IACONESI
ORIANA PERSICO
NEAR FUTURE EDUCATION LAB

THE NEAR FUTURE OF EDUCATION

FLORENCE - SEOUL - QUITO - GOTHENBERG - HONG KONG - VANCOUVER

The education ecosystem: what is it? How does it emerge and manifest
itself ? How accessible and inclusive is it in its current form? What organizational models, if any, can be adopted to make it more accessible, inclusive
and readable/usable?

Ubiquitous Education. Ubiquity through time and space (connect experiences, places and situations for knowledge anytime, anywhere). Ubiquity
through contexts(each place is a potential space/time for learning/teaching/
knowledge, through the commons and ubiquitous tech). Ubiquity through roles (each one can be teacher, student, researcher, entrepreneur depending on the context). What about Divides (technological, cultural, age,
gender)?

The Open Foundation: the role of the open foundation to host, preserve and promote the Knowledge Commons, the Ecosystem, and the value
model, enacted through the currency, and as a shell to enact the Wirearchy
through which the ecosystem will work.

FROM JUNE 1ST

TO JUNE 7TH
7 DAYS OF ONLINE COLLABORATIONS
ARTISTS, THEORISTS, ACTORS, THINKERS, PERFORMERS OF P2P

HANGOUTS FACILITATED BY LIVING BRIDGES PLANET

Koinoo, K-Coins, badges and more: a mutualistic currency for the education ecosystem. Reputation capital. Transformation of the current definition of value to a p2p, ecosystemic, well-being oriented one, based on
networked trust, participation, mutuality. Understanding the ecosystem and
the networks through the currency. A new role for credentials.
Knowledge Commons, recipes, knowledge and meta-knowledge. Transforming Education into a protocol, like the Internet: an accessible, p2p,
network-of-networks. Hypotheses for implementation. A new p2p layer of
the Internet protocol stack.

8:00 AM (EDT) - 2:00 PM (CEST) - 10:00 PM (KST)

NEAR FUTURE EDUCATION LAB

NEAR FUTURE EDUCATION
P2PFOUNDATION.NET
NEARFUTUREDUCATIONLAB.NOVA100.ILSOLE24ORE.COM
NEARFUTURELAB@ISIADESIGN.FI.IT

The first global and interconnected event organized by the

Near Future Education Lab, a group of researchers, teachers,
students, associations, companies that want to change
the future of Education.
Everything starts from this words: The future does not exist,
it's a global conversation about what we want, what we fear,
what we expect and the possibilities we can imagine.
We image an interconnected ecosystem, where everyone
can share own ideas and projects about the near future of Education.
If you want to partecipate, join the Lab and contact us!

The digital flyer of the event.

71

I THINK THAT YOU ARE DOING

SOMETHING HISTORICAL.

Iam not aware of any university where students

are thinking of redesigning their own university.
It was an intense week during which we understood the range of our project. After
months passed on a situation of "closure" on designing, we stopped for a while and
started to think about the best way to present what we were doing to unknown
people and entities. We had to summarize the main features of Knowpen and to
structure the visual and communication materials, because we were actually going
to perform our first leap of faith. At first, we were a bit uncertain about the outcome
and the efficacy of what we were going to show, but as soon as we received such a
enormous and positive feedback we immediately changed our minds. We soon realized what was really going on: we illustrated our project to people living in totally
different cultures and environments, coming from various education systems and
contexts, who were interested in contributing, not evaluating our project.
What we learned from this experience, above all the interesting and precious
feedbacks we received, was the fact that now is the right moment to start rethinking the future of education. It was under everyones very eyes: education concerns
everybody.

We found out the most important thing: we weren't alone in

dreaming a new and alternative education system.

Michel Bauwens
president of the P2P Foundation

THE FUTURE OF
EDUCATION IS
A COMMONS
WHAT HAPPENS DURING A CRISIS?
TRANSFORMATION. NECESSARY CHANGE.

This is what is happening at ISIA, Florences school of

design, where the students are leading a disruptive
effort to co-create their own future of education.
Luca De Biase
giornalista di Nova, Il Sole 24 Ore

72

knowpen.org
Near Future Education Lab
NearFutureEdu

73

2.

How Knowpen Foundation works

the

Future

does not exist

i t s a p e r f o r m a n c e

In the first chapter we explained how the project began, giving a little historical
background; we then moved forward to a general overview about how we applied
the Near Future Design methodology to build the basis of the alternative
education system we were dreaming of.
Lastly, we explained what happened during our first global event during which
we took our project out of our classroom for the first time, in order to show it to
an international community. Eventually, in this second chapter well analyze and
describe the features - some of which were mentioned in the previous part - that
define Knowpen Foundation.
Most of the texts in this chapter refer to the Near Future Education Labs wiki
page11 and to the article The Near Future of Education on Art is Open Source
(AOS) blog12 by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico.

74

75

2.1 Welcome to Knowpen Foundation

Many of the current policies are based on mechanistic conceptions of
education. Its like education is an industrial process that can be improved just
by having better data, and somewhere in the back of the mind of some policy
makers is this idea that if we fine-tune it well enough, if we just get it right,
it will all hum along perfectly into the future. But it wont, and it never did.
The point is that education is not a mechanical system. its a human system.
Its about people, people who either do want to learn or dont want to learn.
Sir Ken Robinson at TED talk How to escape the educations death valley, 2013

We are living in the era of exponential change. Our society changes daily, facing
new tools, technologies, methodologies and knowledges. How can the education
system keep up this pace? Education ought to be the cradle of innovation: an environment where you just dont teach or learn, but also to design and to experiment.
With Knowpen we imagined a place where knowledge is a commons and represents the very fuel of its engine. We imagined an open school, where desire is the
fundamental factor that leads people to learn, teach, create, think. We imagined an
ecosystem where the main focus is on peoples desires and vocations.
2.1.1 The assumptions
Before starting building the Future Map, we identified five fundamental assumptions1 that represent the cornerstones of Knowpen Foundation and lead us to
define the 11 axes of transformation (cf chapter 1, par 1.2.2).
[1] Decent education has an really high entrance/access barrier.

If you have a lot of money, you dont have a problem with the current education
system. If you can afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars which are needed
to attend the best (and not-so-best) schools in the world, you really do not feel
the crisis. You have laboratories, personalised courses, a good student/professor
ratio, tutoring, mentorship, auditoriums, libraries, equipment, etcetera, you have
it all.
Too bad that not many people have all of this money. And even of the ones that
do, most of them rely on Debt to obtain access to these schools, and debt as
we have learned comes with an awful lot of implications.

76

77

[2] Current education models are mostly competitive rather than collaborative.

