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| Peer
to Peer
from
technology to politics to a new civilization? by
Michel BAUWENS (email, site) 
From the Cover of the Peer
to Peer Book by Andrew Oram, et al
Introduction A specter is haunting
the world: the specter of Peer To Peer. The existing economic system
is trying to co-opt it, but it is also a harbinger of a new type of human
relationship, and may in the end be incompatible with informational capitalism. I. TECHNOLOGY 1. Peer to peer
as technological paradigm Business and technology
watchers would have a hard time of avoiding it, as peer to peer is everywhere
these days. Peer to peer is first
of all a new technological paradigm for the organisation of the information
and communication infrastructure that is the very basis of our postindustrial
economy. The internet itself, as network of networks, is an expression
of this paradigm. As ëend to endí or ëpoint to pointí
network, it has replaced both the earlier hierarchical mainframe form,
but also the client-server form, which posited a central server with associated
dependent computers, associated in a network. Instead, in a peer to peer
network, intelligence is distributed everywhere. Every node is capable
of receiving and sending data. The first discussion note below explains
why this peer to peer mode makes eminent sense in terms of efficiency,
as compared to the older models. It should be noted that, just as networks,
peer to peer can come into many hybrid forms, in which various forms of
hierarchy can still be embedded (as with the internet, where all networks
arenít equal). But the very reason Iím using peer to peer
is of course the promise of true equality, something that is not so clear
when one uses the more generic term of ënetworkí. This first
section deals with the expressions of peer to peer in the field of technology. Distributed computing
is now considered to be the next step for the worldwide computing infrastructure,
in the form of grid computing, which allows every computer to use its spare
cycles to contribute to the functioning of the whole, thereby obviating
the need for servers altogether. The telecommunication infrastructure itself
is in the process of being converted to the Internet Protocol and the time
is not all to far away where even voice will transit over such P2P networks.
In the recent weeks, telecom experts have been able to read about developments
such as Mesh Networks or Ad Hoc Networks, described in The Economist: The mesh-networking
approach, which is being pursued by several firms, does this in a particularly
clever way. First, the neighbourhood is ìseededî by the installation
of a ìneighbourhood access pointî (NAP)óa radio base-station
connected to the Internet via a high-speed connection. Homes and offices
within range of this NAP install antennas of their own, enabling them to
access the Internet at high speed.
Then comes the clever
part. Each of those homes and offices can also act as a relay for other
homes and offices beyond the range of the original NAP. As the mesh grows,
each node communicates only with its neighbours, which pass Internet traffic
back and forth from the NAP. It is thus possible to cover a large area
quickly and cheaply.
(http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1176136) Moreover, there is the
worldwide development of Wireless LAN networks, by corporations on the
one hand, but also by citizens installing such networks themselves, at
very low cost. Hereís a description
of what is happening in Hawaii, where a peer to peer wireless network is
covering more than 300 square miles: Now people all over
the island are tapping into Wiecking's wireless links, surfing the Web
at speeds as much as 100 times greater than standard modems permit. High
school teachers use the network to leapfrog a plodding state effort to
wire schools. Wildlife regulators use it to track poachers. And it's all
free. Wiecking has built his network through a coalition of educators,
researchers, and nonprofit organizations; with the right equipment and
passwords, anyone who wants to tap in can do so, at no charge..î
(http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,38492,00.html) A recent in Fortune
magazine uncovered yet another aspect of the coming peer to peer age in
technology, by pointing out that the current ëcentral server basedí
methods for interactive TV are woefully inadequate to match supply and
demand: ìEssentially,
file-served television describes an Internet for video content. Anyone--from
movie company to homeowner--could store video on his own hard disk and
make it available for a price. Movie and television companies would have
tons of hard disks with huge capacities, since they can afford to store
everything they produce. Cable operators and satellite companies might
have some hard disks to store the most popular content, since they can
charge a premium for such stuff. And homeowners might have hard disks (possibly
in the form of PVRs) that can be used as temporary storage for content
that takes time to get or that they only want to rent--or permanent storage
for what they've bought.î
(http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=208364 ) In general one could
say that the main attractivity of peer to peer is that it will seamlessly
marry the world of the internet and the world of PCís. Originally,
ordinary PC users who wanted to post content or services needed access
to a server, which created inequality in access, but with true peer to
peer file sharing technologies, any PC user is enabled to do this. 2. Peer to peer
as distribution mechanism The last story points
to yet another aspect of peer to peer: its incredible force as distribution
mechanism. Indeed, the users of Personal Video Recorders such as TiVo are
already using file sharing methods that allow them to exchange programs
via the internet. But this is of course dwarfed by what is currently happening
in the music world. Again the advantage
here should be obvious, as in this mode of distribution, no centralising
force can play a role of command and control, and every node can have access
to the totality of the distributed information. The latest estimates
say that: î
Worldwide annual downloads, according to estimates from places like Webnoize,
would indicate that the number of downloads -- if you assume there are
10 songs on a CD -- is something like five times the total number of CDs
sold in the U.S. in a year, and one-and-a-half times the worldwide sales.î
(http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/06/13/liebowitz/index.html
)
. The original file sharing
systems, such as Napster, AudioGalaxy, and Kazaa, still used central servers
or directories which could be tracked down and identified, and thus attacked
in court, as indeed happened, thereby destroying these systems one by one.
But today, the new wave of P2P systems avoid such central servers altogether.
The most popular current system, an expression of the free software community,
i.e. Gnutella, had over 10 million users in mid-2002, and as they are indeed
distributed and untraceable, have been immune to legal challenge. 3. Peer to peer
as production method P2P is not just the
form of technology itself, but increasingly, it is a ëprocess of productioní,
a way of organising the way that immaterial products are produced (and
distributed and ëconsumedí). The first expression of this was
the Free Software movement launched by Richard Stallman. Expressed in the
production of software such as GNU and its kernel Linux, tens of thousands
of programmers are cooperative producing the most valuable knowledge capital
of the day, i.e. software. They are doing this in small groups that are
seamlessly coordinated in the greater worldwide project, in true peer groups
that have no traditional hierarchy. Eric Raymondís seminal essay/book
ìThe Cathedral and The Bazaarî, has explained in detail why
such a mode of production is superior to its commercial variants.
Richard Stallmanís
Free Software movement is furthermore quite radical in its values and aims,
and has developed legal devices such as Copyleft and the General Public
License, which uses commercial law itself to prohibit any commercial and
private usage of the software. ì``Free
software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept,
you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.''
Free software is
a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change
and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom,
for the users of the software:
* The freedom to
run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to
study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access
to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to
redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour (freedom 2).
* The freedom to
improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that
the whole community benefits. (freedom 3). Access to the source code is
a precondition for this.î (2) Less radical, and perhaps
more widespread because of this, is the Open Source movement launched by
the above-mentioned Eric Raymond, which stipulates that the code has to
be open for consultation and usage, but where there are restrictive rules
and the property remains corporate. Together, even in a situation where
the software world is dominated by the Microsoft monopoly, these two types
of software have taken the world by storm. The dominant server of the internet
(Apache) is open source, but more and more governments and businesses are
using it as well, including in mission-critical commercial applications.
Most experts would agree that this software is in fact more efficient than
its commercial counterparts. What is lacking today is the spread of user-friendly
interfaces, though the first open source interfaces are coming into existence. Please also remember
that peer to peer is in fact the extension of the methodology of the sciences,
which have been based since 300 years on ëpeer reviewí. Scientific
progress is indeed beholden to the fact that scientists are accountable,
in terms of the scientific validity of their work, to their peers, and
not to their funders or bureaucratic managers. And the early founders of
the Free Software movement where scientists from MIT, who exported their
methodology from knowledge exchange to the production of software. In fact,
MIT has published data showing that since a lot of research has been privatised
in the U.S., the pace of innovation has in fact slowed down. Or simply
compare the fact of how Netscape evolved when it was using Open Source
methods and was supported by the whole internet community, as compared
to the almost static evolution of Internet Explorer, now that it is the
property of Microsoft. The methodologies
initiated by the Free Software and Open Source movements are rapidly expanding
into other fields, witness the movements such as the royalty-free music
movement, the Open Hardware project (and the Simputer project in India),
OpenTV and many much more of these type of cooperative initiatives. I would like to offer
an important historical analogy here. When the labour movement arose as
an expression of the new industrial working class, it invented a whole
rist of new social practices, such as mutual aid societies, unions, and
new ideologies. Today, when the class of knowledge workers is socially
dominant in the West, is it a wonder that they also create new and innovative
practices that exemplify their values of cooperative intellectual work? 4. Peer to peer
in manufacturing? We would in fact
there to go one step further and argue that peer to peer will probably
become the dominant paradigm, not just in the production of immaterial
goods such as software and music, but increasingly in the world of manufacturing
as well. Two recent examples
should illustrate it. Lego Mindstorms is a new form of electronic Lego,
which is not only produced by Lego, but where thousands of users are themselves
creating new building blocks and software for it. The same happened with
the Aibo, the artificial dog produced by Sony, which users started to hack,
first opposed by Sony, but later with the agreement of the company. This
makes a lot of sense, as indeed, it allows companies to externalise R&D
costs and involve the community of consumers in the development of the
product. This process is becoming generalised. Of course, work has always
been cooperative (though also hierarchically organised), but in this case,
what is remarkable is that the frontier between the inside and the outside
is disappearing. This is in fact a general process of the internet age,
where the industry is moving away from mass production to one to one production
or ëmass customisationí, but this is only possible when consumers
become part and parcel of the real production process. If that is the case,
then that of course gives rise to contradictions between the hierarchical
control of the enterprise, vs. the desires of the community of users-producers. This is the same
tension as between free software, a pure peer to peer conception, and the
more liberal interpretation of Open Source, which can be used by established
companies to extend their development, but still under their overall control
and within the profit logic. 5. Some preliminary
considerations One has of course
to ask oneself, why is this emergence happening, and I believe that the
answer is clear. The complexity of the post-industrial age makes centralised
command and control approaches, based on the centralised control, inoperable.
