Lifezones By Peter Halasz [CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons

I. First, the list of commons economic terms in the original article has a very notable omission:

cooperative

I suggest that we avoid coining new words, phrases and “commons jargon” for ideas and  terms that already exist and have reasonably well-established meanings in public and academic discourse. Language is one of our most important commons and its conservation and good stewardship is important.

Suggested terms with utility for commons economics:

• subsidiarity  In my opinion this may be the single most important concept in modern society. “Subsidiarity is an organising principle of decentralisation, stating that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralised authority capable of addressing that matter effectively. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, cybernetics, management, military, and, … In political theory, subsidiarity is sometimes viewed as a principle entailed by the idea of federalism.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
• conditional ownership
• equity
• commonwealth
• absentee ownership
• doctrine of laches
• rule against perpetuities
  
• community land trust
• community property
• concurrent estate
• conservation easement
• public easement
• public interest
• beneficial interest
• deed restriction
• covenant
• co-housing
• condominium
• benefit association
• mutual association
• benefit corporation

II. Secondly, we might consider referring to some existing top-level vocabularies (data dictionaries, ontologies, etc.) and perhaps building the commons-based economics vocabulary as an extension (specialized domain) of one or more of these.

Below is a graphic of the GoodRelations e-comerce vocabulary (click to enlarge in another window). I include this graphic not for its specific terminology but because it conveys several concepts at a glance. The use of a Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram would allow us to  show terms grouped into logical classes and the relationships between those classes. But this is not only a step towards a standardized and machine-readable dictionary of terms; it is also a model of economic processes. I think this would be a very useful kind of model to create for an Economics of the Commons. Rather than invent the Commons Economy Model from scratch we could borrow from existing models like GoodRelations and adapt them as necessary.

At the most basic level, such a diagram would allow us to hyperlink each term to a standard definition such as those given in the UNITED NATIONS METADATA COMMON VOCABULARY. Note that in the UN Metadata dictionary each term is not only defined but there are references to relevant organizations, standards, specifications, urls, etc.

Such a model could be created and updated collaboratively using tools like Prezi, Mindmap, Debategraph, etc.

Once we create our model, software engineers can render it into various machine-readable protocols such as XML, RDF, OWL, etc.

(click on the image for an enlarged view)

Other examples of standardized vocabularies  designed for  both human-readable and machine-readable information exchange:

UNITED NATIONS METADATA COMMON VOCABULARY (2009) http://unstats.un.org/unsd/dnss/docs-nqaf/04_sdmx_cog_annex_4_mcv_2009.pdf

Other UN data and metadata dictionaries, vocabularies, data sets, etc. http://data.un.org/Default.aspx

The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), which is XML-based, has a variety of schemas (vocabularies) used to facilitate information exchange among partners in various disciplines, government-wide. It’s about achieving interoperability. Think of the NIEM data model as a mature and stable data dictionary of agreed-upon terms, definitions, and formats, independent of how information is stored in individual agency systems. www.niem.gov/technical/Pages/niem.aspx

GoodRelations  is a standardized vocabulary (also known as “schema”, “data dictionary”, or “ontology”) for product, price, store, company data, etc. GoodRelations is now fully compatible with the HTML5 microdata specification and can be used as an extension for the schema.org vocabulary. www.heppnetz.de/ontologies/goodrelations/v1

Schema.org The schemas are a set of ‘types’, each associated with a set of properties. The types are arranged in a hierarchy. http://schema.org/docs/full.html

The geopolitical ontology, developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), provides names in seven languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Spanish, Russian and Italian) and identifiers in various international coding systems (ISO2, ISO3, AGROVOC, FAOSTAT, FAOTERM, GAUL, UN, UNDP and DBPediaID codes) for territories and groups and tracks historical changes from 1985 up until today;[2] provides geolocation (geographical coordinates); implements relationships among countries and countries, or countries and groups, including properties such as has border with, is predecessor of, is successor of, is administered by, has members, and is in group; and disseminates country statistics including country area, land area, agricultural area, GDP or population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitical_ontology

Lists of other ontologies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29

http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Ontology#Ontologies_on_semanticweb.org

Related articles

• Solidarity, subsidiarity, and principled sanity (insightscoop.typepad.com)
• Schema.org, Learning Resource Metadata Initiative Join Hands In Boost To Educational Content Searches (semanticweb.com)
• Schema.org Gets New eCommerce Features (nexcess.net)
• Science of the Commons? (Poor Richard’s Almanack 2.0)

The post Building a dictionary for an economics of the commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[Revised repost. I probably should have titled this “Hacking the Organization”. What follows is not a primer of organizational design but simply a back-of-the-envelope sketch of how a number of organizational design and management ideas might be applied to peer-to-peer (P2P) organizations. My intention is for these ideas to be adapted or “hacked” for P2P applications without getting hung up on ideology or terminology, much of which has historical baggage.]

Security, dignity, civic/legal/moral equality, justice, education, love, fun…all these are common-sense, plain language values that almost every sane person shares. This is where any thought about the politico-economic arrangements of society, especially the “commons”, should begin. We should build up from these in the simplest and most direct fashion possible. And perhaps with as little theory and philosophy as possible.

I recognize that many p2p activities may be amorphous, fluid, informally organized, or conducted by completely autonomous and independent individuals. My own preferred lifestyle is agrarian and communitarian. I’m not a particularly good team player. But I would like to think of a world where p2p organizations can launch satellites, build solar-powered factories, and make trains run on time.

In The Political Economy of Peer Production, Michel Bauwens describes peerism as “cooperative individualism”. I think that is an important perspective and I think it can be extended to groups as well. Whether cooperation is one to one, one to many, many to one, or many to many, all cooperators are peers. If they are not peers, the enterprise should not be called cooperation.

In the same paper Bauwens notes that “At present, peer production offers no solution to the material survival of its participants. Therefore, many people inspired by the egalitarian ethos will resort to cooperative production, the social economy, and other schemes from which they can derive an income, while at the same time honoring their values. In this sense, these schemes are complementary.”

Perhaps I am taking a broader approach to peerism than some, but I think peer production and cooperative production are more than complementary. In my mind the concept of a true peer is essential to the concept of true cooperation and vice versa. I know this is not how cooperative production and peer production have always played out historically, but I am hoping that in the future such distinctions may evaporate. Worker cooperatives worthy of the name should become fully p2p organizations.

It is often observed that many worker coops have hierarchical management or that open/free software development projects may have “benevolent dictators” or merit-based hierarchies. How can members of such organizations be said to be “peers”? I think being a peer is most fundamentally based on consent. Ideally, consent to cooperate is freely given and fully informed. But in the real world, consent is a matter of degree. Even under the best of circumstances freedom is constrained by things like personal needs, availability of alternatives, peer pressure, etc., and information is never complete. Nonetheless, we can strive for the highest degree of informed consent for ourselves and for all those peers with whom we cooperate.

The following ideas are directed at maximizing consent and peerism in the context of organizations that are not limited to asynchronous digital production of intellectual goods and services without monetary compensation, but also organizations capable of physical production of tangible goods and services in every part of the economy, and capable of providing people with financial security and a reasonable level of prosperity. Later in the post I’ll write specifically about an approach to designing very large, global organizations that might be capable of dealing with some of our most serious existential crises such as climate change, or the predatory-commercial (or authoritarian-state) enclosure of our global information and communications (Internet and WWW) infrastructure.

General Design Framework

My favorite framework for analyzing and designing formal organizations consists of five layers:

1. Values & principles
2. Goals & objectives
3. Methods & processes
4. Organizational structure & relationships
5. Forms of ownership and distribution of income and assets

This framework could be used for almost any kind of organization from a private, for-profit corporation to a non-profit, charitable foundation or NGO. It is a structured way to analyze or define “what we do, how we do it, why we do it.” In my opinion, it could be very well suited to designing or redesigning peer-to-peer organizations. There is a lot here that lends itself to reverse-engineering existing organizations, too. Some of it may resemble ideas found in the now unpopular business process re-engineering (BPR) framework, but my framework is distinguished from BPR by being a do-it-yourself (DIY) and peer-consensual process.

Although most groups who want to form an organization will have some initial overview of most or all these layers, if each category is analyzed in sequence then each successive layer of the organization is consistent with and solidly supports the layer above.

1. Values and principles. The founding members of an organization can begin by listing, defining and prioritizing their values. It begins with an open process of brainstorming to create a exhaustive list. Then the list can be massaged by consolidating redundant items. Ranking or prioritizing these can then be assisted by creating a “poll” where each member gives each value a 1-10 importance rating. The resulting ranking can be discussed and the poll retaken as often as desired. All this activity can be documented with or without the names of individual participants to begin the historical record and “audit trail” of the organization.

Values and principles aren’t always easy to sort into separate categories. A lot of things are both values and principles, but perhaps principles are more often than not about process.

Examples of values: security, dignity, justice, fairness, civic/legal/moral equality, human rights, community, education, creativity, diversity, opportunity, health, love, fun, future retirement, free time, personal growth, friendship, loyalty, honesty, openness, sharing, reliability, sustainability, conservation, etc.

Examples of principles: composability, subsidiarity, radical transparency, consensus, meritocracy, heirarchy (or non-heirarchy), separation of powers, checks and balances, cooperation, recycling, etc.

2. Goals and objectives. These define the purposes and products of the organization and enable the practice of “management by objectives (MBO).” I use that term here in its plain language, common sense connotation and not in the special sense it has acquired in the world of corporate management doctrine taught to MBA’s. Values and objectives provide a means to measure success or failure empirically and quantitatively and the means for implementing quality control and continuous improvement (concepts well elaborated by W.E. Deming). Goals and objectives can be brainstormed and refined in the same manner as values. In addition, every goal can be rated according to the values that have already been established to further refine priorities. Goals and objectives range from the most general, “mission statement” variety (which might include quantifiable goals like carbon-neutrality, net-zero landfill, etc. ), to general product lines and revenue goals, to extremely specific goals like product specifications, production targets, , etc. One important set of goals explicitly states the ways the organization hopes to enhance the lives of its members. Goals can be further defined and organized as near-mid-long term. One simple way of organizing all these goals is an outline or a series of wiki pages. The wiki platform offers a ready-made way to document all the discussion and revision history and to hyperlink between all the layers of the framework.

3. Methods & processes. “Management by objectives (MBO)” as I use the term has two basic features: 1) a given goal or objective is associated with a project team, and 2) it is generally up to the team to define and mange the resources and methods that are used to achieve the goal. This includes devising the internal structure and self-management methods of the team itself. This is the layer where recursivness and diversity enter the organization. The first two layers have established the universals of the organization; this layer begins differentiating the “species” of project teams that will evolve over time to fit various ecological niches within the organization. The extent to which methods and processes meet the values and goals of the organization will determine their “fitness”. Management by objectives is the organizational equivalent of natural selection. But the difference is that natural selection is all about reproductive success and is otherwise values-neutral, whereas MBO selects for success at explicit, preselected values and goals. This is the opposite of top-down BPR. The MBO that I am describing is agnostic (with the possible exception of legalities) about the internals of any project team and looks only at results. From this perspective, the more mutations, the merrier. In the design stage of an organization, methods and processes will be the prerogative of the organizing members, but this represents only a state of initialization, a starting point for initial project teams. At this stage, the members can only make educated guesses about which methods and processes will best fit the organization’s values and goals and the conditions under which it operates. One important category of methods and processes defines the feedback loops between project teams and the methods for transparency and accountability to the organization as a whole. This is includes but is not limited to bookkeeping, quality control, exception handling, conflict resolution, hiring and firing, purchasing, and the interfaces between projects and between the organization and the outside world. All this can again be organized in outline or wiki form.

Deming process for quality control and continuous improvement:

PDCA is a successive cycle which starts off small to test potential effects on processes, but then gradually leads to larger and more targeted change.

PLAN

Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output. By making the expected output the focus, it differs from other techniques in that the completeness and accuracy of the specification is also part of the improvement.

DO

Implement the new processes. Often on a small scale if possible, to test possible effects.

CHECK

Measure the new processes and compare the results against the expected results to ascertain any differences.

ACT

Analyze the differences to determine their cause. Each will be part of either one or more of the P-D-C-A steps. Determine where to apply changes that will include improvement. When a pass through these four steps does not result in the need to improve, refine the scope to which PDCA is applied until there is a plan that involves improvement.

4. Organizational structure & relationships. This is often poorly matched to values, objectives and methods, which is why it comes at this stage of the design process. At this point the appropriate structure and sub-structures should almost be self-evident. Indeed, the forgoing discussion makes the assumption that the organization will consist of largely autonomous project teams. What I haven’t discussed yet is the idea that some projects will be designed to provide services to other projects. Examples are accounting services, office space or facilities management, information and communication technology, etc. This is analogous to some of the typical departments of traditional organizations, except that they are more autonomous and that most of their services are offered to client projects on a voluntary basis. In other words, production projects can choose to “outsource” such functions either to the appropriate in-house service project (the in-house accounting team, for example), to providers outside the organization, or to handle any or all of these typical tasks within the production project itself. It might also be possible for multiple accounting services or IT teams to exist and compete with each other. This prevents these in-house service projects, such as accounting and IT, from gaining too much power by virtue of exclusive expertise and captive clientele. This is an example of how checks and balances can be established between autonomous project teams. All these projects are peers. All these projects can mutate or fork.

Below are some organization charts that are compatible with the project approach. Note that the “Management” box in the matrix chart is a project itself. It may be the venue for organization-wide goal setting, scheduling, and certain interactions with the outside world.

Matrix Organization

Matrix organization sheme

A WikiMedia Organization chart:

Wikimedia has an excellent gallery of organizational charts, well worth perusing.

One of the best (albeit somewhat dated) introductions to organizational process and structure I know is “The Limits of Organization” by Ken Arrow. He identifies the typical working parts & processes of an organization– things like goal setting and decision making, information flow, accountability, and feedback loops.

5. Forms of ownership. This also is often poorly matched with the organization’s values, objectives and methods. It applies to the organization as a whole as well as to individual projects and to resources and assets that are created, acquired, used, and exchanged within and between projects and between the organization and the outside world. Choices of forms of ownership often reflect the requirements of other entities with which an organization or project will interact. Different projects might choose different forms of internal property ownership and property management.

Michel Bauwens writes in a post on the Next Net discussion group, “One of the key features of peer production is access for use and production without prior permission, and with the control mechanisms moved away from the ‘controlling access’ and ‘controlling work process’ to ‘controlling quality of the results’…” I agree with this as a general trend and preference within p2p organizations, but there are many kinds of resources that are scarce, exhaustible, or subject to access control even in p2p production scenarios.

Resources like common computer code repositories, design drawings and specs, documents, digital media, etc. are intellectual or creative works that can be shared, copied, reused and repurposed without diminishing the common resource pool. Such resources are placed in the public domain or are licensed under a GNU General Public License, Creative Commons copyright, or similar type of commons-oriented ownership.

However, a p2p organization may also purchase or license intellectual or creative works for their own use or for resale that are subject to a more restrictive commercial license or copyright. This could be anything from commercial accounting software or other software applications that limit the number of concurrent users to electronic books or copyrighted documentation and reference materials. In such cases the organization, its subsidiary project groups, and its individual members must establish and follow appropriate procedures for managing such property according to the terms of its use.

If p2p organizations are to expand from the domain of intellectual and creative production into the wider economy to produce many kinds of tangible goods and services, then there are many other kinds of resources which they will need to buy, rent, own, share, sell, trade, and manage.

Purchasing materials, components, and equipment can done by individual project groups or this can be aggregated into special purchasing or supply chain management groups. The ownership and management of resources can be internal to a group or aggregated into various kinds of resource “pools” that are shared by multiple groups.

Property and ownership (like organizational structure) are highly “hackable” or customizable within the existing legal frameworks of most modern nations.

There is a large catalog of “off-the-shelf” forms of organization and ownership as well as exotic forms and infinitely customizable hybrids providing a vast palette of options that can be used to create any organization and manage any kind of resource for any purpose under the sun.

P2P peeps are good at hacking and forking things and in the years to come will spawn many new organizational species.

One thing to consider in choosing a legal form of ownership is that we face an existential threat from predatory special interests that are waging an increasingly well-coordinated war on democratic social and economic institutions, including other businesses. The progressive, egalitarian community faces a radically authoritarian opponent that is hell-bent on establishing a global corporate neofeudalism–a system of private governance and private ownership of all that remains of the commons.

Our problem is how to defend ourselves, our institutions, and our commons against such an enemy and such an assault, without adopting the enemy’s methods or mentality. What kind of self-defensive and counter-offensive methods can we devise that can match the scope, scale, and speed of the enemy’s economic class warfare?

Corporations:

Incorporation has several advantages that make it a common form of business ownership. However, my position is that most corporations have too many advantages that are seldom in the public interest. For details see Tom Hartmann’s book: Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People” – And How You Can Fight Back.

Although corporate law varies in different jurisdictions, there are four core characteristics of the business corporation:

• Legal personality
• Limited liability
• Transferable shares
• Centralized management under a board structure

Liability exemptions, perpetual life, corporate personhood, and other corporate advantages should be granted only when those perks or incentives serve to correct some market failure. Otherwise all other forms of business are at a disadvantage. And if all businesses and persons are incorporated, we may as well toss the estate tax, which in my opinion is a necessary and proper tax.

When businesses receive corporate advantages, they should be required to act strictly within narrow charters and should have requirements that unincorporated business don’t–greater transparency for one. Not only should they NOT be legal persons, they should be much LESS than legal persons. They should behave like the publicly-chartered legal fictions that they are.

People Resources

I use this term to distinguish p2p people resources from the conventional human resource management mentality. Although an individual may be on multiple project teams, she is nevertheless a unique and indivisible person.

Costs and benefits of extreme outsourcing

One of the greatest challenges I see for p2p organizations is the question of “fringe benefits”. The status of “independent contractor” or “free agent” has its attractions both for the peer and for employers. The downside is that many for-profit corporations have carried this to an extreme form of outsourcing, both to minimize facilities costs and to divorce themselves from personnel costs, especially the cost of fringe benefit programs. If peers are going to have any fringe benefits under this new regime, they will almost certainly need to form mutual benefit associations to supplement the healthcare, retirement, and unemployment benefits which may or may not be provided by government.

A mutual organization exists with the purpose of raising funds from its membership or customers (collectively called its members), which can then be used to provide common services to all members of the organization or society. A mutual is therefore owned by, and run for the benefit of, its members – it has no external shareholders to pay in the form of dividends, and as such does not usually seek to maximize and make large profits or capital gains. Mutuals exist for the members to benefit from the services they provide and often do not pay income tax. (Wikipedia)

Maximizing the quality of life of all present and future peers is the highest possible mission of any P2P organization.

Disorganization of the peers

The ecosystem of innovation in the techni-capable general public is hugely fertile and productive, but in an emergent, stigmergic, and largely undisciplined piecemeal fashion. Many new species of innovation might be characterized as technology “micro-organisms”, and many are born and die in virtual islands of isolation without passing their “DNA” to other species or generations of technology. The cross-fertilization of innovations and designs is very localized and random. This is not necessarily bad over a vast time frame, but it dramatically slows the evolution of best designs and practices –especially in the “large animal” category of technology platforms.

We could leave the progress of innovation to the invisible hand of “natural selection” by market forces and we would get a slow evolution. But such a “hands-off” approach is not really hands-off at all. Such evolution would be heavily shaped by the existing vested interests and powers. The only innovations that would be allowed to survive would be those that were not disruptive to the powers that be. How will we organize effectively to stop climate change or stop the corporate take-over of the internet? To balance the influence of the vested special interests we may need large, global organizations that operate in the public interest.

Various interest groups recognized long ago the need for global institutions and created them. They serve political, commercial, financial, legal, military, economic development, scientific, educational, cultural, public health, philanthropic, and other specific agendas.

There is no comparable global public interest institution, for example, whose agenda is specifically to build our future public global information and communications infrastructure (PGICI), sometimes called The Next Net, including all the layers of hardware and software necessary to provide the entire suite of high-level information and communication services to the end user community.

The non-governmental public-interest organizations I’m suggesting need be no bigger or more complex than a UN, WHO, WTO, IMF, NATO, World Bank, or a multi-national corporation. There are many of these in our modern environment.

The problem is that there is no GLOBAL PUBLIC-INTEREST “BUSINESS” MODEL. I use the term “business model” because it is such as cliche in current public conversation. If we want to understand what really makes an organization succeed or fail we dissect its business model.

For the project of forming an open, transparent, democratic, global public-interest organization there is no compatible private for-profit business model, and there is no compatible public non-profit business model either. Something like the PGICI is beyond the usual scope of private philanthropy and it is incompatible with governments that place private business interests (profits) above the public interest.

A PGICI would have to be funded by the end users, and it SHOULD BE. But there is thus far no working business model for a crowd-funded public project of such size and scope. Projects of that size and scope are the province of governments and global industries alone, with perhaps a few philanthropic examples in the public health and humanitarian sectors.

Of course the business model is not the only problem. No field-tested organizational model exists, either. So what about a coalition of parties like the W3C, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the UN ICT Task Force , the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Free Software Foundation, the Foundation for P2P Alternatives, the OpenNet Initiative, the WikiMedia Foundation, Google, the BBC, and others to design and launch a PGICI umbrella organization. The two big questions are 1) is this a project the public can comprehend and agree on, and 2) does the not-for-profit, non-governmental public sector have the global-enterprise-level entrepreneurial and management abilities to make something like a PGICI happen. Or is that kind of entrepreneurial and management ability strictly a private-sector commodity? If it is the latter, then the capitalists have been right all along and we can’t live without them– so we might as well all shut up and go to our cubicles and behave.

The Large, Massively Complex, Adaptive Organization

How should we organize ourselves in the 21st century?

* Harry Halpin and Kay Summer in Turbulence

“[T]here is now a brief window of opportunity – a moment outside ‘normal’ time – where a network of social movements can actively form and radically reshape the world. To do so successfully, future movements must consciously try to avoid two distinct fates: either the dissolution into a decentralised network of loose clusters of relatively isolated groups, movements and individuals – the fate of the summit-hopping phase of the movement of movements – or a decline towards a centralised network of cadres, which severely damaged the movement in the Sixties. Our lines of flight from these dead-ends consist in wilfully pushing ourselves to learn from successful networks and evolve towards a mature distributed network with abundant hubs and a powerful long tail: a movement with both mass participation and dynamic hubs of people and events, capable of evolving and responding rapidly to a fast-changing world. A tall order – perhaps – yet the alternative is bleak indeed.”

My thesis is that both poles of large organization structure–the loose network of diverse individuals, organizations, and movements and the centralized, top-down, hierarchical organization–have strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses severely limit the attractiveness, effectiveness, or longevity of organizations at either extreme. What is needed is a new model for organizations large enough to address international crises and global development needs but without the weaknesses of either of the old large organizational forms.

I propose a variety of bio-mimetic principles and metaphors with which to design a new model for large, global, non-governmental organizations that are democratic, transparent, and open to mass participation. The new model will achieve stability neither through conflict avoidance nor through central command and control, but through the flexible yet closely coordinated dynamics of complex adaptive systems (CAS).

In what follows I’ll discuss a number of bio-mimetic principles and metaphors for organizational design, but the single most important concept in complex adaptive systems is that the complexity of the network of feedback circuits (e.g. nerves) must be commensurate with the complexity of the functional relationships among all the organization’s internal parts (e.g. cells).

The best biological analog for complex feedback circuits is the neural network. A neural network is made of a great many individual neurons (nerve cells) each with many cross-connections to other neurons. Although there are many specialized types of neurons and neural networks (just as there are many types of workers and teams in a large organization), most of the types have large numbers of connections with their fellow neurons. A neuron receives feedback from other neurons via its dendrite fibers. These have many branches, collectively referred to metaphorically as a dendritic tree. A neuron sends out nerve signals via its axon fibers–cable-like projections that can extend tens, hundreds, or even tens of thousands of times the length of the cell body. Like the dendrites, the axon has many branches, enabling communication with many different target cells. Between the branching dendrite and axon fibers combined, the typical neuron in the human brain has an average of 7,000 connections to other neurons. Some have many more connections. Can you imagine an individual member of an organization with 7,000 direct, hard-wired connections to other members? This is a lot of very close-coupled, bi-directional feedback.