Competitive models may be adequate for the industrial era, but they are not
for the networked, information/knowledge/communication era, which is based
on collaboration, universal access and inclusion. All of which are critical to the
creation of social capital and the ushering in of a sharing economy.
[3] Knowledge as a common.

Not only because, as Rifkin puts it13, it allows for marginal costs to tend relentlessly towards zero, with all that this implies, but also (and most of all) because,
as Bauwens frames it14, in the framework defined by Contributory Commons
(provided by the Civil Society) and Ethical/Solidary Economy (the Reframed
Corporation), an Information & Knowledge Common is enabling and empowering, and should be defended as a strategic asset.
[4] Perceptive, cognitive, attention and strategic models for education.

The ways in which we learn, collaborate, work, design and relate have radically
changed. From a perceptive and cognitive point of view, and from the perspective which sees the emergence of novel modalities in which multiple disciplines converge, different roles become entangled, serendipitous actions become
strategic and, in the passage from atoms to bits and back, the production of
knowledge and information becomes a performance which is cultural and linguistic, and which is polyphonic, interconnected, emergent in nature.
[5] Need for a new definition of value.

From the P2PValue15 project page:

Commons-based peer production (CBPP) is a new and increasingly significant
model of social innovation based on collaborative production by citizens through
the Internet.
In this framework a novel definition of value must be found, encompassing
the well-being of the ecosystem, and in a mutualistic sense, progressively losing
the definition of value determined by the market sale price of products and
services, and embracing one which is mutually determined, at a peer-to-peer
level.

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2.1.2 The Foundation and its governance

The school we imagine is characterized by permeable spaces and boundaries: they
are open to the cities and communities, everyone in the world can collaborate
ubiquitously. Architecture, time, relations and sociality mutate, implying a new
personalized experience where we can all be students, teachers, researchers, thinkers, entrepreneurs. To make this happen, we found the necessity to reunite into a
Foundation: Knowpen. The the name is a contraction of the words knowledge and
open, an open knowledge.
Why do we need a Foundation?
Currently, school and education are part of a hierarchical process. Governments,
institutions and companies are deciding the rules, the strategies and the politics that
affect everyone who is part of the education system.

Theres a big difference between going into a mode of command and control
in education. In some systems, central or state governments decide, they know
best and theyre going to tell you what to do. The trouble is that education
doesnt go on in the committee rooms of our legislative buildings. It happens
in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it are the teachers and the
students. If you remove their discretion, it stops working. You have to put it
back to the people
Sir Ken Robinson at TED talk How to escape the educations death valley, 2013

This, of course, leads to significant political, social and economical implications.

The actual system is probably too rigid and incapable of adapting to the fast pace
of change. Its a system that doesnt care about people and their desires, vocations,
expectations.
Knowpen Foundation is an ecosystem in which knowledge is a commons and, at
the same time, its the legal entity that hosts, preserves and fosters the educational
ecosystem we designed. Its an open, permeable and accessible space where you dont
need to get it to make use of the Knowledge Common.

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The governance
The Foundation is formed by individuals and groups wishing to enter the ecosystem. It operates according to the models defined as Wirearchy, that we already
introduced in chapter 1, par 1.2.4.
From a legal point of view, the Foundations statute, which declares the organizational model which according to which it operates, functions as a map between the
foundations organisms and roles as required by law to the ones provided by the
wirearchical model.
In this model, two broad levels are highlighted: the organizational level and the
operational one.
Wirearchy is an emergent organizing principle that informs the ways that purposeful human activities and the structures in which they are contained is evolving from top-down direction and supervision (hierarchys command-and-control)
to champion-and-channel championing ideas and innovation, and channeling
time, energy, authority and resources to testing those ideas and the possibilities for innovation carried in those ideas. The working definition of Wirearchy is a dynamic
two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a
focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.
from wirearchy.com

This two-way flow, is based on the simultaneous presence of various modalities,

operating at different levels of hierarchy/openness, collaboration/cooperation,
structure/informality, goal-oriented/opportunity-driven. It is a diversity-based approach in which single subjects can simultaneously be in different spots along the
space defined by all the axes.
In this scheme, Work Teams emerge which can be at varying degrees of hierarchical
and structured architectures, and which are very goal-oriented, whose focus is to
share complex knowledge to solve problems, perform research, establish learning
processes etc.
At their edges, communities emerge, when larger or common issues are recognized.
They become more informal and entangled, and they broaden their scope, taking
into consideration larger issues and themes. These eventually become Communities
of Practice, which are oriented to the opportunity to solve problems and to test new
ideas, usually originated within the Work Teams.

A general overview of the structure.

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Communities form social networks, which are progressively informal and opportunity driven. They live as networks increasing innovation through diversity of ideas.
They live by remixing and recombining ideas, concepts and designs, to catch unforeseen opportunities and radical innovations.

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This upward stream is matched by a downward one, in which Communities of Practice and Work Teams may emerge from all of the previous one, living as cellular,
rhizomatic, emergent patterns which remix and recombine themselves as desires,
opportunities, needs and visions form and are recognized within the ecosystem.
In this ecosystem, any form of production includes two elements: knowledge and
other things (such as objects, products, services).
All knowledge produced becomes part of the Knowledge Common. All the rest
may be sold, offered, used or else, at the discretion of the producers. The knowledge
produced and put back into the Common defines the value of the project within
the ecosystem, through the number of K-Coins that other people assign to it from
their point of view and if they desire to do so evaluating how it contributes to the
well-being of the ecosystem.

2.1.3 The alternative currency

The Knowledge Common has a value, which constantly grows. This value is measured using K-Coins, Knowledge Coins. K-Coins are a mutualistic currency, which is
used to measure how much a person or organization contributes to the value (wellbeing) of the Environment/Common.
K-Coins are mutually assigned: if subject A perceives that subject B contributes
to the value of the ecosystem (by participation, contribution, production, metaproduction), A can assign K-Coins to B. In other words, K-Coins are proportional
to the Reputation which one has in relation to their active participation to the wellbeing of the Environment/Common.
This currency represents, then, the measure of participation and reputation in the education system.
In the first chapter, par 1.3.2, we mentioned about the crowd-funding initiative
we worked on. We said that it would have been a way to raise the funds, but also a
strategic start-up for the Foundation. Now, after introducing K-Coins, we can better
understand why: K-Coins are acquired, initially, through the crowd-funding campaign (as a measure of the participation to the start-up phase of the Foundation)
and, then, in the later phases, it is generated and operated through the relations in
the ecosystem, according to the principles of mutuality and reciprocity. In other
words, people and organizations joining the campaign will be provided an amount
of K-Coins which is proportional to their level of engagement, thus expressing their
active participation to the ecosystem, and also being able to instantly start participating to the activities (such as courses, studentships, research, projects, grants, etc.).
The initial founders of the Foundation each have an initial amount of currency in
this system, as a measure of the participation which they dedicated to its creation.
The participation is open and shared across all students across universities, schools,
institutes etc. Initial conversion schemes from the K-Coins to other ones is initially
established through the crowd-funding campaign, where each contributor will be
assigned a certain amount of K-Coins, depending on the corresponding level of
participation. All subjects, be them internal or external to the Foundation, who have
participated to the creation of the ecosystems are initially assigned a certain amount
of K-Coins, as well.
The Currency has 4 modalities, obtained through combinations of two axes:

A comparison between Wirearchy and hierarchy, by Jon Husband.

