Date archives "December 2006"

The Shifting Hub

A new study by the New England Complex Science Institute looks at the stability of highly connected “hubs” in social networks (quoted from NECSI Press release): If you’re one of sixty million or so monthly visitors to social networking websites like MySpace or Facebook, you’ve probably noticed them— “network hubs,” people who have many more… Continue reading

Commonism vs. Ownerism: who will win out?

Reblogged from the Transitioner. After explaining why the Internet is a “phronesis engine” (see the same entry), the author makes a number of propositions regarding the future of our economy, with a focus on the mode of ownership: For related ideas, see our entry on Peer Property. “Proposition: Economic revolutions occur when aspects of production… Continue reading

Attention Economy Recap and commentary from John Hagel

Last week we published excerpts of Michael Goldhabers book on the Attention Economy. Here’s the overview page for common access to the different pages, followed by an assessment of Goldhaber’s work by John Hagel at Edge Perspectives. Introduction page and first excerpt at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=698 Second excerpt at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=703 Third excerpt at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=705 Fourth excerpt at… Continue reading

Digital sharecropping

Ed Felten reports on a blog entry by Nicholas Carr: “What’s being concentrated, in other words, is not content but the economic value of content. MySpace, Facebook, and many other businesses have realized that they can give away the tools of production but maintain ownership over the resulting products. One of the fundamental economic characteristics… Continue reading

An example of crowding out at Debian

In my P2P lectures, one of the point I discuss, and generates controversy in the business audience, is the ‘crowding out’ phenomemon. It means two things: that in community-based peer production (as opposed to crowdsourcing by unconnected individuals), paying out money to producers may have the opposite effect of discouraging voluntary labour. And secondly, that… Continue reading

Is it necessary to design against homophyli and the logic of affinity?

We have recently updated the P2P Encyclopedia entry on Protocollary Power,which indicates how power is now hidden/exhibited in the design and architecture of social software, where it can constrain the freedom of individual agents. Related to this is a blog entry which discusses homophyli, defined as the phenomenon where we associate with like individuals because… Continue reading

The Internet as Phronesis Engine

Reblogged from the Transitioner: “The Aristotelean intellectual virtue of phronesis along with the related term episteme a are very important notions to consider in the context of “transitioning,” i.e. developing collective intelligence and wisdom. Episteme is the scientific rationality we are all quite familiar with. Phronesis is usually translated “practical wisdom” and is the kind… Continue reading