Today, intelligence is indeed ëeverywhereí and the organisation
of technology and work has to acknowledge that. And more and more,
we are indeed forced to conclude that peer to peer is indeed a more productive
technology and way of organising production than its hierarchical, commodity-based
predecessors. This is of course most clear in the music industry, where
the fluidity of music distribution via P2P is an order of magnitude greater,
and at marginal cost, than the commodity-based physical distribution of
CDís.
This situation leads
to a interesting and first historical analogy: when capitalist methods
of production emerged, the feudal system, the guilds and the craftsmen
at first tried to oppose and stop them (up to the physical liquidation
of machines by the Luddites in the UK), but they largely failed. It is
not difficult to see a comparison with the struggle of the RIAA (Recording
Industry Association of America) against Napster: they may have won legally,
but the phenomenon is continuing to spread. In general, we can interpret
many of the current conflicts as pitting against each other the old
way of production, commodity-based production and its legal infrastructure
of copyright, and the new technological and social practices undermining
these existing processes. In the short term, the forces of the old try
to increase their hold and faced with subverting influences, strengthen
the legal and the repressive apparatus. But in the long term the question
is: can they hold back these more productive processes? In the second part,
we see how the peer to peer paradigm of technological organisation, is
paralleled by similar forms of organisation in human society, which are
of course enabled by the technological substrate we have just been discussing.
Indeed, it would be quite difficult to sustain a worldwide networked political
movement, or the Free Software movement for that matter, without the enablement
that the technology is providing.
II. SOCIAL ORGANISATION
AND CULTURE 1. Peer to Peer
in Politics Our description of
Free Software and Open Source has already described an important shift,
from technology to a new and soon dominant form of social organisation.
If we open our eyes, we can see the emergence of P2P as the new way of
organizing and conducting politics. The alterglobalisation movement is
emblematic for these developments. - they are indeed
organised as a network of networks
- they intensively
use the internet for information and mobilisation and mobile (including
collective email) for direction on the ground
- their issues and
concerns are global from the start
- they purposely
choose global venues and heavily mediated world events to publicize their
opposition and proposals. Here is a quote by
Immanuel Wallerstein, ëworld systemí theorist and historian,
on the historic importance of Porto Alegre and its network approach to
political struggle: ìSept.
11 seems to have slowed down the movement only momentarily.
Secondly, the coalition
has demonstrated that the new antisystemic strategy is feasible. What is
this new strategy? To understand this clearly, one must remember what was
the old strategy. The world's left in its multiple forms - Communist parties,
social-democratic parties, national liberation movements - had argued for
at least a hundred years (circa 1870-1970) that the only feasible strategy
involved two key elements - creating a centralized organizational structure,
and making the prime objective that of arriving at state power in one way
or another. The movements promised that, once in state power, they could
then change the world. This strategy seemed
to be very successful, in the sense that, by the 1960s, one or another
of these three kinds of movements had managed to arrive at state power
in most countries of the world. However, they manifestly had not been able
to transform the world. This is what the world revolution of 1968 was about
- the failure of the Old Left to transform the world. It led to 30 years
of debate and experimentation about alternatives to the state-oriented
strategy that seemed now to have been a failure. Porto Alegre is the enactment
of the alternative. There is no centralized structure. Quite the contrary.
Porto Alegre is a loose coalition of transnational, national, and local
movements, with multiple priorities, who are united primarily in their
opposition to the neoliberal world order. And these movements, for the
most part, are not seeking state power, or if they are, they do not regard
it as more than one tactic among others, and not the most important.î
(source:
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/commentr.htm) This analysis is confirmed
by Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, the already classic analysis of
globalisation that is very influential in the more radical streams of the
anti-globalisation movement: ìThe
traditional parties and centralized organizations have spokespeople who
represent them and conduct their battles, but no one speaks for a network.
How do you argue with a network? The movements organized within them do
exert their power, but they do not proceed through oppositions. One of
the basic characteristics of the network form is that no two nodes face
each other in contradiction; rather, they are always triangulated by a
third, and then a fourth, and then by an indefinite number of others in
the web. This is one of the characteristics of the Seattle events that
we have had the most trouble understanding: groups which we thought in
objective contradiction to one anotheróenvironmentalists and trade
unions, church groups and anarchistsówere suddenly able to work
together, in the context of the network of the multitude. The movements,
to take a slightly different perspective, function something like a public
sphere, in the sense that they can allow full expression of differences
within the common context of open exchange. But that does not mean that
networks are passive. They displace contradictions and operate instead
a kind of alchemy, or rather a sea change, the flow of the movements transforming
the traditional fixed positions; networks imposing their force through
a kind of irresistible undertow.î
(http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24806.shtml) Here is also a description
by Miguel Benasayag of the type of new organisational forms exemplified
in Argentina: ìLes
gens étaient dans la rue partout, mais il faut savoir quand même
qu'il y a une spontanéité «travaillée»,
pour dire ce concept là. Une spontanéité travaillée,
cela ne veut pas dire qu'il y avait des groupes qui dirigeaient ou qui
orchestraient ça, bien au contraire. Quand arrivaient des gens avec
des bannières ou des drapeaux de groupes politiques, ils étaient
très mal reçus à chaque coin de rue. Mais en revanche,
une spontanéité «travaillée» en ce sens
que l'Argentine est «lézardée» par des organisations
de base, des organisations de quartier, de troc... C.A. : Lézardée,
c'est un maillage? M.B. : Oui, c'est
ça, il y a un maillage très serré des organisations
qui ont créé beaucoup de lien social. Il y a des gens qui
coupent les routes et qui font des assemblées permanentes pendant
un mois, deux mois, des piqueteros. Il y a des gens qui occupent des terres...Donc
cette insurrection générale qui émerge en quelques
minutes dans tout le pays, effectivement elle émerge et elle cristallise
des trucs qui étaient déjà là. Donc c'est une
spontanéité travaillée ; c'est à dire que quand
même il y a une conscience pratique, une conscience corporisée
dans des organisations vraiment de base. C'est une rencontre du ras-le-bol,
de l'indignation, de la colère populaire, une rencontre avec les
organisations de base qui sont déjà sur le terrain. J'étais
en Argentine quelques jours avant l'insurrection. et il y avait partout
partout des coupures de routes, des mini insurrections. Et ce qui s'est
passé, c'est qu'il y a eu vraiment comme on dirait un saut qualitatif:
les gens en quantité sortent dans la rue et y rencontrent les gens
qui étaient déjà dans la rue depuis très longtemps
en train de faire des choses. Et cela cristallise et permet de faire quelque
chose d'irréversible. »
(http://oclibertaire.free.fr/ca117-f.html) What is significant
is that the Argentinean demonstrators seemed to reject the whole political
class, not just the established parties but also the left-wing radicals
who wanted to speak for them and ëcentralise their strugglesí,
clearly opting for various forms of self-organisation! So here, the often
decried anti-politics have a whole different context, not as a sign of
apathy, but as a sign of rejection of hierarchical forms. Also related
is the extraordinary rapid resurgence in Argentine of barter systems, based
on the Local Exchange Trading Systems, which in a very short time succeeded
in mobilising hundreds of thousands of Argentinians. Some prospectivists,
like the French Thierry Gaudin, have spoken of the need for such P2P survival
networks, only means to survive the storms generated by the speculative
financial economy. A report from the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service has paid particular attention to
the innovative organising methods of the alterglobalisation protesters,
and to their use of technology: internet before and after the event and
cell phones during the events. It concludes that with these innovations,
established police powers have great difficulty to cope: "Cell phones
constitute a basic means of communication and control, allowing protest
organizers to employ the concepts of mobility and reserves and to move
groups from place to place as needed. The mobility of demonstrators makes
it difficult for law enforcement and security personnel to attempt to offset
their opponents through the presence of overwhelming numbers. It is now
necessary for security to be equally mobile, capable of readily deploying
reserves, monitoring the communications of protesters, and, whenever possible,
anticipating the intentions of the demonstrators." Another example of P2P
functioning is the network of independent journalists IndyMedia, which
refuse to nominate ëspokespeopleí, and thus have been described
in similar way: every node of the network is equally representative. Of course, these
networked forms of organising are not the sole preserve of the left, just
as the forms of industrial organisation where avidly used by the Nazis,
who ideologically wanted to revert to an earlier age, witness the intensive
way that the Al Qaeda forces have used networked technologies, networked
forms of organisation etc.. as I have described in an earlier French-language
issue on that particular subject. (unpublished, available from [email protected]). Hereís an
example of P2P organising at the extreme right, amongst the fastest growing
radical religion today, the Odinists: ìToday,
the number of white racist activists, Aryan revolutionaries, is far greater
than you would know by simply looking at traditional organizations. Revolutionaries
today do not become members of an organization. They won't participate
in a demonstration or a rally or give out their identity to a group that
keeps their name on file, because they know that all these organizations
are heavily monitored. Since the late 1990s, there has been a general shift
away from these groups on the far right.