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knowledge and products/services;

internal and external.

In the ecosystem, knowledge is a commons.

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All activities in the ecosystem (teaching, learning, projects, designs, artworks, processes...) potentially produce knowledge and a series of products/services.
For example, a project may produce the fact that a series of participants learn something from some of the other ones or as a result of the activity, and a series of
products/services which may result as an outcome of the project itself. All knowledge generated becomes a common, and is shared through the chosen platform and
frameworks available in the ecosystem. The products/services may be offered inside
the ecosystem or outside of it.
K-Coins are generated according to the principles of mutuality and reciprocity, in
a peer-to-peer scheme. The concept of proof-of-work applies in this case, and is
established in the network according to reciprocal schemes which, at the time of
writing, need further investigation. Teachers assign coins to students according to
their positive participation, and to promote their reputation; students assign coins
to teachers to evaluate their positive impact to the ecosystem and to raise/lower
their reputation; project participants evaluate each other according to the same
schemes, and thus also determining the value of the knowledge and of the products/services created in the projects.
The system is permeable: for example, in a project, external entities (individuals or
groups) can assign positive/negative amounts of Currency to contribute to the evaluation of what is produced in the teaching/learning/project processes.
As stated, roles are not exclusive, but, rather, inclusive: in each case, one individual
can, potentially, be a student, a teacher and a project participant, all at the same
time. The roles can also be evaluated in emergent ways, according, for example, to
the life of the project.
K-Coins can be assigned in positive and negative values (thus indicating a decrease
in participation, negative participation, or diminished reputation of the individual
or group).
In the ecosystems there also are curators, working to produce knowledge under
the form of advice. For example, in the educational offering, curators will propose
education schemes and progressions (e.g.: according to my point of view, a Communications Designer should at least follow course A offered by Mr.X, course B offered by
Mrs.Y...). The same applies to projects, research and so on (they produce recipes,
cfr par 2.1.5).
Their work will be evaluated in the same manner, with individual and groups evaluating their value (in terms of reputation and positive participation to the ecosystem, for example in the orientation of students who have just entered the system,
or as producers of useful recipes for projects, research and other processes) using
the K-Coins.

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The logotype, that simbolyze the well-being of the ecosystem,

was inspired by Romanesco broccoli.

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Logo: sviluppo

As for the other axis (internal/external), the system is permeable. This means that to
participate in the exchange of K-Coins, one does not need to be inside the ecosystem, but, rather, participate to it (thus, also acquiring reputation). This process is a
delicate one, and is still being refined as it shapes, for example, a great part of the
oscillations to the conversion value of currency units, the price at which products/
services can be sold to subjects that are external to the ecosystem, and the level of
desirability to take active part in the ecosystem (for example by teaching, studying
or doing projects in the ecosystem).

4.
UNA STATICIT DINAMICA
Logo: sviluppo

Several mechanisms are being developed to engaging individuals and groups to

establish their economies within the ecosystem once they started, to achieve a
growing pattern of shifting to the commons-based economy which is actively promoted within the ecosystem itself.

Schematizzazione

Geometrizzazione

4.
UNA STATICIT DINAMICA
Logo: sviluppo

Schematizzazione

Schematizzazione
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Geometrizzazione

Geometrizzazione

Sviluppo

Sviluppo

Outline, geometry, development.

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2.1.4 An agile ecosystem

2.1.5 The recipes

All the things we have seen so far represent knowledge, as well.

Within the ecosystems, a series of subjects produce recipes.

The Future Map, the definition of the Foundation (its statute and regulations, for
example), the K-Coins definition and the software needed to make them work,
the collaboration and relation tools: everything that we describe here is part of the
Knowledge Common that constitutes the core of the Environment, of the Public
Space, that we are describing. As such, they can be freely accessed and used.

Each project, course, study program, how-to, tutorial each of these things is a
recipe, may contain and use recipes and may be contained in one or more recipes.
Recipes are like the ones for cooking: they contain ingredients, and the instructions
on how to combine them to obtain a certain result.

Using the Git16 metaphor, they can be watched (to know how theyre changing),
pulled (to use them), forked (to modify them, creating your own version) and merged (to take the results of multiple contributions and to assemble them into a new
version). If a certain subject grabs and modifies, lets say, the Future Map, or the
statute of the Foundation, they can use it for their own purposes, but the results
remain part of the Knowledge Common, together with their relation with the original version.
This fact has enormous cultural, political and practical implications. First of all determined by the possible co-existence of multiple versions of everything. This implies, for example, that if I have a certain vision of the Future Map, of how the future
of the education system could be, I could just fork the currently adopted Future
Map, modify in ways which reflect my point of view, and put it back up for merging.
Then other people will be able to make their own decisions: merge it, fork it on their
own and use it, or else. In any case, I would be able to use my own Future Map for
my own purposes (in this case, to aim at a certain objective in the transformation of
the future of the education system).
In all this, K-Coins allow everyone to express (currency as a means of expression)
themselves about their perception of my contribution to the Common, contributing to my reputation and, thus, augmenting the value of the environment/common
itself. This possibility for measure also achieves a virtuous effect: since everyones reputation is connected to their active contribution to the well-being of the Knowledge Common that constitutes the environment, and since the K-Coins measuring it
are mutually assigned, everyone will be engaged into making positive contributions,
thus augmenting their value, thus incrementing their reputation and possibilities/
opportunities within the ecosystem.

Recipes, as forms of (meta-)knowledge are part of the Knowledge Common.

