Collaboration for Good Futures

NMC Symposium for the Future 2010-10-20 Collaboration for Good Futures Mike Linksvayer Creative Commons / Collaborative Futures Photo by asadal · Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 · http://flickr.com/photos/68242677@N00/2117153416/

Thesis & Outline Collaborative Futures = (increased probability of) Good Futures ? (your participation matters)

How this talk came about...

Aside: very brief re licenses and Creative Commons

Creative Commons .ORG
Nonprofit organization
HQ in San Francisco
Global network of 100+ affiliate organizations
Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

Licenses & Public Domain
Space between ignoring copyright and ignoring fair use & public good
Legal and technical tools enabling a “Some Rights Reserved” model
Like “free software” or “open source” for content/media
But with more restrictive options
Media is more diverse and at least a decade(?) behind software

Six Mainstream Licenses

Public Domain Tools

Lawyer Readable

Human Readable

Machine Readable (License) <rdf:RDF xmlns="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nl/"> <permits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Reproduction"/> <permits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Distribution"/> <requires rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Notice"/> <requires rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#Attribution"/> <prohibits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#CommercialUse"/> <permits rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#DerivativeWorks"/> <requires rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/ns#ShareAlike"/> </License> </rdf:RDF>

Machine Readable (Work) My Book by <a rel=" cc:attributionURL " property=" cc:attributionName " href=" http://example.org/me "> My Name </a> is licensed under a <a rel=" license " href=" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ " >Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a rel=" cc:morePermissions " href=" http://example.com/revenue_sharing_agreement ">example.com</a>.

DRMfree NOT! Computer must help not handcuff! “ DRM Voodo” by psd licensed under CC BY 2.0 http://flickr.com/photos/psd/1806247462/

Public licenses (e.g., CC) enable mass collaboration in communities (e.g. Wikipedia) and across legal entity boundaries (e.g., Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Free Software) (end not so brief aside)

Back to how this talk came about...

About Collaborative Futures ...

Could the book sprint methodology be extended to non-manuals, i.e., less structure implied by subject?

How about a book sprint starting with only two words: Collaborative Futures ?

A recipe for the perfect meta-collaboration? Or a recipe for certain collaboration fail?

Arbitrary lessons and curiosities...

Whenever a communication medium lowers the costs of solving collective action dilemmas, it becomes possible for more people to pool resources. And “more people pooling resources in new ways” is the history of civilization in…seven words. —Marc Smith, Research sociologist at Microsoft

“Sharing is the first step”

“Web 2.0 is bullshit”

“This book might be useless”

“On the invitation”

“Open relationships”

“Sharing is the first step”

“Problematizing attribution”

“Can design by committee work?”

And lots about the future...

A recipe for the perfect meta-collaboration? Or a recipe for certain collaboration fail? A: Selection of book sprint participants a confounding factor, or rather a factor in success (twice).

Good Futures Note: This may seem like cheerleading. There is an opportunity for a good critique of free collaboration and the “net” in general. Please take it up! Also note: This section is just me, not Collaborative Futures

In Innovation, Meta is Max “The max net-impact innovations, by far, have been meta-innovations, i.e., innovations that changed how fast other innovations accumulated.” Robin Hanson (Economist) http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/meta-is-max---i.html

Collective Intelligence Meta innovation?

Commons Meta innovation for Collective Intelligence?

$2.2 trillion Value of fair use in the U.S. Economy http://www.ccianet.org/artmanager/publish/news/First-Ever_Economic_Study_Calculates_Dollar_Value_of.shtml also see http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7643

In Innovation, Meta is Max “We don’t have any idea how to solve cancer, so all we can do is increase the rate of discovery so as to increase the probability we'll make a breakthrough.” John Wilbanks, VP for Science, Creative Commons

Good Futures Also requires avoiding bad futures. Under-appreciated role of free collaboration?

Cyber terrorism (Cyber terror war on) Privacy breaches Loss of Generativity Lock-in Surveillance DRM Censorship Suppression of innovation Electoral fraud

Threat categories
Legitimate security issues
Protectionism
Politics and power
Security theater and fear-based responses (driven by all of above, not just legitimate security issues)

What digital freedoms needed for beneficial collective intelligence?
Keep same rights online/digitally that we (should anyway) have offline/IRL
Permit innovation and participation enabled by digital world even if not possible before (probably follows from above)

How building the commons (free software, free culture, and friends) helps

Security
Data shows FLOSS is more secure
Security through obscurity doesn’t work
FLOSS encourages a heterogeneous computing environment
Free software and free culture both allergic to DRM and other mechanisms that sacrifice security to other goals

Protectionism
Peer production undermines policy arguments for protecting knowledge industries
Free software and free culture both allergic to DRM

Politics and power
Free software and culture improve transparency
... and the ability of all to participate
Peer production works against concentrated power — doesn’t require concentrated production structures and lowers barriers to entry

Security theater and fear
Access to facts mitigates fear and allows rational evaluation of responses
Commons work against three previous threats that drive security theater and fear

Can the success of the (digital) commons alter how we view freedom and power generally?

“The gate that has held the movements for equalization of human beings strictly in a dilemma between ineffectiveness and violence has now been opened. The reason is that we have shifted to a zero marginal cost world. As steel is replaced by software, more and more of the value in society becomes non-rivalrous: it can be held by many without costing anybody more than if it is held by a few.” Eben Moglen

“If we don’t want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from others.” Richard Stallman

i.e., we can form collective intelligences instead of forced collectives ... and still “change the world”

What is the future of digital freedom?
I don’t know
Have a good idea of what we need to do to make it a good future
It is truly wonderful that creating free software and free culture has a side effect of facilitating [digital] freedom

Building the commons is key to assuring a good future
Politicians and corporations are unimaginative ... they need to see solutions, or they react in fear
A dominant commons makes many collective stupidity scenarios much less likely
Beneficial collective intelligence needs universal access to culture, educational resources, research ... in machine-readable form

So Collaborate! (and learn/experience so you can teach/recommend free software and free culture when appropriate)

Polyphonic voices / heteroglossia / CF contributors Thank you friends, and apologies for misrepresentations: Adam Hyde, kanarinka, Michael Mandiberg, Marta Peirano, Sissu Tarka, Astra Taylor, Alan Toner, Mushon Zer-Aviv

License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Attribution
“ Author”: Mike Linksvayer
Link: http://creativecommons.org
Questions?
[email_address]
Detail of image by psd · Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 · http://flickr.com/photos/psd/1805374441

Collaboration for Good Futures

by Mike Linksvayer

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