This has also helped
Odinism thrive. Odinists took the leaderless resistance concept of [leading
white supremacist ideologue] Louis Beam and worked on it, fleshed it out.
They found a strategic position between the upper level of known leaders
and propagandists, and an underground of activists who do not affiliate
as members, but engage instead in decentralized networking and small cells.
They do not shave their heads like traditional Skinheads or openly display
swastikas.î
(http://www.splcenter.org/cgi-bin/goframe.pl?refname=/intelligenceproject/ip-4q9.html)
This last development
allows a smooth transition to the next, perhaps unexpected description
of peer to peer as a new emerging concept in the field of spirituality.
2. Peer to Peer
in Spirituality Let us start with
a revealing quote, from June Campbell, a female practitioner of Tibetan
Buddhism, who has been the ësecret consortí (lover) of the
well-known tulku Kali Rinpoche, as she describes in the very interesting
testimonial book, ëTraveler in Spaceí. It shows the tension
between what are perhaps valuable psycho-technologies, which can bring
new forms of human awareness, but also how they are embedded in hierarchical,
even feudal, forms of organisation: ìTricycle:
How did misogyny help male monastic practice? Campbell: In the
very popular text of Milarepa's life story-which all lay people and monastics
read--there are many expressions of ambivalence about women: how women
are polluting, how they are an obstacle to practice, that at best women
can serve others and at worst they are a nuisance. At the same time, women
are transcendentalized into goddesses, dakinis, female aspects of being
that men must associate with in order to reach enlightenment. On the one
hand, the monastic boys were cut off from women, from maternal care, from
physical contact, from a daily life in which women played nurturing and
essential roles, and this whole secular way of life was devalued in favor
of a male-only society. And yet these boys grew into practitioners who
needed women, either in symbolic form or real women as consorts, to fulfil
their quest. So even misogyny, which was extensive in the monasteries,
was used as a way of helping these young men in their practice. In order
for patriarchy to survive, women had to be subjugated.î
( http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-02-08.htm) To make a long story
short: June Campbell describes in her book how the Tibetan system puts
woman in submissive positions, and because it does not honor their place
in the spiritual system, and does not recognise the sexual needs of the
male lamaís, it obliges women to enter into secret, hypocritical,
and subordinate sexual relationships. But this is just
one example of what happened on a massive scale in the late sixties, seventies
and eighties. There was a massive spiritual hunger in the West (the demand),
a supply in the East, but which was embedded in hierarchical and feudal
relationships. If at least in their own countries these spiritual leaders
where beholden to the controlling influence of tradition and convention,
this was not the case in the West, and many devotees willingly gave up
their critical and independent thinking only to be exploited by a whole
series of ëscumbag guruísí (David Laneís Neural
Surfer website had a whole site on them, with extensive documentation of
their misdeeds). Thus in the nineties arose a critical counter-movement,
expressed in books such as ìThe Guru Papersî by the Kramers,
and in a critique of the hierarchical assumptions of eastern spiritualities. As a result, there
has been the emergence of a great number of circles, which are based
on peer to peer relationships, where a number of spiritual searchers, which
consider themselves to be equals, collectively experiment and confront
their experiences. This has been elaborated into a methodology by John
Heron in his book ìCooperative Inquiryî and also in the important
new book by Jorge N. Ferrer, Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory
Vision of Human Spirituality.( SUNY, 2001.) ìFerrer
argues that spirituality must be emancipated from experientialism and perennialism.
For Ferrer, the best way to do this is via his concept of a "participatory
turn"; that is, to not limit spirituality as merely a personal, subjective
experience, but to include interaction with others and the world at large.
Finally, Ferrer posits that spirituality should not be universalized. That
is, one should not strive to find the common thread that can link pluralism
and universalism relationally. Instead, there should be emphasis on plurality
and a dialectic between universalism and pluralism.î
(http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/watch/ferrer/index.cfm/xid,76105/yid,55463210) 3. Global knowledge
exchange and new cooperative social practices on the internet "Left-leaning
intellectuals have long worried about the way in which our public space
- shopping malls, city centres, urban parks, etc. - have become increasingly
private. Other liberals, like writer Mickey Kaus, have emphasised the dangers
to civic life of pervasive economic inequality. But the web has provided
small answers to both these conundrums. As our public life has shrunk in
reality, it has expanded exponentially online. Acting as a critical counter-ballast
to market culture, the web has made interactions between random, equal
citizens, far more possible than ever before."
(http://www.andrewsullivan.com/text/hits_article.html?9,culture) The internet is a real
revolution in human affairs. Isnít it indeed amazing that millions
of people are freely producing and exchanging information and knowledge
on the web? We are not talking of the thousands of companies that are doing
it out of marketing viewpoints, but on the amazing emergence of this new
form of intellectual cooperation that we are witnessing on such a massive
scale. There have of course
been various explanations for this. Well-known has been the essay on cybercommunism
by Richard Barbrook, which explains the phenomena as a ëgift economyí,
while most business or economy oriented analysts have stressed the notion
of an attention economy, which basically states that in a context of abundance,
which characterises the information environment that is the internet, the
only way to gain influence, is to gather the attention, in fact the only
scarce good in a networked environment, and that this requires the giving
out of knowledge and expertise. Thus, Shumpei Kumon, the President of the
Global Communications Institute in Tokyo, has introduced the notion of
the Wisdom Game. In short, he explains the changing nature of the rules
used to distribute power in a society. In tribal and agricultural societies
and feudal societies, whose nature was tributary (the social surplus was
extracted by the permanent threat of force), social power depended on military
strength, which allowed the dominant to extract a tribute. With capitalism,
it was wealth itself that became the vehicle of power. Rome was rich because
it was strong, but America is strong because it is rich. But in the Information
Society we have a twist: paramount becomes the role of ëinfluenceí.
First of all, influence through the mass media (where of course private
ownership plays a role in who can afford these type of massive investments),
and it can be said that the Vietnam War was not lost by the U.S. due to
inferior military force, but because it lost the propaganda wars. But of
course, increasingly this influence will be wielded through the internet,
and an often-cited early example of this was the use of the medium by the
Zapatistas In a knowledge-based
economy, he says, there are emergent powers that are based on influence
and brain power. Again, this struggle for influence (or reputation) can
only be a result of giving out information. There are thus strong incentives
to share. In his own words: "The new
social game that begins to prevail in the era of informatization is the
game of wisdom, in which the goal is to acquire and exercise wisdom or
intellectual influence by disseminating and sharing information and knowledge.
Some people call this the game of "reputation." This contrasts with old
games of wealth and prestige." (4) David Ronfeldt and John
Arquila, have also stressed the changing nature of power dynamics.