Two of my favorite authors on organizational design are the Nobel-prize economist Kenneth Arrow (The Limits of Organization) and Edwards Deming, the father of industrial quality control and “continuous improvement.” Both men emphasized the central importance of an organization’s feedback networks to the practical limits on its size and efficiency.

The basic element of a feedback network is a single feedback loop. Each feedback loop of a neuron may involve many other cells, so the possible number of loops is far greater than the 7,000 connections that each individual cell has.

Deming described the generic logic of the basic feedback loop in terms of the PDCA cycle (see details above). PDCA stands for plan. do, check (or study), and act.

A neuron performs analogous feedback steps, with less anthropomorphic labels. However, a single neuron probably has a greater number of such feedback loops than many human organizations. A single mouse brain may have more such loops than the largest human organization on earth. (If we want to talk about collective human intelligence, maybe we need to at least aspire to a feedback network as complex as that of a mouse brain. Deming called his organizational philosophy, BTW, the “System of Profound Knowledge”.)

The point is that organizational failures are most often related to feedback failures–organizational feedback networks tend to be woefully inadequate. So massively complex feedback is the primary bio-mimetic design principle for massively complex, adaptive organizations. One of the best tools we have for implementing complex feedback networks within an organization and between an organization and the world is called a social network. Social network platforms like facebook or Google +, for all their faults, are easily capable of supporting feedback networks involving hundreds of millions of people. While each neuron might be thought of as having 7,000 neuron “friends,” most humans may only be capable of interacting with a few hundred (see Dunbar’s number) in any coherent fashion.

Designing organizations as complex adaptive systems (CAS)

It is often claimed that CASs cannot be intentionally planned or designed–they must be allowed to emerge spontaneously and serendipitously from natural evolution of from a “cloud” of stigmergic activity . Examples of complex, adaptive stigmergic activity are seen in swarming ants and bees, schooling fish, etc.

IMO this is a one-sided view. CASs can be helped to emerge. Emergence can be intentionally pushed, pulled, and guided. And in the case of the Next Net Ecosystem, I argue that in order to address the scope, scale and speed of various immanent existential threats we MUST assist with the emergence of new ICT infrastructure with new defensive and counter-offensive capabilities. The birth of the Next Net Ecosystem needs skillful and dedicated midwives and husbandmen to bring it safely into this world in a timely manner despite serious obstacles and risk factors.

Examples of planned, designed, and managed CASs and guided emergence include complex gardens, permaculture systems, and forest garden designs, and the design and management of other complex, integrated agricultural and horticultural systems involving mixed ecosystems of plants, animals, humans and natural resources with diverse bioregions and microclimates.

Rooms, patios, campuses, and plazas full of master gardeners, permaculture designers, agriculturalists, landscape designers, etc. can and do collaborate on designing, building, and managing complex adaptive systems every day.

They combine systems science with knowledge, experience, and practical skills and apply principles of continuous improvement and quality control to make complex systems progressively healthier and increasingly more robust, productive, and adaptive.

As one small case history of helping a complex adaptive system to emerge far more quickly than would otherwise have been possible without intensive planning, design, and management, consider this personal gardening story: http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/super-nature/

Living Systems Theory (LST)

Additional bio-mimetic principles and metaphors for the design of large, complex, adaptive organizations can be drawn from the Living Systems Theory of James Grier Miller and others.

In the Wikipedia section below, reference is often made to “self-organizing” systems. In the case of biological organisms and ecosystems there is no single explicit designer or architect. However, all the organisms both inside and outside of an eco-region are co-designers, co-architects, and co-engineers of the ecosystem, despite the fact that their activities may not be intelligently coordinated. A consequence of this lack of intelligent planning and coordination is that adaptation to environmental changes is often slow and, in the short term, clumsy.

If nature succeeds as well as it does without intentional systems analysis and planning, how much better might we succeed at organization and social evolution WITH system science, design, quality control, and continuous improvement methods if those methods are intentionally and carefully applied?

Furthermore, if 500 people got together and designed, planed, and built an organization in an open, transparent, and democratic way , that organization may be said to have been “self-organized”, even if the original 500 people no longer belong to the organization. Thus references to “self-organization” below in no way detract from the application of living systems theory to the creation of large, complex social institutions.

Wikipedia: Living Systems

Living systems are open self-organizing living things that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter.

Some scientists have proposed in the last few decades that a general living systems theory is required to explain the nature of life.^[1] Such general theory, arising out of the ecological and biological sciences, attempts to map general principles for how all living systems work. Instead of examining phenomena by attempting to break things down into component parts, a general living systems theory explores phenomena in terms of dynamic patterns of the relationships of organisms with their environment.^[2]

Theory

Living systems theory is a general theory about the existence of all living systems, their structure, interaction, behavior and development. This work is created by James Grier Miller, which was intended to formalize the concept of life. According to Miller’s original conception as spelled out in his magnum opus Living Systems, a “living system” must contain each of twenty “critical subsystems”, which are defined by their functions and visible in numerous systems, from simple cells to organisms, countries, and societies. In Living Systems Miller provides a detailed look at a number of systems in order of increasing size, and identifies his subsystems in each. Miller considers living systems as a subset of all systems. Below the level of living systems, he defines space and time, matter and energy, information and entropy, levels of organization, and physical and conceptual factors, and above living systems ecological, planetary and solar systems, galaxies, etc.^[3]

Living systems according to Parent (1996) are by definition “open self-organizing systems that have the special characteristics of life and interact with their environment. This takes place by means of information and material-energy exchanges. Living systems can be as simple as a single cell or as complex as a supranational organization such as the European Union. Regardless of their complexity, they each depend upon the same essential twenty subsystems (or processes) in order to survive and to continue the propagation of their species or types beyond a single generation”.^[4]

Miller said that systems exist at eight “nested” hierarchical levels: cell, organ, organism, group, organization, community, society, and supranational system. At each level, a system invariably comprises twenty critical subsystems, which process matter–energy or information except for the first two, which process both matter–energy and information: reproducer and boundary.

The processors of matter–energy are:

• ingestor, distributor, converter, producer, storage, extruder, motor, supporter

The processors of information are

• input transducer, internal transducer, channel and net, timer (added later), decoder, associator, memory, decider, encoder, output transducer.

Miller’s living systems theory

James Grier Miller in 1978 wrote a 1,102-page volume to present his living systems theory. He constructed a general theory of living systems by focusing on concrete systems—nonrandom accumulations of matter–energy in physical space–time organized into interacting, interrelated subsystems or components. Slightly revising the original model a dozen years later, he distinguished eight “nested” hierarchical levels in such complex structures. Each level is “nested” in the sense that each higher level contains the next lower level in a nested fashion.

His central thesis is that the systems in existence at all eight levels are open systems composed of twenty critical subsystems that process inputs, throughputs, and outputs of various forms of matter–energy and information. Two of these subsystems—reproducer and boundary—process both matter–energy and information. Eight of them process only matter–energy. The other ten process information only.

All nature is a continuum. The endless complexity of life is organized into patterns which repeat themselves—theme and variations—at each level of system. These similarities and differences are proper concerns for science. From the ceaseless streaming of protoplasm to the many-vectored activities of supranational systems, there are continuous flows through living systems as they maintain their highly organized steady states.^[5]

Topics in living systems theory

Miller’s theory posits that the mutual interrelationship of the components of a system extends across the hierarchical levels. Examples: Cells and organs of a living system thrive on the food the organism obtains from its suprasystem; the member countries of a supranational system reap the benefits accrued from the communal activities to which each one contributes. Miller says that his eclectic theory “ties together past discoveries from many disciplines and provides an outline into which new findings can be fitted”.^[7]

Miller says the concepts of space, time, matter, energy, and information are essential to his theory because the living systems exist in space and are made of matter and energy organized by information. Miller’s theory of living systems employs two sorts of spaces: physical or geographical space, and conceptual or abstracted spaces. Time is the fundamental “fourth dimension” of the physical space–time continuum/spiral. Matter is anything that has mass and occupies physical space. Mass and energy are equivalent as one can be converted into the other. Information refers to the degrees of freedom that exist in a given situation to choose among signals, symbols, messages, or patterns to be transmitted.

Other relevant concepts are system, structure, process, type, level, echelon, suprasystem, subsystem, transmissions, and steady state. A system can be conceptual, concrete or abstracted. The structure of a system is the arrangement of the subsystems and their components in three-dimensional space at any point of time. Process, which can be reversible or irreversible, refers to change over time of matter–energy or information in a system. Type defines living systems with similar characteristics. Level is the position in a hierarchy of systems. Many complex living systems, at various levels, are organized into two or more echelons. The suprasystem of any living system is the next higher system in which it is a subsystem or component. The totality of all the structures in a system which carry out a particular process is a subsystem. Transmissions are inputs and outputs in concrete systems. Because living systems are open systems, with continually altering fluxes of matter–energy and information, many of their equilibria are dynamic—situations identified as steady states or flux equilibria.

Miller identifies the comparable matter–energy and information processing critical subsystems. Elaborating on the eight hierarchical levels, he defines society, which constitutes the seventh hierarchy, as “a large, living, concrete system with [community] and lower levels of living systems as subsystems and components”.^[8] Society may include small, primitive, totipotential communities; ancient city–states, and kingdoms; as well as modern nation–states and empires that are not supranational systems. Miller provides general descriptions of each of the subsystems that fit all eight levels.

A supranational system, in Miller’s view, “is composed of two or more societies, some or all of whose processes are under the control of a decider that is superordinate to their highest echelons”.^[9] However, he contends that no supranational system with all its twenty subsystems under control of its decider exists today. The absence of a supranational decider precludes the existence of a concrete supranational system.

At the supranational system level, Miller’s emphasis is on international organizations, associations, and groups comprising representatives of societies (nation–states). Miller identifies the subsystems at this level to suit this emphasis. Thus, for example, the reproducer is “any multipurpose supranational system which creates a single purpose supranational organization” (p. 914); and the boundary is the “supranational forces, usually located on or near supranational borders, which defend, guard, or police them” (p. 914).

Strengths of Miller’s theory

Not just those specialized in international communication, but all communication science scholars could pay particular attention to the major contributions of living systems theory (LST) to social systems approaches that Bailey^[11] has pointed out:

• The specification of the twenty critical subsystems in any living system.
• The specification of the eight hierarchical levels of living systems.
• The emphasis on cross-level analysis and the production of numerous cross-level hypotheses.
• Cross-subsystem research (e.g., formulation and testing of hypotheses in two or more subsystems at a time).
• Cross-level, cross-subsystem research.

Bailey says that LST, perhaps the “most integrative” social systems theory, has made many more contributions that may be easily overlooked, such as: providing a detailed analysis of types of systems; making a distinction between concrete and abstracted systems; discussion of physical space and time; placing emphasis on information processing; providing an analysis of entropy; recognition of totipotential systems, and partipotential systems; providing an innovative approach to the structure–process issue; and introducing the concept of joint subsystem—a subsystem that belongs to two systems simultaneously; of dispersal—lateral, outward, upward, and downward; of inclusion—inclusion of something from the environment that is not part of the system; of artifact—an animal-made or human-made inclusion; of adjustment process, which combats stress in a system; and of critical subsystems, which carry out processes that all living systems need to survive.^[12]

LST’s analysis of the twenty interacting subsystems, Bailey adds, clearly distinguishing between matter–energy-processing and information-processing, as well as LST’s analysis of the eight interrelated system levels, enables us to understand how social systems are linked to biological systems. LST also analyzes the irregularities or “organizational pathologies” of systems functioning (e.g., system stress and strain, feedback irregularities, information–input overload). It explicates the role of entropy in social research while it equates negentropy with information and order. It emphasizes both structure and process, as well as their interrelations.^[13]

See also

• Artificial life
• Biological organisation
• Biological systems
• Complex systems
• Spome
• Systems biology
• Systems theory

[Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_systems]

Additional Bio-mimetic ideas

Additional principles and metaphors for the biomimetic design of large, complex organizations can be taken from recursive fractal geometries and from some of the concepts of object-oriented programming.

Object-oriented programming techniques include features such as:

• data abstraction
• encapsulation
• messaging
• interfaces
• modularity
• polymorphism
• inheritance
• object instantiation

(See more resources on bio-mimetics and complex adaptive systems below)

Poor Richard

Related subjects and resources:

• P2p (almanac2010.wordpress.com)
• MIT Center for Collective Intelligence How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?’
• MANAGEMENT & VIRTUAL DECENTRALISED NETWORKS: THE LINUX PROJECT, By George N. Dafermos (pdf)
• Cyberchiefs: a typology of online governance
• Open Enterprise Governance Model (bettermeans.com)
• The Future Proof Enterprise (shareable.net)
• Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail, by John Gall
• TIMN in 20 minutes: social evolution — past, present, and future, (YouTube.com) This video offers an overview of the TIMN framework: its focus on social evolution (past, present, future), its construction around four cardinal forms of organization (tribes, institutions, markets, networks), its system dynamics, and its future implications.
• The Rochdale Principles are a set of ideals for the operation of cooperatives (Wikipedia)
• The Slow Business Manifesto
  
• Open enterprise manifesto
• The WorldBlu 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy
• Open organizations (open-organizations.org)
• The Systems View of an Open Organization

• COMMON WELFARE ECONOMY Summary in 20 cornerstones (pdf)

• Common Welfare Balance Sheet (pdf) Human dignity, Solidarity, Ecological Sustainability, Social Justice,
  Democratic Co-determination & Transparency
• The characteristics of chaordic organizations (p2pfoundation.net)
• Open organisation (p2pfoundation.net)
• Open business (p2pfoundation.net)
• Open enterprise (p2pfoundation.net)
• Category:Open Company Formats (p2pfoundation.net) Can we invent new corporate formats for P2P and commons-friendly market approaches?

• Commons/P2P Next Steps: Creating Sustainable Commons Based Institutions

• Open P2P Design: A Metadesign methodology for Open Design Projects
• SourceMap: Open Supply Chains
• Decision making
• Co-Operative Business Consultants
  
• Relationship Capital
  
• Relationship Capital Interactions
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)
  
• Crowdfunding Social Change
• Critical Path Method. The critical path method (CPM) is an algorithm for scheduling a set of project activities.^[1] It is an important tool for effective project management.

Resources to help extend the application of biological metaphors and Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) to organizations

• “Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)” (brief intro video)
• Mesh Network CAS model? (brief video)
• Visualizing complex networks
• NATURE – Controllability of Complex Networks – Data Visualization
• Modeling Complex Adaptive Systems
• Systems Thinking, Complexity Theory and Management” by David C. Aron, M.D., M.S.
• The Brain as a Complex Network (Part 1)
• Understanding Strategy though Complexity Theory

——————————————————————–

Excerpt from Replacing systems management with complex responsive processes in peer to peer work environments (P2P Foundation blog)

http://www.cbc.coop/system/files/Break+Free+from+Our+Systems+Prison.doc

Break Free from Our Systems Prison

Implications of Complex Responsive Process Management Thinking

preDraft version for UKSCS conference 2010– not for republication.

Please acknowledge source if you quote.

Bob Cannell FCIPD

This paper is an argument for application of CRP thinking to practical management learning. It attempts to show why CRP is a radically new ‘take’ on the theory of organisational management and why it is better suited to democratic and participative organisational environments.

……

Some examples will illustrate this problem. Worker cooperative members can design their working arrangements any way they wish. Suma is the largest worker cooperative in the UK and was described as one of the two most radical employers in Europe by the former director of Co-operatives Europe.

Suma members for example have collectively decided they want to choose their work colleagues democratically, to multi-skill and undertake multiple jobs in the course of a week (job-rotation), to work how and when they want and to have strictly equal pay rates for all Suma workers. But all of these eminently egalitarian and reasonable wishes, the operations and criteria of which are worked out in the present in active conversation, is in conflict with employment legislation and an employment culture which assumes a prescriptive and systematic relationship between employer and employee.

It is possible to assess common management techniques for their basic underlying assumptions. Most of these have been designed pragmatically without consideration of the underlying philosophical assumptions; CRP based or Systems model based.

Systems based techniques will not be easy to use or just ineffective in an organisation which lacks arbitrary management authority, the ability to require subordinates to JEDI (just effing do it). CRP friendly techniques would be a better choice of tool in organisations where consensual agreement is required for proposed change to take place.

The post Organizing P2P Organizations appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Guild coat of arms of a smith

Executive Peer-to-Peer Summary:

This essay is partially in response to Whither government regulation in a highly complex age? which questions the ability of a hollowed-out, privatized government to effectively cope with the increasing complexity of social and environmental crises such as global warming. What follows assumes some prior familiarity with the basic ideas of p2p culture.

Guild coat of arms of a shoemaker

I agree that the failure of government regulation to curb the destructive activity of large corporations is only likely to worsen with the increasing privatization of government and the increasing complexity of global problems. So what can p2p culture do about this?

1. Establish powerful, confederated P2P Guilds and Leagues based on various global commons of knowledge and expertise so that mitigations, adaptations, and other interventions can be crowd-sourced by massively distributed, parallel, and open networks of peers.

2. Establish many strong, self-reliant economies at the local geopolitical (or Eco-political) level by forming partnerships between the P2P guilds and progressive local communities. These partnerships would maximize economies of scope via peer production and would also be strongly confederated with their peers bio-regionally, nationally, and globally.

3. One more maneuver that may be necessary to assist this process I will dub “castling”, a term borrowed from the game of chess. What I mean by this is a shifting of local populations between adjacent local geopolitical jurisdictions (such as cities and counties in the US) so as to create political, social, and economic majorities of p2p culture in the targeted locations. Those locations that are simultaneously abandoned by p2p culture are essentially “sacrificed” to the corporate predators. (Half a loaf saved is better than none.)

Guild coat of arms of a fisherman

The resulting strongly confederated p2p cultural strongholds might stand the best chance of competing with the large corporate entities, excluding them from the “castled” commons, and limiting the scope of their environmental destruction.

How P2P Culture Might Save the Day

1. P2P Guilds and Leagues

Various authors have suggested the concept of “phyles” or “tribes” for characterizing horizontal organizational structures in p2p culture. See for example the Las Indias cooperative movement. (p2pfoundation.net)

I am not opposed to these , and in the end it is important for peer groups to self-identify with the descriptions they

Guild coat of arms of a tanner

prefer; but I think I prefer the idea of confederated GUILDS and LEAGUES, and perhaps I can make an argument for these terms that will be persuasive to some.

A guild can function just as envisioned for a phyle (from Greek phul? — tribe, clan) but does not carry the same connotation as a tribe, clan, or phyle of having a primary basis in familial kinship, nor the historical reputation (in certain cases) of rebellion against central authority. The subtle but important difference is that a guild is all about practical know-how and about taking care of business– not about ideology or revolution (eh, at least on the surface…).

The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild by Rembrandt, 1662.

The Guildhall, London (engraving, ca 1805)

“The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society. They often depended on grants of letters patent by a monarch or other authority to enforce the flow of trade to their self-employed members, and to retain ownership of tools and the supply of materials. A lasting legacy of traditional guilds are the guildhalls constructed and used as meeting places.

Guild coat of arms of a mason

“An important result of the guild framework was the emergence of universities at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford around the year 1200; they originated as guilds of students as at Bologna, or of masters as at Paris.” (Wikipedia)

One point on which I think guilds differ from Las Indias’ conception of phyles (“In Phyles, Community precedes Enterprise” -David Uguarte) is that for guilds, community and enterprise are two sides of one coin. I think this fits well with p2p culture while also being relatively non-confrontational with mainstream corporate/capitalist norms. The ability of guilds and leagues (such as the League of Women Voters) to present a relatively “normal” outward face, may have occasional tactical advantages.

According to Phil Jones,

“One issue people have with the traditional Guild is that Guilds are demarcated by profession. They aren’t a grouping that implies a multidisciplinary team. Guilds are great for teaching, accrediting and providing a retirement policy but aren’t self-sufficient or “closed” economic loops.”

Guilds, phyles, tribes, etc. . . .each has extensive variation and we can pick and choose features of one or all and remix to

Guild coat of arms of a taylor

suit our purposes. However, I think that overall, p2p relations have more to do with behavior and knowledge than with kinship. Guilds in the form of trade unions and academic institutions also have a rich history of confederation across multiple disciplines and locations, making the guild, IMO, a more appropriate basic raw material to further hack, improvise, and remix.

Michel Bauwens notes that “for lasindias, guilds can be phyles and are in fact the historical example for it .. the Venetian and Florentine guild councils, who originally ruled the cities, had international structures to support themselves, with halfway houses etc … The Hanseatic League is an interesting example. It never did have a constitution or formal membership as far as I know. Cities, guilds and towns just identified with it and co-operated in respect of matters of common interest, like suppressing piracy.”

Another interesting example is the Iroquois League:

“The Iroquois League, historically the Iroquois Confederacy, is a group of Native Americans (in what is now the United States) and First Nations (in what is now Canada) that consists of six nations: the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca and the Tuscarora. The Iroquois (also known as the Haudenosaunee or the “People of the Longhouse) have a representative government known as the Grand Council. The Grand Council is the oldest governmental institution still maintaining its original form in North America. The League has been functioning since prior to major European contact. Each tribe sends chiefs to act as representatives and make decisions for the whole nation.” (Wikipedia)

Guild coat of arms of a carpenter

Anyway, I like many (if not all) of the characteristics of leagues and guilds, and I like the anachronistic romance of the words. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Justice League of America. . . these could become the League of Extraordinary Peers and the P2P Justice League. Steal This Film is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property that was produced by The League of Noble Peers.

We could also have P2P Makers Guilds, P2P Designers Guilds, P2P Programmers Guilds, and P2P Privacy Guilds. Such guilds would not be organizational stovepipes. Peers could affirm their interests and expertise by membership in as many guilds as they may qualify for.

Interestingly, many players of computer and video games have become familiar with guilds and their popularity continues to increase. “In computer and video gaming, a … guild is an organized group of players that regularly play together in a particular (or various) multiplayer games. These games range from groups of a few friends to 1000-person organizations, with a broad range of structures, goals and members… Numerous [guilds] exist for nearly every online game available today” (Wikipedia) In some cases the guilds are internal to the game play and sometimes they are external. Some gaming guilds have their own web sites. I don’t know if these gaming guilders are learning good guilding habits or bad ones from the perspective of p2p culture. My distance from the gaming community has obscured this information from me.

In any case, such guilds and leagues as may be created in the service of p2p culture will be able to confederate in any number of flexible ways. So too can those peer groups who, despite my valiant efforts of persuasion, prefer to call themselves phyles, tribes, clans, pods, schools, gaggles, or ganfaloons…

In many cases peers will be able to join multiple guilds, leagues, phyles, etc. as appropriate to their interests and skills. In p2p culture most such groups, despite their other characteristics, will tend to be the peers of each other and will tend to practice the same cooperative individualism or cooperative autonomy that pertains amongst individual people peers. This will make a flexible and resilient network of peers and peer groups spanning local, regional, national and global topologies.

2. Partnerships between P2P groups and local, regional, national, and international geopolitical (evolving into Eco-political) and non-state sovereign entities.

P2P culture will help to establish many strong, self-reliant economies at the local geopolitical (or Eco-political) level by forming partnerships between the P2P guilds, leagues, etc. and progressive local communities. These partnerships will maximize economies of scope via open, peer processes such as peer production and crowd-sourcing. These p2p/geopolitical or p2p/eco-political partners would also become increasingly confederated with their counterparts bio-regionally, nationally, and globally.

There may be cases where such partnerships fuse into indivisible p2p entities and cases where they do not. Regardless of that, the objective is to weave the influence of p2p culture into the geopolitical fabric of the planet, concentrating first at the the local level, at the most receptive local geopolitical “nodes,” and then spreading outwards. The levers which p2p culture will employ in this effort will be open knowledge, expertise, and methodology that will enhance the comparative advantages and capabilities of the geopolitical partners in contrast with those geopolitical entities which do not embrace the p2p partnership. In effect, p2p culture will come to the rescue of local entities that give us access. At the same time, we will redirect the public policies and practices of our geopolitical partners towards open and sustainable operations.

