Web Politics 2.0

Peer to Peer As a new mode of production, governance, and property

The P2P ‘Tipping Point’
“ The most profound finding of the 2006 Edelman Trust Barometer is that in six of the 11 countries surveyed, the “person like yourself or your peer” is seen as the most credible spokesperson about a company and among the top three spokespeople in every country surveyed. This has advanced steadily over the past three years.
In the US, for example, the “person like yourself or your peer” was only trusted by 22% of respondents as recently as 2003, while in this year’s study, 68% of respondents said they trusted a peer. Contrast that to the CEO, who ranks in the bottom half of credible sources in all countries, at 28% trust in the US, near the level of lawyers and legislators. In China, the “person like yourself or your peer” is trusted by 54% of respondents, compared to the next highest spokesperson, a doctor, at 43%.

Understanding P2P
Part 1: Understanding P2P
Part Two:P2P and the Market
Part Three: The Politics of P2P

1. Understanding P2P
P2P is the relational dynamic at work in distributed networks
Hierarchical, de-centralized networks, distributed networks

Complexity and Hierarchy

Types of Networks

P2P as technological infrastructure

P2P as Technological Infrastructure
Point to Point infrastructures for P2P communication: internet, web, IM, filesharing, grid computing
A Read/Write infrastructure for autonomous publication and distribution: blogging, podcasting, webcasting
An infrastructure for glocal cooperation: Wiki’s, Social Software, Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 and P2P
The Web 2.0 unlocks the ‘wisdom of crowds’
The Web 2.0 renders data independent of the application; and applications independent of the program: mash-ups and open API’s

P2P Technologies
Must allow for cooperation: blogs, wiki’s, forum
Must allow for ‘participation capture’ and automatic archiving
Must allow aggregate rating & reputation schemes
Must allow affinity searching and recommendation schemes
Must allow presentiality (buddy lists)
Must allow cooperative contextuality building: social bookmarking, tagging
Must allow for the remixing of microchunks
The ‘network is the PC’: Writely, Google Spreadsheets

P2P Social Processes
1. The ability to produce in common: Peer Production as a third mode of production
2. The ability by participants to manage distributed projects by themselves: Peer Governance as a third mode of governance
3. The ability to protect the common project from private appropriation: Peer Property as a third mode of non-exclusionary property

Characteristics of Peer Production
Equipotentiality, anti-credentialism, self-selection
Holoptism, participation capture
Communal validation, no collective individual, social or algorithmic wisdom of crowds technologies

“… .People would experience others as equals in the sense of their being both superior and inferior to themselves in varying skills and areas of endeavor (intellectually, emotionally, artistically, mechanically, interpersonally, and so forth), but with none of those skills being absolutely higher or better than others…” Jorge Ferrer P2P = equipotential participation (credentialism)

Peer Governance as 3 rd modality
Conclusion: P2P is a third mode of production, governance, and property
Common Inclusionary Private Exclusionary Collective State Property Peer Governance Separation of powers Absolute monarchy Politics Peer Production Market Centralized Planning Economics Distributed Autonomy Decentralized Heterarchy Centralized Hierarchy

The Evolution of Hierarchy (1) by John Heron The sole role of hierarchy is in its spontaneous emergence in the initiation and continuous flowering of autonomy-in-co-operation in all spheres of human endeavor equipotential rights of participation of everyone in every field P2P Era Hierarchy empowers a measure of co-operation and autonomy in the political sphere and in varying degrees in other spheres political representation with varying degrees of wider participation Late Modern Hierarchy empowers a measure of co-operation and autonomy in the political sphere only political participation through representation Early Modern Hierarchy defines, controls and constrains co-operation and autonomy no rights of political participation Premodern Relationship between hierarchy, cooperation, autonomy Degrees of Moral Insight

Evolution of Hierarchy (2): Power
Premodern era: custom and force:
“ Make die, and let live”
Early modern era: disciplinary societies
“ Make live and let die”
Late modern era: control societies
“ control the desire; a posteriori control,
the metaphor of the elastic”
P2P era: reputation societies?