In the print age,
where information is still a scarce physical good, power is based on the
control of those information streams, and it gives rise to the bureaucratic
form of organisation. In a networked environment, characterised by overabundant
streams of information, which are potentially accessible to everybody,
power is the result of access and participation in the network itself,
and it gives rise to a ëcyberocracyí. Ronfeldt and Arquila
have developed the notion of a new kinds of politics, noopolitics, based
on these ëimmaterialí struggles for the hearts and minds. A
probably similar interpretation, which I have yet to read as I write this
essay, is Alexander Bardenís ìNetocracyî. But one author goes
in fact much further than this, Stephan Merten of Oekonux.de, a site that
wants to promote the Free Software paradigm as the example for other social
practices, and eventually, as the central paradigm of a new type of society.
He, in my opinion, correctly argues that the internet is not an exchange
economy at all, because in fact, each produces according to his capabilities
and desires, and each takes according to his needs, which is the very definition
of communism by Karl Marx. He also notes that the original gift economy
was also a form of oppression, because these gifts created obligations
for those who received them, something that is not the case on the internet. Two important aspects
of these new social practices on the internet, which involve millions of
users, and not just the thousands of programmers active around Free Software,
is that the process is cooperative, and free. Dutch academic Kim
Veltman introduced the important and increasing role of cooperation as
basic to the unfolding of civilisational forms: ìMajor
advances in civilization typically entail a change in medium, which increases
greatly the scope of what can be shared. Havelock noted that the shift
from oral to written culture entailed a dramatic increase in the amount
of knowledge shared and led to a re-organization of knowledge. McLuhan
and Giesecke explored what happened when Gutenberg introduced print
culture in Europe. The development of printing went hand in hand with the
rise of early modern science. In the sixteenth century, the rise of vernacular
printing helped spread new knowledge. From the mid-seventeenth century
onwards this again increased as learned correspondence became the basis
for a new category of learned journals (Journal des savants, Journal of
the Royal Society, Göttinger Gelehrten Anzeiger etc.), whence expressions
such as the "world of letters. The advent of Internet marks a radical increase
in this trend towards sharing. ì(http://erste.oekonux-konferenz.de/dokumentation/texte/veltman.html) A similar assessment
of the evolution of cooperation, by scientist and evolutionary psychologist
John Stewart, who actively states that cooperation is an evolutionary factor
and that the next step for humanity should logically be a cooperative planetary
organism: ìEvolution's
Arrow also argues that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively
improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover the best adaptations.
And it has discovered new and better mechanisms. The book looks at the
evolution of pre-genetic, genetic, cultural, and supra-individual evolutionary
mechanisms. And it shows that the genetic mechanism is not entirely blind
and random. Evolution's Arrow
goes on to use an understanding of the direction of evolution and of the
mechanisms that drive it to identify the next great steps in the evolution
of life on earth - the steps that humanity must take if we are to continue
to be successful in evolutionary terms. It shows how we must change our
societies to increase their scale and evolvability, and how we must change
ourselves psychologically to become self-evolving organisms - organisms
that are able to adapt in whatever ways are necessary for future evolutionary
success, unfettered by their biological or social past. Two critical steps
will be the emergence of a highly evolvable, unified and cooperative planetary
organisation that is able to adapt as a coherent whole, and the emergence
of evolutionary warriors - individuals who are conscious of the direction
of evolution, and who use their evolutionary consciousness to promote and
enhance the evolutionary success of humanity.î
(at http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Review_Complexity.pdf)
If cooperation
is part of evolutionís arrow and of the unfolding of the civilisational
process, cannot the same can be said about the notion of free availability
of goods and services? This has been explained in a underestimated book
by a French philosopher, Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux, who wrote the book,
ìPour la Gratuitéî.
The author stresses
that many spheres of life are not dominated by state or capital, that these
are all based on free and equal exchange, and that the extension of these
spheres is synonymous with civilisation-building. Hereís a quote: Le rapport
gratuit est quand même très différent du rapport marchand,
même si le rapport marchand aboutit toujours à un rapport
non marchand, à líusage: quand vous achetez un abricot, il
níest quíune pure marchandise au moment où vous hésitez
entre lui, la pêche ou la grappe de raisins, mais une fois que vous
líavez acheté et que vous le mangez, cíest votre capacité
à apprécier son goût qui entre en jeu. La gratuité,
cíest un saut de civilisation. A un moment donné, notre problème
níest plus de savoir si, oui ou non, notre enfant va aller à
líécole, mais bien comment on va définir le rôle
de líéducation, assurer la réussite scolaire de chacunÖ
Les interrogations gagnent en qualité, en ambition, elles créent
du lien social. La société
a montré quíelle savait étendre le champ de la gratuité
à des domaines qui níétaient pas donnés au
départ, qui níétaient pas donnés par la nature,
par exemple avec líécole publique ou la Sécurité
sociale. Dès lors, il mía semblé que faire reculer
la frontière, identifier les lieux où on peut repousser la
limite de ce qui est dominé par le marché et libérer
des espaces du rapport marchand, cíétait une possibilité
très importante, très concrète, très immédiate.
Cela ne renvoie pas à des lendemains ou des surlendemains qui chantent;
ça peut se faire tout de suite et permettre ainsi díexpérimenter
déjà une autre forme de rapport aux personnes et aux choses.
La gratuité, rappelons-le, un bien vaut avant tout par son usage
et nía quíaccidentellement une valeur díéchange.(http://www.peripheries.net/g-sagot1.htm ) 4. A new culture
of work and being Pekka Himanen has
examined another cultural aspect of peer to peer, based on his analysis
of the work culture of the free software and hacker communities, in his
book about ìThe Hacker Ethicî. In this book, he compares the
protestant work ethic defined by Max Weber is his classic îThe Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalismî, with the new mentality of hackers.
A quote from the blurb: ìNearly
a century ago, Max Weber articulated the animating spirit of the industrial
age, the Protestant ethic. Now, Pekka Himanen - together with Linus Torvalds
and Manuel Castells - articulates how hackers* represent a new, opposing
ethos for the information age. Underlying hackers' technical creations
- such as the Internet and the personal computer, which have become symbols
of our time - are the hacker values that produced them and that challenge
us all. These values promoted passionate and freely rhythmed work; the
belief that individuals can create great things by joining forces in imaginative
ways; and the need to maintain our existing ethical ideals, such as privacy
and equality, in our new, increasingly technologized society. This same aspect is
discussed in a discussion note below by Kris Roose, who distinguishes the
ësecondary
cultureí, described originally by Max Weber, where one works,
many times unpleasantly, to make a living and buy oneselves pleasures,
and the
tertiary culture, where the work itself becomes an
expression of oneself (the ëself-unfoldingí process described
by Stephan Merten of Oekonux, see below) and a source of direct pleasure. Richard Barbrook
and other writers of a Manifesto for ëDigital Artisansí had
already described some of the elements of this culture as well: 4. We will
shape the new information technologies in our own interests. Although they
were originally developed to reinforce hierarchical power, the full potential
of the Net and computing can only be realised through our autonomous and
creative labour. We will transform the machines of domination into the
technologies of liberation. 9. For those of us
who want to be truly creative in hypermedia and computing, the only practical
solution is to become digital artisans. The rapid spread of personal computing
and now the Net are the technological expressions of this desire for autonomous
work. Escaping from the petty controls of the shopfloor and the office,
we can rediscover the individual independence enjoyed by craftspeople during
proto-industrialism. We rejoice in the privilege of becoming digital artisans. 10. We create virtual
artefacts for money and for fun. We work both in the money-commodity economy
and in the gift economy of the Net. When we take a contract, we are happy
to earn enough to pay for our necessities and luxuries through our labours
as digital artisans. At the same time, we also enjoy exercising our abilities
for our own amusement and for the wider community. Whether working for
money or for fun, we always take pride in our craft skills. We take pleasure
in pushing the cultural and technical limits as far forward as possible.
