Social peer-to-peer processes

Many of the characteristics of P2P processes emerged in the open source movement.

P2P processes are not structureless but are characterized by dynamic and changing structures that adapt themselves to phase changes. We can describe this by invoking self organization. Stigmergy is also cited by some practitioners in P2P as their principal mode of coordination, as an alternative to planning (see more on the Open value network model).

Its rules are not derived from authority, as in hierarchical systems. It does not deny ‘authority’, but only fixed forced hierarchy, and therefore accepts forms of influence that based on expertise, initiation of the project, etc.^[4] P2P may be the first true meritocracy^{[citation needed]}.

P2P eliminates most, if not all, barriers to entry. It is assumed that ‘anybody’ can contribute and does not use formal rules in advance to determine its participating agents. The threshold for participation is kept as low as possible, to being permissionless at the extreme, for example in mining for the Bitcoin network or in opening a wallet and perform transactions on the same network. Participants are expected to self-select the module that corresponds best to their expertise. Equipotency means that it is the immediate practice of collaboration which determines the expertise and level of participation. Validation of knowledge, acceptance of processes, are determined by the collective through the use of digital rules which are, in some cases, embedded in the project's basic protocol.

Communication is not top-down and based on strictly defined reporting rules, but feedback is systemic, integrated into the protocol of the collaborative system. Techniques of 'participation capture' and other social accounting make automatic collaboration the default scheme of the project. Personal identity becomes partly generated by the contribution to the common project. P2P characteristics have been studied by Howard Rheingold et al.'s Cooperation Project.^[5]

The organizational topology in P2P is a network, not a linear or 'pyramidal' hierarchy (though it may have transient elements of it); it is 'distributed' or 'decentralized'; intelligence is not located at any center, but everywhere within the system.

P2P processes start from the premise that ‘we don't know where the needed resource will be located’. Thus, most processes are crowdsourced.

Collaboration must be free, not forced, and not based on an exchange (i.e. time vs money).

These P2P interactions are geared to produce something, enabling the widest possible participation.

Whereas participants in hierarchical systems are subject to the panoptism of the select few who control the vast majority, in P2P systems, participants have access to holoptism, the ability for any participant to see the whole.

These are a number of characteristics that we can use to describe P2P systems ‘in general’, and in particular as it emerges in the human lifeworld.

Infrastructure

The first requirement to facilitate the emergence of peer-to-peer processes at large scale is the existence of a technological infrastructure that enables distributed access to fixed capital.

Digitalization: Individual computers that enable a universal machine capable of executing any logical task are a form of ubiquitous fixed asset, available at low cost to many producers.

Networking: The internet, as a point to point network, was specifically designed for participation by the edges (computer users) without the use of obligatory hubs. Although it is not fully in the hands of its participants, in its initial form the internet was controlled through distributed governance, and outside the complete hegemony of particular private or state actors. The Internet's hierarchical elements, such as the stacked Internet protocol suite and Domain Name System, do not deter participation, although they are no longer free of censorship. Meshworks are a logical extension of the internet. With this methodology, devices create their own networks through the use of excess capacity, bypassing the need for a pre-existing infrastructure. Wireless community networks, Open Spectrum advocacy, file-serving television, and alternative meshwork-based telecommunication infrastructures are exemplary of this trend.^[6]

The second requirement is alternative information and communication systems which allow for

Web 2.0 allows for intermediated collaborative production, a first step towards true peer production.

Web 3.0 and Web3 allow the desintermediation of large scale collaborative production, which is a true case of peer production.

The third requirement is the existence of a 'software' infrastructure for autonomous global cooperation. A growing number of collaborative tools, such as blogs,

The fifth requirement is cultural, i.e. the diffusion of mass intellectuality, (i.e. the distribution of human intelligence) and associated changes in ways of feeling and being (ontology), ways of knowing (epistemology) and value constellations (axiology) have been instrumental in creating the type of cooperative individualism needed to sustain an ethos which can enable P2P projects.^[6]

In the economy

Capitalism

There are two important aspects to the emergence of P2P in the economic sphere. On the one hand, as a format for peer production processes, it is emerging as a 'third mode of production' based on the cooperation of autonomous agents. Indeed, if the first mode of production was

As a new mode of production, peer production is still largely dependent on the mainstream economy to reproduce itself. Recently, with the advent of

The support given by major IT companies to open-source development is a testimony to the use derived from even the new P2P property regimes (digital commons in this case).

Thus, production today is no longer confined to the enterprise, but beholden to the mass intellectuality of knowledge workers, who through their lifelong learning/experiencing and systemic connectivity, constantly innovate within and without the enterprise.^[6] See also Verna Allee and the value network concept.

One hybrid business model is that businesses use the P2P infrastructure (the Internet for example, or even their computing cloud which may run on Linux, an operating system issued from peer production), and create a surplus value through services, which can be packaged for exchange value.