Evolution of Cooperation Typology Time frame High, 1+1>2 The 4 wins “ Wisdom Game” Synergistic P2P era Average, 1+1=2 Zero Sum: Win-win: Draw “ Money Game” Neutral Modern (market, industrial) Low, 1+1<2 Zero Sum: Win-Lose “ Power Game” Adversarial Pre-modern (feudal, imperial) Quality of Cooperation Game Typology Cooperation Format

Typology of Peer Governance
1. The forms of peer governance of open/free communities and peer production groups
2. The forms of governance/ownership/income distribution for the derived and monetizable service and market-oriented production models that derive from commons-related projects (formal modes of capital and IP ownership)
3. Choice from wide selection of governance and institutional formats for peer. Plug-and-play management models
4. Political governance models for the whole of society that are inspired by peer to peer models or principles: peer governance supplements and informs/re-forms representative democracy
5. Political theories and movements inspired by the P2P ethos

Characteristics of P2P Hierarchy
Usually consists of a core leadership embodying the original aims of the project, sometimes - the ‘benevolent dictator’
Teams are led by flexible meritocratic leaders: jazz band logic
Principle of non-dependence or reverse dependence
Large projects are led by a non-profit foundation - possibility of corporate spin-offs

What with the Power Law?
The Power Law
"In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution."
The Dunbar Number
Counteracting the Power Law?
It does not always apply (Krebs studies)
Open communities show better spread
Knowing networks can be designed to foster diversity, autonomy, openness

Peer Property
Universal common property regimes are different from private property and public collective property
Individual authorship + share-alike + free distributed access
Examples: GPL and Creative Commons

Physical vs. Information Commons Cyber Collectives Communities Governance Global Affinity Groups Territorial Groups Actors Non-local Local Scope Non-rival & Anti-rival Rival Type of Resource Information Commons Traditional Commons

The Circulation of the Common
Peer production needs open and free access to the raw material for its production: open/free paradigm and movements
Peer Governance is the participatory process for the production of the common: the participatory/cooperation paradigms and movements
Peer Property uses new legal and institutional formats to protect its production: the Commons-based paradigms and movements
The Common Property format creates open/free raw material: the viral circle spirals onward

Part Two: P2P and the Market
PRECONDITIONS FOR PEER PRODUCTION:
Abundance and/or Distribution of intellect
Abundance and/or Distribution of the technical means of production (networked PC’s, desktop manufacturing, personal fabricators)
Abundance and/or Distribution of the access to financial captial (P2P Exchanges and Financing)

Why P2P will grow For Profit For Benefit Material production Immaterial production

Conditions for expansion of peer production
The ‘distribution of everything’: further distributive advances in financial and industrial capital
Separating the design and material production phase of the industrial process
Finding integrated processes for the physical, logical, and digital ‘commons’
(e.g. Semapedia, German White Bicycle program)

Modalities of Sharing

Types of individual engagement
1. The classical "prosumer mode" , in which everybody is working basically for themselves in using and customizing productive abilities
2. The "swarm mode" in which people are loosely aggregated in doing things, either for themselves (ebay,musicsharing) or for an external task that uses the "least effort" way (Seti@home and successors)
3. The "community mode" , in which the team up in new forms of voluntary social organisation. (classical example Free Software).
These three modes are pretty separated, but there is a "hidden
continuum" structurally connecting them, they become "mutual
enablers".

User vs. corporate typology Commons-dependent Community Mode Platform Enablers Swarming Mode Externalizers Prosumer Mode Type of Corporation Type of Users

Types of Corporate Engagement
Externalizers: Ikea, Dell, EasyJet : part of the value chain (‘the last mile’) is externalized; but the basic producer/consumer dichotomy remains
1) Classic producers with passive consumers
2) Simple externalisation: ATM’s, gas pumps
3) Complex externalizers:Dell, Ikea
4) Integrating peer production in the value change: Amazon
Participation enablers (Web 2.0 paradigm): enable the loose interconnection of individuals; and monetize the common attention: Ebay
5) From do-it-yourself, to co-design, to co-creation
Commons-dependent: corporations monetizing derivative value created by peer communities (FLOSS companies)
Google, YouTube: exclusive monetization
Revver: revenue-sharing

Media Monetization Strategies
Audience growth (N+1) = Attention Economy
Metcalfe’s Law (N-square) = Transcational Multiplication, Social Commerce
Reed’s Law (N-quadrupling) = Long Tail communities, Group-Forming Networks

What kind of ‘intersubjectivity’? Alan Page Fiske’s Relational Model
Reciprocity: The Gift Economy (tribalism)
Authority Ranking: The Tributary Economy (feudalism)
Market Pricing: The Market Economy (capitalism)
Communal Shareholding: The Sharing Economy (peer to peer)