We are the pioneers of the modern.î
(http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/hrc/theory/digitalArtisans/t.1.1.1 ) But hackers are not
in fact the only oneís exemplifying those values of working for
passion, based on self-unfolding of oneís creativity and desires,
and in the context of peer-based relationships. A whole new generation
of youngsters have shown to be ready for such social practices, as shown
in a book like ìThe Industrialisation of Bohemiaî and exemplified
for a short number of years in the dynamism of the internet start-ups,
before they were destroyed by the shorttermism of their venture capital
backers. We are in fact talking about new ways of feeling and being! In our previous paragraph
of peer to peer-based forms of political organising, we quoted Miguel Benasayag,
who is the philosopher who is going furthest in identifying a new cultural
substrata that makes P2P practices possible. (He has of course been influenced
by the paradigmatic work of what we could call the ëfounding P2P philosophersí,
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, whose first chapter of their classic
ìMilles Plateauxî is dedicated to a description of the ëRhizomeí,
a complete peer-based network...) C'est pourquoi
nous pensons que toute lutte contre le capitalisme qui se prétend
globale et totalisante reste piégée dans la structure même
du capitalisme qui est, justement, la globalité. La résistance
doit partir de et développer les multiplicités, mais en aucun
cas selon une direction ou une structure qui globalise, qui centralise
les luttes. Un réseau de résistance qui respecte la multiplicité
est un cercle qui possède, paradoxalement, son centre dans toutes
les parties. Nous pouvons rapprocher cela de la définition du rhizome
de Gilles Deleuze : «Dans un rhizome on entre par n'importe quel
côté, chaque point se connecte avec n'importe quel autre,
il est composé de directions mobiles, sans dehors ni fin, seulement
un milieu, par où il croît et déborde, sans jamais
relever d'une unité ou en dériver ; sans sujet ni objet. La nouvelle radicalité,
ou le contre-pouvoir, ce sont bien sûr des associations, des sigles
comme ATTAC, comme Act Up, comme le DAL. Mais ce sont surtout - et avant
tout - une subjectivité et des modes de vie différents. Il
y a des jeunes qui vivent dans des squats - et c'est une minorité
de jeunes -, mais il y a plein de jeunes qui pratiquent des solidarités
dans leurs vies, qui n'ordonnent pas du tout leur vie en fonction
de l'argent. Cela, c'est la nouvelle radicalité, c'est cette émergence
d'une sociabilité nouvelle qui, tantôt, a des modes d'organisation
plus ou moins classiques, tantôt non. Je pense qu'en France, ça
s'est développé très fortement. Le niveau d'engagement
existentiel des gens est énorme.
(http://www.peripheries.net/g-bensg.htm)
This is clearly
a description of a new existential positioning, a radical refusal of power-based
relationships and a clear departure from the old oppositional politics,
where the protesters where using the same authoritarian principles in their
midst, than those of the forces they were denouncing. Here are some further
quotes, which highlight the new ëradical subjectivitiesí
"Contrairement
aux militants classiques, je pense que les choses qui existent ont une
raison d'être, aussi moches soient elles..." "Rien n'existe par
accident et tout à coup, nous, malins comme nous sommes, nous nous
disons qu'il n'y a vraiment qu'à décider de changer. Les
militants n'aiment pas cette difficulté; ils aiment se fâcher
avec le monde et attendre ce qui va le changer." "C'est toujours très
surprenant: la plupart des gens ont un tas d'informations sur leurs vies,
mais "savoir", ça veut dire, en termes philosophiques, "connaître
par les causes", et donc pouvoir modifier le cours des choses." "Oui, l'anti-utilitarisme
est fondamental. Parce que la vie ne sert à rien. Parce qu'aimer
ne sert à rien, parce que rien ne sert à rien. " "On voit bien cette
militance un peu feignante qui se définit "contre": on est gentil
parce quíon est contre. Non! ça ne suffit pas díêtre
contre les méchants pour être gentil. Après tout, Staline
était contre Hitler! "
(http://www.peripheries.net/g-bensg.htm)
III. NEW ZONES
OF CONFLICS, NEW ALTERNATIVES
1. Peer to peer
in a hierarchical world: conflict within individuals New subjectivities
are arising, that desire self-unfolding of their creativity and peer-based
working relationships. New cooperative production
and distribution methods and P2P organisation forms are arising, often
based on the free exchange of knowledge. But is the world
ready for it? Here is a quote that
expresses what happens when a new P2P soul enters an existing organisation,
giving voice to the dehumanising aspects of current forms of social organization: ìWhether
it is in response to us sensing that a new possibility exists for us on
the horizons of our current ways of being, or whether it is to do with
us sensing an increasing lack, is difficult to say. But, which ever it
is, there is no doubt that there is an increasing recognition that the
administrative and organization systems, within which we have long tried
to relate ourselves to each other and our surroundings, are crippling us.
Something is amiss. They have no place in them for us, for our humanness.
While the information revolution bursts out around us, there is an emerging
sense that those moments in which we are most truly alive and able to express
our own unique creative reactions to the others and othernesses around
us (and they to us), are being eliminated. In an over-populated world,
there seems to be fewer and fewer people to talk to - and less and less
time in which to do it.î
(http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jds/ )
In fact, the
current form of entreprises are of course still thoroughly hierarchic and
authoritarian despite the many changes to networked and team-based forms
of work, which stand in tension with the hierarchical format. This was
described in the 1988 classic by Robert Jackall, ìMoral Mazesî,
in fact a in-depth anthropological study of the modern entreprise format:
"When managers
describe their work to an outsider, they almost always first say: 'I work
for [Bill James]' or 'I report to [Harry Mills].' and only then proceed
to describe their actual work functions . . . The key interlocking mechanism
of [modern corporate culture] is its reporting system. Each manager
. . . formulates his commitments to his boss; this boss takes these commitments
and those of his other subordinates, and in turn makes a commitment to
his boss . . . This 'management-by-objective' system, as it is usually
called, creates a chain of commitments from the CEO down to the lowliest
product manager or account executive. In practice, it also shapes
a patrimonial authority arrangement that is crucial to defining both the
immediate experiences and the long-run career chances of individual managers.
In this world, a subordinate owes fealty principally to his immediate boss." Moral Mazes goes on
to describe how bosses use ambiguity with their subordinates (and other
more-or-less unconscious subterfuges) in order to preserve the power to
claim credit and deflect blame, which tends to perpetuate the personalization
of authority. Unlike a straight, Max Weber style bureaucracy, which
is procedure-bound and rule-driven, a patrimonial bureaucracy is a set
of hierarchical fiefdoms defined by personal power and patronage. Here David Isenís
describes the crucial shortcoming of the present system: ìWhen
there is good news, credit flows up -- so the boss, personifying the organization,
looks good to superiors. Then credit flows up again. When there is bad
news, it is the boss's prerogative to push blame onto subordinates to keep
it from escalating. Bad news that can't be contained threatens a boss's
position; if bad news rises up, blame will come down. This is why they
shoot messengers. So it's easier to
ignore bad news. Thus, Jackall's chemical company studiously ignored
a $6 million maintenance item until it exploded (literally) into a $150
Million problem. "To make a decision ahead of [its] time risks political
catastrophe," said one manager, justifying the deferred maintenance.
Then, once the mess had been made, "The decision [to clean up] made itself,"
said another relieved manager.î
(http://isen.com/archives/990601.html) Or here is French sociologist
Philippe Zafirian who describes a more general unease with the current
system. ìDepuis
plusieures années, les enquêtes nationales ne cessent de nous
indiquer une nette dégradation des conditions de travail, telle
que les salariés la vivent et la déclarent.
Les enquêtes
sociologiques de terrain le confirment : c'est à un phénomène
de vaste ampleur que nous avons affaire. Les individus au travail souffrent
et ils l'expriment. On pourrait certes débattre des moteurs internes
de cette souffrance : tous les chercheurs ne sont pas d'accord sur ce point.
Mais il me semble qu'une réalité s'impose, par son évidence
et son importance : les salariés plient sous la pression, elle les
écrase. La pression n'est pas simple contrainte. Toute personne
se développe en permanence, dans sa vie personnelle, dans un réseau
de contraintes.
Les indicateurs
de cette pression, nous les connaissons bien: débit, rendement,
délais clients, challenges, pression des résultats à
atteindre, précarité de la situation, organisation de la
concurrence entre salariés, salaire individuel variableÖ On
y relève à la fois la reprise de vieilles recettes tayloriennes,
mais aussi quelque chose de nouveau, de plus insidieux : la pression sur
la subjectivité même de l'individu au travail, une force qui
s'exerce sur son esprit, qui l'opprime de l'intérieur de lui-même,
qui l'aliène. Mais il existe une
autre facette de la situation actuelle : la montée de la révolte.