This follows the axiom that the only way to save ourselves is by saving others.

3. The “Castling” Maneuver

This is a shifting of local populations between adjacent geopolitical jurisdictions (such as cities and counties in the US) so as to create political, social, and economic majorities of p2p culture in the targeted locations. Those locations that are simultaneously abandoned by p2p culture are essentially “sacrificed” to the corporate predators. (Half a loaf saved is better than none.)

This kind of effort will involve brokering a lot of property on favorable terms for all involved. It will involve massive relocation of homes, small and medium businesses, farms, and personal revenue streams. We will need the ability to concentrate the efforts of our global human and financial resources on as many concurrent locales as possible.

Our ability to accomplish such maneuvers will depend heavily on the quality of the organizations and networks we build and our technology toolkit. Our social networks, alternative financial systems, and complementary currencies will need to operate very well and very securely at scale. We will need the ability to perform large volumes of complex social organizing activity and complex economic activity in a highly secure and efficient manner.

As Elinor Ostrom wrote in Green from the Grassroots, the last post before her death on June 12:

“The goal now must be to build sustainability into the DNA of our globally interconnected society. Time is the natural resource in shortest supply…“

We don’t have forever. Hopefully we have a decade or two. But we may not have even another decade to prevent unprecedented suffering and practically irreversible ecosystem collapse.

Poor Richard

The post Guilding the Lilly? (using p2p guilds for public regulation) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Fortunately, we have a bailout by the people, for the people, coming up November 15th called the Rolling Jubilee. This is a project of the OWS affinity group Strike Debt where we buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it.

The Jubilee begins November 15
with “The People’s Bailout,” a variety show and telethon in NYC.
All proceeds will go directly to buying people’s debt and cancelling it.

We cannot buy specific individuals’ debt – instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. The Jubilee begins November 15? with a variety show and telethon in NYC.? All proceeds will go directly to buying people’s debt and cancelling it.

The banks got bailed out. We got sold out. The 1% won’t sponsor a #PeoplesBailout. But we are the bailout we’ve been waiting for. Join us.

#RollingJubilee Social Media Campaign

Thursday Nov. 8th is going to be a big social media day for #RollingJubilee. Signup at http://ow.ly/eT6fr to join our People’s Mic! Start sharing at 10am, and then join us at 8:30pm for an InterOccupy call about Strike Debt and the #RollingJubilee.  Check http://www.rollingjubilee.org for sample text, hashtags, media, and donation information. You can also find a few choice sample tweets below:

• A Jubilee is a mass cancellation of debts. Want to sign up for #RollingJubilee updates? Go here: http://ow.ly/eT6fr @StrikeDebt

• In debt? You are not a loan, and you are not alone. It’s time for a #PeoplesBailout http://ow.ly/eT6fr November 15th

The post Abolishing the debt through the Rolling Jubilee initiative appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Poor Richard: I hope no one will mind if I indulge in a little visioneering here. I am imagining an information system of P2P practice and research. The P2P collaborative economy, free culture, and new commons movements are creating a lot of digital content. Most is in discursive and narrative form that is time consuming to read. Among this volume of content are case studies in a variety of formats (many very informal), business plans, proposals, and presumably many legal documents (charters, agreements, etc.).

I am imagining a semantic ontology according to which the key ideas and data of this content could be parsed and tagged to form a distributed database using semantic linked-data structures. This would help transition the collective knowledge base of the research, activist, and social entrepreneurial communities into a machine-readable, semantically linked, searchable form.

The P2P Foundation Wiki is an excellent searchable resource, and perhaps the semantic wiki extensions for the wiki engine could eventually be applied. “A semantic wiki is a wiki that has an underlying model of the knowledge described in its pages. Regular, or syntactic, wikis have structured text and untyped hyperlinks. Semantic wikis, on the other hand, provide the ability to capture or identify information about the data within pages, and the relationships between pages, in ways that can be queried or exported like a database.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_wiki

A fringe benefit of creating such data structures for existing content would be to provide common templates for future content creation and data collection.

• Gure Guretxa, Linda Larson Kemp, Lynne Desilva-johnson and 14 others like this.

• 

  Michel Bauwens I’m all for it,and have been proposed it quite a few times, but the issue for a volunteer-based commons is: who will do it. As you may realize, I have more than enough on my plate. So if a “just do it” injunction does not work, perhaps you could write it up in the form of a fundable research proposal?

  October 15 at 10:20pm · Unlike · 4
• 

  Michael Maranda PR: How much time have you put to this vision and its parameters? What you envision above has numerous layers. I imagine others hearing it would read their own take into it, as I do. My own past efforts overlap some of what you are addressing. of course, anyone who has experience in dealing with various aspects of this would probably do things differently if approaching it anew. It would be interesting to tease out some of the perspectives and chunk different tracks of effort that could move forward.

  October 15 at 11:13pm · Unlike · 2
• 

  Michael Maranda As for capacity to move something like this – there is an order of complexity whereby it is hard to imagine it resulting from a volunteer just-do-it approach, unless perhaps a roadmap is plotted, and others can see their own interest in tackling various chunks. Still – I would also like to address the question of “community supported technology” as Sam Rose raised elsewhere. Some people are ready to put in some time pro bono in hackathons, but I’d like to see a way where we can blend such efforts fairly with others who are supported by the work. This is of course separate from the technological product you are visioning, but it’s hard for me to hear any big vision without returning to these questions.

  October 15 at 11:18pm · Unlike · 2
• Helene Finidori Probably this could be part of what I am currently trying to develop with Markus A. O. Loponen. It’s more or less the idea that was behind the pearltree that I connected on another thread

  October 16 at 9:36am · Edited · Unlike · 4
• Sergio Storch Great, friends! That´s also what I´ve been developing under the name “ecosystemic architecture” for a knowledge-centric NGO in Brazil. We are using a set of tools, with a little bit of data modeling, where we haven´t still reached the stage of using onthologies. It´ll be very welcome, as well as I think we can offer value-adding visions for this endeavor. Does anyone want to know more about it?

  October 16 at 12:25pm · Unlike · 6
• Sergio Storch Michel Bauwens, I think we together can tap resources to fund such an effort in Brazil. This can be a place appropriate for putting this together, because we are in a good moment in the convergence of information science and civil society P2P collaboration. And it can be glocal, of course, since the work that has to be done can be done remotely.

  October 16 at 12:27pm · Unlike · 8
• 

  Michael Maranda Sergio Storch do share. Perhaps a new thread, or whatever forum you like?

  October 16 at 9:41pm · Unlike · 1
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  Michael Maranda All – wish we would spend time mapping out alignments on these ideas..

  October 16 at 9:41pm · Unlike · 2
• 

  Poor Richard Michel, I’m surprised no one has pushed a few million dollars at you yet for such projects. Seriously, shame on those out there with deep pockets.

  October 16 at 9:42pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Helene, your pearltree background comments are probably what got me to thinking about this again — a topic I return to perennially. I have been interested in “expert systems” and knowledge bases for several decades, but as an intellectual tourist. I have no significant hands-on experience in the field. It is a fairly big theme in the chapter on “Identity Management” (still incomplete) I wrote for my PeerPoint paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TkAUpUxdfKGr_5Qio2SlZcnBu_sgnZWdoVTZuD_Regs/edit

  October 16 at 9:49pm · Like · 1
• 

  Poor Richard Helene’s pearltree: http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-fa=5509379&N-s=1_5509379&N-u=1_558656&N-p=50149783&N-play=0&N-f=1_5509379&N-reveal=2

  

  Pearltrees

  www.pearltrees.com

  Pearltrees lets you have all your interests at hand all the time

  October 16 at 9:56pm · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard P2P Foundation’s “Everything Open and Free” mindmap: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/open-everything-mindmap-and-visualization/2009/09/08

  

  Open Everything Mindmap and visualization

  blog.p2pfoundation.net

  Thismindmapcould certainly be more beautifully designed and presented, but I can…See More

  October 16 at 9:58pm · Like · 5 · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard P2P Foundation “Everything Open and Free” Prezi: http://prezi.com/tlsiltvngctq/everything-open-and-free/

  

  Everything open and free by Lily Fisher on Prezi

  prezi.com

  presentation by Michel Bauwens

  October 16 at 10:00pm · Edited · Like · 5 · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard The P2PF Wiki has lots of ontology references: http://p2pfoundation.net/The_Foundation_for_P2P_Alternatives?title=Special%3ASearch&search=ontology&go=Goand a page on linked data: http://p2pfoundation.net/Linked_DataThe PeerPoint paper has many links to sources on ontologies, linked-data, etc. but unfortunately its still a bit disorganized. It is searchable, though (press F3). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TkAUpUxdfKGr_5Qio2SlZcnBu_sgnZWdoVTZuD_Regs/editWikipedia of course also has many pages on these and related topics.

  

  Search results for “ontology” – P2P Foundation

  p2pfoundation.net

  October 16 at 10:10pm · Edited · Like · 2 · Remove Preview
• 

  David EggletonEverything cultural, you (all) mean?Gravity and air are open and free, but solar gain, water and soils vary a lot from place to place. We are eaters.Yes, let’s stop shooting ourselves in the feet.

  October 16 at 10:14pm · Unlike · 2
• 

  Poor Richard Sergio, that sounds very exiting about the “convergence of information science and civil society P2P collaboration” in Brazil! I have been feeling for some time that Latin America is the hope of the world in pioneering new-old socioeconomic forms and technologies as if people and the planet mattered. As you, Michel, and your friends pursue things along these lines I’d love to keep in touch.

  October 16 at 10:18pm · Like · 2
• 

  Poor Richard Michael Miranda, the most time and effort I’ve put into this vision and its parameters is the PeerPoint paper and some long discussions on the Next Net Google group going back a few years. Next Net: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/building-a-distributed-decentralized-internet

  Google Groups

  groups.google.com

  October 16 at 10:22pm · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard David, point taken! I was just writing about the unqualified abundance meme in another post in this group.

  October 16 at 10:28pm · Like · 2
• 

  David Eggleton http://www.barbaramuirpaints.com/2009/08/unqualified-abundance.html

  

  Barbara Muir Paints: Unqualified abundance

  www.barbaramuirpaints.com

  It’s so nice to hear that you are having a wonderful time way up there in Nova S…See More

  October 16 at 10:31pm · Unlike · 2 · Remove Preview
• 

  David Eggleton got carried away

  October 16 at 10:33pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Lol, David!

  October 16 at 10:33pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Michael Maranda, many good points and questions in your several comments, to which I have few answers or solutions. Lets brainstorm.

  October 16 at 10:40pm · Like
• 

  Michael Maranda sounds good — will check that link

  October 16 at 10:41pm · Unlike · 1
• 

  Michel Bauwens http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Intelligence; also in diigo, the P2P-Epistemology tag ..

  

  Category:Intelligence – P2P Foundation

  p2pfoundation.net

  This section is dedicated to monitoring P2P-influenced concepts and practices re…See More

  October 17 at 8:52pm · Unlike · 1 · Remove Preview
• 

  Michel Bauwens Sergio Storch, we can talk about this when I arrive in Rio after nov 15 ..

  October 17 at 8:59pm · Like · 1

• Helene FinidoriSergio Storch, yes I would like to know more about your endeavor. Also as far as ontology is concerned, you can have a look at the pearl tree linked by Richard higher up and it’s background explanation. Michel remember I suggested to do something like this (linked data accessible through graph pearltree is an intermediary step) with the p2p foundation internal links. Keep me in the loop .

  October 18 at 12:50am · Unlike · 3
• 

  Michel Bauwens will do Helene, but having time for such things is clearly an issue for now ..

  October 18 at 7:16pm · Like
• Helene Finidori Well Michel, I would suggest that we let this emerge from some interactions we are having here… working on it ! And so is Richard it seems?

  Friday at 3:00am · Edited · Unlike · 3
• Helene FinidoriJohn Love, Richard welcome to the Exploring Alternatives pearl tree team!

  Friday at 3:02am · Unlike · 2
• 

  Poor RichardHelene, I am still far from any good answers to the questions you pose in the “background” pearl of the Exploring Alternatives pearl tree. I particularly like what you did with debategraph, and after my initial experience with that user interface, I consider it an impressive achievement on your part!

  While I’m finding debategraph difficult to master, I like its capability to define crossliinks between nodes, a capability absent from many idea graphing/mapping tools using the “tree” metaphor. I created a simple debategraph for the “hex model” here: http://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=231296&iv=09&mac=231299-231300-231298-231296-231303-231304-231302–

  (note: if the graph window is empty at first, try refreshing your browser)

  You have to go around and click on all the nodes before the cross links are shown in the graph. That’s one example of the problems with the interface. You should be able to easily select a view where all that information is included. Also, I don’t know how you got such a clean looking “outline” view (debategraph calls it “box” view) in yours.

  Debategraph might be suitable for designing ontologies at the conceptual level if it were easier to use. Things like Delicious or Diigo are good tools for creating folksonomies via tagging, but a folksonomy is just a vocabulary or word list without any organizational substructure. What is needed is more like a nested tree/outline format to turn a folksonomy into an ontology. Debategraph has this, plus the valuable crosslink feature, but it lacks the convenient browser “bookmark bar” button to capture content into the graph the way pearltrees, delicious, and diigo can do.

  None of this goes any farther towards creating open linked-data structures, either. I am focused on the ontology design first, but perhaps there are tools that cover both bases that I’m not aware of yet.

  

  Commons

  debategraph.org

  Debate map visualization of: Commons

  Friday at 3:53am · Edited · Like · 2 · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard Another part of the “research information system” I am visioneering is pattern detection and recognition. An ontology gives us set of semantically charged patterns. Then what we need is a pattern language with which to parse existing content and match it with our ontology. I am thinking of something like the “regular expressions” used in the old unix text editors or in the Pearl and Awk programming languages I once used. http://encyclopedia.tfd.com/Regular+expressions

  

  Regular expressions

  encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com

  Wikipedia article about Regular expressions

   

  Friday at 4:04am · Edited · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• Dante-Gabryell Monson Hi Poor Richard , this is a vision we share. Programming work has been on its way. I invite you to have a look at http://automenta.com/netention, and to join this list https://groups.google.com/group/global-survival

  Netention – Automenta

  www.automenta.com

  Software that works with us, instead of for us. A future that promises accelerat…See More

  Friday at 4:29am · Like · 2 · Remove Preview
• 

  Michael Maranda Ontologies of/for what?

  Friday at 4:33am · Like
• 

  Michael Maranda Pattern languages best emerge by direct human effort.

  Friday at 4:35am · Edited · Like
• Dante-Gabryell Monson some more precise descriptions of ungoing coding :
  http://blog.automenta.com/2012/10/netention-semantic-editor-design-options.html

  

  Automenta News: Netention – Semantic Editor (Design Options)

  blog.automenta.com

  Friday at 6:07am · Unlike · 1 · Remove Preview
• Dante-Gabryell Monson some more :
  http://blog.automenta.com/2012/10/combining-netention-and-gss-into.html

  

  Automenta News: Combining Netention and GSS into Netention

  blog.automenta.com

  Friday at 6:08am · Unlike · 1 · Remove Preview
• Lorraine Lee And of course I will again plug http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Pubwan

  

  Pubwan

  scratchpad.wikia.com

  Pubwan is a proposed project in open source, non-profit data mining. Applications to consumer…

  Friday at 6:11am · Unlike · 2 · Remove Preview
• Dante-Gabryell Monson and some recent post :
  https://groups.google.com/d/msg/global-survival/3F_iSgz4Ei4/5VVcR9XyRV4J

  Re: Visual Programming with Interaction Nets – Google Groups

  groups.google.com

  Friday at 6:12am · Unlike · 1 · Remove Preview
• Dante-Gabryell MonsonMichael Maranda , perhaps you mean Folksonomies ?
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

  

  Folksonomy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  Afolksonomyis a system of classification derived from the practice and method of…See More

  Friday at 6:29am · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• Dante-Gabryell Monson further note : although it may not yet have the visualization potentials I hope Netention will have, it is also of great interest to look into OntoWiki ( cc: Pavlik Elf ) :
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OntoWiki
  http://ontowiki.net/Projects/OntoWiki
  Its mailinglist :
  http://groups.google.com/group/ontowiki-user

  

  OntoWiki – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  OntoWikiis a free,open-sourcesemantic wikiapplication, meant to serve as anontol…See More

  Friday at 6:34am · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• Dante-Gabryell Monson I also feel like citing a phrase used by Seth , in relation to the development of http://automenta.com/netention ( see links to prototypes and mailing list above – code is open sourced )

  “I’ve explained to people that Netention is not just a product – but that it refers to the evolution of human language into new semantic and syntactical domains of higher expressiveness and effectiveness in programming reality itself, not just software. so anything that can help this goal ought to be part of the project, as long as it doesn’t complexify it.”

  Netention – Automenta

  www.automenta.com

  Software that works with us, instead of for us. A future that promises accelerat…See More

  Friday at 6:43am · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard Thanks for posting the links y’all. I hope these projects will all continue to develop and gain momentum. How and where does it all come together?

  Friday at 7:01am · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Dante that netention semantic editor would be truly awesome! Not that I’m any expert on the topic, but that is the first tool of its kind I have even seen a coherent description of. I would suggest that such an editor should have easy switching between several views including an outline view and a semantic graph view as well as the wysiwyg document content. Is there any way in hell that a great editor like LibreOffice (a free and open source office suite, developed by The Document Foundation. It is descended from OpenOffice.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice) could be forked and retrofitted with semantic functions? Then we’d have semantic spreadsheets, outlines, etc., too. (LibreOffice Online will allow for the use of LibreOffice through a web browser by using the canvas element. Development is ongoing and it has not yet been released)

  

  LibreOffice – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  LibreOfficeis afree and open sourceoffice suite, developed byThe Document Founda…See More

  Friday at 7:20am · Edited · Like · Remove Preview
• Dante-Gabryell Monson I suggest these projects come together by supporting the synthesis of these technologies, and then use these technologies to continue our interactions. What could help, is to support developers / programmers. I believe a “collective” could be a good format to converge programmers and non-programmers sharing such intentions ( much in the way other platforms emerged, such as couchsurfing ).
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective

  I imagine it being like some kind of temporary artist / developer residency.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist-in-residence

  It would be good to cover the food, heating, water and electricity costs, and find some agreement in relation to rent. I believe this approach is, at first, one of the most cost effective approaches to converge and mutually empower each other. It would need to be decided where to hold such collective ( I have in mind some places in Germany – perhaps there are other suggestions ? Or perhaps we could change location every 3 months ? Europe, US, … ).

  If need be, I imagine partnering with existing not for profits, or eventually a limited liability partnership, or setting one up.

  We are discussing legal frameworks here ( edgeryders are also interested in graphed approaches , midst other projects )

  http://edgeryders.ppa.coe.int/where-edgeryders-dare/mission_case/can-we-and-should-we-pull-official-edgeryders-organisation

  Edgeryders also discuss potentials for collectives / residencies , called “unmonastery” :

  https://twitter.com/unmonastery

  I personally suggest a permanent collective residence :

  http://edgeryders.ppa.coe.int/who-ryder-what-edge/mission_case/permanent-collective-leipzig

  

  Collective – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  Acollectiveis a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one co…See More

  Friday at 7:25am · Unlike · 2 · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor RichardDante-Gabryell Monson, per Seth “as long as it doesn’t complexify it.” — LOL, yeah, right…

  Friday at 7:30am · Edited · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Dante, I agree that a collective-in-residence approach would be ideal. If one exists or forms with the scope discussed here I would try to be involved as much as possible via net.

  Friday at 7:33am · Like
• 

  Poor Richard OntoWiki looks very promising but I don’t have a server. Does anyone know if there is a hosted wikifarm running OntoWiki? Also this:

  “Possible drawback: since OntoWiki is based on RAP (an RDF API for PHP and SQL databases), it cannot be used to host large RDF/OWL models (hosting more than 5 MB of RDF/OWL is not possible, I would estimate). However, we could still try to represent some selected parts of the demo datasets in OntoWiki.” http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-semweb-lifesci/2007Jan/0229.html

  Suggestion for the HCLSIG Demo: Ontowiki from [email protected] on 2007-01-30 (public-semweb-lifesci@w3

  lists.w3.org

  Friday at 8:02am · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Michael MarandaDante-Gabryell Monson I meant what I said .. someone else mentioned ontologies being facilitated by a tool, I think debategraph. I want to know Ont. applied to what specifically?

  Friday at 8:08am · Like
• 

  Michael Maranda Unless what was meant in that case WAS folksonomy, but the term ontology was used?

  Friday at 8:11am · Like
• 

  Poor Richard “Towards an Interlinked Semantic Wiki Farm Abstract. (pdf) This paper details the main concepts and the architecture of UfoWiki, a semantic wiki farm { i.e. a server of wikis { that uses form-based templates to produce ontology-based knowledge. Moreover, the system allows diferent wikis to share and interlink ontology instance between each other, so that knowledge can be produced by dierent and distinct communities in a distributed but collaborative way. Key words: semantic wikis, wiki farm, linked data, ontology population, named graphs, SIOC” http://smw.referata.com/w/images/Towards_an_Interlinked_Semantic_Wiki_Farm.pdf

  Friday at 8:13am · Like
• 

  Poor Richard note: Distinctions between folksonomy and ontology (information science) were briefly discussed in a prev comment.

  Friday at 8:35am · Like
• 

  Mark Dilley An interesting thread – it got a little TL;DR – what it makes me think about is how we work together – on Facebook & other threaded media we have an http://bit,ly/WriteOnlyMemory – if we were working in a wiki – we would be building our knowledge and conversations into reference able points that could help us work together better.

  Friday at 8:43am via mobile · Unlike · 1
• 

  Poor RichardMark Dilley I’m looking for a hosted semantic wiki platform for my work and for collaboration like this. OntoWiki sounds like the best semantic wiki platform so far, but no hosted sites available yet. Any suggestions? (anyone)

  Friday at 8:46am · Like · 1
• 

  Michael Maranda Indeed – Mark Dilley thats one aspect that makes FB particularly unsuited for this work. It’s fine for stream of the moment, but meaningful work requires some room for curation/stewardship. Potential for subgroups, space to summarize and cull…

  Friday at 8:48am · Unlike · 1
• 

  Michael MarandaPoor Richard are you at all familiar with wagn? see http://wagn.org— it’s more relevant if you can get to the level of wagneer. It’s billed as a variety of wiki, and as a application platform. I’ve known the folks involved for many years, and have been serving on their board. they are an NPO. (GrassCommons.org)

  

  Go together. – Wagn

  wagn.org

  team-driven websitesWagn helps creators work together. Most web teams are badly …See More

  Friday at 8:50am · Unlike · 2 · Remove Preview
• 

  Mark Dilley Wagn is a great wiki, very powerful – a semantic MediaWiki farm http://referata.com is also available.

  Friday at 9:03am via mobile · Unlike · 2
• 

  Poor Richard I was considering referata, but I’ve hesitated because I am a little underwhelmed with the mediawiki semantic extensions. I wouldn’t get into wagn if not ontology-aware.

  Friday at 9:08am · Like · 1
• 

  Mark Dilley I believe Wagn is ontology aware

  Friday at 9:10am via mobile · Like · 1
• Helene Finidori That’s the problem maybe? Many wikis and apps are just ‘ontology aware’, or ‘folksonomy aware’ through tags or keywords. Not many are ontology generating through hyperlinks (linked data) that are representative of activity and actual emergence. Not the perception thereof… At the beginning of emerging memes, tags are not very usefull because lost in the noise, or struggling to find an expression. Just look at the commons tag. What turns out is creative commons…

  Friday at 2:35pm · Edited · Unlike · 1
• 

  Michael Maranda We can ask Ethan McCutchen the manner or extent to which Wagn is “ontology aware”

  Friday at 2:28pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard MM, Helene’s qualification of “ontology generating” should be the operative one. Thanks, Helene.