P2P and Markets
Differences between peer production and the market:
Markets do not function according to the criteria of collective intelligence and holoptism, but rather, in the form of insect-like swarming intelligence. Yes, there are autonomous agents in a distributed environment, but each individual only sees his own immediate benefit.
Markets are based on 'neutral' cooperation, and not on synergistic cooperation: no reciprocity is created.
Markets operate for the exchange value and profit, not directly for the use value.
Whereas P2P aims at full participation, markets only fulfill the needs of those with purchasing power.
Amongst the disadvantages of markets are:
They do not function well for common needs that do not assure full payment of the service rendered (national defense, general policing, education and public health), and do not only fail to take into account negative externalities (the environment, social costs, future generations), but actively discourages such behavior.
Since open markets tend to lower profit and wages, it always gives rise to anti-markets, where oligopolies and monopolies use their privileged position to have the state 'rig' the market to their benefit. The theoretical peer-like qualities of agents in free markets are absent from capitalism

P2P and the Market: Immanence
P2P is highly dependent on the market
The market is highly dependent on peer production and social innovation
Many peer production projects rely concretely on a business ecology – i.e. Linux & IBM
An increasing number of corporations are commons-dependent
Peer production and externalization are part of the value chain, the production chain, the cost-benefit calculations of corporations

P2P and the Market: transcendence
P2P remains a non-reciprocal form of production
No pricing, no corporate hierarchy, no market allocation of resources
P2P is dependent on the market, but also restricted by the market: unrealized social value waiting to be unlocked
P2P can be part of a political project to transcend the current political economy

P2P and the Market as field of tension
Who rules: from cognitive capitalists, via vectoralists to netarchists
From the Second to the Third Enclosures?

Economic Evolution (projection)
The primary economy is based on reciprocity, which derives from common ancestry or lineage . It is based on families, clans, tribes and exchange mostly operates through gifts which create further obligation. Wants are defined by the community. Leadership is in the hands of the lineage leadership. Key issue: belonging.
The secondary economy arises together with power monopolies which engender coercion as a means to force cooperation . We enter the domain of class societies, and production is organized by the elite in power, which holds together through the symbolic power which transforms power into allegiance. Respect for power, in the form of tribute, taxes, etc.. is normative. The key question is: 'to deserve power or to deserve subjection'.
The tertiary economy arises with the entrepreneur and capitalism. It is based on 'equivalent', i.e. 'fair' exchange, which is normative . Power arises from relative productivity, relative monopoly over a needed good, and from the wage relationship which creates dependence. Cooperation is no longer correlated to belonging. Relationships are impersonal.
The quaternary economy, based on peer to peer processes, is based on 'ideological leaders' which can frame common goals and common belonging and is based on membership and contribution . Contributing to the best of one's ability to common goals is normative and the key question becomes: to follow an existing group or to create one's own, i.e. to convince or be convinced..

The politics of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 and peer producers, the dolphin/shark dilemma:
1) who owns the platform (netarchical and vectoralist strategies)
2) is the infrastructure open/free; is it fake or true sharing
3) IP ownership and monetization strategies (Third Enclosures)

A peer-informed economy? (1)
Today: treating scarce goods as if they were infinite; treating abundant goods as it there were scarce: the current economy is based on pseudo-abundance and pseudo-scarcity
Tomorrow: A steady-state economy coupled with growing immaterial assets and a well-being economy: the P2P political economy is based on real abundance and scarcity

A peer-informed economy? (2)
Today: the commodification of everything; cognitive and affective capitalism; the colonization of the life-world in the market state
Tomorrow: a pluralist economy combining:
A core of non-reciprocal peer production
A reciprocity-based gift economy for services and traditional pre-capitalist economies (open money reform)
A vibrant market based on non-externalization, non-scarce monies and new corporate formats
Governance based on multi-stakeholdership

P2P Politics: Strategies
Three strategies:
Transgressive = ignoring the old: Filesharing, Piratbyran
Alternative/Constructive = building the new: Creative Commons, GPL
Reformist = changing/adapting the old: legislative reforms (DAVDSI France)

P2P Politics: Goals
Recognition of true scarcities through true costing
Reforming the market: natural capitalism, living economies
Impeding artificial scarcities
IP reform (against illicit monopoly rents from IP)
Monetary reform
Promoting true abundance
Sustainability of peer production: p2p to market?
Universal basic income?

As a new mode of production, governance, and property P2P = a total social fact

THANK YOU Contact Information Wiki : www.p2pfoundation.net Blog : blog.p2pfoundation.com Email : michelsub2004@gmail.com

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Web Politics 2.0

by farsam on Nov 10, 2006

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Web Politics 2.0 — Presentation Transcript