There can be recipes about what is the education path to become a Designer, an
Engineer, a Cultural Anthropologist. Recipes about how to build chairs, drones,
particle accelerators. Even recipes about cooking.
A certain recipe may indicate that, before attempting to do something, I should
learn something: Recipe to create object X could state that you can use software tools
Y and Z, physical tools K and T, and you have to follow course A, preferably with Mr. B,
and it would be better to join Lab C, and you would need the collaboration of at least 1
person who has followed course D and E, and who is proficient in using tool Y.
Recipes can be produced by multiple subjects: I, for example could produce a recipe
about what you need to learn and do to become a proficient Communication Designer.
Other people could create similar recipes (starting from scratch, or forking my recipe, for example): other designers, people who think they know what it takes to
become a Communication Designer, and more.
One peculiar type of subject which could desire to have its say about this could be,
for example, the Italian Ministry for University and Research (the MIUR), or any
other governmental institution in other parts of the world. Actually, all of these
types of subjects basically occupy their time creating recipes under the form of
official study plans, policies, regulations and more. We recognise these plans, rules
and regulations as valid and mandatory on the premise that we trust these governmental entities and institutions, and that we acknowledge them the role of the
maintainers of the systems in which sciences, humanities and research can thrive
and prosper.
Its a matter of trust, and reputation.
What could, then, happen in the ecosystem which were describing?
It may become true that Mr. Xs recipe on how to become a Robotic Engineer is valued more (in K-Coins) than the one from the MIUR, other Government Agencies,

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or even than the one from Stanford, or even MIT. This can happen for multiple
reasons, of course. One of them is that, in the ecosystem, more people have recognized more value (by attributing K-Coins) to Mr. Xs recipe. This would mean that the
education ecosystem recognizes Mr. Xs recipe more valuable than the one by the
Ministry, or by Stanford, or by someone else.
This possibility is disruptive: what could a Ministry of Education, or Stanford, or
MIT do in this case? They could produce a better recipe, or adopt Mr. Xs, or fork
it or many more things. Sure is that that they would have to act, in order to bring
more well-being to the ecosystem.

# the Recipe Maker

2.1.6 The life of the ecosystem: scenarios

Now that we explained how this ecosystem works, we can give examples about
possible scenarios happening inside it: how can I interact, produce, add value to the
Common?
How can I teach in this ecosystem?
I could offer a course/lab/training-on-the-job/something using the social network,
or by participating to a Community of Practice or Work Team (and possibly recognising the need for such an offering), or because I really enjoy teaching a certain
subject/practice, or because I have the tools/spaces/conditions to offer it, or else.
In my offering I can use elements from the Knowledge Common, optionally forking them and creating my own versions, which are put back into the Common. I
can use recipes, and produce recipes of my own, to be used in the course or outside
of it (my course is needed to learn how to build object X, as described by recipe Y). The
offering can also be included in recipes by other subjects, which deem it as being
fundamental for achieving a certain purpose.
These same people may decide to replace a certain element of their recipe with my
offering, should they be convinced (and, in this, reputation helps) that mine is better.
Eventually, I will give the course/lab/stage/practice/etc, and the people who have
participated (students, recipe-adopters, be that to become an engineer, complete a
project, to learn something so that I can then teach it, to learn something for no
purpose at all and so on) may decide to assign me some K-Coins for my positive and
active participation to the well-being of the Ecosystem.
From this moment my offering would benefit from increased reputation

# recipes

# elements of the Common

How can I create a project in this ecosystem?

This scenario works much in the same way like the previous one, the major difference is in its augmented degree of generality. To engage a project you have to learn
something, use knowledge and information, assemble a certain number of recipes,
and more. All to produce, as described, more knowledge and some objects/products/
services/other.

In this scenario, an interesting figure may emerge: the Recipe Maker. Its an expert,
enthusiast, skilled person who combine different elements of the Common into recipes.

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Thus, it would work out in the same way. The social network/communities of practice/work teams scheme could be used to start a project. The project would use
elements from the Knowledge Common (be them single elements or recipes),
combining them with courses, laboratories and relations with other people and
organisations which would have to have access to knowledge and recipes (either
directly or by going to school) and, possibly, a certain level of reputation. In this

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scenario: the value of reputation in the ecosystem becomes self-evident, as enabler,

facilitator, multiplier, accelerator of the action.
How can I learn in this ecosystem?
You always learn in this ecosystem. One of the strengths of this approach is the
explicitation of this fact: in different moments and contexts of their life subjects will
act as learners, professors, laboratories, entrepreneurs, producers of recipes, and
more. I could decide to learn in multiple ways: by choosing a certain recipe (based
on the reputation of its creator, or for some other reason); by choosing a certain
course/lab/other offering; by joining into a project in which I would need to learn a
certain thing or adopt a certain recipe.
Or I could even identify that no-one is currently offering a certain course/lab/training/other, and by using the social network/communities of practice/work teams
to try to make it available (and this would also be an opportunity for someone to
actually create the offering).
If all else fails, I could try to learn by myself in some way, and, maybe, even offer the
course myself.
In all this, the usual mechanism applies: of all the contributions which I used (the
course, lab, recipe or else) I would be able to assign K-Coins to attribute to them
reputation, based on my perception of how they contributed to the well-being of
the ecosystem and of the Knowledge Common.

We imagined a p2p, interconnected ecosystem where knowledge is a

Commons and everyone can teach, learn, share ideas and projects.

The life of the ecosystem.

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3.

Making Knowpen accesible to anyone

the

Future

does not exist

i t s a p e r f o r m a n c e

In the second chapter we explained and analyzed the features of Knowpen

Foundation. We found out more about new ways of knowledge and information
sharing, alternative currencies and relational networks. At last, we tried to give an
idea about the life of this ecosystem through general scenarios.
In this third chapter we are going to expand a critical matter of this project: its
accessibility and comprehensibility. Well build a communication design project
able to let the complex contents of Knowpen intelligible to anyone, throughout
Speculative and Near Future Design tools.
Inhere, well describe the process and the metadesign17 that will took us to the
definition of a concrete communication object able to foster the comprehensibility
of this project.

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3.1 A step ahead towards a communication strategy

Since the beginning, people have always been the main focus of the project. We
imagined an opened ecosystem based on their desires, vocations, needs. Now then,
how can we share what has been done so far in an effective way? How can we let
people get involved in this project? How can we let them activate and participate?
Is it possible to make them be part of what we dreamed? In this first section, we
are going to expand this questions starting from what Knowpens communication
lacked so far and what tools we should use to solve this issue.
3.1.1 The critical matter
After we expanded the research done on Knowpen Foundation, we focused on the
description and explanation of its functioning. Reached this point, the complexity of
this project should be clear. This is the main reason why we faced several criticisms
since the project moved its first steps outside of our classroom. The most common
criticism that people directed to us is that our intent to involve and reach everyone
fails in the moment we use complex languages, approaches and communication. As
it was already mentioned in the introduction to this text, we often heard the word
elitism flanked to Knowpen Foundation. We strongly believe that this definition
couldnt be more wrong: its a complete contradiction in terms of intent, vocation,
desire. Defining this project elitist by attacking what has been its communication
so far, its a superficial act of non-productive criticisms. Wed like to point out the
difference between criticize the intents and criticize the way they are expressed.

