The Most Important P2P Trends of 2008 and 2009

I looked for 10, but came up with the following 6, as the most important trends that originated in 2008, but will make themselves felt quite strongly in 2009.

I was tempted to add p2p currency and p2p energy developments, but I think while there was a lot of discourse about it, I haven’t seen too many realisations yet. One exception may be the mobile currencies in Africa. If you disagree, let me know.

Which trends do you think I missed?

Here’s the trend summary:

1. The election of President Obama using the internet as key platform for mobilizing support

This is of course the most important trend and realization in 2008. The President of the most powerful country was elected in a way that would have been impossible without the internet, which has thereby come of age and become the core media in politics. It’s not just the fundraising, but the successful organization of actionable volunteers, relying on tremendous amounts of self-organizing behaviour. While the Obama election is an example of the top down instrumentalisation of the internet, the riots in Greece show its uncontrollable aspect, when the same media are used for real-time organizing of a massive revolt of dissatisfied youth.

2. The emergence and consolidation of open design communities

Two-three years ago, it seemed as if the open and free hardware model was not working, and advocates were looking for the reasons why. Today, there is a burst of emergence of communities designing physical artefacts, and companies making them (Arduino, Chumby, Buglabs). The Linux model has taken root outside the world of software. Advocates are no longer debating, but creating the crucial tools to make such collective development possible. I’m not going to mention the further development of co-creation and co-design, of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, which were well covered already in 2007.

3. Renewed interest in localization and creation of platforms for Peak Oil transitioning and permaculture/local agri-platforms

The meltdown has accelerated, but not caused, a renewed interest in localization, already stimulated by an increasing awareness of the unsustainability of the current model of neoliberal globalization. There is a kind of fusion going on between interest in community, local food production, local currencies and decentralized energy grids. Platforms are being built that will become more important in the next few years.

4. Distributed manufacturing and mail order machining

A lot of trends are also converging to make manufacturing potentially more localized. 3D printing and Additive fabrication are maturing substantially, creating many possibilities for mail-order design and machine shops. Companies are turning more to rapid tooling, rapid manufacturing and mass customization, while ‘maker communities’ are emerging for bottom up tinkering and fabrication, linked to the open design communities we described above. Fablabs and personal fabrication communities are progressing apace as well.

4. Emergence of DIY Biology communities

This is a particular subfield of open design, tinkering and manufacturing that is getting particular attention. Amateur chemists and biological communities are tinkering with synthetic life and other experiments to produce biological products at home, and rapidly exchanging their experience through communities.

5. The expansion of Open Access and Creative Commons for Open and Peer to Peer Learning

Open content production, and access to existing scientific and scholarly content has made tremendous progress over the last year. All this is being used in the context of many new initiatives for more peer-oriented learning such as the P2P University initiative. The first inklings of open accreditation have been debated about. George Siemens’ connectivist learning theory has matured.

6. The creation of new third spaces for open collaboration: the hub, co-working, hacker spaces

People in the West work less in offices and factories, rely on mobile offices both while travelling and at home, but to live collective values and for mutual support, they are creating new type of co-working spaces, including franchises such as the Hub, and a multiplication of open hacking centers in major urban centers. Unconferencing and barcamps create infrastructures for temporary gatherings as well and have become ubiquitous including the pioneering development of Equality Camps which brings advocates and web 2.0 savvy geeks together for mutual enrichment. A culture of digital resistance is being created which combines offline and online aspects which mutually reinforce each other.

2 Comments The Most Important P2P Trends of 2008 and 2009

  1. AvatarSepp Hasslberger

    I miss the growth of social networks, which to me seems nothing short of phenomenal, involving ever greater slices of the mainstream public instead of just early adopters and “old hands”.

    While the social networks themselves aren’t (yet) based on open source software and more importantly aren’t (yet) using distributed computing and storage capabilities in true p2p fashion, the networks do raise awareness of such possibilities and eventually will lead to a great advance of p2p software and direct interaction.

  2. AvatarSepp Hasslberger

    More on the growth of social network participation. The article makes the point that many more young rather than older people are into social networks, but the overall growth is still impressive:

    “Of the roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults who go online, 35 percent use social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, Pew found in a survey of 2,250 people late last year. Just 8 percent of adult Web users were on social networking sites four years ago.

    Through the most recent survey and other polls last year, Pew determined just how much more likely it was for younger people to be participating in social networks. Some 65 percent of online teenagers 12 to 17 use the sites, and three-quarters of Internet users between 18 and 24 have a profile.”

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