  Friday at 2:31pm · Like
• 

  Michael Maranda Not yet convinced of that, I am afraid.

  Friday at 2:34pm · Like
• 

  Michael Maranda Or it is unclear what the purposes and uses are of these ontologies.

  Friday at 2:34pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Michael, ontology (info sci) and linked-data can be hard to get your head around if you don’t have fairly recent software engineering familiarity. Here is the best explanation I’ve seen in a while:

  Open Ontology, by Paola Di Maio

  While different definitions for ontology exist, it can be said that Ontologies are conceptual and semantic frameworks representing models of the world, as well as explicit and complete knowledge representations of a model of reality, expressed using different formalisms and artifacts. When trying to understand what makes up an ontology, different authors have different views. Mike Uschold et al. say that an ontology may take a variety of forms, but it will necessarily include a vocabulary of terms and some specification of their meaning, such as definitions and an indication of how concepts are interrelated, which collectively impose a structure on the domain and constrain the possible interpretations of terms [9]. Particularly in Web based environments, an ontology delimits the boundary of the system’s knowledge and functional domain, and serves as conceptual and semantic reference for software development. In practical terms, entities and attributes, classes, objects and properties, as well as data models, data schemas, metadata and vocabularies and their extensions, when ‘normalized’ all contain information that models a view of the world, for the purpose of a given system, and constitute the representation of such domain, in short, an ontology.

  The expression ‘open ontology’ is not new, and it is used generically to reference ontologies which are in the public domain, and sometimes to ontologies that have been developed using collaborative processes.

  In our work, we have come across the need to define and qualify, at least to some extent the degree of ontology ‘openness’:

  To be ‘useful’ (fit for purpose) in complex loosely coupled scenarios, where the cooperation of diverse and geographically dispersed agents is required, it is necessary for the ontology to display at least the following properties ….

  http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Ontology

  

  Open Ontology – P2P Foundation

  p2pfoundation.net

  While different definitions for ontology exist, it can be said that Ontologies a…See More

  Friday at 2:41pm · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
• Helene Finidori Sorry I didn’t get to read the whole thread… On ontologies, Shirky’s ‘Ontology is overrated maybe’? Netention? Hat off to Seth! Dante-Gabryell, if you manage to get the ball rolling on transforming the pearl tree of alternative memes into linked data of evolving memes from wikipedia or P2P foundation as we have discussed several times, through a collective, so that an ontology of P2P linked memes actually emerges from our discussion, great!

  Friday at 2:42pm · Unlike · 1
• 

  Michael Maranda I have been paying attention, dont get me wrong. I think there is some wishful thinking here in this application of ontologies. Are we trying to make the brainwork automated? What is lost? Is what emerges from these automata folksonomy or ontology? Do we have human intervention in the curation of these ontologies? On what basis? (again, with what purposes? for the latter let me mull your last post a little more)

  Friday at 2:45pm ·Like
• 

  Poor Richard MM, the only place in PeerPoint I had a chance to get into detail about how ontology and linked data are applied is the section on Identity Management. That is ontology/linked-data through and through, and the engineers in the W3C RWW community working group, among many other active software engineers, totally agree.

  Friday at 2:53pm · Edited · Like · 1
• 

  Poor RichardThere may be ways for folksonomy to feed ontology. I’m agnostic about it right now. I recently posted at Y Worlds Working Group Alpha:Greets, tawhuac

  I’m glad you picked up on that P2P fb thread. There’s more on this topic in the Next Net and Global Survival Google Groups, and I’ve also been tossing it around with folks at the W3C Read Write Web Community Group and various mail lists.

  The trouble with folksonomies like you get from diigo or the like is no category/subcategory organization. You might impose this later, perhaps, but after the fact the semantic relationships between tags are not as clear as when you first assign them to a tweet, web page, link or whatever. I may be wrong about this, but it seems important at this point.

  Using Diigo as an example, it has some great features, not the least of which is poping its tagging dialog up in whatever your active window may be and automatically capturing the url, etc for you.

  What Diigo and other similar apps don’t do:

  1. let you access your entire existing folksonomy, alphabetized, in the dialog box or auto-complete if you manually type a tag. So you wind up with many variants of the essentially the same tag.

  2. let you hierarchically group tags into categories or sub categories, and define those on the fly

  3. let you define crosslinks between tags, categories, and subcategories (tags and subcategories may relate to more than one main category)

  4. they don’t publish the data to RDF or some linked-data format.

  What do you folks think?

  Friday at 3:01pm · Like
• Helene Finidori Actually, I think Shirky is one that knows what he is talking about… He speaks from one vantage point and you Richard probably from another… Anyway Michael… actually I think the ‘application of ontology’ is to enable us to see what emerges and to ‘orient’ emerging data and patterns so we humans can parse it and make sense of it… I see this as a help to navigation, exploration and discovery… Of course we have human curation in the process… it’s the whole point… bring things to visibility of humans… The negation of the black box! Our problem with data and knowledge is access and entry point. You have to know from where to enter and start to navigate…

  Friday at 3:01pm · Unlike · 1
• 

  Michael Maranda Thats’ my point in several different posts. yes. But I think we already have much of the tech at hand, and I think we are inflating the value of concepts like the semantic web. I see myriad projects starting with very similar aims, and overlap, and a bit too much attachment.

  Friday at 3:11pm · Like
• 

  Michael Maranda (last response was to Helene Finidori primarily)

  Friday at 3:12pm · Like
• 

  Poor RichardHelene, I agree with your points about ontology, but have to strongly disagree with you about Shirky’s.  In 10 or 20 years with strong AI in the reach of the open software community (as opposed to the military), our computers would be able to crawl the web and learn language and infer meaning the same way a child does, perhaps. At present, projects like IBM’s Watson rely on ontologies and expert systems.

  “The sources of information for Watson include encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, newswire articles, and literary works. Watson also used databases, taxonomies, and ontologies. Specifically, DBPedia, WordNet, and Yago were used.[20]” (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_%28computer%29 )

  Also see a paper by one of Watson’s architects: Foundations of Ontological Analysis by Chris Welty, IBM Watson Research Center

  http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CD0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.vassar.edu%2Ffaculty%2Fwelty%2Fpresentations%2FIBM-02.pps&ei=lbOBUMCjB4Ho8QTC_IHQBA&usg=AFQjCNE-dfzVAXX2II3wtV4M00UyFyjOGg

  

  Watson (computer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  Watsonis anartificial intelligencecomputer system capable of answering questions…See More

  Friday at 3:22pm · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard Sophisticated search engines like Google can find patterns but they can infer very little meaning aside from dumb correlations without consulting ontologies. Ontologies are models of our knowledge of the world created by humans for computers to use in order to do tasks we want them to do.

  Friday at 3:26pm · Like · 1
• 

  Michael MarandaPoor Richard what sort of claims is Shirkey making that you find problematic? if best addressed in another thread, please do

  Friday at 3:32pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Part of the reason for common misconceptions and lack of wide understanding about ontologies is the primitive state of development of the tools available at our level to create and apply them. Most people who are not software engineers in the ontology …See More

  Friday at 3:37pm · Edited · Like · 1
• Helene Finidori Ah Richard, I just see you comment on debategraph. Lots of potential in debategraph… some serious work to be done on the interface though…

  Friday at 3:35pm · Edited · Unlike · 1
• Helene Finidori Richard? Misconception of a potential because lack of tools? Really? It reminds me of 3G bound to fail in 2000 because of lack of adequate device and software -seen from Sweden first hand at the time…

  Friday at 3:39pm · Edited · Like
• 

  Poor RichardHelene, I’m not understanding your point. Have you read all my remarks in this thread?

  Friday at 3:42pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Michael, I’ll confine my critique to Shirky’s remarks about ontology. He basically says all we need is folksonomy (chaotic tagging) and our surprisingly brilliant computers can figure everything out from that. He says for example “The strategy of tagging — free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints — seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.” For one thing, you can’t create meaningful linked data sets from thousands of slightly different tags that mean the same thing, or identical tags that mean thousands of different things. Our surprising computers would choke. Remember, a single system of categorization (in Shirky’s universe a giant global tag cloud) must be shared by hundreds of millions of people. The only way to make sense of that many tags is, unsurprisingly, an ontology. Tags are just words. We already have words. Words don’t solve the problem by themselves. We need dictionaries to go with the words– that’s one of the things an ontology is, a dictionary/encyclopedia for computers.

  Friday at 4:04pm · Edited · Like · 1
• 

  Michael Maranda I imagine some of this is more in the inspirational realm of possibilities. I have the same well grounded reservations per folksonomies. I see more value in the communities of practice establishing these as common assets. I’ll have to follow up sometime on a model that aims to bridge over some of the difficulties.

  Friday at 4:04pm · Like
• 

  Poor Richard We have the collective knowledge of the crowd, of humanity, in Wikipedia. In ten years the volume of data in such resources will be several orders of magnitude greater. But the present limits of a computers ability to help us digest, cross-reference, c…See More

  Friday at 4:20pm · Edited · Like · 1
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  Ethan McCutchen Hi all. As to the question of whether Wagn is “ontology generating”, we’d like to think so. At least, that’s what we’re aiming for. Naming, renaming, denoting, referring, contexualizing… it’s all at the heart of our approach to creating community databases organically.

  Friday at 5:21pm · Like · 2
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  Poor RichardEthan, thanks for dropping in. Does Wagn output any RDF or linked-data or such?

  Friday at 5:26pm · Like · 1
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  Michael Maranda While waiitng for Ethan or Gerry Gleason to weigh in — I believe these outputs are something that can be established via wagneering, or constructing some WQL… but aside from that there is a lot of interesting items in the pipeline that are close to what we are seeking, if not already present.

  Friday at 6:23pm · Like · 1
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  Mark Dilley Wagn is powerful – it has been 6 years since the inception of the idea and I still struggle with it. Wiki+Tagging

  Friday at 6:46pm · Like · 1
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  Michael Maranda And a new release was pushed out today ,, they are moving forward to an exciting model w upcoming 2.0

  Friday at 6:52pm · Like
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  Mark Dilley looks like not right now: https://Google.com/search?&q=site:wagn.org+RDF&oq=site:wagn.org+RDF

  Friday at 7:00pm · Edited · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda The Q is more what it takes or what strategies are best, because I think it is not presently built in but can be readily achieved on the new framework. but thats all prob best for a separate thread.

  Friday at 7:04pm · Like · 1
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  Ethan McCutchen We don’t currently have an RDF exporter, though Gerry Gleason is currently working on a general XML export solution.

  Friday at 7:57pm · Like · 1
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  Ethan McCutchen shoot, typing with a sleeping infant on my lap, and his foot just submitted that last response prematurely I would say that wagn is more RDF-like in the way it structures data than any other solution I know, so the export is really no significant c…See More

  Friday at 8:01pm · Like · 2
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  Michael Maranda RDF is in XML, so it is really a matter of setting up cards/nesting etc..?

  Friday at 8:04pm · Like
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  Michael Maranda I’m falling more on the side of ontology than folksonomy in this sort of endeavor.

  Friday at 8:04pm · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda So, it is fair to say we can populate datasets based on our ontologies and we can cobble together export ability fairly easily

  Friday at 8:06pm · Like
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  Ethan McCutchenyes, that’s fair to say.I would say that once we have an XML renderer, it would be very straightforward to build an RDF/XML renderer that inherits from it.

  Friday at 8:17pm · Like · 1
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  Gerry Gleason My theory for Wagn Xml has been that if you put the information into Xml, there is much support for translating to any variation of xml with the same info (I’m talking about XSLT stylesheet, supported by most browsers now). Json is similar, once it is in Json, you can rearrange stuff to any target formatting.

  Friday at 8:22pm · Like · 1
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  Gerry Gleason I picked Wagn to work on because it mixes relational and free format data better than anything I’ve even seen. I’ve been working to add the format rendering, and more recently towards taking data into Wagn in the same formats.

  Friday at 8:26pm · Unlike · 2
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  Gerry Gleason As I read through more of the background in this thread, I think there is a lot of confusion about what ontologies and semantic web constructions will do for you. I have yet to read anything compelling about ontology in the information systems sense. …See More

  Saturday at 5:58am · Edited · Like
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  Gerry Gleason To put it another way, when you talk about ontology this way, you are talking about a solution in search of a problem, and it isn’t really a solution to anything. Dante is pointing to a way forward, creating spaces for the work to connect and interlin…See More

  Saturday at 5:50am · Like
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  Gerry Gleason Another interesting project is Ward Cunningham’s “Smallest Federated Wiki project …See More

  Saturday at 5:57am · Like · 1
• Helene Finidori cc Markus A. O. Loponen

  Saturday at 6:21am · Unlike · 1
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  Poor RichardGerry, Ethan, and interested others, I agree that providing XML rendering is a good thing, but I doubt that RDF can be automatically parsed out of generic XML. ( RDF is a data model often expressed in XML syntax, but also in other types of syntax such as N3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework

  

  Resource Description Framework – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  TheResource Description Framework(RDF) is a family ofWorld Wide Web Consortium(W…See More

  18 hours ago · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor RichardEthan McCutchen: “I think of it [RDF?] less as an export than as one format of a query result. Wagn has a query language (WQL) which is, to my mind, very much like navigating RDF.” Sounds like a useful feature, but I am also wondering in this topic thread how to parse entire collections of existing content into RDF and linked-data with some kind of overarching ontological framework.

  17 hours ago · Edited · Like · 1
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  Poor RichardGerry Gleason “As I read through more of the background in this thread, I think there is a lot of confusion about what ontologies and semantic web constructions will do for you….Can anyone tell me what successes or results have come from this work?”…See More

  17 hours ago · Edited · Like
• 

  Poor Richard@Gerry, “when you talk about ontology this way, you are talking about a solution in search of a problem, and it isn’t really a solution to anything.”I beg to differ with you and numerous others who feel this way. I have given a variety of arguments …See More

  17 hours ago · Like · 1
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  Michael Maranda As long as we’re in FB threads, I feel doomed to repeating.

  17 hours ago · Unlike · 1
• Helene Finidori Doomed to repeating only if you/we, everybody keeps opening conversations all over the place… But that’s how we create a diversity of contact points and a diversity of response… so repetition is probably not a feature ‘imposed’ by FB… but r…See More

  16 hours ago · Edited · Unlike · 1
• Helene Finidori And that’s what we need to deal with and manage… conversations that are scattered and asynchronized vbecause this is how we want them to be… open and evolutionary…

  16 hours ago · Like
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  Michael Maranda Well, part of the repetition is because we are using this threaded space which we cannot curate to our purposes. It should be expected that there will be people new to the conversation in general and in the specific formations here. This space is not set up to receive and orient well. I would argue this is in fact imposed by a carelessness or more pointedly, lack of concern for these issues of groupness.

  16 hours ago · Unlike · 1
• Helene Finidori Yes so we need to redispatch/segment our conversations contents into chunks that can be reprocessed… What I’ve been talking about and trying to get some development done for a while… with to date Markus A. O. Loponen up to the task!

  16 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Michael Maranda Indeed. And the rationale for such agreements has to be part of the orientation for anyone arriving.

  16 hours ago · Like
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  Poor RichardHelene Finidorii: “we need to redispatch/segment our conversations contents into chunks that can be reprocessed.”Not a bad problem definition. I am imagining a semantic wiki space that includes additional collaborative functions. Each wiki page migh…See More

  15 hours ago · Edited · Like · 1
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  Gerry Gleason The Open Ontology article is great too. I think we can go further with that and do something necessary. In the space of the metacurrency project, something like what is described here is necessary as a foundation of what we where calling Open Rules, …See More

  13 hours ago · Edited · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason BTW, comments are a standard feature in Wagn. It using a special code in the permissions system. If you can “comment” on the card by the permission setting, then a comment box shows up on the botten in the “open” view. Most Wagn’s also will have ru…See More

  13 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason If I were automating the migration of a mediawiki to wagn, I would probably turn the talk namespace into +discussion cards attached to the base name as migrated.

  13 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard I discussed commenting above because of our shared experience here on fb with so many parallel and discontinuous threads on related topics within and between groups and also venues outside of fb. The most generic metaphor for this may be micro blogging…See More

  13 hours ago · Like
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  Gerry Gleason I realize that, and so I would want to have features to ‘pull’ comments from any source and record how and when that is done. I also think we should look to Ward’s SFW for initial protocols for doing that. FB may not like ‘comment pulling’, but if th…See More

  12 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard Midiawiki’s talk space is good but doesn’t feed into a trans-wiki-page stream, does it? I think the only way of aggregating talk from multiple pages is via email notification.

  12 hours ago · Like
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  Gerry Gleason And don’t get me wrong, I love imagineering and find it to be productive preparatory work, but I really want to be building things. I want to be building things in the gift economy and I do possess important currencies in the design and coding of thes…See More

  11 hours ago · Edited · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard I appreciate your inputs here, Gerry. This is a big, long, conversation.

  11 hours ago · Like · 3
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  Gerry Gleason Indeed.

  10 hours ago · Unlike · 3
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  Chris Watkins I think we might have discussed Semantic MediaWiki with Michel, and from memory, he liked the idea. Installing it will require effort, though and they don’t have the resources for it.
  We’ve installed SMW on Appropedia (when we started a compendium of m…See More

  9 hours ago · Unlike · 4
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  Mark Dilley I think we if we could raise a couple hunded dollars, that would get us upgraded… will ask around

  8 hours ago · Unlike · 2
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  Poor Richard Just tacking a link here: http://p2pfoundation.net/Prospective_EcoSocial_Ontology“The Prospective Eco-Social Ontology (PESO) is an approach toward interoperable taxonomic systems for navigation and concatenation of diverse content libraries and topical threads in the realm of “common good” environmental and cultural regeneration work. The idea sprouted from designs for the BrowsEarth content aggregation platform.”

  

  Prospective EcoSocial Ontology – P2P Foundation

  p2pfoundation.net

  Basic concept: create adaptable shared reference structures and symbology for cr…See More

 

Michael Maranda

Ontology/Ontologies … we use the term in a variety of senses. Some inspired by or in context of programming, some in programmatic approaches to semantics for content. We have the adjacent term folksonomy. We have some philosophical minds among us I am sure, and I’ll let them speak for themselves, and we have social theory and observation as further sources. We also have patterns and pattern languages with roots in architectural theory (Alexander) and with some modification to coding practice. We’d do well to acknowledge the different purposes, strategies and language for each of these, which are somewhat overlapping.

Like · · Unfollow Post · Friday at 8:18am near Ann Arbor, MI

• Kyle Sykes, John Kellden and 2 others like this.
• 

  Michael Maranda Going to the root of ontology, and very central to my own work which is a blend of most fo the above (making me rather sensitive to the ambiguities of this discourse) leaning heavily upon social theory/observation in response to what I see as gaps that often stem from ideology or slant. Without burdening everyone with the complexities of the full modelof Shared, Layered and Open Stewardship I will highlight one aspect of the ontology of that work, and here I mean Ontology as mode of being – philosophical and social. Looking at social interactions, and the social formations that undergird them I distinguish in pragmatic terms four layers (you may quickly also relate this to Internet architecture by analogy). Also I am employing a coding mentality of “Acts As” rather than “is a” …

  Friday at 8:23am · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda What I wish to make clear for design work and for providing a vision and possible framework for coordination and collaboration are appropriate layers of stewardship and the being of different social formations. (I know I open myself to argument, and have had many of them already.)

  Friday at 8:27am · Unlike · 3
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  Michael Maranda In short we must make room for a view of layered stewardship from the vantage of different social functions and social formations. Persons – Everybody. Groups, an are with the widest range of social formation from rather informal to incorporated, with attention to a range of nesting operations. Orgs with many subgroups, Organizations of Organizations and groups, etc. And finally Networks/Fields. The question that led me to this begins with the appropriate siting of stewardship and the necessity of openness… that any functional domain requires freedom to find alternate provider for that function and the ability to DIY or form an alternate body when desired.

  Friday at 8:31am · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda I offer this in contrast to models that ignore the variety of social formations, reducing us to individuals. Indeed, we are individuals, but we don’t have to lose anything or feel reduced by our participation in other social formations, and indeed we generally retain the freedom to participate in multiple such formations, more so in healthier societies.

  Friday at 8:32am · Like · 1
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  Poor Richard Disambiguation: My use of the term ontology here is specific to information systems which was my topic. If there is an ongoing problem with ambiguity I can adopt Wikipedia’s format: ontology (information systems). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29

  

  Ontology (information science) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  Incomputer scienceandinformation science, anontologyformally represents knowledg

  e as a set of concepts within adomain, and the relationships among those concepts. It can be used toreasonabout the entities within that domain and may be used to describe the domain.

  Friday at 8:33am · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Michael Maranda As I noted sometimes this is a simple and reactive bias. Perhaps influenced by strands of Libertarianism, or at least reinforced by it. Often it is a reaction against injustices and enclosures perpetrated by others or at other layers. We have adopted the general philosophy of “route around” in many such cases where the institutions and groups are not serving well nor serving in a meaningfully inclusive manner. However, we should not deny to ourselves the ability to establish structures as and when we see fit, with the express freedom to likewise take them down when they no longer serve our purpose.

  Friday at 8:35am · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda Many is the time I have seen P2P architectures which are solely concerned with how we interact as persons, and with scant attention, and frequently a rejection of the need for instruments for the groups. This is not me calling out anyone here in this group, I a not saying I see it here. But I am hoping that you here also see these issues, and that if we can present a unified theory, it will take my points into account.

  Friday at 8:36am · Unlike · 2
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  Poor Richard I dealt with these issues a bit in http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/organizations/Subsidiarity is relevant, too.

  

  Organizing P2P organizations

  almanac2010.wordpress.com

  Last updated 10/4/2012 [I probably should have titled this “Hacking the Organiza

  tion”. What follows is not a primer of organizational design but simply a back-of-the-envelope sketch of how a number…

  Friday at 8:42am · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
• 

  David Braden This is an important topic Michael. The whole system (and I mean whole to mean everything) is built up from individual interactions. Humans operate primarily as groups. These are superorganisms operating within the system in the same way that ant and bee colonies are superorganisms. Groups then intereact at these different levels you describe.There are pros and cons to the internal structure of groups from the point of view of the individual. From the point of view of the whole, what is important is what flows from the interactions. Nutrient flows through an ecosystem, the flow of goods and services through a market, the flow of information through a network.The point of groups is how they allow individuals to participate in the flows . . . how they increase or decrease the quantity and quality of interactions . . . how they increase or decrease the volume of the flows.

  Friday at 9:28am · Unlike · 5
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  Michael Maranda Yes, thank you David I appreciate your input here. Indeed, the recognition of groups is a recognition of dimensions of our sociality and of our existing institutions and practices. Anything that excludes them will give only a partial picture.

  Friday at 9:33am · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda Picking up again from the other thread … what i am arriving at are purposive ontologies. They need to be tied to fields of practice or concern. They become a common asset for those acting in that arena. Certain Ont/ sets help navigate borders of fields or between them.

  Friday at 4:20pm · Unlike · 2
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  Poor Richard Ontologies encapsulate knowledge and expertise in various domains. It is important for people with the relevant knowledge and expertise in each domain to populate the ontology for that domain, but it is equally important for all the domains to use ontologies that are constructed according to certain common standards so that they are interoperable and form a whole. For example, Wikipedia enforces various standards and requires that data be entered into Wikipedia in proper wiki syntax via the the wiki editor. You can’t just paste any old Word doc into Wikipedia.

  Friday at 4:35pm · Like
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  Michael Maranda Yes. That is clear. The Ontology is a different matter than the syntax for a particular platform/tool. Each Ontology is a standard for content in a domain. Ontologies should conform to interchange standards, and platforms should habe adequate facilities for import/export according to interchange formats.