Your project is too elitist, it uses a complex language and

it gives too much information at the same time. You are not
really including anyone, as you are expecting to.
(a recurring criticism directed to Knwopen Foundation)

As the project reached the level of development explained in the previous chapter, we were immediately aware that a good communication strategy should have
been produced to let it be known, experienced, desired. Thats what we are trying
to do here. Well analyze the better path to follow in order to create a desirable
and understandable communication design product able to let people get into this
framework. The intent of this work is to add the missing step we needed to get this
project out of our classroom, once and for all.

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3.1.2 Desirable, preferable, possible worlds

After we identified the main critical matter of this project, we decide to avoid looking for an implementation and totally directing towards communication. The Near
Future Design methodology helps us to follow the best path: earlier in this text we
mentioned that the aim of this approach is to shift the perception of possibility.
This is what we have to do to let people get involved in this project: its necessary to
focus on desire, inspiration, daily life and allurement. In order to enact what we described so far, we are going to create a strategy able to stimulate, foster and activate
peoples imagination about this topic. The only way to let people discuss, imagine
and consider something that is not yet existing in reality, is to manifestate an object
able to convey its contents and values into peoples mind. That why we are referring
to possible worlds to be formed, shaped and performed into the real world. So far,
we analyzed and described the Near Future Design methodology, but we would also
like to expand the Design Fiction concept18. On this regard, we would like to quote
Joshua Glen Tanenbaum, Assistant Professor in Informatics at UC Irvine:
[...] I am realizing that oftentimes the fiction element is misinterpreted as not real,
rather than in a story. This is a problematic confusion, and it leads to some things
being called Design Fictions that really dont fit the definitions above. In particular,
there is a growing interest in what Id term speculative design: scenarios that envision possible future technologies that dont really exist yet, but without the narrative
trappings that are doing the really heavy lifting in Design Fiction.
The more I look at the growing interest in future-oriented design, envisioning, and
speculative design, the more important it becomes to me to carve out a space for
stories that are concerned with our designed futures. Stories are, after all, one of the
oldest and most important of human technologies. Narrative is the first information
technology, likely preceding language itself. We are evolved to take pleasure in narratives, to extract information from stories, and to retain information that has been
encoded in narrative forms. What is easier to remember: a list of random facts, or
a story that incorporates those facts into a meaningful causal structure? Stories take
the raw materials of life and cohere them into meaningful forms: they are a tool for
reasoning about the world and for communicating that reasoning to each other.

A diagram by Bruce Sterling on manufacturing and Design Fiction.

When an item becomes a conventional object? What are anticonventional objects?

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Design Fictions need to be stories, because stories have internal logics that other informational forms lack. The presence of characters, of point-of-view, of sequenced
causally connected events, and of storyworlds creates an ecology in which to situate
diegetic prototypes. They create a point of contact for a reader to empathize-with and
build an understanding of a fictional design. If the fictional design and the fictional
world dont play well together, then the design fiction isnt doing any meaningful
work. It is comparatively easy to imagine an impossible technology. It is much harder
to really situate that technology within a coherent fictional world. It is even harder
to create a believable bridge from our current world to this new fictional world.
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3.2 Metadesign
This analysis we are going to describe the predictive and ideal processes of the
metadesign phase. Herein, well ask ourselves question about design issues, the values we want to communicate, the user we want to address to, trying to solve any
single aspect that come before the concrete object. Its an attempt to systematize
the creative-designing process, in order to let the project come out after conscious
choices, not by a mere intuition/inspiration. In this case, we are going to focus on
the best way to build an effective communication object. Wed like to point out that
the outcome of this analysis (the concrete object) will not be presented in this text,
since our aim is to give a general guide to create several and different artifacts.
3.2.1 The aim of the project
The first step of the metadesign process is to ask ourselves about the aim we want to
follow. As already mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter, we know that we
need to create an object that is going to be understood, desired, wanted, experienced, observed, something able to draw people in Knowpens framework. The best
way to produce something close to peoples experience is to focus on their daily life,
their direct experience of what is familiar and habitual.
In order to do that, we need to answer to the following questions: in the life of the
ecosystem we described, how do people live their life? How do they teach, learn,
create a project? How do they earn money or behave? How do they share their interests and ideas with the others? Its clear that the communication matter is pretty
important.
Another relevant aim of this work is, beyond the creation of something clear and
comprehensible, to produce an object able to help the spreading itself. This can be
done throughout the work that Nefula (cf About this project) is doing right now,
which intent is to share the Near Future Design methodology along with the existing (or not yet existing) related projects. Knowpen Foundation was born among
the desks of ISIA Firenze in early 2014. Since that time, it has been edited, revised
and discussed, but what we missed since the very beginning was an effective communication object to let the project spread outside the expert and informed people
circle. Thats why Nefula, that gathers some of the students and the teachers who
participated to the creation of Knowpen, is interested in finding a solution to solve
this lack.
Lastly, its important to highlight the values that will be conveyed through this
object: openness, clarity, desirability, involvement.

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3.2.2 Nefula: identity and features

To better define a strategy to build out ideal communication object, we need to illustrate who is ordering the commission, even when its internal. We are going to give a
look about how we, at Nefula, describe our distributed laboratory (from nefula.com):
What we do

Which future(s) do we want?

At Nefula we have one main concern: help society, communities, companies and
organizations to imagine, explore and examine Possible Futures, in order to improve the quality of decisions about which futures we want.
To do that, we situate possible futures into the present, so we can explore them,
think about them, talk about them and make value judgments about them.
In this new space people can suspend disbelief and simply experience the possible
to develop a sense of the possible by accessing things to play with and ways to act
it out;
connect and synthesize multiple sources of knowledge, in all disciplines and modalities, across cities, cultures, and virtual domains; better understand tensions,
conflicts, harmonies, dissonances; rituals, and tendencies when they are in their
early stages, when they are still only suggestions.
How we work

We are a network of researchers, artists, designers, academics, journalists, architects and other professional and vocational figures who continuously contribute to
forming context and topic based observations updating our understandings about
the Consensual Reality, the Curious Rituals, the Strange Now, the State of the
Arts and Technologies, the New Normals.
We operate in fields as vast as environment, work, relations, emotions, consumption, entertainment, health, information, knowledge and more.
We establish collaborations and partnerships with governments, companies,
NGOs, activists, and other forms of organization.
These partnerships are usually topic based (eg.: the Near Future of Rural Mobility;
the Near Future of Street Food; or else), and they produce reports (on Consensual
Reality, Curious Rituals, Strange Now, State of the Arts and Technologies, New
Normals) and Pre-totypes (under the form of complex Transmedia Narratives
establishing credible simulacra).
We use our Pre-totypes to raise up wide public discussions which are then observed, measured, understood and published.
We organize events in which all of the methodological steps are represented in
spectacular, suggestive and thought-provoking ways, so that they can be showcased and used to bring together experts, policy-makers and civil society into evaluating the results and collaborating to build the desired, preferable New Normals.