Celle-ci transparaît beaucoup moins dans les statistiques ; elle
s'extériorise moins en termes de conflits ouverts. Toutefois, pour
un sociologue qui mène en permanence des enquêtes de terrain,
le fait est peu contestable. On peut pressentir l'explosion d'une révolte
d'une portée équivalente à celle qui a secoué
la France à la fin des années 60, début des années
70, lors des grandes insurrections des O.S (red: ëOuvriers Spécialisésí).,
quelles que soit les formes d'extériorisation qu'elle prendra. La
révolte n'est pas simple réaction à la pression. Elle
a des causes plus profondes. Elle renvoie d'abord à une évolution
profonde, irréversible, de la libre individualité dans une
société moderne. Elle touche enfin
à ce phénomène important : à force de devoir
se confronter à des performances, à des indicateurs de gestion,
à une responsabilité quant au service rendu à l'usager
ou au client, les salariés ont développé une intelligence
des questions de stratégie d'entreprise. Ils jugent, et d'une certaine
manière comprennent les politiques de leurs directions, voire en
situent les contradictions et insuffisances. Mais il leur est d'autant
plus insupportable d'être traités comme de purs exécutants,
des machines sans âme et sans pensée propre, d'être
en permanence mis devant le fait accompli. Je pense que notre
époque connaît un véritable renversement : bien des
salariés de base deviennent plus intelligents que leurs directions
et que les actionnaires, au sens d'une pensée plus riche, plus complexe,
plus subtile, plus compréhensive, plus profondément innovante. The citation from Zaifian
also points out the opposite problem from the one we introduced at the
beginning of this section, and is thus not only about the pain of P2P souls
entering old-style procedurial or patrimonial hierarchies, but also the
opposite, the pain of the more traditional sectors of the population faced
with the new demands of a hypercompetitive entreprise. These changes
have been described in the already classic ìLe Nouvel Esprit
du Capitalismeî by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello and
show how a system has moved from a use of bodies to the demand for the
engagement of the ëwhole ëbeingí of the new knowledge
workers, an internalising of the priorities of the entreprise. But at the
very moment that, since the eighties, the priorities of companies have
shrinked to the generation of only profits for the sharelholders, this
creates a tension with the value systems of the individuals. The new forms of
peer to peer based work will of course have to accommodate the many different
wishes and needs of various sectors of workers, and honor their differences.
Worth exploring are the different systems that indeed honour the different
value systems, as pioneered by Clare Graves, the different schools of Spiral
Dynamics, Temenos from Ray Harris, and other integrative systems.
2. Collective
Conflicts and the new enclosures Two dominant spheres
(we will not discuss the surviving pre-capitalist forms of social organisation)
presently co-exist. The dominant sphere of commodity-based capitalism,
and the new sphere of cooperative exchange. As they are driven by different
logics, it is clear that this is an emerging and important conflict zone. A lot of
this P2P material is exactly what I would describe as evolved 3B - Civilis.
A stage only fully entered into when one has gained the skills of 3A. 3B
is the non-hierarchical co-operation of equals. The next task, 4A,
is to devise a system that honours and balances the fact of multiple developmental
levels. It is the creative handling of inter-level conflict for the health
of all. So I was really pleased to see you acknowledge the limitations
of P2P as it arises out of the previous paradigm. This is the beginning
of asking a 4A question, but I would argue that it needs to look at the
co-existance of the other levels as well. And certainly, the notion of
surplus is absolutely central to the emergence of a proper 3B. Here I would
also include the 'securing' of the previous level's core needs. P2P is
only emergent in those spheres in which individuality is strong. Each level
needs a sufficient surplus, but it also needs to secure its core need.
[Ray Harris] The central problem
is that most of the existing peer to peer emergence is based on the surplus
created by the present economic system, and that many forms of peer to
peer live from the wealth created by this system, being unable to sustain
themselves independently. I am personally not convinced yet that peer to
peer can sustain itself economically, and so are many of its proponents.
Which is the reason why many peer to peer oriented theorists point to the
need of a ëgeneralised citizen wageí, which would replace all
existing transfers (unemployment, etc..) and allow for a generalisation
of peer to peer activities, based on the surplus generated by the money
economy. So, how will these
different spheres indeed co-exist? There are in fact
three hypotheses of their co-existence, conflict, or dominance: 1) will
the cooperative sphere swallow the competitive sphere (thesis of Stephan
Merten); 2) will they co-exist
(Richard Barbrook, Eric Raymond) 3) will the competitive
sphere completely eat the cooperative sphere. The latter is the thesis
of Jeremy Rifkinís Age of Access which is an attempt to describe
the ways in which the economy is trying to swallow the cognitive and cultural
spheres. 2.1 Extending the
cooperative sphere and replacing informational capitalism Since peer
to peer is functioning so well in the sphere of producing software, the
pre-eminent form of social capital, and since our whole economy is becoming
dominated by ëimmaterial processesí, what could be expected
is that practices arising out of this new cooperative sphere would ëinfectí
the total economy. This thesis is the most radically expressed by Stephan
Merten of Oekonux, who calls for a GPL Society, where the principles behind
the General Public License would gradually be extended to the whole
society. Hereís an extensive quote: As
I tried to explain Free Software is not based on exchange so neither is
a GPL Society. How a GPL Society may look like concretely can't be determined
fully today. However, at present there are many developments, which already
point in that direction. - One development
is the increasing obsolescence of human labor. The more production
is done by machines the less human labor is needed in the production process.
If freed from the chains of capitalism this development would mean freedom
from more and more necessities, making room for more processes of self-unfolding
- be it productive processes like Free Software or non-productive ones
like many hobbies. So contrary to capitalism, in which increasing automation
always destroys the work places for people and thus their means to live,
in a GPL Society maximum automation would be an important aim of the whole
society. - In every society
based on exchange - which includes the former Soviet bloc - making money
is the dominant aim. Because a GPL Society would not be based on exchange,
there would be no need for money anymore. Instead of the abstract
goal of maximizing profit, the human oriented goal of fulfilling the needs
of individuals as well as of mankind as a whole would be the focus of all
activities. - The increased communication
possibilities of the Internet will become even more important than
today. An ever-increasing part of production and development will take
place on the Internet or will be based on it. The B2B (business to business)
concept, which is about improving the information flow between businesses
producing commodities, shows us that the integration of production in the
field of information has just started. On the other hand the already visible
phenomenon of people interested in a particular area finding each other
on the Internet will become central for the development of self-unfolding
groups. - The difference
between consumers and producers will vanish more and more. Already today
the user can configure complex commodities like cars or furniture to some
degree, which makes virtually each product an individual one, fully customized
to the needs of the consumer. This increasing configurability of products is a result of the always increasing flexibility of the production machines.
If this is combined with good software you could initiate the production
of highly customized material goods allowing a maximum of self-unfolding
- from your web browser up to the point of delivery. - Machines will become
even more flexible. New type of machines available for some years now -
fabbers are already more universal in some areas than modern industrial
robots, not to mention stupid machines like a punch. The flexibility of
the machines is a result of the fact that material production is increasingly
based on information. At the same time the increasing flexibility of
the machines gives the users more room for creativity and thus for
self-unfolding. - In a GPL society
there is no more reason for a competition beyond the type of competition
we see in sports. Instead various kinds of fruitful cooperation will take
place. You can see that today not only in Free Software but also (partly)
in science and for instance in cooking recipes: Imagine your daily meal
if cooking recipes would be proprietary and available only after paying
a license fee instead of being the result of a world-wide cooperation of
cooks. The same type of ideas
have been developed in great detail by Michael Albert and other proponents
of ëparticipatory economicsí: The underlying
values parecon seeks to implement are equity, solidarity, diversity, and
participatory self management. The main institutions to attain these ends
are council democracy, balanced job complexes, remuneration according to
effort and sacrifice, and participatory planning. ì (http://www.parecon.org ) The key question
is of course, how do we get from A to B? If it is true that
the current form of informational capitalism is already creating enough
surpluses to sustain such cooperative practices, it is also clear that
most of them are not making money by themselves. Currently, P2P programmers
are often academics, students, or have other sources of income. Thus, the
current weaknesses of the model are that: 1) the hacker
themselves are a varied bunch of individuals, with many different political
positions, theyíre only common point is their preference for the
free flow of information and knowledge
2) peer to peer
in the technological sense is the domain of technology-savvy hackers who
have the same ëabsorptive capacityí to collaborate on software
projects; it is and remains a technological elite. Nevertheless, the partisans
of this approach are convinced that the nature of work in informational
capitalism is already such that the ëcooperative workí of the
knowledge workers is already expropriated, and that this situation can
be reversed. This issue
is effectively be addressed by a group of social and economic thinkers,
such as Yann Moulier Boutang of the magazine Multitudes, and other partisans
of the universal social wage. They are strongly associated with the thinkers
around Tony Negri, himself an offshoot of the Autonomous Marxism movement
in Italy, and with participants such as Maurizio Lazzarato, who just wrote
a new book on the French philosopher Gabriel Tarde (Title: "Puissances
de líinvention: la psychologie economique de Gabriel Tarde contre
líeconomie politiqueî), one of the pioneering thinkers of
the immaterial economy, writing at the end of the nineteenth century!!
ìthe modes
of production and communication of knowledge lead us beyond the economy.
