PmWiki | EAO / PeerProduction

''Peer Production''

Free and Open Source Software is just one element in an emerging social and economic ecosystem involving what up till now has been considered just the consumer. Bauwens finds he needs some new words to describe his concepts, but they are words I can identify with easily enough. For example, this book has been put together in a completely open way from beginning to end, including the final production process (Lulu.com). So I can be described not just as a 'producer' with all the baggage that carries with it, but also a 'prod-user', productive user, if you wish, or just go ahead and spell it 'produser' (Fine for English, but it will cause problems in other languages!). Perhaps more serviceable will be Bauwen's other newly coined term: end-maker, rather than end-user.

The point is that I am demanding an active say in the end-product, and the peer to peer dynamics that are emerging in this networked society in today's digital world have already brought me into not just virtual but physical contact with, say, Michel and GianMarco, around common interests. We met on the Net, but it did not stay that way. The digital world with all it offers, which includes new social resources, people, has also offered me ideas, techniques for producing this work which I hope is something of value.

I already have the experience that a previously published work, simply placed in open fashion on the World Wide Web, drew sufficient interest for a major conference on free software to be substantially funded by an interested partner whose interest and funding was sparked by that book. The translation of that work into another language also came through the same virtual set of circumstances and in that case too (I am speaking of two translators) we met physically in another part of the world while dealing with topics of common interest. I have little doubt that these experiences are multiplied in many cases today. This 'economy' did not set out to be a capitalist, market-driven effort. What has resulted (and in some ways this book now being written is also a result) is, though, of value. One commentator has called this the 'ethical economy'; Michel Bauwens simply calls it peer to peer production.

Bauwens maintains that this kind of distributed network infrastructure that I have been hinting at in concrete, personal terms, which results in bottom-up, self-organised dynamics, will profoundly change not only our economy but also our civilisation. It is this transformational element in his thinking which I find so attractive.

The Salesian Family re-interpreted as an ethical economy (:nl:)