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Why it is important

In a time of exponential transformation, long term future predictions are interesting, but Near Future (what comes next) is prerequisite.
On one side, we change technologies, systems, hardware, software, methods, dress
codes, eating habits, destinations, working modalities and more. Very fast, very
often. Without even fully understanding them, or their implications.
On the other side, we are confronted with powerful imaginaries coming from
media and operators (large, global, local). Objects such as drones, robots, self-drive
cars already exist in our mind, with the effect of narrowing down our perception
of possibility, of what our future can (or will) be allowing for medium-long term
development of strategies and business models.
At Nefula, we believe that Future is a plural object.
We have built a methodology to describe the Near Future(s), and to enable as
many people as possible to create it, collaboratively and critically. One step at the
time.
We hope that it can serve for the positive, creative, incremental, tactical, strategic
ways in which we can build our futures, together, with each step and turn we take
in our daily lives.

Now that we found out more about what is Nefula, its easier to understand why
our interest in letting a project as Knowpen Foundation be known and extended to
a wider audience. Another reason that matches our commitment in spreading this
vision is our interest in the education matter (cf About this project).

On the next page: Nefulas home page

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3.2.3 Ideal user

The next thing to do, is to articulate life forms that may identify the ideal users and
their possible worlds19. We are going to ask ourselves about the habits, behaviors,
characteristics
of people relating to this project.
Its necessary to highlight that education is a very wide matter, it covers several
aspects and fields. But, first of all, education concerns everybody. We are not mentioning the standard education path that most of the people follow during their
early lives, but we are referring to the widest idea of it. We, as human beings, learn
everyday, everytime in different and unexpected ways. Our ideal users are, then,
people interested in this matter of constant and unconventional learning.

3.2.4 Values and purposes to communicate

Reached this point, its necessary to recap with a diagram which are the values and
purposes we need to keep in mind during the development of the project.

Information
COMMUNICATION PURPOSE

It could be a group of young people interested in design who wants to try a different
way to create their projects, finding a reliable network and effective resources. They
are all interested in learning and specializing about different subjects and skills (e.g.:
information technologies, 3D print, illustration and publishing, etc), while staying
together and working on the same project. They all live different lives, even in different cities or countries, but they are linked by the same desire to grow together and
build something useful.

Practical PURPOSE

Involvement

It could be a middle age man working in a bank, who had always dreamed to teach
economies to people, no matter their age. His dream of becoming a teacher is still
alive and in the Knowpen ecosystem he could do it, just because he is very motivated
and willing to teach. If he is a valuable teacher, he would earn reputation (K-Coins)
and his skills and talent could be finally recognized by people (not by institutions).
It could be a little kid living in a poor family, who was forced to give up on studying
despite his intelligence. She would find the way to become an engineer after entering in the ecosystem and following a very valuable recipe produced by someone
else. She could help her parents when needed and keep on studying with a very
flexible and customizable plan, that wouldnt be possible in a standard school.

Clarity

Openness

IDEAL USER SIMULACRUM

COMMUNICATION
OBJECT

Conveyed
values

Openness
Desire
Vocation
Collaboration
Education

Identity

NEFULA

We this diagram we just visualized the simulacrum of the ideal user that is going to
make use of the communication object.

It could be a teacher, a student or a researcher that is actually attending his education path but that is willing to have an alternative to what is learning or teaching.
Someone wanting to fully personalize their education and spend the time of their
lives pursuing what they dream with dedication, vocation and inspiration. Someone looking for a different way to follow a somewhat restricted plan, being able to
establish collaborative relationship with people of different age, nationality, field of
interest.
These are just some of the ideas we suggest in order to have a more concrete vision of
the life forms that could be interested in our communication object about Knowpen
Foundation. It is clear that our ideal audience is pretty wide, thats why we have to
focus on values based on the most universal comprehensibility as possible.
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3.2.5 Possible narrative path

In this section we are going to expand the values we identified into a narrative plan,
scenarios, roles of the parties.
In order to let the values and the purposes of the first metadesign phase transforming
into a concrete object we have to analyze the kind of output. As a communication
object, we could produce a video, a comic, an illustration, an infographic, a performance: anything that is able to communicate the content of Knowpen in a clear
way. We decided to focus on the creation of a series of illustrations/infographics that
can describe the life of a life form into the ecosystem according to daily life matters.
The iter we want to follow is the following:

to create textual scenarios describing the life of our ideal users;

to translate them into one or more illustrations/infographics;
to look for feedbacks just after the first draft are done;
to improve the visualizations according to peoples reactions and opinions.

The scenarios and the consequent visualization we are going to produce must match
the values we already mentioned before as clarity, desirability, involvement. They
have to stimulate imagination with a good dose of appeal.
The search of feedback its necessary because, since this a project from and for people, its completely based on their understanding, reception, opinion. Wed like to
underline the importance of looking for this feedback among people who are unrelated to Knowpen and, in general, to the education matter: this will help to improve
the universal accessibility we opted for.
3.2.6 Enunciation strategies
Its time to make a little step further into the concretization of our communication
object, by identifying the necessary elements to build a prototype.

tion utility. It will be a narrative object, able to tell a story and let people identify
themselves into this possible world.
About texts to be inserted in the graphic, its necessary to simplify them and decrease the number of words (the total absence of texts would be even more suitable for
an universal accessibility, but we think a minimum quantity of text will be needed
anyways). Its also auspicable to use english as the probability to reach a wider audience are way more high. A good job from translating the textual scenarios to the
graphic will be essential.
About the style and features of the illustrations, we may opt for an essential and
clean design, since we are addressing to a very wide audience (e.g.: a childish style
is definitely far from the values we want to convey). We also believe that a neutral
design (closer to infographic and geometries) could fit the universal communication
we are pursuing. Furthermore, the use of colors will be limited to the highlightment
of the different elements and transitions. Another important matter is related to the
flexibility of its format: the graphics are eventually produced to fit various kind of
digital or material containers
Commutation proof
To identify the effectiveness of the enunciative strategies we just described, its necessary to commute them.
Firstly, lets focus on the choice of a illustration/infographic: a multimedia object, as
a video, would be effective as well and probably even more involving, but it would
lose its spreadability as we get offline or on printed paper. A graphic object its easier
to share among different contexts. Secondly, if we insert a lot of texts inside this
visualization, the communication effectiveness would be less: too much texts means
too much information and this fact would go against the values and purposes we
inscribed in the project. Also, a strongly characterized graphic style could mean a
decreasing of the desirability of the object itself: it may exclude a certain audience.
Lastly, if we consider a definitive format for our illustration, we would limitate its
shareability and suitability to various contexts.

