Project Report: WiseLifeLab
WiseLifeLab is an action-research group established at the end of 2019 at the University of Torino by Vincenzo Giorgino, with Sowelu Avanzo (economic sociologist) and Giulio Peraldo (financial analyst). It applies a transdisciplinary approach at co-designing networked ecosystems. The integration of various disciplines, methods and technologies is ensured by a generative embodied orientation to recognize and cultivate life skills. The latter are the foundation of human intelligence and the pillar on which just and wise ecosystems can be built in a society of emergencies.
The opportunity opened by the Internet of Values is enabling society to design new systems of provisioning and of valuing human contribution which allow to overcome the labour-income nexus, that is currently being challenged by automation. The society we envision is capable of employing such tools to pursue self-organisation and commoning grounded on secular wisdom. Various projects are currently being developed related to the valorisation of personal data for communities and the design of glocal system of interaction and transaction based on distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). At conceptual level, the relational work approach (Zelizer) to economic interactions is extended to include mindfulness, a human skill oriented to cultivate attention and compassion.
In this respect, WiseLifeLab has been involved in diverse research-action activities related to the Covid-19 pandemic, such as: a contribution to the CO3 project aimed at orienting this European funded program towards an effective response to the Covid-19 crisis; the submission of two projects to the EUVersusVirus Hackathon; and the collaboration with the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of Torino and the Politecnico of Torino for a transdisciplinary project to deal with social, economic and health-related issues due to the pandemic crisis.
The projects submitted at the hackathon aimed at the application of DLT-based tools to empower and protect communities, regarded as self-organizing and living ecosystems. In particular, CO3 Crowdfunding as Wise Commoning envisioned a system for financing and managing projects at a community level, whereas the project A Peer to Peer Solution for Health Insurance, awarded with the third prize of its section, concerned the design of a disintermediated system for Covid-19 insurance and protection of communities.
Currently, we are mainly focused on the ongoing development of these and other initiatives for the risk mitigation and management of the post-lockdown Covid-19 pandemic.