We are beyond the necessity of socialising intellectual forces through
exchange, division of labour, money or exclusive property. This does not
mean that the relations of power between social forces are neutralised
- in fact, they show up as fertile matings or fatal shocks beyond the market
and the exchange of wealth. This means that that unavowed ethical nature
of economic forces resurfaces powerfully as a single mode of "economic
regulation" at the very moment in which economic production is subordinated
to intellectual production.î
(http://www.moneynations.ch/topics/euroland/text/lazzarato.htm;
http://www.emery.archive.mcmail.com/public_html/immaterial/lazzarat.html) In terms of strategies
or tactics, these new schools of militancy no longer advocate revolution
(or reform) but a diagonal approach. Negri himself often refers to the
Roman Empire and the rise of a counter-empire in its midst. When the Christian
movement arose, they were totally incomprehensible to the Roman establishment,
and themselves did not fight the Empire (ëgive unto Caesar, etc..í),
but instead, created a counter-society. When the Empire disbanded, they
were simply ready and the sole counterforce to survive intact. Thus these
new politics advocate a ëdiagonalí and ëhic and nuncí
approach of creating alternatives. ëRésister cíest créerí. 2.2 Resisting
informational capitalism Of course, not everybody
believes in this optimistic scenario. For many others, it is simply a matter
of resisting the encroachment of the private sphere and to defend these
new commons.
A good spokesman
for this strategy seems to be Jeremy Rifkin. According to Rifkin
and others, the extensive method of capitalist expansion, based on the
geographical extension of its influence, as in colonialism or imperialism,
is indeed over, and we are entering an intensive epoch, where the system
is going deeper inwards, incorporating and transforming culture as a commodity.
Rifkin describes attempts such as leasing and other forms of paid access,
and seems to describe the need for a defensive strategy, exemplified by
the ëexception culturelleí in France, or movements such
as Slow Food. His mantra is: defend the sphere of intimacy against the
sphere of efficiency. But one thing is
clear, traditional commodity-based and industrial capitalism does not know
yet how to fruitfully incorporate the new sphere, although it will continuously
try, but so far, as illustrated by the dotcom collapse, it has failed,
says John Perry Barlow, himself a libertarian, and if Iím not mistaken,
at one time a member of the Republican Party
ìThe whole
dot-com thing was an effort to use 19th and 20th century concepts of economy
in an environment where they didn't exist, and the Internet essentially
shrugged them off. This was an assault by an alien force that was repelled
by the natural forces of the Internet.î (John Perry Barlow)
(http://news.com.com/2008-1082-843349.html) Another example may
be Lawrence Lessig, author of the War of Ideas. He situates the field of
struggle in the following ways: 1) the very architecture
of the internet. As it originally embodied the peer to peer values of its
founders, it is precisely this end to end architecture that has to be preserved
in order to protect the integrity of its common infrastructure
2) the freedom of
speech and association of the internet could be endangered by the encroachment
of private interests, who start to monopolise portals and media sites,
and can use copyright to silence many voices Thus, it is very
important to defend the existence of the new digital commons that is the
internet, against any attempts to privatise or disband it.
2.3 Integration
in informational capitalism Of course, this is
still a very likely scenario, as the system has shown its extraordinary
capacity to integrate any challenges to its hegemony. This is the process
that is best described by Jeremy Rifkinís Age of Access, and that
would entail a transformation of commodity-based capitalism towards a system
based on ëaccessí to digital resources, and dominated by subscriptions,
leasing systems, and the like. But if they eventually
succeed and this cultural sphere is indeed taken over completely, the consequences
would be quite negative, says Rifkin, and with him Jordan Pollack: we will
never own anything anymore, we will always be dependent on all kinds of
licensing .. ìIt
seems to me that what we're seeing in the software area, and this is the
scary part for human society, is the beginning of a kind of dispossession.
People are talking about this as dispossession that only comes from piracy,
like Napster and Gnutella where the rights of artists are being violated
by people sharing their work. But there's another kind of dispossession,
which is the inability to actually buy a product. The idea is here: you
couldn't buy this piece of software, you could only licence it on a day
by day, month by month, year by year basis; As this idea spreads from software
to music, films, books, human civilization based on property fundamentally
changes.î (http://www.edge.org/documents/day/day_pollack.html) This position is echoed
by libertarian John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation: I'm spending
an enormous amount of my time stopping content industries from taking over
the world--literally. I feel like we're in a condition where private totalitarianism
is not out of the question because of the increasingly thickening matrix
of channels of communication owned by the same companies that own content,
that own Web properties, that own traditional media. In essence, they're
in a position to own the human mind itself. The possibility of getting
a dissident voice through their channels is increasingly scarce, and the
use of copyright as a means of suppressing freedom of expression is becoming
more and more fashionable. You've got these interlocking systems of technology
and law, where merely quoting something from a copyrighted piece is enough
to bring down the system on you.î
(http://news.com.com/2008-1082-843349.html) Of course, this situation
can also be described positively, in the sense that the hierarchical based
forms of industrial capitalism, are being supplemented and partially replaced
by the more humane peer to peer relationships. This is the position expressed
by Eric Raymond, who advocates the use of Open Source software by the business
community, and even by Richard Barbrook, who in his essay on cybercommunism
stresses the co-existence and cooperation of the profit-driven system on
the one hand, with the gift economy on the other hand and integrates it
in his tenth paragraph of the Manifesto for Digital Artisans, cited above.
2.4 Digital Commons (section to be developped:
Struggles
around the new enclosures and the ëdigital commonsí)
BIBLIOGRAPHY P2P Technology Peer to Peer: Sharing
Over the Internet. Bo Leuf. Addison Wesley Professional; ISBN: 0201767325 P2P Society The Future of Ideas:
The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. By Lawrence Lessig. Random
House, 2001.
Jonathan Rauch,
Kindly Inquisitors and David Brin, The Transparent Society - each of these
books contain compelling arguments for allowing decentralized social processes
to regulate dangerous knowledge. In Rauch's book, he outlines the dangers
of attempting to outlaw speech about ideas that are considered unacceptable,
and in Brin's, he outlines the dangers of trying to limit the use of information
gathering tools to a narrow class of acceptable users. In each case, they
conclude that adversarial processes will limit the damage, and maximize
the value. They deserve to be widely read and discussed. (note from David
Reed)
WEBLIOGRAPHY P2P Technology The advantages of
a P2P computing architecture explained by Intel
http://www.intel.com/eBusiness/products/peertopeer/ar010102.htm The P2P identity
scheme unveiled by the Liberty Alliance (Nokia, Sun) against the Passport
scheme of Microsoft
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992550 MIT papers on Open
Source, perhaps the best collection, with many papers crossing over from
technology to social, business, and organisational characteristics
http://opensource.mit.edu/online_papers.php P2P Business How proprietary software
and Open Source work together
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3416--283153-0,00.html P2P Organisation CO-CREATING PERSONAL
AND PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE THROUGH PEER SUPPORT AND PEER APPRAISAL IN NURSING.
Thesis Submitted by Janet C.E. Quinlan for the Degree of PhD of the University
of Bath, 1996
http://www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/jquinlan/titlepage.htm P2P Spirituality Participation, Organization,
and Mind: Toward a Participatory Worldview, David Skrbina. CARPP Thesis
2001.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/davidskrbina/summarycontents.htm Cooperative Inquiry
is a pioneering methodology for peer-based spiritual experimenting, developed
by John Heron, now in New Zealand
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jnheron/page2.html
P2P Society A defense of the
Open Spectrum idea: airwaves are not physical property
http://www.reed.com/OpenSpectrum/
DISCUSSION NOTES
1. Why P2P is
a stronger model, both technologically and organisationally, than the hierarchical
pyramidal modes?
(A contribution
by Kris Roose)
DEFINITION Each form of organization
implies two information streams: form observation point towards decision
point, and form decision point to execution point. Observation an execution
most often coincide, and anyway are much closer -in informational distance-
to each other, than each of them to the central decision point. In an hierarchic
organization model the first stream goes bottom-up, the second stream top-down.
By gathering information at the top, only there we find a complete view
of reality and decisions can be made more easily. In a Peer-to-Peer
organization information freely flows from point to point. At each point
a global view can be attained. The decisions can be made in global discussion,
without the need of a central node. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS 1. On decision making One can discern three
way of dicision making, three ways of problem solving: (1) selection, (2)
compromise and (3) integration. In selection, one alternative is selected
out against the others, considered as ìwrongî or ìimpossibleî.