Another hybrid model is the creation of two-sided markets. One form of this was improperly called the "sharing economy",^[7] also termed "access economy" or "peer exchange economy."^[8]. More properly speaking, this is better described as a "micro-services economy", instantiated by businesses like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb, which are proprietary platforms that mediate coordination among people who can engage in transactions. This new practice is also called Platform Capitalism, or the adaptation of Capitalism to the new possibilities introduced by web 2.0, in which the firm doesn't own the means of production and doesn't even engage in production, but coordinates a network of producers and consumers. In this context peer production is contained within a private domain (a proprietary platform for coordination) and subject to with will of whose who control the platform. The Platform Coop arrangement also exists, where the platform that insures the coordination among producers and consumers is owned by a cooperative with a more democratic governance. The P2P movement proposes fully decentralized alternatives of these type of economic coordination systems, where the platform is in the hands of participants, like in the Bitcoin network.

Peer-to-peer systems contribute to more specific forms of distributed capitalism. The massive use of

Market economy

Social P2P systems are different from

• Although markets exhibit stigmergic behaviour, i.e. insect-like swarm intelligence, they mainly rely on price signalling as a coordination mechanism, which does not apply to all economic processes (ex. creation of scientific or technical knowledge, creation and distribution of art) and is insufficient for complex economic processes (ex. cannot express most externalities for example).
• Another shortcoming of the market economy is that although there are autonomous agents in a distributed environment, each individual only sees their own immediate benefit.^[6]
• Markets are based on 'neutral' cooperation, and not on
  synergistic
  cooperation. Since market transactions do not create obligations, as they are fulfilled on the spot through payment, unless debt is used, they are not conducive to strengthening social relations.
• Markets operate on the production and distribution of products (goods or services) through exchanges that are mediated by
  DIY
  .
• Whereas P2P aims at full participation, markets only fulfill the needs of those with purchasing power.

Markets do not function well for common needs that do not involve direct payment

In The Political Economy of Peer Production Bauwens regards P2P phenomena as an emerging alternative to capitalist society. P2P economy may be seen as extending or already existing outside the sphere of free/open source software production and other non-rival immaterial goods. Peer production effectively enables the free cooperation of producers, who have access to their own means of production, and the resulting use-value of the projects supersedes for-profit alternatives.^[6]

Historically, though forces of higher

My own concept of Magisteria of the Commons is quite similar. My argument is that we have a commons gap in our global institutional order. We have inter-national governmental cooperation, we have trans-national financial flows, but we do not have transnational civic institutions that are able to project the web of life and the dwindling resource base of the planet. I strongly suspect these Magisteria will evolve various forms of multi-stakeholder governance, but with participation of the productive citizens directly. This is emphatically not an iteration of the World Economic Forum model.

Open source movements

Many new movements are taking on P2P organizational formats, such as the

They are able to mobilize vast numbers of people from every continent, without having at their disposal any of the traditional news media, such as television, radio or newspapers. Rather, they rely almost exclusively on the P2P technologies described above. Thus, Internet media are used for communication and learning on a continuous basis, prior to the mobilizations, and also during the mobilizations.

Independent Internet media platforms such as Indymedia, as well as the skillful use of mobile phones, are used for real-time response management, undertaken by small groups that use buddy-list technologies, and sometimes open-source programs that have been explicitly designed for political activism such as TextMob.

Many reports have appeared, including those described in Howard Rheingold's

• Eric Von Hippel
  , author of Democratizing Innovation, on user innovation communities
• Pekka Himanen, for his examination of the new work culture in 'Hacker Ethics'
• Peter Drucker author of Concept of the Corporation for term 'federal decentralization'
• Michel Bauwens, co-founder and primary activist of the P2P Foundation.
• Elinor Ostrom, for her work on Common Pool Resources (CPR).
• Rachel Botsman for co-writing 'What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption' (see Collaborative consumption)

Culture

• Lawrence Lessig, created the Creative Commons licenses and is an advocate of Free Culture against the encroachments of excessive intellectual property restrictions
• Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder
• Dan Gillmor for his advocacy of citizen-based journalism
• Mark Pesce, for his campaign around the issue for an alternative information and communications infrastructure
• Virtual Communities and Smart Mobs

• John Heron, founder of cooperative inquiry techniques in the field of spirituality
• Jorge Ferrer, author of Revisioning Transpersonal Psychology, an extended review of the development of participatory spirituality
• Henryk Skolimowski, author of The Participatory Mind
• David Skrbina
  , author of a history of the participatory worldview
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, for their early anticipation of the 'rhizomatic' future

Politics

• McKenzie Wark, author of a class analysis of the information age, and her hypothesis of the vectoralist class (owners of the vectors of information) in her book A Hacker Manifesto [2004]
• Empire and Multitude
• John Holloway, author of Change the World Without Taking Power
• David Bollier, Commons advocate
• Alexander R. Galloway, for his unveiling of the importance of protocol as a form of power, in his book Protocol [2003]
• Eben Moglen, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center

Science

• Yochai Benkler, study of Commons-based peer production

Technologies

• Vint Cerf - 'father' of the internet
• Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software movement
• Eric Raymond, founder of the Open Source initiative
• Irene Greif, for her definition of an operational semantics for the actor model in 1975^[11]
• Robin Chase for work on Buzzcar
• Juliana Rotich for work on Ushahidi

See also

References