My thesis is that no matter if we do “P2P everything”, although a massive evolution in its own right, and a quantum leap forward, this will still be insufficient for us to save the human species for tremendous suffering. I also believe that we can be spared from the worst of the negative effects of our current mistakes and the resulting suffering, if only we could make better more systemic decisions.

We met Paul Codd MacDonald at the UrbanLabs in Barcelona. Paul’s concern is that P2P technology and organisational formats are not very effective if not married with new forms of governance and decision-making. We agree.

Here’s how he describes his “2020people” project:

“It’s been frustrating witnessing the lack of progress by global society on critical issues like climate change, poverty, global conflict, and the steady erosion of local communities everywhere. 2020people.com is born out of that frustration and a desire to do something about it to help. Although 2020people was initially brought into being by one person, it is intended and constituted as a not-for-profit vehicle to create a new commons where we can can share and build something for the benefit of all. You can think of it like a structured brainstorming session on “Civilisation 2.0”.

As someone who has worked in the internet field for much of my professional life, a website was the natural place to start. The site is intended to allow like-minded people from all over the globe, from different walks of life, to connect with one another, express views, inform one another with insights from our different perspectives and fields of expertise, and ultimately put a plan together that we can use to convince others of the critical importance and viability of quick and effective action. There are a few tools on this site which I think will be helpful, and as we think of ways to gather resources for the project there will be other developments on the way such as events and offline get-togethers.”

Paul also works on the Metagovernment project:

“The goal of the Metagovernment project is to make the governance of any community as accessible as a free software project. No one is required to participate, but everyone is allowed to participate, just as software developers can contribute to open source projects and editors can contribute to Wikipedia.

This form of governance, called open source governance, does not entail voting or majority-rule. Instead, people may help govern any community as much or as little as they wish by creating, discussing, and supporting resolutions. User input is weighed by other users through a scoring system and brought to the attention of other participants interested in that input. ”

See also this interesting listing of similar open source governance projects.