In compromise a rapporchement is made between the alternatives, basically
for psycholpogcial reasons: each contributor has the feeling that, although
not completely, his views were at least partially taken intom account,
and nobody is the winner. In integration every detail of the contributions
is taken into account, and all apparently unreconcilable were transformed
(reformulated, retroduced to their essence) as to enable a peaceful and
constructive combination of all elements. Every contributor feels happy
and motivated --at least if he agrees to redefine some of his contributions--,
and the result has a much higher probability for success tha if just one
of the options had been chosen. Although hierarchical
organization doesnít exclude integration in se, the distance between
information source and decision level is so big, that view transformations
and secondary motivations (hidden agendas) can be added to the decision
making process. As the concerned themselves only participate very poorly
to the decision process, the decisions can be taken without complying with
the ìbottomî. E.g. every war is started against the will of
the large majority of the concerned. In P2P the conclusion
is more likely an integration, because everybody has the same possibilitry
of participation in the the decision making, and can protest when his contribution
is not (enough) taken into account. 2. The intermediary
agents / brokers As well goods as
informations very often are not produced or available where they are needed.
This distance allows a host of intermediary agents to settle them in a
profitable situation. By creating a lock they create a control situation,
and take often enormous) profit without adding value to the products. Factors
that enable lock creation include material and psychological distances,
classified information (e.g. address lists), ìlicencesî, etc.
It can easily be calculated that the most important part of the price includes
profits of brokers, taxes, etc. Builiding an hierarchy
also is a kind of parasitism. P2P is a way to reduce this phenomenon to
the minimum.
3. The capacitating
technology These high forms
of communication are only possible with a technological substrate. Sociocultural
progress in general always implies material substrates. This is often forgotten
in politics. Noospheric conditions are only possible with the kind of technology
Internet procured us. 4. Progress by hypes Sociocultural evolution
often makes progress by hypes. All of a sudden, a clear defined concept
appears, and divulges at the velocity of light. Everybody gets the meaning
at once, and those concepts are quickly integrated into the existing social
culture. So was, e.g., the
notion of ìparticipationî in the 1968 student revolts.îHuman
resourcesî is another example, as were ìevaluationî,
ìfunctional evaluationsî (ëfunctioneringsgesprekí).
ìP2Pî seems to be such a good sounding concept.
2. Peer to peer
needs to be complemented by Integration technologies and integrative attitudes?
(A contribution
by Kris Roose) Another application
is the integrative communication style in an optimal relationship. This
style, described --in Dutch-- on http://psy.cc/9510.html , is not only
a communication technique, but rather a series of fundamental attitudes
towards each other. These attitudes are trained during the communication
training. In fact, by disuccing human relations and cooperative creativity,
we leave the field of P2P. ALthough P2P is an essential paradign for human
interaction and organization, more profound considerations on the integration
process should be useful here --or at the begin of the text. These integration
philosophy stems form two starting-points: 1. factual integration
(the integration of needs and desires). A dynamic system only can reach
equilibrium when the need of the participating elements are maximally fulfilled.
The non-fulfillment of any needs creates a source of desequilibrium (from
demotitaion to revolution) that will challenge the structure as long as
needs stay infulfilled. Integration is an advantage, not only for each
element as such, but for the group as a whole. The whole cosmic evolution
vcan be seen a one long journey towards global integration. The basic law,
that in fact underpins all forms of moral and ethics, is: ìeach
action must aim at a maximal integration of the needs of all concernedî. 2. conceptual integration
(the integration of ideas). The probability that a diverging idea holds
some useful information and intuition is indefinitely higher than the probability
that a diverging idea is completely wrong. Hence, to make decisions by
choice is always erroneous, even if supported by wisdom or a majority.
The probability that a thesis is right (ìtrueî, although I
prefer ìplausibleî) increases with the number of divergent
contributions that are integrated.
3. The Wisdom
Game?
(A contribution
by Kris Roose) In my own work, I
make a distinction between secondary and tertiary culture and it seems
clear that the concept of the Wisdom Game is typical of a tertiary culture.
In a secondary culture, there is a non-integration (or just a low integration)
between earning and feeling happiness. One has to do things, often not
captivating in themselves, to earn money, and then we can use this money
to purchase agreeable things. On the other hand, the internet offers
immediate reward (creativity, proudness, the kick of interacting with great
systems). This explains perhaps why so many people -from hobbyists to hackers-
are prepared to work hours and hours on the net without any financial reward:
just for the fun of it. But in the meanwhile they create a thesaurus of
information, knowledge advancement and artworks. Their game starts growing
horribly real. Furthermore, if
ìinfluenceî is defined as the global effect of non-hierarchical
interactions, it is a good measure for synergetic processes. I think that information
(facts, knowledge, psychologcial skills) was also paramount in hierarchical
organization. The strength of the managers is a function of their informational
superiority. One can try to increase this superiority, but also to decrease
the information and the feeling of a global view in the lower regions of
the organization: top secret, control of media, limited education, prohibition
of meetings, ìdivide et imperaî, etc.
4. Peer to peer
cannot yet sustain itself on its own
(A contribution
by Andrew Russell ) My main overall criticism
of your paper would be to urge you to pay more attention to the hierarchical
systems that p2p is built upon and may be transcending. A few examples
will illustrate this general notion: 1. In your section
4 on p2p manufacturing, you mention a sort of "open source Lego"
project. I think a crucial point here is also that there is only
one company who could coordinate such an enterprise - Lego. Their
ability to do this is due to their leading position and reputation in their
industry. The historical roots of their rise to prominence -- including
investments in patents and manufacturing equipment, licensing agreements,
advertising, etc. -- created their ability to go "open source." In these
sorts of open source models, there is a constant tension to negotiate giving
things away vs. keeping some things (or all things) proprietary. 2. Same is true for
the Internet - it appears to many users to be "free" and totally
"transcending geography," but the truth is that it is not at all free and
is based on geographical-based advances (in other words, previous networks).
Wiecking's Hawaiian wireless network seems to liberate its users from the
traditional gatekeeper / server-client model. The non-profits and educators
may not charge the users for using the wireless network, but this does
not mean it's free. These institutions must pay for their connections to
the net, must buy and upgrade and maintain their equipment, and are subjected
to volatile market forces in their efforts to find good people to do this
work. And the Internet backbone - nothing is "free" there, either.
So if these folks in Hawaii want to get info from a website based in, say,
Spain, the traffic needs to go through several servers, over network lines
(owned by WorldCom or maybe Level 3 or any number of smaller carriers),
and then finally to the users in Hawaii. And all of this, of course,
is the result of massive taxpayer, military, private sector, etc. investment
in networking research over the past 40 years. The internet is said to
"transcend geography," but all internet network traffic is predicated upon
previous networks - telephone, cable, fiber, satellite, etc - and could
not survive without these legacy networks. The point I am laboring
to make is that the service in Hawaii appears to be free and truly p2p:
but this would not and could not exist without some sort of hierarchical
drive to start the whole system in the first place (the spirit of this
comment also applies to the first para of section 5 "Some preliminary
considerations"). Centralized command and control is alive and
well -- more distributed than it used to be, for sure, but not completely
detached from centralilzed power. Indeed, AOL's entire network is
not p2p at all -- it goes from the client, then to central AOL servers
(for USA traffic these servers are in Virginia), then back out to the client.
So even if we were using AOL IM in the same room, our traffic would go
all the way to Virginia and back. 3. And even
among the p2p community, their "gift economy" is based on widespread,
low-cost availability of computer hardware, chips, fast networks -- all
products of companies steeped in the "old-world" economy of investment
banks, stock prices, venture capital, and the like. Hackers cannot
make a living by giving away all of the products of their labor. Right
now, I cannot envision a way that this p2p community could exist without
the extremely hierarchical, greed-driven, profit-based industries who make
chips, motherboards, hard drives, fiber-optics, routers, and all of the
components that allow p2p to flourish. I guess the point
I'm trying to make is that p2p seems to be standing on the shoulders of
the past 40 years of networking and 100+ years of progress in computing
(in industry, academia, government, hobbyists' garages and basements, and
the private sector). And if you take away these shoulders, p2p would crumble
to the ground.... I admire p2p and think that it
is a harbinger of things to come (Manuel Castells and Pekka Himanen, as you
note in your text, express this trend very clearly). But I have serious
doubts about how much the model can be successful beyond the software world
-- especially when the Bush Administration is turning away from decentralized
models toward big-government, big-brother models. In fact, at the
end of Raymond's book
version of "Cathedral and the Bazaar" he has a 3-page section
where he discusses whether the open-source model can be usefully applied
to goods other than software, or if it has political implications.
He basically avoids this question and sticks to the logic of "one battle
at a time". He does acknowledge the obvious parallels to decentralization
trends in other industries; but then goes on to warn against over-applying
these ideas. However, once open-source is proven to be superior in
software (he guesses it will take 3-5 years), he expresses a willingness
to start other battles.
Created 7/02 |