  Friday at 6:33pm · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda Certain classes of object will still have their own ontologies some elements being applicable cross-field, and others specific to fields/sub-fields. It is useful to have a place or places (& method) where reference ontologies are declared, stored and shared. Even for given Object type in an Ontology, we may therefore find many versions of that Ontology as a field evolves.

  Friday at 6:38pm · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda One model for organizing across ontologies groups 5 buckets – each bucket a type of data, where we may find reference to various object/ontology standards of that grouping, convenient acronym: S.C.O.P.E. Stories/Solutions, Conversations, Organizations, People (persons), Events.

  Friday at 6:41pm · Unlike · 1
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  Michael Maranda You may imagine that for example .. “Solutions” in one domain may require a different data model than in another, and would specify particular aspects for it’s Ontology.

  Friday at 6:42pm · Unlike · 2
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  Poor Richard Word.

  Friday at 7:08pm · Like · 1
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  Poor Richard Take “person” for example. Tha’ts an ontology (or I probably should say sub-ontology or mini-ontology) that Y Worlds is working on. Obviously person is an object common to most ontological domains of knowledge. The open ontology approach is to have a core ontology that is extensible and to customize it for if each knowledge domain. Or perhaps multiple domains can share a person model that has enough attributes to serve them all with some attributes being unused in some domains. One possible candidate for a core person model is the one needed for basic identification and access control across interacting web applications. One commenter on the hex model wondered what implicit assumptions I was making about a person. Would a robot qualify? Of course it all depends on the context you need the model for.

  Friday at 7:19pm · Edited · Like · 1
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  Michael Maranda Indeed, and in so many cases a group, organization or field will have need for particulars about a person-data-object… which are clearly extensions of a core, but even so deserve to be declared as a standard/extension.

  Friday at 7:23pm · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason Poor Richard, I don’t think we should explore this further here, but I would dispute this, “Ontologies encapsulate knowledge and expertise in various domains.” as being a claim made by advocates of these formal ontological systems. I’ve yet to say any that credibly deliver on that claim. If you want to debate that further, we should create a different thread for it.
  As a developer and systems expert, I don’t find these systems compelling enough to want to use them in any system I would work on developing.
  From the standpoint of ontology in the sense that Michael is exploring here, this is a question of group personality and choice. If you and your network are developing it, then you will attempt to use formal ontologies and explore a lot of existing projects and code that go that way. I and other have made other choices and you see some of that explored in the links. Formal ontologies are of no help in resolving the high level design questions like this, there is no ontology of ontology to explore it with.
  From the standpoint of actually building something collaboratively in this space, we have to first have a space for those who have made enough investment and commitment to matter in the outcome. If you’re not designing and building code, I don’t care what you think of formal ontologies. I’m not that invested in this specific community but I have a long time association with peer to peer as an open field. If I’m doing development work on this project, I can guarantee it will involve Wagn. If Poor Richard is involved it will involve formal ontologies (at least until he sees the light ), and he and I will have to figure out how to come to an understanding.

  Saturday at 8:46am · Like · 1
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  Gerry Gleason BTW, I would say the claim that “Wagn is ontologically aware” represents the fact that Wagn is very effective at creating ontological spaces, at naming things in a natural way. That means you just encode your ontology in the wagn namespace and rely on its own namespace semantics. These semantics also make the content available as RESTful resources. The Wagn namespace is a hierachy of potentially nested resources.
  I think it would be relatively easy to implement ontologies on Wagn as it is, we just don’t have a clear use case or any demand for it.
  With Wagn, you don’t need a lot of semantic translation, you can just name things how you want. Names and semantics are only formalized for Wagn development, for Wagneer and developers who are extending Wagn and naming things in a global space of reference.

  Saturday at 8:53am · Unlike · 3
• Helene FinidoriI’m wondering if the very constitution of a ‘pull-platform’ around social objects with graphs of relationships and visualization of what emerges does not de facto create an ontology… Because what we are after is having visibility on what is ‘out there’ in an evolutionary way -i.e as it emerges, on many dimensions.What is important I think is not to get lost into making too abstract/finished/closed images of reality. We need to concentrate our efforts in getting a clearer image of evolving reality that WE can interpret to take action.I think to try and get back to various streams of conversations here and there, that folksonomies have the downside of loosing the gems in the noise. And that things emerging are not necessarily visible in plain sight. Pre-established or as-we-go ‘declarative’ ontologies (like you describe Michael somewhere… require a shared discipline and might not be able to capture emergence in real time (otherwise we would have clearer pictures by now). Capturing relationships is probably the way to go, through linked data. But hybrid solutions are interesting because they provide the markers from which the holes can be filled by the reality of what is unfolding…

  Saturday at 10:01am · Edited · Unlike · 2
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  Gerry Gleason Poor Richard, thanks for the link to your P2P article. Haven’t read all of it yet, but wanted to comment on this: “A PGICI would have to be funded by the end users, and it SHOULD BE. But there is thus far no working business model for a crowd-funded public project of such size and scope. Projects of that size and scope are the province of governments and global industries alone, with perhaps a few philanthropic examples in the public health and humanitarian sectors.”
  That may be true, but I have a different response to it. So? P2P is pretty new, the Internet and Wiki and … all very new. Social media, etc.
  All it says is that we will have to first search for new forms of organization, new organizational processes. Much of our work will be explorative, experimental, tentative, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have much to build on. Articles like yours are part of that, thanks, as is the practice and history of cooperative organizations. It is telling is that we need to evolve new organizational forms, new modes of productions. It is a challenge to be sure, but all it good.
  I’m going to finish your article before saying much more, but one thing I do want to respond to. Having leadership and structure does not mean that the organization is not peer to peer. That’s one of the reasons I like the language about “vessels”. I have a sailboat, and when we take it out, I am responsible for everyone on board. In the context of “being on mission”, there will be operational leadership if only for coordination and a single source of clear signals for actions and transitions. The leader is a peer, and each person on a team is following a collective leadership, each has to lead within a particular scope of action. This is based on skills and experience, but most directly on “right placement”, being in position to act and with the knowledge to act rightly. The latter being derived from the former in large part.

  15 hours ago · Edited · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason Well said, Helene. That what attracts me to Ward’s “Federated Wiki” (linked in another thread), I would call it a ‘pull-platform’. Like github and similar. Then if you want to build on something from a stream, you just pull it and rely on the backlinks to track the source. If the source takes updates (is not write once, read many), then the source can pull them (and/or be requested to pull them). When you go to formalize part of an ontology, you can pull from folksomic sources. The OED is built this way.

  Saturday at 12:10pm · Edited · Like
• 

  David Braden I like your approach Helene. Not being a platform designer, I get lost in the technical language. Being a user of social media I am continually frustrated by the impulse to divide ourselves up into interest groups. New sites attract people, they share that on which they agree, then there is nothing left to talk about and the site becomes inactive.The ontology I would propose is that the world we experience is a single pattern of flows built up from the relationships among the many elements. Any loss of a relationship or any gain of a relationship changes the pattern . . . literally changes the world we experience . . . so we cannot know the overall effect of a proposed change unless we consider the entire set of relationships.

  Saturday at 11:24am · Like · 2
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  David BradenIf you guys can design a place where we can have a discussion across interest and expertise about the way the world works, I am there.Relationships are built from the exchange of value and the multitude of individual exchanges create the flows. Nothing exists unless it fits within the flows. Nothing can exist unless it receives what it needs to live from the flows. What value will your platform deliver to attract participation across interest and expertise?

  Saturday at 11:30am · Like · 2
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  Michael Maranda (Caveat, with visitors since yesterday and through the next few days my bandwidth has been/will be limitied) Gerry Gleason I think I have come to better understanding of what Poor Richard has been communicating. The thread starts out with the Singular/Plural here for a reason… which is precisely what is implied in “ontology of ontologies” … Ontologies are by definition formal. The point that is important is a group needs to achieve formalization on aspects of it’s language and processes (with room for revisiting, of course). Going in the direction of Field – it is important for any number of groups to achieve similar formalizations between them.

  23 hours ago · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda Gerry Gleason you say: “Having leadership and structure does not mean that the organization is peer to peer.” I presume you also mean it does not nec. mean that it isnt?

  23 hours ago · Like
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  Gerry Gleason Yes, exactly. Opens the question about what makes it one or the other, and I think it relates to consent. It is a collective choice to situationally recognize a leader. How does that choice happen? In a hierarchy, the leader is typically appointed these days, but these systems are rooted in power over scarce resources, often resources made scarce by those in power.

  22 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason Michael, by “singular/plural”, you mean the individual/group discussion at the top of this?
  If I understand, I totally agree, and apologize in advance if I misinterpreted anything above. I may have missed it.
  Not sure I agree about ontologies, unless we are meaning different things by formalism as well. I know you and I and many here agree that no formalism fully captures any complete reality, but that they are also all so necessary and a fundamental process of human beings as linguistic beings.

  20 hours ago · Like
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  Michael Maranda Nor any word captured the world, they are but devices.

  19 hours ago via mobile · Like
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  Poor Richard Apropos of this topic I’ll repeat a link on Open Ontology, emphasis on the open, for reference: http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_OntologyI acknowledge that ontology as an abstraction or general concept overlaps much more than information science (my per…See More

  

  Open Ontology – P2P Foundation

  p2pfoundation.net

  While different definitions for ontology exist, it can be said that Ontologies a

  re conceptual and semantic frameworks representing models of the world, as well as explicit and complete knowledge representations of a model of reality, expressed using different formalisms and artifacts. When trying to…

  19 hours ago · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richard Gerry Gleason, I agree that consent is one of the key criteria of peerism. I give others in the intro (About) to this group and in the article you mention, and the literature on this is extensive, esp in the P2PF wiki and blog.

  18 hours ago · Edited ·

 

Michael Maranda

PeerPoint Revisited

• 

  Michael Maranda Quickscanned it having read it in past. But thought I would take a more disciplined approach since we are of late in more direct dialogue here, if you will indulge me.

  Friday at 9:27am · Unlike · 1
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  Michael Maranda First off the bat – Poor Richard– wondering in light of my discursus under the Ontology thread which you have just read, as to whether you think PeerPoint needs space articulated for a variety of Peer types? namely, that not only are individuals nodes/peers, but organizations/groups would also need tools and conceptwork in the peerage. or point me to where it is addressed in the document. Even if it is addressed, I think it needs more prominence.

  Friday at 9:29am · Unlike · 1
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  Michael Maranda PeerPoint — what do you want to do with it, how can we host a PeerPoint discourse, effort and process that allows easier entry? Or do you think it is premature? By this I mean a number of ancillary documents and chunks and a meaningful web-presence centered upon evolving this, attracting others to it, and advancing the field generally.

  Friday at 9:32am · Like
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  Poor Richard “PeerPoint needs space articulated for a variety of Peer types” I mention this briefly in terms of needing a variety of “on-ramps” and numerous other references to the varieties of different communities of interest or stakeholders, etc, but I didn’t develop it in a focused way yet. Good poiint.

  Friday at 9:35am · Like · 1
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  Michael Maranda I am not here to pester you on these, but if there is something I can do to help, i will do what i can.

  Friday at 9:35am · Unlike · 1
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  Michael Maranda (Direct editing the document is not so enticing to me… helping put an expression of it into a new and more inviting space is more so..)

  Friday at 9:36am · Like
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  Poor Richard My sense was that a wiki platform was really needed to take PeerPoint forward. I almost decided on referata but then I balked. Not sure why. Maybe I just needed a rest — or a push.

  Friday at 9:37am · Like
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  Michael Maranda Push.

  Friday at 9:38am · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda Well, rest also. Health and clear mind.

  Friday at 9:38am · Unlike · 2
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  Poor Richard “if there is something I can do to help, i will do what i can.” Please add paragraphs or pages to PeerPoint about this. You seem to have a good picture/map of this.

  Friday at 9:48am · Like · 1
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  Poor Richard Ooops didn’t see your other comment. Well, if you write some paragraphs or pages I can append them to PeerPoint as well as what ever other venue you want to use. Lately I’ve just been tossing stuff into PeerPoint to rearrange later, once there is a wiki.

  Friday at 9:50am · Like
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  Michael Maranda Let’s help you settle on and into a wiki then. Is the obstacle energy and time, selection of wiki, domain, hosting?

  Friday at 9:52am · Like
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  Poor Richard All of the above. Based on what I know at this moment I would go with referata because of the semantic features. There is a hosted site. If you can get a referata wiki up and running it need not be PeePoint specific. It could be P2P or “open collaborative football practice”. There’s a good chance there is an existing referata wiki that has similar topics and would welcome us. That might be ideal, especially if they already have a good use of the semantic extensions, a good site look and organization, and a knowledgeable user community. If you agree with those assumptions, job one would be to search/browse existing referata wikis to see if any would be a suitable “hoem” for our various activities. (BTW I would be using the P2P Foundation wiki if I were not dead set on semantic capabilities. I also strongly favor wysiwyg wikis but referata/mediawiki is not such.)

  Friday at 10:39am · Edited · Like · 1
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  Michael Maranda Not yet familiar with referata.

  Friday at 10:35am · Like
• 

  Poor Richardhttp://www.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page

  

  Referata

  www.referata.com

  Referata offers hosting of semantic wikis, allowing you to add, structure and st

  ore data so it can be managed, shared, browsed and analyzed in as many ways as you choose.

  Friday at 10:43am · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• 

  Michael Maranda yes, looking into it

  Friday at 10:45am · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard I emailed the Referata admins to ask if they knew of existing wikis with similar topic coverage. Their FAQ says there are about 750 existing Referata wikis, but I didn’t fiind a directory of them (which seem pretty slack).

  Friday at 2:02pm · Like
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  Michael Maranda I am ambivalent re referata. I invite you to get to know wagn a bit. I am urging one of the main contributors to the code to log on to fb and engage us here.

  Friday at 7:50pm · Unlike · 1
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  Michael Maranda Doing my slowread of PP – I am struck by a thought that has recurred many times in these contexts – do we need X to build X? do we need peerpoint to build peerpoint? at minimum we have to model the processes through cobbled and found tech…

  Friday at 7:51pm · Unlike · 2
• 

  Michael Maranda We covered very similar ground in Coalition of the Willing working group — folk such as Fabio Barone, Mark RoestCharley Quinton, Chris Watkins, Timothy RaynerGerry Gleason, were heavily involved. Not sure who else in this FB group, offhand.

  Friday at 7:57pm · Edited · Like · 3
• 

  Gerry Gleason First focus on the social processes you are intending to produce. Technology is secondary. General purpose technology will need a lot more work on the part of the participants, but the users will be called on to interpret the ins and outs of a particular technology. Therein is the rub you are up against. You want to be inclusive, but the group has to buy in to the platform. None of the platforms are compelling enough in their raw form to offer a clear path to a solution, so you try to find a good fit.

  Friday at 8:45pm · Unlike · 3
• 

  Gerry Gleason In building Wagn we have borrowed the best from Wiki technology, and it is a very good Wiki even if you don’t need Wagn’s unique features. The unique features are what enable us to build Wagn into something more that a content platform, a Wiki with data. By extending it, you can build full on custom apps, and have the Wiki functionality as a content management base for your application. In my view, this is what gives a path from a dedicated community building a wiki database, and an application built to attract a larger community into the collaborative spaces built by the core team.

  Friday at 8:51pm · Unlike · 3
• 

  Poor Richard “First focus on the social processes you are intending to produce.” Gerry, I completely agree with you, Michael and others on that. That is already going on in triplicate, though, and its not my area of expertise or personal focus. So I depend on the civilizing influence and social intelligence that you good folks bring to the table. Likewise there is piecewise work on open technology all over the place, but few places for the end-to-end, soup-to-nuts, solitaire-to-enterprise-management scope, ongoing conversation about requirements and specifications. W3C, IEEE, etc handle universal standards in the middle, but end-user needs (from the teenager to the global NGO) and application designs are not handled in such a universal fashion which IMO retards development of the future-class tools and infrastructure we need to battle the kleptocrats and corpoRats.

  Friday at 9:57pm · Like · 2
• 

  Michael Maranda indeed!

  Friday at 9:58pm · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard PeerPoint aims (how successfully is another matter) to offer low participation barriers and near-term value while simultaneously looking forward to a not-too-distant future when the net is the computer, the web is the OS, and yet every peer node (and its user) has complete control and ownership of how and how much to participate. In that paradigm we also need applications that have deep and mature feature sets and which are all highly intelligent and interoperable. It is fashionable nowadays to deprecate “high design” and hope for emergence. Contrary to popular belief emergence isn’t how we got to this point and that isn’t sufficient to take us forward as rapidly as we need to go to head off global neofeudalism and environmental catastrophe.

  Friday at 10:17pm · Like · 1
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  Mark Dilley Yaron Koren is a main developer of Semantic MediaWiki and runs referata – I like it because I am always a fan of the simplest thing that works. Shall I invite him to this thread or no?

  Friday at 10:22pm · Unlike · 3
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  Michael Maranda is it simplest because it works?

  Friday at 10:24pm · Like
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  Michael Maranda My criteria: does it do what is desired? and will we be able to extend and interoperate? and with what degree of complexity to do so?

  Friday at 10:27pm · Unlike · 1
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  Mark Dilley That doesn’t resonate – what do you mean by “it works?”

  Friday at 10:28pm · Like
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  Michael Maranda i mean, it is already operational. Rather a contrast between the ideas we have which are yet vaporware

  Friday at 10:29pm · Like · 1
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  Mark Dilley I guess in that sense. I am a bludgeoner, move to referata for as long as needed, move again, if needed. Does Wagn offer a WikiFarm? if so, that is a different question.

  Friday at 10:33pm · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda meaning an easy path for install/hosting? (if so, yes)

  Friday at 10:34pm · Like
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  Michael Maranda you can set up a wagn right away on cloudstore http://wagn.org/try_wagnand I think it is free presently (create cloudstore acct)

  

  try wagn – Wagn

  wagn.org

  Friday at 10:36pm · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
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  Michael Maranda was about to do an instal to test

  Friday at 10:37pm · Unlike · 1
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  Mark DilleyYaron Koren – wanted to see what your thoughts were on this thread – might be TL;DR

  Friday at 10:43pm · Like
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  Michael Maranda Problem is it is this thread and a few adjacent …

  Friday at 10:49pm · Like
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  Chris Watkins Yep, I’m a bit lost…
  I think that Referata makes sense, as it’s using Semantic Mediawiki which has a good sized user base (and is built on MediaWiki which has a very big user base).

  Yesterday at 5:34am · Unlike · 2
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  Gerry Gleason Mediawiki is popular and that is a point in its favor, but it is also more purpose built for Wikipedia. I don’t think it is actually a good fit for many organizations that use it.

  Yesterday at 6:40am · Unlike · 2
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  Michel Bauwens personally love mediawiki, very easy for non-tech people

  Yesterday at 6:52am · Like · 1
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  Gerry Gleason I don’t want to underemphasize that. That people who are part of the core group already know it is key. Every platform has a learning curve, and it is often hard for non-specialists to evaluate how well they will like it once past the learning curve.
  Actually, what I mean by “social structure first” is that the information system is being implemented as part of the systems supports of an actual working group. You convene a working group first, then the personalities and commitments of those gathered are something of a starting point. It also means that social network is a consideration. Things like Mediawiki and Drupal or wordpress already have large communities that the development teams have to serve. If the folks building referata are interested enough to come over and join this conversation, that’s a much bigger plus going forward than a wide user base (working alpha or beta release of better is also important as Michael suggested).
  My investment in Wagn means that all I need is a small team of ruby and javascript/css people and I can make it do whatever we can design. Each of those who gather to build this will have similar commitments.
  Finally what I mean is that the social systems design and experimentation is what drives the design. Very few people are deep enough in both the information and social systems to do this work, but I suspect that there are more of those here than we know.
  In other words, there is no better place to convene such a working group than here, not meaning FB, but out of a conversation like this. If mediawiki is what the community is familiar with, then create one for the community now and we can all learn to bludgeon the data there while some of us gather to build the next platform.

  Yesterday at 7:11am · Unlike · 1
• 

  Gerry Gleason It’s really a side topic, but I want to point out another budding opportunity. With Wagn we are the first vendor to deploy our app with “cloud store” (cldstr in the urls), sort of like an app store for the cloud. It would be a fairly simple matter to set up mediawiki to deploy that way. He already has wordpress, and then we could build “accessories” to extend these app in our community.
  Bottom line for the non-technical is that you can put any app on a hosting farm very easily, then you will be able to choose those apps and accessaries with a web application. What this also means is a marketplace in apps and accessaries, and I claim that this is a perfect space to create a P2P ecosystem that sustains itself on mini-payments in this marketplace. But that is another thread …

  Yesterday at 7:20am · Like · 1
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  Gerry Gleason Mark, please explain your practice of bludgeoning data a little for those who’ve never done it.

  Yesterday at 7:24am · Like
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  Mark Dilley I do not let my technical inability stop me from building my ideas (at least I try not to) – so I work with what ever is at my disposal , even if it is not technically the exact fit. What I how is for a technical person to come along after me and build tools. This often means I do more work than is “needed” and horrifies technically skilled folks – and it also means I often can get started building my ideas. (is that what you were thinking Gerry?)

  Yesterday at 7:53am via mobile · Unlike · 1
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  Mark Dilley *hope

  Yesterday at 7:53am via mobile · Like
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  Mark Dilley In this case – staring with referata and moving when other tools are ready (wagn) – ready in both the social and technical sense. 100 pages or 1000 pages – it just takes elbow grease

  Yesterday at 7:56am via mobile · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason Yes, but I was also thinking that this practice is one of using knowledge of what you can do with basic functions of wiki (linking, naming) and building an information resource with that. Managers and designer may specify a purpose built tool, and that might save you a lot of time, but it is also more complicated and not ready. I think I was hoping for more about the kind of idea that you might pursue that way.

  Yesterday at 8:01am · Like
• 

  Yaron Koren Hi guys – I just saw this conversation. I’m not planning to do any “evangelism”, but if you have any specific questions about Referata, Semantic MediaWiki or MediaWiki in general, I can probably answer them.

  Yesterday at 8:15am · Unlike · 3
• 

  Gerry Gleason Hi Yaron, I took a quick peek at some of the online info about these tool. Designer to designer, what is the best thing about these tools. To save you time interpreting that from the conversation, I work on Wagn, http://wagn.org/ I’m the #3 committer and closing fast on the inactive co-founder of the project. The other co-founder is Ethan McCutchen.

  

  Go together. – Wagn

  wagn.org

  team-driven websitesWagn helps creators work together. Most web teams are badly

  disconnected.  Designers, developers, and content creators go their separate ways for days, weeks, or months at a time.   Separate tools, separate timelines, separate worlds.With Wagn, your whole team is editing a workin…

  23 hours ago · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Mark Dilley I read that Poor Richard has his work in a closed system and doesn’t know which open system to use. I advocate for starting with one even if it doesn’t meet expectations yet.

  23 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 2
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  Yaron Koren Gerry – I wouldn’t call myself a designer per se, but I’d say the best thing about Semantic MediaWiki is that it lets people easily create structures for collaborative data. You can see the testimonials page also: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Testimonials

  23 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason We have plenty of testomonials for Wagn too, I’m looking for how you would pitch it to a designer/developer to interest them in digging deeper into the details and potentially contributing by applying your tools.

  22 hours ago · Like
• 

  Poor Richardre cloudstore:This Connection is Untrusted
  You have asked Firefox to connect securely to cldstr.com, but we can’t confirm that your connection is secure.
  Normally, when you try to connect securely,
  sites will present trusted identification to prove that you are
  going to the right place. However, this site’s identity can’t be verified.

  20 hours ago · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Michel comments that mediawiki is very easy to use but other wiki engines have more WYSIWYG editors. In favor of Referata however is potential migration to P2PF mediawiki if they eventually add the semantic extensions there.

  20 hours ago · Like
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  Mark Dilley What other wiki engines have WYSIWYG editors? Do they play nice with people who are used to the simplicity if inline editing – I.e. not having to use a mouse / Microsoft word style.