In the previous paragraph we opted for an illustration/infographic as a suitable

communication support to make Knowpen comprehensible to anyone. We found
this a valuable choice thanks to the strong spreadability of this means: it can be
easily applied to many online and offline contexts (a blog, a book, a newspaper, a
crowd-funding campaign page, an advertisement banner, etc.). The intent is, then,
to create an object which first purpose is to be shared and spread in a digital format,
while the secondary is to be included also on material supports as the one already
mentioned. This is where we identify its practical utility.
We may now focus on the stylistic features of this object and on its communica-

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3.2.7 Communication and distribution channels

The last step of this metadesign phase consists in giving a general idea about the
communication channels that may be used to let the project be known, desired, participated. Through the text we mentioned about several digital or material channels
that may be considered. We, at Nefula, may employ our web site as the favourite
place to communicate Knowpen and the visualization could be contained in the
dedicated page.
Earlier through the text we talked about the possibility of enacting a crowd-funding campaign: this communication object would be the best way to represents and
communicate how the ecosystem works in a simple and direct way.
Also, we may use it during our workshops about Near Future Design as an effective
method to show the features of the project, shortly and immediately.
What we would like to highlight is that the communication utility of the visualization consists in the ability of share this project, make it being understood and
desired: an in-depth research about the best way to spread this communication
object may be needed.
Thanks to each step we took during this metadesign phase, we could understand the
necessity of focusing on the details and features of a project before start working
on it. Sometimes, designers risk to give certain elements for granted and this could
limitate their work. In our world, that is proliferating with methods and tools, its
important to find first a reason to create something effective and valuable.
3.2.8 After the metadesign
The brief guideline that we tried to illustrate in this last section of the text, is going
to be the basis for the creation of a concrete communication object. Herein, we
preferred to focus on the process of its realization instead of simply including one
or more outcomes (that, at the time of writing, are being produced). This choice was
made due to the nature of the project: a constant, mutable, open process. Giving an
outline is then a way to eventually fix it and adjust it to different needs and contexts.
The intent of this text is, first of all, was to gather and organize a very wide research
that started from early 2014. We also desire for the thesis itself to be a valuable
document to share our vision in a linear and coherent way. The outcome of this
last part we just described, will be eventually shared after the publication of this
text, in an online context which is the ideal environment for instant feedbacks,
opinions and criticisms. This process is constantly growing in time: thats why we
suggest this publications as a point of reference for the project at his current state
and development.

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Conclusion

An open source, mutable, permeable project

What has been presented and explained through this text its
the result of the contribution and participation of people sharing
a desire: make education accessible to anyone. Its an effort to
reinvent the future of everybodys education with awareness and
dedication. The project arose in a common and recurrent context
where a group of students and teachers got together in a situation
of crisis. Every day in the world, the same situation may occur.
What happened at ISIA worked differently, since we gave up
our act of protest to start thinking, designing and reinventing
our school with our own hands. One of the aim of this project
is also to inspire people who is living a similar situation to start
acting and thinking out of their boxes.

The future does not exist: it is a performance, which

we enact with every single one of our decisions.

Its important to underline the intrinsic nature of Knowpen

Foundation: it was designed by people for people, as an opensource project that needs their ideas, opinions and suggestions.
It mutates constantly, along with the fast transformations that
we are facing. This work was an attempt to give a thorough
documentation of the current state of development in order to
engage new discussions and involve more people. Its a permeable
project where everybody is invited to join in to change, improve
and create different versions of the same core concept about an
ecosystem that fosters and preserves the common: knowledge.
We opted for a disruptive approach, creating something far
from a hierarchical organization and, currently, a large and
articulate international group is working to support the project
continuing this big research. Researchers, teachers, students,
associations, companies are invited to join us. We are looking
for ideas, suggestions, critiques about the future of the education
system. The Near Future Education Labs group on Facebook is
open dot everybody willing to join in.
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113

Bibliography

NOTES

1.

The Tumblr documenting the students protest

can be consulted at noisiamofirenze.tumblr.com;

12. From the article The Near Future of Educationon

AOS, Art is Open Source blog, 2014;

2.

Search Near Future Education Lab on Facebook

to join our group;

3.

Our Twitter account: @NearFutureEducation;

13. Referring to the article The Rise of AntiCapitalism by Jeremy Rifkin on The New York
Times web site (nytimes.com), 2014;

4.

Visit nefula.com for further information and to

discover other Near Future Design projects;

14. From FLOK - Ecuador Research process

presentation by Michel Bauwens on slideshare.
net;

5.

More information atsuperflux.in/work/

newnormal;

15. More at p2pvalue.eu/project;

6.

Agile software development is a set of software

development methods in which requirements
and solutions evolve through collaboration
between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary
development, early delivery, continuous
improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible
response to change (from Wikipedia);

7.

To find out more about Wirearchy visit

wirearchy.com;

8.

More at p2pfoundation.net;

9.

FLOK Society is, at its core, a research project

occurring within a university: Ecuadors postgraduate-focused state school the IAEN. But
the parameters of the project push us to seek
as many partnerships with any other schools,
entities, social organizations, and communities
with a stake in the project. Which is to say,
there is an open invitation, and there soon
will be proactive attempts to court, input and
collaboration from all Ecuadorians and any
international group that shares the values of
FLOK and is interested in the theory that
by creating and empowering peer networks
a country can create a new economic matrix.
Find more about FLOK Society a floksociety.
org;

10. From the article What happened in the planetary

event of the Near Future Education Lab on AOS,
Art is Open Source blog, 2014;
11. Our wiki page on P2P Foundation
p2pfoundation.net/Near_Future_Education_Lab;

16. Git is a widely used source code management

system for software development. It is a
distributed revision control system with an
emphasis on speed, data integrity,and support
for distributed, non-linear workflows.Git was
initially designed and developed in 2005 by
Linux kernel developers (including Linus
Torvalds) for Linux kernel development (from
Wikepedia);
17. The term metadesign refers to book by Michela
Deni and Giampaolo Proni, La semiotica e il
Progetto, Franco Angeli editore, 2008 (p. 97):
metadesign is the work that come before any
project, literally its the project on and about the
project;
18. For an in-depth research about the Design
Fiction concept we suggest to look for further
information about interviews, essays and texts
by Julian Bleecker (Near Future Laboratory) and
Bruce Sterling;
19. In semiotics, a possible world is a fictional world,
an alternative to the real one that its still taken
as a point of reference to add variations (def.
from La semiotica e il Progetto by Michela Deni
and Giampaolo Proni, Franco Angeli editore,
2008).

