Founders

• Michel BAUWENS

I am 47 (born 21/3/58), married to a Thai national in Chiang Mai, with 2 children in Paris, and 2 children here in Thailand.

After a career as a reference librarian/analyst (USIA, 1981-1990), business information manager (BP Nutrition, 1990-93), editor-in-chief of the digital magazine Wave in Belgium (1993-1994), creator of two dotcoms, respectively active in the field of intranet/extranets (eCom, sold to Alcatel, 1995-96), and interactive marketing (KyberCo, sold to Virtuality, 1997-1998), European Manager of Thought Leadership (USWeb/CKS / MarchFIRST, 1997-98), and eBusiness Strategy Director for Belgacom (Belgium's largest telco, 1999-2002), I started to have serious doubts about the sustainability of the neoliberal model for the political economy. I decided to take a two-year sabbatical for reflection, and eventually moved to the magical city of Chiang Mai,Thailand, to start a new life, with a more balanced pace of life, amidst my Thai wife's extended family. I try to sustain myself through teaching (Payap University, CMU) and to devote time to explore the new social paradigm which I call peer to peer, and holds promise for political and social change. I created the Foundation for P2P Alternatives in order to find similarly minded people worldwide, hoping to contribute to the change that I am trying to analyse and understand.

Creative endeavours: I should mention that I also tought The Anthropology of Digital Society at St. Louis/ICHEC in Brussels, co-editing two French-language volumes with the same title; and co-created (scenario, research and interviews) a 3-hour TV documentary with film maker Frank Theys, entitled TechnoCalyps, the metaphysics of technology and the end of man, which will be relaunched in a new version (with which I did not collaborate much this time) in May 2006 in Belgium. In my home country Belgium I am somewhat known as an 'internet guru'; here in my new life, I am again a 'great unknown'.

Spiritually and intellectually, I have moved from a radical materialist position in my youth, to an intense investigation and experimentation with eastern and western psycho-technologies from my mid-twenties to my mid-thirties (a search for enlightement and transcendence), through self-study of the western philosophical tradition later in life. After a crisis of confidence in the existing system during 1997-1998, associated with exhaustion through overwork in my business environment, I decided to reflect more deeply and to attempt to integrate the ideals of my youth (engagement with the left), with the spiritual knowledge gathered during my spiritual search, and my knowledge/experience with the current social and intellectual trends, as well as my engagement in the worlds of business and technology. It gradually dawned on me that the commonality behind the changes we were witnessing, was the peer to peer form, which I set out to study and understand, to the best of my abilities, in dialogue with others.

• Kris ROOSE Look to The Noosphere Website
• David Mason and James Herman
• Chris Stewart
• Brice Le Blévennec
• James Burke JamesBurke brief description