  20 hours ago via mobile · Like
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  Poor RichardYaron Koren, bedides the basic semantic extensions, what other semantic tools are included in or compatible with Referata? (e.g. from one of the testimonials: “Semantic Forms, Header Tabs, Data Transfer, and recently Semantic Result Formats, and SRF Ploticus”)

  20 hours ago · Like
• 

  Poor RichardMark Dilley re wysiwyg wikis, see here for example:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software#Features_2
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_hosting_services#Technical_comparison

  

  Features 2 – Comparison of wiki software – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  en.wikipedia.org

  20 hours ago · Edited · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Poor Richardhttp://www.wikimatrix.org/

  

  WikiMatrix – Compare them all

  www.wikimatrix.org

  Daisy Daisy is a Java-based open source content management system, with a Wiki-l

  ike combined editing/publishing frontend. It is ideally suited for structured content management, knowledge management, and complex website management as it has the concept of structured document types. It consists of a …

  20 hours ago · Like · Remove Preview
• 

  Yaron Koren Poor Richard – you can see here for the full list of extensions: http://www.referata.com/wiki/Special:Version . All the ones you listed are there, though SRF Ploticus no longer exists.

  16 hours ago · Unlike · 1
• 

  Poor Richard Awesome, Yaron. Thank you for that link. That just about clinches my decision to start a Referata wiki. Now I have to decide how to name/brand/position it. I don’t want to make it for PeerPoint or the “Ontological Imperative” only, but something to att…See More

  

  Version – Referata

  www.referata.com

  This wiki is powered byMediaWiki, copyright © 2001-2012 Magnus Manske, Brion Vib

  ber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, Gabriel Wicke, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Niklas Laxström, Domas Mituzas, Rob Church, Yuri Astrakhan, Aryeh Gregor, Aaron Schulz, Andrew Garrett, Raimond Spekking, Alexan…

  15 hours ago · Edited · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• 

  Mark Dilley Poor Richard – Quite familiar with these – what I am curios about is your experience with one. I have not had a good experience with any of these – especially in the realm of going back and forth between wysiwyg and inline editing.

  15 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 2
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  Gerry Gleason I will take a look at that cldstr issue when I get a chance. It may just be an artifact of the beta state of the platform, not sure yet.

  15 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason The wagn WYSIWYG isn’t bad, just a javascript plugin, the name escapes at the moment (tinyMCE). The lack we feel we need to fill is a link/inclusion editor.

  14 hours ago · Edited · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason Sometime I still need to transition to the raw (html) editor to fix things, but it isn’t bad even when you need to do that.

  15 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Poor RichardMark Dilley, no experience with any of them. Just like the idea. The divil is in the datiels.

  15 hours ago · Like
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  Gerry Gleason Most of us would rather bludgeon the raw interface than face flacky UI that is supposed to be easy to use.

  14 hours ago · Unlike · 2
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  Poor Richard Flakey is bad, but all the early wysiwyg editors were flakey. It sort of caught on nonetheless….

  14 hours ago · Like
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  Gerry Gleason How good is your javascript? There is a lot of good javascript out there, and a lot of mediocre stuff too. Like you say, unfortunately a lot of marginal stuff is in use and more acceptable than raw to most. My javascript is getting better, but UI isn’t my sweet spot either.
  I’ve observed the good JS/CSS talent is hard to come by, and even harder in open source projects with no lead funding.

  14 hours ago · Edited · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Gerry, I used to dabble in JS, Perl, Awk, and many, many other things but no longer want to write code (though like you I have to go to HTML to tweak my WordPress editor). I have a hard enough time with English, but I think that’s where I can do the most good.

  14 hours ago · Like
• 

  Mark Dilley That is why I like wiki – stick to the language I know

  13 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
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  Gerry Gleason That was partly a joke. I will write JS when I have too, and I’m not too bad at it now. Someone has to make it work well for everyone. I still like to code, but I like doing ruby more than JS. The idea is to make Wagn into a tool where we can write little bits of ruby from some common patterns and never have to really code. This will make Wagneering a little harder than the sorts of Wiki power use that Mark likes, but that is where you get all the semantic features and custom app capacity.

  13 hours ago · Unlike · 2
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  Timothy Rayner @Hi everyone! Good to see you out causing trouble Michael Maranda.

  11 hours ago · Unlike · 4
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  Michel Bauwens dear Poor Richard, because of my very intensive travel schedule I have not been able to follow the whole discussion and have lost the thread a bit .. would be nice to see a summary accessible via the wiki and blog … my question is: can we semanticize the p2p wiki without funds, i.e. relying on low-entry volunteering?

  9 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Michel Bauwens or: we crowdfund the effort …

  9 hours ago · Unlike · 2
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  Mark Dilley I like community funding the effort!

  9 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Poor RichardMichel Bauwens: “can we semanticize the p2p wiki?” Yes, the semantic mediawiki extensions can be applied to the p2p wiki, but Yaron Koren is the expert on the necessary procedures. If Yaron is willing to discuss this with us, or refer us to the appropriate documentation and/or someone with the know-how, I will email you for the contact info of the appropriate p2p wiki admin person(s).

  9 hours ago · Edited · Like · 1
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  Mark Dilley Yaron helped out on WikiIndex.org – I am also tracking down a friend of mine that upgraded OutHistory.org and wanted to install SMW there, but that was too much for them to grok.

  9 hours ago · Unlike · 2
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  Michel Bauwens ok, I’ll be waiting for any news on this …

  8 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Michel Bauwens for the record the 18k entries have been viewed 20m times, now reaching 26k per day in traffic

  8 hours ago · Unlike · 2
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  Poor Richard Awesome, Michel. Semanticizing the p2p wiki might also attract some additional IT development around it (e.g. interfacing with it).

  8 hours ago · Like
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  Gure Guretxa I honestly think you should have been properly crowdfunding from last year. Never understood the reticence to fund, design, build and present a decent resource! Accesibility and usability (in their broadest meanings) are key.

  5 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard I don’t know about Michel, but I hate making pitches for money. I started working on one to fund a series of small symposia of key intellectuals, including Michel, so they could have some face time together. The working title was “World Justice League”. But I gave it up because as you say — personal reticence. But that’s just me. I don’t know what is stopping others from stepping up to the plate.

  4 hours ago · Like · 1
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  Gure Guretxa Oh, hey Poor Richard, I was commenting on Michel’s question about crowdfunding and the p2pF site/s in particular. I’d be embarrassed to launch a campaign too, hehe, that’s probably normal. However, surely the foundation could have and can easily make a proposal to the world about needing to upgrade and present the wealth of info in the wiki and blog (bookmarks, other satellite groups, etc) in a much more efficient and effective fashion. Usability is key, otherwise it is messy shelving for geeks who are not particularly interested in making that info accesible and attractive to the world. I would imagine a foundation would need to have an interest in spreading its message and having layers of complexity which would provide value both for new arrivals and experts/academics.

  4 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard I said somewhere before that I’m really surprised that people aren’t shoving money at Michel by now. He needs to unleash some of his charms on some crowdfunding wizards — he must meet them on his many travels.

  3 hours ago · Like · 1
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  Gerry GleasonIt needs to be funded somehow. We can create something to hold the project and start working on it with a volunteer effort. I know that all of us are already contributing quite a bit to the commons to seed the process, and we are often asking our families to sacrifice a lot to pursue this vision.The financial tools and institutions that are available to us are totally inadequate. Something like crowd-funding probably is the solution, but the tools available for that seem too rooted in the systems of scarcity to support and sustain this kind of work. I worked on the Metacurrency project and still have some hope that those efforts will produce something because we need it. We need an accounting systems for open stewardship of commons based productions systems.
  And just like the information systems tools we need to bootstrap from the tools we have, so that could mean a kickstarter fund or similar to go after a couple of key milestones planning on designing a path to sustainability as one of the milestones.Wall street’s proposition is to give you the opportunity to bet on ideas, if the idea you back can make it to an IPO, you can exit with millions and move on to something else. The people with the ideas are often distinct from the ones selling the idea; getting venture capital, buying the distressed start-up and leaving the idea people out, or any of a hundred methods.Our proposition is sustainability. The investment you make is not looking for rapid growth and an exit strategy, it is looking for long-term sustainability. The goal is that the ecosystems that include these sustainable commons based institutions will thrive. When I invest in the commons I will expect to let my assets sit there for a long time and be undiminished, say when I withdraw some of it to fund my kid’s education or my retirement, but I don’t need it to grow. I need it to provide the environment where everyone in my community thrives and they are lined up to buy my commons shares when I need to redeploy my assets.

  3 hours ago · Unlike · 1
• Helene Finidori The P2P foundation should be (is?) applying for the CAPS EU grant?

  2 hours ago · Unlike · 2
• 

  Poor Richard Writing proposals is intense, and I don’t know if any of the P2PF crew is up for that on top of their existing commitments. Same for crowdfunding efforts. That’s why I’m blowing the ships horn here for some fundraising wizards who are friends of the P2PFto come forward….

  2 hours ago · Like
• 

  Michel Bauwens we have done a number in the past, at least 2 of which we won (like the one next year in Germany); Franco Iacomella is our point man on this, but as a true free software person, he doesn’t want to be on Facebook; we are now preparing a project with Comunes via Kune; we have room for more. It is only me who is over-extented, other people in the network might be game … I have time to work on project mid-dec to mid-febr; then march-june is dedicated to the EU project on Mirror Democracy … (in Berlin) and 2 months at home as well … so no room for quite some time

  48 minutes ago · Like · 1

Poor Richard

This is a thread from Y Worlds on the subject of folksonomies derived from sets of bookmark tags. I list the major features lackiing in Diigo and other apps in its class:

tawhuac « WGA Playground

wga.yworlds.com

An excerpt by Poor Richard: “I am imagining a semantic ontology according to which the key ideas and data of this content could be parsed and tagged to form a distributed database using semantic linked-data structures. This would help transition the collective knowledge base of the research, activis…

Like · · Unfollow Post · Share · Friday at 5:00pm

• John Kellden, Michel Bauwens and 2 others like this.

Michel Bauwens

Benjamin Brownell has been designing a simple, universal, open ontology system for “common good” success stories:http://p2pfoundation.net/Prospective_EcoSocial_OntologyUseful open-source tool to consider in this domain:http://www.ontopia.net/

Prospective EcoSocial Ontology – P2P Foundation

p2pfoundation.net

Basic concept: create adaptable shared reference structures and symbology for cross-platform semantic linking and pattern reinforcement in non-fiction story-form media

Like · · Unfollow Post · Share · Saturday at 10:51am

• Michael Maranda, Helene Finidori and 2 others like this.
• Helene Finidori Is there a visual representation of it? Or an example to picture it?

  Saturday at 10:59am · Unlike · 2
• 

  Michel Bauwens he’s in my g+ list .. perhaps you can gmail me and I forward?

  Saturday at 11:02am · Like · 1
• 

  Michael Maranda Is he on FB? He was an active member of the CotW discussions/ working group. I would have listed him, if I thought he was active on FB.

  23 hours ago · Like
• 

  Poor Richard Thanks for these links, Michel. Apropos of this topic I’ll repeat a link on Open Ontology, emphasis on the open, for reference: http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Ontology

  

  Open Ontology – P2P Foundation

  p2pfoundation.net

  While different definitions for ontology exist, it can be said that Ontologies are conceptual and semantic frameworks representing models of the world, as well as explicit and complete knowledge representations of a model of reality, expressed using different formalisms and artifacts. When trying to…

…

 The Next Edge Group

Michael Maranda

Several parallel threads are running on questions that are closely aligned, and if not they end up twisting to invoke the other issues. An obvious point perhaps, but I will follow it with another. We here are not alone, others all around are working on so manny of the same things, or discovering they wish to. Whatever emerges must establish meaningful paths for any and all to get involved in advancing our cause(s).

Unlike · · Unfollow Post · Friday at 2:33pm near Ann Arbor, MI

• You, John Love, Irma Wilson, Helene Finidori and 6 others like this.
• Arié Moyal How do we map the overlap?

  Friday at 2:34pm · Unlike · 2
• 

  Michael Maranda There are several aspects to map, and I think it worthwhile to map in a way that allows any of several starting frames, and not prioritizing one above the other – in part because each is valid, but also because we can gain something from the different angles, not to mention there are different learning/thinking styles. What might some of these mappings take as entry points: people/identities w/interests/passions/commitments; projects; groups/orgs; problems/itches(to scratch); interests/ideas/fields; offers/needs; locations. all obvious and some elements left out, perhaps and surely better ways to frame this.

  Friday at 2:42pm · Unlike · 4
• 

  David EggletonE. F. Schumacher: “”For constructive work, the principal task is always the restoration of some kind of balance.”I suggest that naming the “target” balance is a very good way to find allies and colleagues. With such an intention (I’m comfortable with the concept, obviously), people can begin to self-organize in a balanced and balancing way.In my case, the constructive work is moving the slider on the producers….mere consumers continuum to the left, because those populations are way/unsustainably out of balance.

  Friday at 2:56pm · Edited · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda I need to dwell on what you just posted David Eggleton – not grokking yet.

  Friday at 3:27pm · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda But I do want to add that it is also beneficial to map the spaces/contexts/processes we are all participating in — just as there is overlap in the few threads I observed, we are all in several overlapping groups and listservs etc. We’ve taken up many of the underlying tech out of convenience and as early adopters and for exploration, or even to stake a claim for our ideas and aims… we need to bring these into view and start to build what suits our needs and processes rather than contort ourselves to what has been found. This is not to say that I reject bricolage, but we really need to align through mapping these purposes and social processes among the other things listed.

  Friday at 3:30pm · Unlike · 4
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  David EggletonMichael, I hoped to provide an alternative to the morass that is problem-solving. Maybe it was out of place, but look at the complexity of your first comment. I despaired of all that getting started, much less done.

  Friday at 3:42pm · Unlike · 2
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  Michael Maranda That is not to say parts cannot be moved forward. The ideal would be for such parts to be designed in a way that other aspects can be connected readily. And while what I list sounds complex, I think it can be brought to better focus. And fwiw, it may seem more complex than it is.

  Friday at 3:44pm · Like
• 

  Michael Maranda “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. ” (Helps me – and felt urge to put that interlude into this space)

  Friday at 3:47pm · Unlike · 5
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  David Eggleton Yes, there is simplicity on the far side of complexity. “Lighting” can put one’s attention on one or the other.

  Friday at 3:51pm · Like · 1
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  Poor Richard In app development and in information curation, access, and quality control we have a “confusion of tongues” like that which plagued the Babylonians when they tried to build the tower of Babble to the heavens.

  Friday at 4:27pm · Like · 3
• 

  Joris Claeys Started to follow this thread as I got exactly the same impressions as Michael Maranda built his first thought around.
  The intentions are great but this platform will never get you anywhere. You will need collaborative tools or platforms such as The Brain to bring connected thoughts and ideas together or linked or influenced by/from to see the correlations betzeen the different ideas, initiatives, people, markets, etceteras…
  I don’t have the golden resolution here as there are many groups wher eI have seen the same issue rising up, being explored and up not far at all. Living Bridges Planet / SOCAP Network has done some good work in this area with Bert-Ola Bergstrand, Willi Schroll together with many others have realized some results. I still have to study their state of outcome. Perhaps we can ask for their assistance or share their experience on tools and approach. I think both are also part of this group, so perhaps they can take the director seat and tell us

  Friday at 4:42pm · Unlike · 2
• 

  Adam Johnson I too am trying to get my head around what Michael Maranda is pointing out. I’m perhaps a little less perturbed by the lack of a map, but that could be because I come from a field that it is overmapped and suffers for that. I like the sense of a lack of maps, but a free flow of intelligence to enable interesting ideas to emerge and be grabbed by people. Is that the point being made by David Eggleton? I see the centre for action not being the group where the discussion takes place, but rather the person with whom an idea resonates. So, for me, the goal is less to map (conveys a sense of coordination to me, probably unfairly), and more to infect with ideas. The distillation of the Babel of tongues referred to by Poor Richard then happens when somebody grasps an idea and makes it real.

  Friday at 5:42pm · Like · 3
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  Adam Johnson Anyway, my thoughts. Not without their problems.

  Friday at 5:42pm · Unlike · 1
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  Poor Richard Hmm.. thinking out loud….It seems to me that most of Michael’s points are the reasons I stared PeerPoint, but Michael has looked at the PeerPoint proposal and isn’t attracted to it. I think we’re looking at the same problem, but can’t get into the same approach. Are M’s concerns getting lost in the clutter and noise of PeerPoint, or does PeerPoint seem pointed in a different direction and beside the point w/r to his map of problems and solutions? Where is the disconnect? This is complingcatered. For one thing, I am focusing on tools and infrastructure to address the needs of activists, collaborators, and social entrepreneurs. Is Michael focusing on the other side of the coin, the people, groups, and objectives? Perhaps I am concentrating on the generic collaborator’s toolkit while waiting for the users to step up and explain their needs in their own voices. I spent a few pages up front discussing the people and the needs, but it may not have been enough to “seed” the participation of the elusive and endangered users lurking out there in their own enclaves of idiom and discourse. I guess my bias may be that the human side of all this gets discussed almost ad nauseum while the engineering side doesn’t get the attention of enough eyeball and brains. But ultimately the two side need to interdigitate. I seem to have failed to set up the right atmosphere for that to happen in the context of PeerPoint. So what are the altourniquets?

  Friday at 6:45pm · Edited · Like · 5
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  Michael Maranda Dont put words in my mouth. I am still digging into PeerPoint, Poor Richard. Indeed – I have been pushing in a way to get us started o thinking of what next to advance PP. I want to see PeerPoint and other related efforts put into a space or adjacent spaces so we can determine do they meet our needs – and get clear what our needs are.. and also what degree of consensus we may establish for aligning in a meaningful endeavor. Of course, I think there is something to what you say about 2 sides of the coin. I was mulling that over while driving around town.. I respect the dimensions you have expressed. if you hadnt expressed them (Many) I would have criticised and said why arent they there. But as they are there – tho I am not sayingI have no criticsm of them.. I am free to empahsize elements that are the other side of that coin, groupness, process, space of interaction, space between. I offer these things because I think they are deep relevance to design and coordination in these endeavors.

  Friday at 6:49pm · Edited · Unlike · 3
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  Michael Maranda Funny thinking the two sides of the coin thing … I had a different slice on my two sides… some of which included things you see on your side .. it is like when Helene reacted to your Hex model, and we saw different configurations.. There is too much overlap for us not to be thinking of many of the same things. What is important I think is to be able to express is simple and 30,000 ft view language what we want, and see how different our angles are – and where complementary (and where supplementary).

  Friday at 6:52pm · Unlike · 3
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  Poor Richard Michael, I couldn’t agree more. Part of my problem is years of built-up frustration that I tend to project onto everyone. I think we’re in the same boat I need to stop standing up and tipping it so much.

  Friday at 6:56pm · Like · 5
• Helene FinidoriMichael, I’ve missed part of the discussions lately and I’m just discovering this thread. I am yet to talk with Richard about PeerPoint, which converges with the project I am working on with Markus A. O. Loponen, described in March here: http://menemania.typepad.com/helene_finidori/2012/02/engaging-for-the-commons.html when I was postulating for a knights foundation grant. It has evolved with a strong focus on making conversations ‘productive’ and using some forms of machine assisted, ontology as orientation that I think I gave you a hint on… There’s also loads of stuff I put on debategraph… some of it is accessible through here:http://www.debategraph.org/Poster.aspx?aID=40. but it’s been a while since I didn’t touch any of that. There’s also the trial I’ve been gathering on github that could serve to pull the various projects: https://github.com/HeleneFi/The_Project/wiki/_pages. We’ve tried to pull people there with Harlan T Wood, not sure where he is at. Basically I’m operating a convergence between commons P2P, systems-thinking/complex adaptive systems, collaboration/facilitation and semantic/ontology… It’s a bit of a mess (i.e. stuff everywhere trying things out I suppose and looking at what sticks and can get some discussion going beyond the actual FB thread exchange… . Here are the links to Markus’ stuff: http://intra.samabase.org/a work in progress. We are trying to develop the project around actual user cases and communities of practice, based on needs.I would be very interested to see what you are up to if there’s a place to look.

  Saturday at 9:31am · Edited · Unlike · 4
• 

  Daniel F. BassillMichael Maranda with over 6 billion people in the world there must be others who share the same vision and sense of purpose as each of us have. Finding and connecting to such people is the first challenge. I wrote this blog article in 2010. …See More

  

  Tutor Mentor Institute, LLC: What is purpose of conferences. Seminars?

  tutormentor.blogspot.com

  Though training and couching plays a vital role,mentoringhas its own effectivene

  ss because senior level guidance is given to all working class to enhance their working condition and to eliminate work related conflicts in an organization.

  Saturday at 10:33am · Unlike · 1
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  David Eggleton Assumptions of fuels and electricity sufficient to support nonlocal activities, which I, too, am enjoying, concern me. Have you all settled on something I missed or is there agreement to ignore what’s so uncertain?

  Saturday at 10:41am · Unlike · 3
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  Sepp Hasslberger I have settled on the likelihood of there being a good chance of a technological jump pretty soon that will make our energy worries a thing of the past. That view matured from a decade and more of observation of the alt energy movement and what’s happening in little ways here and there.

  Saturday at 11:17am · Like · 1
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  David Lawrence Hawthorne This morning I found a post from Tom Mallard on my FB page about a purported plan by FB to implement a fully-paid subscription model for its business. Of course, we could ‘opt-out,’ or find a number of ways to be cultivated into one or another paid tiers. I speculated in my own post, that FB would, as a result, become a nonentity in time, no more powerful than the old “comic book” or “match book” ads. It’s also possible that another entity, could offer a very similar service to FB, and be satisfied with an open-source model. A nation, group of nations, company or group of companies, institution or group of institutions, satisfied by the utility of mapping big data patterns might find good reason to offer similar services ‘free’ to an open market. Imagine a non-governmental enterprise that guaranteed your ‘privacy’ It is the behavior of people, (to paraphrase Drucker), that is the source of all value. Why should we have to pay to behave? To speak? To think? To converse? If “investors” see some value in being permitted to observe these behaviors, they should take the risk, after all, they are willing to harvest the value. If the Middle East needs a post-oil age resource to market, why not mine ‘Big Data’ and earn great public relations ‘soft-power’ credits by ‘protecting individual rights and privacy?’ (Another item for my Swiftian Memoirs

  Saturday at 11:45am · Unlike · 7
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  Ralf Lippold The true value of FB is its non-monetary cost.

  Saturday at 11:57am · Like · 1
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  Joris ClaeysRalf: for as long as it lasts…In the end FB and the non-availability of tools to do something with all the information makes FB a dead-end platform – sooner or later…David: I will be posting an extra-ordinary article on future energy in the coming days on @ eco-sTrEAMS . It will blow many out of our chairs and will make reference to it on the Next Edge once it is out. Suspense …So back to the subject, do we come to a conclusionhere on how to make use of teh data and thoughts being gathered and made useful, other then a paid service?

  Saturday at 2:02pm · Like · 1
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  Jim Rutt The true COST of FB is wasted time!

  Saturday at 2:03pm · Like
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  David Lawrence Hawthorne I wait with bated breath Joris Claeys It will be interesting to see how closely aligned we might be.

  Saturday at 3:55pm · Edited · Like · 2
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  Joris Claeys HopeDavid: I can get to it tomorrow… it should have been out a week ago!

  Saturday at 4:06pm · Like
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  Joris Claeys HopeDavid: I can get to it tomorrow… it should have been out a week ago!

  Saturday at 4:06pm · Like
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  David Lawrence Hawthorne Don’t worry, I’m only 6 month behind on my book.

  Saturday at 6:38pm · Like
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  Michael MarandaDavid Eggleton if you have missed anything it is perhaps in parallel discussions in the P2P group. However, there is no agreement except that there is high likely overlap and probablility that several of us are working on things that are roughly in the same boat. There has been no agreement to ignore any major uncertainties either. (Side note, I will likely be less active next several days as family is in town — but I hope to steal some moments for these discussions!)