ANDERSON, Chris
2006 The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Hyperion Books
Baudrillard, Jean
1994 Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press
BILTON, Nick
2011 I Live in the Future & Heres How It Works, Crown Business
BLEECKER, Julian
2009 Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction, on Near Future Laboratory
DENI Michela, PRONI Giampaolo
2008 La semiotica e il progetto. Design, comunicazione, marketing, Milano - Franco Angeli
DUNNE Anthony, RABY Fiona
2013 Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, The MIT Press
GIBSON, William
1984 Neuromancer, Ace
HARDIN, Garrett
1968 The Tragedy of the Commons, on Science
HAWORTH, Robert H.
2012 Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, PM Press
HIMANEN, Pekka
2001 The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd
ILLICH, Ivan
1971 Deschooling Society, New York - Harper & Row
JENKINS, Henry
2006 Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York - New York University Press
NOVA, Nicolas
2012 Curious Rituals, on Near Future Laboratory
OSTROM Elinor, HESS Charlotte
2006 Understanding Knowledge as a Commons, The MIT Press
PACCAGNELLA, Luciano
2010 Open Access: conoscenza aperta e societ dellinformazione, Bologna - Il Mulino
STERLING, Bruce
2005 Shaping things, The MIT Press

115

Articles

BOSH, Torie
2012 Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains the Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction, on Future Tense blog
DOURISH Paul, BELL Genevieve
2009 Resistance is Futile: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing, on dourish.com
HALDANE, James
2014 Speculative Design: Playing Devils Advocate, on The Architectural Review blog
IACONESI, Salvatore
2014 on AOS - Art is Open Source blog
Design, philosophy art and business;
Transmedia Design;
Transmedia Narratives, simulacra, simulation, fake and design fiction;
Near Future Design: the perception of a new possible and a new role for Design;
Borges, Welles, Baudrillard, Ballard, Dick and Caronia: Creating Futures;
JAIN, Anab
2012 Design For The New Normal, on Superflux blog
JENKINS, Henry
2007 Transmedia Storytelling 101, on henryjenkins.org
2011 Transmedia 202: Further Reflections, on henryjenkins.org
MILNER, Greg
2016 Ignore the GPS. That Ocean Is Not a Road, on New York Times web site
RAO, Venkatesh
2012 Welcome to the Future Nauseous, on Ribbon Farm web site
SARDAR, Ziauddin
2010 Welcome to postnormal times, on ziauddinsardar.com
STERLING, Bruce
2013 Design Fiction: anticonventional objects, on Wired.com
Patently untrue: fleshy defibrillators and synchronised baseball are changing the future, on Wired.com
WARD, Matt
2013 Design Fiction as Pedagogic Practice, on Medium

116

Articles about Knowpen Foundation and the Near Future of Education

CECCONI, Marta
2014 on CheFuturo! blog
La nostra scuola ubiqua. Il nostro desiderio di imparare senza fine
CONSONNI, Francesca Marianna
2014 I dilettanti del miracolo, on Undo.net
DE BIASE, Luca
2014 Crisis and Transformation of the Education system: the Near Future of Education in Florence, on Nva blog
FALETRA, Rudy
2014 on CheFuturo! blog
Decidiamo noi quanto vale la conoscenza. Con una moneta, un ecosistema p2p, e una nuova idea di scuola.
Benvenuti alla Knowpen Foundation
IACONESI, Salvatore
2014 on AOS - Art is Open Source blog
The Near Future of Education: a potential revolution, at ISIA in Florence;
The performance of the Near Future of Education;
Near Future Design at CyberResistance in Milan;
The 7 days of the Near Future of Education;
What happened in the planetary event of the Near Future Education Lab;
The Near Future of Education;
XY: a Castle, a Lab and the Near Future of Education;
IACONESI Salvatore, PERSICO Oriana
2014 on CheFuturo! blog
Chiudete lISIA? E noi inventiamo una scuola nuova: ubiqua, accessibile, inclusiva. Chiamatela #Occupy3.0;
Bauwens: Perch lISIA ha inaugurato un nuovo corso dei movimenti studenteschi;
Il sostegno attivo di Jon Husband, linventore della Wirearchy;
Parola a Layne Harstel e alleducazione come motore della giustizia sociale;
MENICONI, Alice
2014 on CheFuturo! blog
Oltre la protesta, verso una nuova percezione del possibile: cos nato il Near Future Education Lab
And our blog on Nva (italian) @ http://nearfutureducationlab.nova100.ilsole24ore.com

117

CREDITS
The realization of this work was possible thanks to the participation of many people. Id like to start
thanking who directly contributed to this thesis.
The first thanks go to my teachers and friend Salvatore and Oriana. Since we first met at ISIA,
you changed my vision of school and helped me to think outside the box.
Thanks to Nefula and all its members, my friends Mirko Balducci, Tommaso Cappelletti, Marta
Cecconi, Gian Paolo Delfino, Giacomo Equizi, Rudy Faletra, Tommaso Tregnaghi.
Thanks to Michel Bauwens, Layne Hartsell and Jon Husband for their precious contribute since
the beginning of this project.
Thanks to the whole Near Future Design class (2013/2014) and to anyone else that contributed
at ISIA Firenze.
Thanks to all the members of the Near Future Education Lab.
The last months havent been easy for me, thats why I would also like to thank all the people that are not
directly linked to this project, but who supported and encouraged me all the way until I fulfilled this goal.
Thanks to my whole, big and caring family, thanks to Mino, thanks to my dear nephew Matteo.
Thanks to Shiga and Max, my childhood friends, that I will cherish forever. Thanks to my cats
Nino and Misa. Thanks to my Cincy.
Thanks to my japanese family: Miho-san, Haru-chan, Shu, Tetto-san, Natsuko-san, Saki, Risa,
Yuito, Tokunaga-san, Matsuo-san, Kohei, Taneda-sensei, Joe-kun, Haga-san, Kinoshita-san,
Nishiguchi-san and everybody at N.I. Planning. I miss Nara so much!
Hayashi-san, this work is in english thanks to you.
Thanks to the table-gamez community: Reddo, Lord Peylish, Lollaz, L.A, Cesar, Beis.
Thanks to Giulia and our cilandrini.
Thanks to Luca, I hope your foot wont broke this time!
Thanks to Valentina, the hot chocolate is waiting for us.
Thanks to my best friend Claudia.
Thanks to Elisa.
My last thank you goes to my beloved grandmother Rita who left us while working on this thesis.
To you.

# meraviglia!

 The future does not exist, its a global conversation about what we want, what we fear,
what we expect and the possibilities we can imagine.
Salvatore Iaconesi

ALICE MENICONI
TESI DI DIPLOMA DI 2 LIVELLO
A.A. 2014-2015