For years, I’ve been looking beyond the technical and economic limits which we’ve developed during our fast few decades of personal computing and digital networking.  I’ve looked at co-creative potentials envisioned by Internet pioneers, and added ideas on the basic nature of communication and community.  This book reflects all of that research– but in most ways, it’s just a beginning.

Co- creating tech and culture

We can rebuild communications technologies (tools, techniques and systems) to foster the emergence of communities and inter-communities of autonomous peers. It’s an immense challenge, however, because we must displace corporations which marry communities to software platforms based on financially extractive models.

We can foster just and effective dialogue between tech and culture with these open tech goals:

1. All globally valuable communications software should be, or become, freely available to diverse digital networks.

2. Network participants should be able to use any software which meets systemic specifications for protocols or APIs.

Humanity first

I believe that p2p networking technology is crucial to a sustainable future.  However, it won’t get anyone out of the creative and social work we need to do together.

Communication and collaboration are deeply human. People must share ideas and activities to discover common interests, to plan and work fairly together, and to develop true community.

Putting humanity first, we won’t predetermine social tools and techniques according to currently usable software, including our evolving programming languages.  However, we’ll always need to refine tools and techniques through shared experiences with usable software.

Software applications and functions

Many processes described in Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking could be integrated into a small set of signaling and storage applications. However, they’ll probably be explored in various networks before they’re fully realized anywhere. Also, complex projects require coordinating functions which my book doesn’t yet mention. For instance, I’m developing a fractal process management system for objectives with unlimited levels of complexity.

I’m drafting a new paper on the open ecosystem of tools and techniques we need to support p2p organizing, including essential systems such as notifications, scheduling and calendars.  Designers can directly integrate such systems with this book’s networking models.

Coordinated Goals

I’ll openly develop Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking based on feedback, and I’ll use Agreement-Based Organization to help build co-authored versions of its networking models.  Ideally, participation will be open to all sincerely interested people, via distributive network management principles.

Agreement-Based Organization will always be separately available, and both documents will always be licensed for sharing and adaptation.  However, I believe that some form of agreement-based organization will receive increased attention as a component within a co-authored p2p networking model.

I’ll coordinate my goals with harmonious efforts in existing projects and communities such as Value Flows. We’ll only need a small fraction of our co-creative resources to develop open technologies for all people.

How you can help

I want and need feedback on Peer-to-Peer Digital Networking.  I’d especially appreciate if feedback reflects these framing questions:

1. Does this technology create ability for people to communicate or organize?

2. If this technology restricts ability to communicate or organize, should that be a technical standard or a community standard?

Maybe you have ideas I haven’t encountered before!  Feel free to comment directly on the document or email me, and share your thoughts on how we can emerge into an Information Age.

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Why “agreement-based organization”?

As peer-to-peer technologies evolve, it seems increasingly urgent and feasible for humanity to work globally towards a norm of consent-based relationships in all aspects of adult life.  ABO promotes this by suggesting consistent open source protocols for the creative development and support of inclusive, complexly adaptive organizational forms.

I believe that ABO is the first organizational framework which fully supports personal autonomy and the “collective autonomy” which we can find through inclusively managed agreements.

We all face difficult global challenges.  Together, however, we can re-imagine and rebuild genuine social connections which have been increasingly displaced by industrial and commercial culture. We can foster genuine community on all scales of personal, cultural, economic and political action.  We can undermine distorted fears and false scarcities, to co-create an information age which is rich in freedoms and opportunities for all.

Key features of Agreement-Based Organization

In Agreement-Based Organization:

• All formal social structures evolve as agreements adopted by the direct written consent of participants.
• Agreements are stressed as tools for communication and coordination, not control.
• Media access and participation rights are fundamentally important topics, for all potential levels of organization.
• Formal proposals and agreements are related to a systematic view of shared goals, processes, tasks, roles, protocols, events and budgets. 
• Agreements of all sorts are supported, but the peer-based development of ‘agreement-based groups’ is prioritized. For instance, practical standards are suggested for dealing with inactive or obstructive members and time-sensitive emergencies.
• People and groups are encouraged to creatively develop formal relationships through modular design, rational hierarchies, federation, ‘intercommunity’ and distributed version control.

Special consideration is given to the equitable and sustainable distribution of group tasks and roles, in a technologically updated analog to Jo Freeman’s classic 1970 essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness.

ABO revisions and versions

In my initial discussions about ABO,  some great thinkers raised important concerns about my rigorous emphasis on explicit mutual consent.  I had considered similar concerns while writing the document, but hadn’t consistently indicated them.  I’ve worked throughout ABO to improve clarity and explicit detail, and to develop some innovations further.  The document has grown from 13 to 16 pages, despite ruthless editing and a deliberately concise style.

I’ve begun using a new WIP protocol to openly iterate personal texts.  I consider the publicly evolving Agreement-Based Organization to be ABO’s main version, but I’ll link timestamped versions such as ABO 1.2.1 for anyone who wants or needs to use fixed texts.

I’ve been coordinating ABO with Value Flows terminology when it seems feasible.  Value Flows focuses strictly on economic networks, but I always seek shared meanings and efficient communications.

Onward together

ABO is a conceptually dense document, which could easily be expanded into a book-length treatment or (my preference) an expansive system of linked topics.  I’ve created a public ABO issues and enhancements list to indicate current plans.  My main goals are to make ABO more modular, collaborative, and directly connected to the experiences of real communities.

If you’re interested, please check ABO out.  I’d love to talk with you about specific ideas, experiences and possibilities!

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