  Saturday at 6:47pm · Unlike · 2
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  David Eggleton Thanks for that, Michael. I really wondered if something was agreed upon re energy availability/affordability prior to my debut here last spring. I’m under the influence of Chris Martenson and Richard Heinberg, to name just two of a cohort, and seem unique in that.

  Saturday at 9:02pm · Like · 2
• 

  Seb PaquetHere’s something I wrote a few years ago that feels relevant…In my view, conflict is actually good when
  it arises, because it provides visible points of “creative friction”
  and lets participants each refine what exactly it is that they are
  after. In a way, by hashing out a disagreement, you define yourself.
  Only by showing yourself, what you are into, and what you value, can
  networking work appropriately for you – that is, bring the right
  people and projects towards you. In other words, good self-
  representation leads to good connections.One key issue when working on self-representation is that of language.
  You may be using words with different meanings than others. This is
  why we need conversational spaces, to figure out e.g. if my idea of a
  “Pooled Fund” means exactly the same as *your* idea of “Pooled Fund”.Language is imperfect, but it’s pretty much all we have, right? It can
  still roughly guide our explorations of one another. When ideas and
  goals are verified to line up among a number of people, you’re on your
  way to collaboration. Actually you’ve collaborated already, on the
  task of clarifying that common goal.One idea that keeps coming back to my mind is that of “knowledge
  territories”. We each have a piece of turf we know about and a
  vocabulary to talk about it. It’s great to have a space to each define
  our territories. Once that is done, though, if we adopt a
  collaborative stance, we will want ways of identifying overlap between
  those territories, ways of matching up concepts between us, and ways
  to agree on a shared language. I think that when this is achieved in a
  disciplined way, it becomes easier for individuals to adhere strongly
  to a shared vision or goal and move forward together with confidence.

  (context: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!msg/openkollab/Vfg8VELhC1g/CBPZ-VNIcfQJ)

  Re: Conflicts Arising From Generative Open Collaboration Spaces – possible mitigating mechanisms -.

  groups.google.com

  21 hours ago · Unlike · 6
• 

  Poor RichardHelene Finidori, thanks for all those links in one comment–I finally made a bookmark folder for all your awesome work and networking.

  11 hours ago · Like
• 

  Poor RichardSeb Paquet: “we will want ways of identifying overlap between
  those [knowlege/vocabulary] territories, ways of matching up concepts between us, and ways to agree on a shared language. I think that when this is achieved in a disciplined way, it becomes easier for individuals to adhere strongly to a shared vision or goal and move forward together with confidence.”Good definition of problem space. Any ideas about solutions?Related threads from the P2P group:I hope no one will mind if I indulge in a little visioneering here….
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/145538675490320/permalink/464870363557148/Ontology/Ontologies … we use the term in a variety of senses…
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/145538675490320/permalink/466381613406023/

  PeerPoint Revisited
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/145538675490320/permalink/466406333403551/

  This is a thread from Y Worlds on the subject of folksonomies …
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/145538675490320/permalink/466574893386695/

  Benjamin Brownell has been designing a simple, universal, open ontology system… https://www.facebook.com/groups/145538675490320/permalink/466870136690504/

  Next Edge Thread: Several parallel threads are running on questions that are closely aligned…
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/120497731371323/permalink/362987357122358/

  

  P2P

  I hope no one will mind if I indulge in a little visioneering here. I am imagini…See More

  10 hours ago · Edited · Like · 1 · Remove Preview
• 

  Adam Johnson I think Seb Paquet has it right on the importance of a shared language, and to me there are two examples straight up.
  The first is a discussion in this group but on a separate thread. I refer to “infrastructure”, and am thinking hard infrastructure like roads and so on (forgive me, I garduated as an engineer and sometimes lapse). Others (most?), at least in this group, refer to infrastructure as the framework within which we can align conversations.

  10 hours ago · Like · 1
• 

  Adam Johnson Oops. The second is more meta. Some of the discussions here are using language and ideas that I have the smallest of fingernail-hold understanding. And yes, I graduated as an engineer but I also graduated in cultural studies during the reign of Derrida…See More

  10 hours ago · Unlike · 3
• 

  Mark Frazier Stephanie LeMieux has some intriguing ideas on a hybrid approach to folksonomies and taxonomies (slide 18 onwards) at http://www.slideshare.net/Earley/hybrid-approaches-to-taxonomy-folksonmy

  

  Hybrid Approaches to Taxonomy & Folksonmy

  www.slideshare.net

  Hybrid Approaches to Taxonomy & Folksonomy Semantic T e chnology, 2009 Stephanie Lemieux Earley & Associates [email_address] www.earley.com

  9 hours ago · Like
• 

  Troy CamplinThis is why I am trying to set up a Society that brings together all of the different groups working in complexity — CAS researchers, complexity theorists, chaos theorists, information theorists, self-organization theorists, network theorists, spontaneous orders theorists, Austrian economists, complexity economists, etc. We have a blog to start things off, but there will be a proper society eventually:http://spontaneousorderstudies.blogspot.com/

  9 hours ago · Like · 1
• 

  Poor Richard Thanks, Mark Frazier. That slide set covered the folksonomy/ontology dichotomy-overlap more thoroughly than I did. It seems most of the little projects like ZigTag have disappeared or been absorbed into Microsoft’s stable like KWizcom. Overall, I think the hybrid approach is a winner–its the way I would go if I were an apps developer. The concepts in slide 18-45 are must-read for anyone interested in the technical side of this discussion.

Finis

— 30 —

 

The post Visioneering an information system for P2P practice and research appeared first on P2P Foundation.

They accuse the PeerPoint project of being too ambitious and naive–they’ve seen everything and done everything and they have a superior, smug, cynical attitude. They argue that the only solution is more of what they are accustomed to.

But it is exactly their approach that resulted in the present state of affairs in which the internet is colonized and dominated by large corporate predators.

Digital anarchists and libertarians have been the naive, unwitting pawns of the powerful actors they meant to resist.

I’ve been around information technology since long before the internet, since IT was called electronic data processing. Since before the email and electronic bulletin boards and USENET. And I’ve been involved in every aspect of it since the days when we operated mainframes with teletype terminals and punched tape. I was old guard once, very old guard.

I’ve also been a political, social, and environmental activist since the sixties, witnessing from the inside the horrifying failure of almost all our struggles.

Finally I woke up to the fact that it was on our watch–MY watch–that the world got a whole lot closer to going down the tubes. My confederates and I, we all screwed things up with the best of intentions. We all get a big-assed #FAIL.

Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By that definition anybody who thinks that old-style FLOSS and independent, freelance DIY development is going to pull us through the crises and the threats we now face is not just naive–they are buried inside a mystery wrapped in a conundrum, locked within an enigma. They are lost in space.

The threats to privacy, liberty, democracy, and equality have steadily grown worse despite all our BRILLIANT efforts up till now, so only a different strategy can be expected to reverse that trend.

That strategy is not a continued, exclusive reliance on autonomous, slef-organizing, emergent systems. That’s all well and good but not, by itself, enough. We need to try something else as well. That something else might even be something that was tried in the past and discredited because it was ineffective then. It might be large-scale collective organization and design.

Critics of PeerPoint have suggested that on its best day it would be a vain effort to imitate the W3C. On its worst day it would be no more than an over-ambitious pipe dream. But they aren’t the only ones who don’t want another W3C. What we want is more like a combination of the Linux Foundation[2] and the Wikimedia Foundation[3]. Not that I’m knocking the W3C (peace be with them) but I am proposing something more agile.

The critics also say that nothing good was ever designed by a “committee” implying that I have proposed some kind of bureaucratic nightmare. They point to giant, government-sponsored boondoggles they were part of in the past. My friend Fabio had a better rebuttal than I could have given:

“Design by committee may not work, but design (and build, review, adjust, adapt, discover, unfold, involving everyone during the whole thing) by community does work and is proven to produce life-affirming architecture, in contrast to deadening architecture produced by the default “efficient”, commercial endeavor. A committee and a community. Both are groups of people. So is a mob, or an army, or a corporation. What’s the difference?”

In the past large-scale collective design failed because it was forced to adopt centralized, top-down planning and organization methods. Now we can do things in a much more distributed, horizontal, and agile manner. (Its called peer to peer.)

It also failed because it adopted organizational structures and created designs that were monolithic. Now we can create organizations and designs that are modular and composable.

Composability[4] is a system design principle that deals with the inter-relationships of components. A highly composable system provides recombinant components that can be selected and assembled in various combinations to satisfy specific user requirements. In information systems, the essential features that make a component composable are that it be:

• self-contained (modular): it can be deployed independently – note that it may cooperate with other components, but dependent components are replaceable
• stateless: it treats each request as an independent transaction, unrelated to any previous request. Stateless is just one technique; managed state and transactional systems can also be composable, but with greater difficulty.

Finally, many past revolutions have failed or succeeded upon their access to technology. Somehow ignoring the story of “guns, germs, and steel” the old guard now wants to say that revolutions are not about tools or technology, they are just about people and social relations. They pontificate that technology doesn’t make revolutions, people make revolutions. Tell that to an Afghan tribesman and see if he will discard his AK-47 or his satellite phone.

As Elinor Ostrom[5] wrote in her last words to the world before her death on June 12, 2012,

The goal now must be to build sustainability into the DNA of our globally interconnected society. Time is the natural resource in shortest supply…We have a decade to act before the economic cost of current viable solutions becomes too high. Without action, we risk catastrophic and perhaps irreversible changes to our life-support system. Our primary goal must be to take planetary responsibility for this risk, rather than placing in jeopardy the welfare of future generations.

As I wrote in PeerPoint, quite clearly, the PeerPoint Design Specification is meant to promote a more rapid and coherent development of our next generation of non-violent weapons of social revolution.

Let those who don’t think we need a non-violent social revolution shut the hell up and get out of the way.

Poor Richard

1. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TkAUpUxdfKGr_5Qio2SlZcnBu_sgnZWdoVTZuD_Regs/edit?pli=1#
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composability
5. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/green-from-the-grassroots

The post Viva PeerPoint! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

(An excerpt from Poor Richard’s full version)

This is an open invitation to participate in developing a crowdsourced design specification for a suite of integrated peer-to-peer applications to include (but not limited to) social networking, real-time project collaboration, content management, database management, voting, trust/reputation metrics, complementary currency, crowd funding, etc. This specification overlaps with several existing p2p infrastructure and social networking projects but also goes substantially beyond anything yet existing.

Members of other projects are encouraged to participate in further developing the open PeerPoint specs and to adopt any part of the specs that they can use. To participate, please join the Next Net Google Group and read the PeerPoint topic.

PeerPoint = Peer-to-Peer Everything

[This is a back-of-the-envelope first draft of top-level design specifications.]

PeerPoint is intended to be much more than a user-owned social networking platform to replace Facebook, Twitter, etc. It is imagined as a peer-to-peer (p2p) social  collaboration suite, developer’s tool kit, and security appliance in one cheap plug-n-play box.

The social tools provided by Facebook, Twitter, etc. have been fun and fairly useful, but if we think about how much serious collaborative work lies ahead of us over the next decade in order to shift an entire civilization onto a more principled, democratic, and sustainable footing, we are going to need better,  more collaborative, more functional digital work tools. Those tools need to belong to us and they need to meet the social and political needs of our time, not the needs of a few self-serving corporations or their shareholders.

With the PeerPoint approach, each user will retain ownership and custody of all the data and content they create. PeerPoints will communicate directly with each other over secure, anonymous internet connections. PeerPoint users may still connect to the internet via commercial internet service providers (ISPs), but those ISP’s will only act as blind, passive carriers of PeerPoint encrypted data.

The PeerPoint will be connected between the user’s pc, home network, or mobile device and the ISP connection. It will support phone lines, mobile devices, wifi, ethernet, etc. for maximum flexibility. It may be accessed by your remote mobile devices either over commercial cellular networks or p2p wireless mesh networks like those used by Occupy Wall Street.

The PeerPoint is designed to Occupy the Internet.

The need:

Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are proprietary, for-profit platforms that exploit users to create content and value. But they provide value as well, so a “Facebook killer” must provide greater user value (functionality, privacy, etc.) than Facebook. For numerous reasons the services provided by the commercial companies do not adequately meet the creative, social, political, and financial needs of the 99%. They are not up to the tasks that participatory democracy, non-violent social change, and sustainable economic systems will demand of our internet communications and our evolving cooperative methods of creating, working, organizing, negotiating, and decision-making together, in groups large and small, regardless of the geographical distances between us. This new kind of group interaction over distances is what allows self-selected individuals to coalesce into powerful workgroups, forums, and movements. It is also what will enable direct participation in the legislative process to function at a large scale for the first time in human history.

The corporate internet business model is based on surveillance of our online activity, our thought, and our expression. By data mining the vast amounts of our information in their custody, they identify our patterns of thought and behavior. They do this ostensibly to sell us stuff and to make money, and so far we have accepted this as the cost of our “free” use of corporatized internet services. But what other, less benign uses can this surveillance and data mining be put to?

I have been hoping for somebody like the Linux community to create an appliance-like p2p node that provides all the apps needed for secure (and when desired, anonymous) social networking, voting, trust/reputation metrics, database, content collaboration and management, workflow, complementary currency, crowd funding, etc.  I’m talking about something that comes complete, out of the box, with the apps pre-installed; that connects easily to your personal computer, home network, or mobile device.

For developers:

If a FreedomBox were used as a starting platform, the PeerPoint application package would be added on top of the FreedomBox security stack.

The PeerPoint apps don’t yet exist as an integrated package, or even as individual apps that are adequate to replace Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, Google Search, Google Earth, YouTube, Kick-Starter, etc. etc. All this functionality is envisioned for the PeerPoint eventually.

In the beginning it will be necessary to have interfaces/connectors to various proprietary client-server applications like Google until they can be re-engineered in  open source p2p versions.

Initially the project would consist of a first tier of essential apps that must be tightly integrated in their interfaces/connectors, protocols, and data structures. After deploying the first tier, development would continue on a second-tier of applications. Second tier development efforts could be much more distributed and parallel since the final specs for all the basic interfaces, protocols and data structures of the first tier modules would be available to all interested developers.

The common requirements for each PeerPoint app are:

1. world class, best-of-breed
2. open source
3. p2p architecture
4. consistent, granular, user-customizable security management and identity protection
5. integrated with other apps in the suite via a common distributed database and/or “data bus” architecture.
6. consistent, user-customizable large, medium, and small-screen (mobile device) user interfaces
7. ability to interface with its corresponding major-market-share service (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
8. GPS enabled

First tier applications:

1. security & anonymity (FreedomBox, Freenet, I2P or better)
2. trust/reputation metrics
3. distributed data store (Freenet or better)
4. communication (email, voicemail, blogging, microblogging) (Syndie or better)
5. social networking: socialswarm.net: list of distributed projects, Wikipedia: distributed social network apps,
6. crowdsourcing: content collaboration & management  (wiki, Google Docs, Open Office, or better)
7. project management/workflow
8. data visualization (data sets, projects, networks, etc.)
9. user-customizable complementary currency and barter exchange (Community Forge or better)
10. crowd funding (http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-open-source-crowdfunding-platform)
11. voting (LiquidFeedback or better)
12. universal search across all PeerPoint data/content and world wide web content
13. Personal Health Records

Digital Commons

One contribution the PeerPoint can make to the digital commons and the ethics of sharing is to incorporate a computing resource sharing capability into its system design. Every personal computer, tablet, smart phone, etc. is idle or operating far below its capacity most of the time.

Added up, this unused capacity is equivalent to many supercomputers sitting idle. Those idle virtual supercomputers could be used in the public interest if the personal computing devices connected to the internet were designed to share their idle capacity for public purposes. Users might also be given the option to designate various percentages of their idle capacity to different uses, causes, groups, etc.

Peer Publica

Once PeerPoint is up and running with the first tier applications we may be able to organize the 99% well enough to begin rapid development of the more complex second-tier applications and to start building or buying alternative network infrastructure.

Our new public internet won’t be owned by corporations or by the state. It will be owned by the people, an instrument of the people to invoke the people’s will and help bring both government and corporations under civic control.

Obstacles

“We are not progressing from a primitive era of centralized social media to an emerging era of decentralized social media, the reverse is happening…. Surveillance and control of users is not some sort of unintended consequence of social media platforms, it is the reason they exist….Free, open systems, that neither surveil, nor control, nor exclude, will not be funded, as they do not provide the mechanisms required to capture profit….we do not have the social will nor capacity to bring these platforms to the masses, and given the dominance of capital in our society, it’s not clear where such capacity will come from. …Eliminating privilege is a political struggle, not a technical one.” (emphasis added) Dmytri Kleiner

I partly agree, but I think we have both a political struggle and a technical struggle rolled into one.

The integral tools I describe in PeerPoint are tools (maybe I should even call them weapons) that we need now to conduct our political struggle, not afterwards. The community that brought us Linux and Open Office (the integrated suite of open source applications that replaces Microsoft Office), is capable of bringing us a PeerPoint or something equivalent if it understands the need.

If anyone doubts this, look at Wikipedia’s impressive List of Open Source Software.

But free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) development is largely self-motivated and idiosyncratic, with many islands of genius and inspiration separated by vast seas of  minutia and trivia. The bulk of the hacker and FLOSS community does not yet appear to perceive its enlightened self-interest in our existential struggle for open source, p2p society and open source p2p government. Maybe the “digital libertarians” among them feel they can outwit Big Brother better on their own terms as individuals. Perhaps we need to help them open their “Doors of Perception” wider, even if that takes a little mescaline.

At the very least we need to offer something like an X-Prize and we need to be ready and willing to fund and provision projects that fall within PeerPoint’s conceptual scope. That should begin right now with FreedomBox, the most likely base on which a PeerPoint might be constructed.

So pony up, folks. Like the old auctioneer says, “What’s it worth? You tell me.”

Poor Richard

The post PeerPoint appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This is a response to  Value in Prosumer practices- and in the Information Economy, by Adam Arvidsson

Adam wrote: “Lately there have been many attempts to theorize and criticize value creation in online prosumer practices. A lot of people have proposed some version of the Marxian labor theory of value, whereby they have suggested that online content creation should be seen as a form of labor, and that consequently, social media sites like Facebook, twitter, and why not, the Huffington post, expoit their users by appropriating the surplus value that they create. This analysis suggests that, while such an approach could be useful in some cases, it is inadequate as a way of understanding value creation in prosumer practices in general, and as a critique of exploitation in informational capitalism, it definitely barks up the wrong tree. Instead we propose an analysis where the question of value is organized around the crucial link between, on the one hand, an ever more socialized reputation economy, and, on the other hand, financial markets as the ‘places’ where the values are set. This perspective views social media platforms as instruments that determine the value of the kinds of intangible assets that are subsequently monetized on financial markets. This leads us to suggest that social media platforms are not so much part of the problem as much as they could be part of a solution: they could support a more democratic reputation economy by means of which valuations of intangible assets are democratized.”

The whole paper is available (pdf) here.

(Note: I added hyperlinks to some of the terms in Adam’s abstract above for some background reference.)

Parsing the abstract

Adam or others that he cites are making some clearly-stated, rock-solid, and uncontroversial arguments here, and some that are persuasive or provocative but not conclusive, and some that are confusing, convoluted, and very debatable. I list them here in their order of appearance in the excerpt above:

1. There is an implied need for the word “prosumer”.
2. “Online content creation should [not] be seen as a form of labor”.
3. “social media sites…exploit their users by appropriating the surplus value that they create” (create by some means other than labor?).
4. Labor (no matter how we define it?) “is an inadequate way of understanding value creation in prosumer practices in general.”
5. Labor (“as a critique of exploitation in informational capitalism”), “definitely barks up the wrong tree.”
6. There is “an ever more socialized reputation economy” which is involved in organizing and setting the value of prosumer practices.
7. “financial markets [are] the ‘places’ where the values [of prosumer practices] are set”
8. “value is organized around the crucial link between, on the one hand, an ever more socialized reputation economy, and, on the other hand, financial markets”, with considerations of labor being either secondary or  inapplicable to organizing or setting value
9. “social media platforms [serve] as instruments that determine the value of the kinds of intangible assets that are subsequently monetized on financial markets”
10. “social media platforms… could support a more democratic reputation economy by means of which valuations of intangible assets are democratized.”

My analysis

1. There is an implied need for the word “prosumer”. This need is implied by the author’s use of the term. To begin with, this word adds exactly nothing to the centuries-long dialog on economics. It goes without saying that every living thing and probably every inanimate thing on the planet, much less on the internet, is both a producer and consumer of goods and services. A rusty nail is a prosumer. For that reason and perhaps others less clear to me yet (it didn’t help that I had to look it up) I don’t much like the word. But I may soon be using it, nonetheless.

2. “Online content creation should [not] be seen as a form of labor”. Adam’s arguments against Fuchs’ application of Marx raise some issues worth discussing. This is probably the most controversial and disputable issue this paper raises. Adam returns to it frequently but always seems to downplay or dismiss it each time.

Whatever the other means of determining a Facebook’s value (such as reputation, audience value, and  financial markets), I have no doubt that work has value and there is a lot of work flowing into Facebook along with a giant sucking sound….But what do I mean by “work”? I’m not even going to try to speak for Marx or anyone else. I’m using the term work instead of  the more loaded term “labor” for that reason.

I would define work per se the same way a physicist would. By that definition even my rusty nail prosumer does work. But in this post I’m only going to write about human work that creates some human-recognizable value. I could have said work is any human activity that produces a good or provides a service, but I’d be getting back into Marxian territory. I’m satisfied to refer to generic human work and generic human-recognizable value, period. In a case where I might create some value unconsciously or by accident I might doubt that I had performed any work. If my inadvertent action accidentally created some value for someone else and I was aware of the correlation between my action and her gain, I might feel justified in seeking some share of that gain. Then I would need a reason other than having done “work” to support my claim. So I’m not saying work is the only way to create value or that the creation of value always involves work. But by my definition most participants in Facebook, games, blogs, etc. are performing work and are probably creating human-recognizable value (or they probably wouldn’t be doing it intentionally). However, in most cases today they aren’t getting “paid” anything or rewarded for that work beyond its intrinsic social or recreational rewards.

Does it matter that many Facebook users, Second Life users, gamers, etc. might not consider their activity to be work because they think of it as social interaction or play? Perhaps. They may even resist thinking of it as work for a while. But wait until some of their peers start getting redeemable points or credits for their Facebook activity or play time. I don’t think it will be long before play, when it is understood by the player to produce some value recognized and rewarded by others, will become her work. It will often still be play, but no longer pure play. It will then be both play and work simultaneously. The same applies to “social” online activity. Recruiting friends to an event, filling out surveys, clicking on ads or links, reaching some magic number of friends or some threshold of influence or reputation, etc….Many such things can and probably will be rewarded by others for non-social (e.g. commercial) reasons. If the user is aware of the non-social motives behind such rewards then at that juncture those activities become simultaneously social interactions and work.

Second Life already has an internal market economy with a virtual-to-real currency exchange rate. The supply of virtual currency (Linden dollars, or “Lindens”) reached 1.8 billion in 2008, worth some $6.9 million in real US dollars.

The same dynamic applies to credits or points issued and exchanged all across the internet, including rewards that are in-kind or bartered for work.

How long can it be before nearly everyone is pursuing and expecting such extra-social and extra-recreational rewards in ever increasing amounts? While the kinds of “local currencies” in which rewards for work are issued will probably proliferate, it is only natural for some fungible mediums of exchange to emerge.

I don’t pretend to foresee all the implications of this, but I assume there are those at Second Life and Facebook that are already modeling, simulating and predicting these trends.

No doubt the coin has two sides and there are pros and cons for the social and game platform companies instituting reward programs, virtual currencies, etc. to consider and control. It only stands to reason that online users will grow to see their online time as more valuable and will increasingly expect and demand compensation.

The paper repeatedly takes the position, sometimes ambiguously but often pointedly, that the work factor in the value function is negligible or trivial. I’m just not convinced of that yet. Share croppers started out on the same footing that Facebook users are on today. They slowly began to capture more and more of the fruits of their labor. Leaders and movements accelerated the sharecropper’s transition to markets and currencies. And then there were unions….

In the online economy there are many leaders, activists, and advocates. Many are highly skilled and educated technocrats, analysts, programmers and systems engineers with a big stake in the virtual world. I doubt if the transition from virtual sharecropping to virtual industry, labor and trade will take as long as it did the in the carbon-based economy.

3. “Social media sites…exploit their users by appropriating the surplus value that they create” (create by some means other than labor?). In my opinion the primary means of creating content, reputation, knowledge, applications, platforms, networks, etc. is work. The value of work is multiplied by time, reputation, skill, knowledge, tool use, etc. so there are numerous possible feedback loops. Work  x  time  x  [skills  + knowledge  +  tools] = output. But output  x  reputation <> value. None of those variables and functions are sufficient to set the value of the work. Much of that ambiguous value rises in the direction of the giant sucking sound, never to be seen again this side the corporate firewall….

What DOES set the value of the work?

What COULD set the value of the work?

What SHOULD set the value of the work?

4.  Labor (no matter how we define it?) “is an inadequate way of understanding value creation in prosumer practices in general.” This is totally uncontroversial as long as the word is “inadequate” and not “irrelevant”. However, in the body of the full paper it occasionally seems to read “labor is irrelevant” or some near equivalent in other terms. As stated above, I think that remains to be seen.

5. Labor (“as a critique of exploitation in informational capitalism”), “definitely barks up the wrong tree.” This seems consistent with the treatment and status given labor (a toothless old dog barking at shadows?) throughout the paper. But I’m unclear what tree labor is barking up and why it is not the right one. I’m just missing the sense or the point of the metaphor.

6.  There is “an ever more socialized reputation economy” which is involved in organizing and setting the value of prosumer practices. At the lowly level of work, reputation is just a co-factor of work that multiplies its value. As long as the value of the work is zero, it doesn’t matter how large the reputation multiplier grows. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. Numerous flows of likes, shares, clicks, comments,  etc. feed the reputation, but no matter how great the reputation, the work still remains valueless until some value is placed on the work by other means. Once that happens, then the multiplier effect of the reputation co-factor will kick in.

On the other hand, the aggregate reputation of all the workers on the digital treadmill will rise upwards towards the giant sucking sound. Up there, inside the corporate firewall, the reputation co-factor has a huge multiplying power for whatever streams of value, such as the “market cap”, for example, that circulate up there.

7.  “Financial markets [are] the ‘places’ where the values [of prosumer practices] are set.” FINALLY, some value. According to some well-paid economists, much of the online work has no value, but things like speculation create mass quantities of value from thin air which can then be multiplied by all the reputation that has been vacuumed up from the digital work floor down below.

The FACT that financial markets set (and apparently create, as well) the value of the company out of thin air is not in dispute. The question of whether they should do is less settled, at least in my mind.

8. “Value is organized around the crucial link between, on the one hand, an ever more socialized reputation economy, and, on the other hand, financial markets”. Here, again, the theory is that work has no value. Only financial markets set value with reputation serving as some multiplying co-factor applied by the markets in some highly arcane and ceremonial way.

This wealth, created by the financial markets in some mysterious way by “conventions” (all we know is that reputation is used somehow in the magical ceremonies) is then shared equitably with all the internet workers…..NOT!

9. “Social media platforms [serve] as instruments that determine the value of the kinds of intangible assets that are subsequently monetized on financial markets”. Going by the full paper, I’d say these “intangible assets” are supposed to include things like “audience value”. I don’t understand why that is any more intangible than reputation, though. The paper doesn’t seem to mention where the tangible revenue like CA$H from ads and data mining, and interest on huge cash investments a company makes, and stuff like that gets counted in to set the value of the company.

10.  “Social media platforms… could support a more democratic reputation economy by means of which valuations of intangible assets are democratized.” This is hard for me to parse. I did not read any mention in the paper of assets being democratized, so I have to guess it is only the valuation process and not the assets themselves that are “democratized”. Even assuming that reading is correct, I don’t think I know what it means.

We must hold on to the hope that all the voting mechanisms such as eyeballs, likes, shares, comments, ad and link clicks, etc. on the social networks will be able to democratize something or it mat all be for nothing.

Conclusions

One of my main problems with this paper is what I see as false either-or dichotomies. Labor and reputation should BOTH be valid valuation modifiers. Reputation and financialization may be Adam’s main interests, but the “meat” of his comments on these two things could have been clearly presented in two or three pages. Too much of the paper was devoted to 1) econo-jargon that just seemed (to me) to obfuscate the role of labor and 2) drawing false either-or dichotomies between financial market valuation, audience value, reputation, and other valid co-factors such as labor, attention-time, content, etc.

You might be able to squeeze value out of reputation without actually producing anything, but that would be an aberration of the marketplace, not a healthy value stream. Actual production of content and mouse clicks (unless fully automated) requires time, effort, and expertise (labor). Reputation is only a co-factor that multiplies the value of the labor (paid labor only, since in the view of economics experts, unpaid labor has no “value”), the ad space, the stock price, etc..

The only thing that is really new about reputation in the internet economy is its increasing democratization. All the old drivers of reputation still pertain, but we now have more active and explicit ways to “vote” on our preferences (liking, sharing, commenting, etc.) The orders-of-magnitude-greater democratization and quantification of reputation is new and important for underpinning information quality assurance and valuation. I just don’t think it sweeps everything else (like labor, LOL) under the rug or into the dust bin, and I don’t see that creating a lot of need for new theory and jargon. Opportunity, perhaps, but not need.

I am inclined to say that much of the new “reputation economy” jargon and theory actually obfuscates matters rather than clarifies them.

I appreciate that Adam Arvidsson may be implying that Facebook users may somehow deserve to share in the financialized value of the company. If so, I completely agree. But in my opinion it will only be when the the open/free/p2p community creates a new and better social network platform that such an ambition has any chance to be realized.

Meanwhile, I think the best general approach to valuation is to identify ALL  inputs and all outputs of value and then, for each input and output stream, identify the various sources of the inputs and the receivers of the outputs. Only then can the aggregate value of an online social network be calculated and the fairness of the contributions and distributions be judged.

One value of such an exercise might be to show the potential developers and users of future social network platforms what they are missing–the opportunity cost of continuing with “business as usual”.

In much the same way that the nuclear power industry adds to climate change by capturing resources that could go into solar technology, and the way that Microsoft’s monopoly set computer science back 100 years (yes, I know computer science is not that old); Facebook and Second Life capture investment and human resources that could and should be better used.

It is beyond the scope of this piece to discuss what is going on with efforts to develop open, democratic, and user-owned social networking platforms, but there is definitely something very wrong with the snail’s pace at which such projects are proceeding and with the proprietary aspects of the few projects which do exist. I would like to see a p2p social networking engine become part of the Linux core code.

Quotes & Notes from the full paper

“Audience value” (as an attractor of ad revenue, investment, more audience, etc) and the value of “audience participation” are two separate things.

Some forms of added value are difficult to attribute to individual actors & others are not.

I can’t agree that “however the multitude is exploited in creating common resources, labor time is not a good measure of that exploitation.” I can only agree that labor is not always the best measure. Those are very different conclusions.

“A third crucial precondition for the relevance of the labor theory of value is that the realization of
value occurs in direct commodity exchange on markets where there is a direct correspondence
between market price and the labor time necessary for commodity production.”

I think there is some obfuscation here. “Labor theory of value” (either ambiguous or pre-defined in a particular way), “direct commodity exchange”, and “direct correspondence” are all fairly tricky terms to navigate to arrive at a “crucial precondition for relevance.” Whats wrong with indirect exchanges and correspondences, for instance?

“…the rise of intangible assets as a component of the market value of companies implies that resources like brand, innovation, and flexibility, that are to a large extent appropriated from the self-organized productive practices of the multitude (at least within an ‘negrian’ theoretical framework), are directly evaluated on financial markets.” and “…value created in productive processes is more or less directly channeled to financial markets. On financial markets this value is redistributed according to what Marazzi call linguistic ‘conventions’…”

That seems clear and uncontroversial as a matter of fact. As a matter of equity some question remains.

“This leads us to suggest that informational capitalism ever more deploys a reputational ‘law’ of value,
where the value of companies and their intangible assets are set not in relation to an objective measurement…”

What about numbers of eyeballs, users, keystrokes, hits, clicks, links, and numerous other objective measures of reputation?

The “like economy”: many of the same metrics of reputation I applied to internet brands, like Facebook, above also apply to individual users and friend groups. Some reputation criteria may be indirect, intangible, or relatively arbitrary (non-specific “attention time”, celebrity, expertise, etc.) but many are explicit as numbers of “friends”, “likes”, shares, comments, views, click-throughs, etc. Explicit, tangible metrics are the easiest to capture but are not necessarily more relevant than other intangible and ambiguous influences. Adam often seem to be saying value is properly indicated either by one or the other.

The facts in the section on “Facebook and Finance” are not controversial except for raising the question of equitable distribution of this value stream.

“…the value of social media companies like Facebook does not primarily depend on the number of users that they have, nor on the time that users spend online. It depends on the strength of their brand which is an effect both of the number of users that they have, and on their ability to penetrate the lifeworld of those users ‘vertically’ so to speak.”

I would argue that user population times attention time *is* a primary factor if it is arguably the stronger of the only two factors described.

The chart on p 19 showing the lack of correlation between market valuation and user volume only shows that the market valuation process is still largely irrational and based on irrelevant assumptions and arbitrary conventions.

I am not satisfied that “each Facebook user was a ‘victim of exploitation of surplus value’ to the extent of $ 0.7 a year” or that the “figure on the overall value created by audience participation on the internet globally, $ 100 billion… becomes $ 59 per internet user per year.”

The “math” and the assumptions behind those per capta estimates are too opaque.

“If the suggestion is that internet platforms, or even ‘the internet’ as a whole, exploit users by attracting surplus value from their ‘audience labor’, and that consequently this surplus value ought to be redistributed in the form of a basic income, then, as we have seen on page x, there is not much to redistribute. This becomes a rather toothless argument.”

“Audience labor” seems like a very ambiguous term. Is it taken from broadcast media-speak? Is it the labor performed by a couch-potato watching ads on TV? Is this all that Facebook  users are–audience?

Labor may be a toothless dog…. but only under certain assumptions, some of which I have challenged. One implicit assumption seems to be that all users are equal with respect to quantity and quality of labor. In fact, the basic income distribution might be divided unequally among far fewer than “all” internet users. Some internet users should probably be paying for their activity and others should be getting paid.

“What needs to be re-distributed in a more equal fashion is not the value appropriated by social media platforms, but the value that circulates on financial markets.”

Again a false either-or dichotomy. The answer is not one but both. Or better yet, the answer is all valid inputs and outputs with no artificial and arbitrary externalities. I am not confident that Adam’s analysis and recommendations are fully consistent with that degree of neutrality with respect to all inputs, outputs, and methods of valuation.

Poor Richard

Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet, by Christian Fuchs

The post Towards a Reputation Economy: a response to Adam Arvidsson appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This is a response to “Should we worry about capitalist commons?” by Michel Bauwens . What follows won’t make as much sense if you don’t read that article first.

Avoiding the language trap

As Michel Bauwens acknowledged in an article about theories of property rights subtitled “The Ubiquity of Mixed Systems”, when we try to superimpose political and economic theories, doctrines, and ideologies on actual human society we nearly always end up needing to think in terms of mixed or hybrid systems. As he importantly noted in that article, an “arrangement that works in practice can work in theory.” It is vital that in developing new economic and social theory we work from actual examples, cases, and histories, as Michel did in “Should we worry about capitalist commons? by basing his discussion on the case of the free software movement.

Michel’s post also takes important steps in describing the relation between the socio-economic status quo at any given time and emergent relations and phase transitions. Michel writes:

It is simply inconceivable that a slave-based empire could undergo a phase transition towards the feudal mode of production, without the existence of proto-feudal modalities within that system; it is equally inconceivable that the feudal mode of production could have a phase transition towards the capitalist mode of production, without proto-capitalist modalities existing within that feudal system. It is the ultimate strengthening and intermeshing of these proto-capitalist modalities, which creates the basis for a political and social revolution that ultimately guarantees the phase transition.

This reminds me of the “include and transcend” trope in the Integral Theory of Ken Wilber and the Spiral Dynamics theory of psychology professor Clare W. Graves.

Relationships between a status quo and an emerging transition state are often reflected in their respective linguistic and rhetorical idioms. Terminology can include and transcend or it can be provocative and divisive. Often a particular terminology is chosen precisely to signify affinity with one group and/or distinction from another, as in the case of “capitalist” terminology and “anti-capitalist” terminology.

I have learned as a computer programmer that I can take a flow chart depicting the logical relations between a set of inputs, outputs, and algorithms and I can code that sucker in any one of a dozen computer “languages”. What’s more, in any one of those languages I may have alternative choices of data structures, methods, etc. for accomplishing the same ends. Likewise a crafter of detective stories can tell the same story in many different styles and structures. Then that book can be translated into any number of languages.

The underlying logic, values, relations, and specifications of the computer program or novel are in many ways more important or fundamental than the language in which they are embodied. The latter becomes important only in relation to the environment in which the program must run or the book must sell. The same is true when it comes to expressing socio-economic models and theories with language.

One of my personal rhetorical preferences is to use terminology that is familiar and comfortable to people in the center in mainstream culture, especially when I am discussing ideas that may be culturally unfamiliar or uncomfortable to many. By choosing “business” terminology that is native to the mainstream, and even native to my political opponents, I sometimes alienate my own friends on the left. But my intent is a kind of rhetorical “Jujutsu” (a Japanese martial art for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon).

Wikipedia says: “‘Ju’ can be translated to mean gentle, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding. “Jutsu” can be translated to mean “art” or “technique” and represents manipulating the opponent’s force against him rather than confronting it with one’s own force.”

Or maybe I just take a perverse pleasure in being provocative towards my own philosophical and political community. Or both.

Actually, there is a good reason for stepping on liberal corns and tipping our radical sacred cows. All too often we liberals (and especially we “mavericks”) have emotional attachments to our chosen doctrines and jargon that are not justified by actual technical utility. If we are students of history we may have observed how often old intellectual “wine” is simply repackaged in new bottles. How often does the re-bottling really accomplish anything, and how often does it cause unintended consequences such as the wine getting spilt or going sour? Occasionally the new package actually does something new like dispense single servings while keeping the rest fresh. But often it turns out the new bottle does little or nothing more than the old one did. Its the old “distinction without a difference”. (Or is it the other way around?)

In stark contrast, to actually improve the wine itself might require a long, laborious apprenticeship under a master vintner to acquire a thorough and pragmatic knowledge of soils, vines, cultivation practices, harvesting, pressing, blending, fermenting, racking, bottling, and cellaring. Within and between each subsystem there are many elemental, functional, or essential values and relations. The bottle is vital, but it is perhaps the most uncomplicated piece in all of this (less problematic than even the lowly cork), and for a wide range of bottle designs one kind may do just as well as another.

Another analogy that bears on the subject of “sustainable terminology” is a recycling and re-purposing analogy. We can conserve intellectual capital and labor by recycling our “bottles” rather than tossing the old, used terminology in the linguistic landfill and manufacturing new ones from scratch. Perhaps only a small number of cracked or chipped bottles need to be discarded and replaced with new ones. Our new, improved intellectual wine might just as well be re-packaged in the same old bottles as the the old wine once they have been well cleaned and inspected.

I may have belabored these analogies a bit but I have demonstrated how ideas about one thing, such as terminology, can be repackaged in other terminology as foreign to that subject as enology, or wine making. It is far less a stretch to repackage some new socio-economic understanding or sensibility in old soci-economic terminology with a minimal number of pragmatic tweaks and hacks.

One example I have recently seen is “copy-far-left”. This is a portmanteau, or  “hack”, of the familiar word “copyright” and the familiar expression “far-left” which signifies an ultra-liberal or radical political orientation. (The expression comes from the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly during the French Revolution. The most radical members were seated on the far left of the chamber.) But this expression and others such as copyleft, copywrong, and copy-just-right are somewhat subjective and come with various degrees of emotional, philosophical, political, and historical baggage.

I prefer instead the more conventional term “conditional copyright” which signifies a copyright that is a bundle of individual and severable rights– any, all, or none of which may be explicitly retained or waived by an author. An author is anyone who has created a work or “added value” to an existing work. It can be argued that all works are derivatives of previous work but that does no harm to the notion of an author as someone who has added value either to a particular work or to the general body of creative human expression. The latter generalization is perfectly consistent with a conditional copyright, which can serve the same purposes as any of the other copy-whatever hacks. The conditional copyright is simply any copyright that has a specification which explicitly spells out the rights that are (or are not) either retained by the copyright holder or granted to others with or without other special conditions. The familiar specification “all rights reserved” is simply a special case of the conditional copyright where the entire bundle of rights is retained unconditionally by the specified copyright holder.

A similar conditionality has long been recognized in the English and American common law of real and personal property through the same bundle of rights metaphor.

I challenge any of my liberal or radical friends to define a form of property ownership, non-ownership, anti-ownership, enclosure, non-enclosure, or commons that I cannot model with a conditional property or copyright specification without the need for any new terminology whatsoever, proving that new terminology is unnecessary for a full and fair technical or legal discourse. If new terminology is still desired it should be admitted that it serves a poetic, rhetorical, emotional, or ideological need rather than a technical or analytical one.

(Disclaimer:  the only case to which I will not try to apply conditional copyright principles is the proposition that there is no value created or added; or that any value which may be added does not require any formal or legal means of protection because  some other, informal means is sufficient. Also, I’m not a copyright attorney–these conditional copyright principles may or may not be compatible with current national statutes and international agreements.)

“The map is not the territory” (Alfred Korzybski)

Regardless of what terminology we use to discuss socio-economic theories such as “commons-based peer-production” or “capitalist commons“, we should remember that “the word is not the thing” (Alfred Korzybski). We are discussing actual social and economic relations in vivo and in situ.

In our lives we have one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to many relations–relations between people and people, people and groups, people and objects, groups and objects, groups and the environment, etc. You can find many of the same, identical relations across many cultures, past and present, spoken of via many different metaphors and ritualized/institutionalized in many different ways.

Our choice of terminology and metaphor should be audience-appropriate, but analytically and technically we need to focus on functional relations, values and criteria. We can call something public, private, civic, social, or common. We can call something a group, a partnership, an association, a corporation, a collective, or a community. But people can differ wildly about what any of those terms mean. Any distinctions we attribute to those terms really arise from a more basic and fundamental class of issues: power, rank, consent, transparency, accountability, democracy, inclusion, opportunity, sustainability, reciprocity, symmetry, justice, fairness, dignity, & etc., etc., etc. Too often when we argue at the level of public vs private or common vs corporate we are arguing about the “bottles” and fail to ever connect with those underlying assumptions, values, and relations that really make the wine what it is.

At the academic level there are heroic efforts to put economics on an empirical, scientific footing. Those efforts are largely thwarted by the influence of money and power. But at the level of public discourse economics is almost entirely a vehicle for ideology (a disease of the mind).

Michel Bauwens is taking important strides towards an interdisciplinary, non-ideological, doctrine-neutral analysis of social, political, and economic relationships and I really dig it. That is the kind of framework I want to build on. That is the kind of framework we can all build upon collectively and cooperatively no matter what our personal biases may be.

Poor Richard

Related Articles

• Networks, Neighbourhoods and Communities: A Reflection (downes.ca)

The post Analyzing mixed socio-economic systems appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There are two broad ways for progressives to view economic issues:

1. Through a political/legal regulatory reform lens.
2. Through a grassroots economic development lens.

The two views are entirely complementary, assuming that progressives can both walk and chew gum at the same time. But because of the increasing corruption of our broken political system, the bottom-up, grassroots development of direct economic democracy (I’ll call it “green free-enterprise“) may turn out to be more effective in the long run than a never-ending boxing match with the time-wasting, money-robbing, and energy-sapping  Tar-baby of political reform, re-reform, and re-re-reform.

In  “The Wonderful Tar-baby Story“, the classic “Uncle Remus” story by Joel Chandler Harris, the Tar-baby (a life-like form concocted of sticky pitch and tar by the wiley Br’er Fox) seemingly refuses to answer Br’er Rabbit’s friendly greetings; and every time the indignant Br’er Rabbit takes an angry swipe at the Tar-baby , “His fis’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ’im”.

‘Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de natchul stuffin’ outen you,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby, she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’. She des hilt on, en de Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way…”

In a similar fashion progressive activists may get all tangled up in the political system’s recalcitrance,  filibustering, and perpetual resistance to reform.

Hard-fought legislative reforms could even theoretically become counter-productive if they imposed redundant regulatory compliance burdens on green, worker-owned cooperatives whose charters, bylaws, and worker enfranchisement begat enlightened self-management in the first place.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete” – Buckminster Fuller

Green free-enterprise is an exercise in the progressive framing of economic issues.

The Right wants to label progressive economic ideas as socialism, government take-overs,  totalitarianism, communism, Marxism, and worse.  At the same time, our opponents characterize themselves as libertarians and free-market, free-enterprise capitalists. But in fact, they actually hate competition and attempt to dominate markets by any means possible. This includes monopoly power and capturing the political process with concentrated wealth and influence. The paleo-corporate world does not believe in sporting competition using Marquess of Queensberry rules. In reality they believe only in economic warfare in which the competition is literally or figuratively murdered. They also falsely claim to support “family values” while they actually seek to enslave workers and strip them of their civil rights, their human dignity, and of all protections of health, safety, and financial security.

At the same time, classical top-down, command-and-control versions of socialism have rightly been abandoned by the left in favor of democratic and participatory forms of economic development. What has been slower in capturing the imaginations of many progressives is the importance of radical diversity and localization in economic democracy.

Economic democracy is at its core a grassroots movement. That grassroots movement may include a national reform agenda, but even more fundamentally it MUST include a reverence for local and individual self-determination. Forward thinking progressives must not join their right-wing corporate foes in asking modern, liberal societies to surrender their freedoms in exchange for security and prosperity. On the contrary, the progressive community  must step up to the modern challenge of finding methods to increase prosperity, freedom, civil rights, and human dignity, all at the same time. And it CAN be done. The appropriate ideas and methods DO exist. One framework for reconciling these values and methods, the peer-to-peer (P2P) framework, was recently shared by Michel Bauwens at the TEDx conference in Brussels.

TEDxBrussels – Michel Bauwens – 11/23/09

Trying to bridge the language

Much of the language of politics, economics, and sociology that I grew up with my be outliving its usefulness. Words like capitalism, socialism, anarchy, liberalism, etc. (and all their “neo” versions) may have been beaten to death in the public imagination and/or may conjure up too much historical baggage to sort out, even within the center-to-left, progressive community.

Mr. Progressive (my old-school persona) says: “Grassroots economic development, economic democracy, peer-to-peer, open everything, diversity, localization, self-determination, etc. are all consistent with an old liberal idea: the idea of free-enterprise. Not the fake, bait-and-switch kind of “free-enterprise” of monopoly capitalists which is only a euphemism for market deregulation, anarchy, and corporate take-overs. The free-enterprise I’m talking about is the real deal–open, local, diverse, human-centered, worker-centered, democratic, socially just, and sustainable. That’s why I call it GREEN .

GREEN FREE-ENTERPRISE

I think the green meme and the free-enterprise meme still have value and meaning in the public imagination, at least in the US. The protection of both workers and consumers from corporate exploitation is the core principle of green free-enterprise: cooperative worker ownership and consumer ownership of local, national, and multinational businesses. This requires no legal reforms and we need not borrow from any “foreign” political or economic theories. The US has a rich tradition of employee ownership, worker-ownership, and consumer ownership of economic enterprises.

As long as any given legal framework protects the freedom of paleo-corporate enterprise to act as it wishes, that same framework will confer the same latitude to green free-enterprise at the same time. No differential treatment is required. No tax exempt status is required. Co-operative businesses that redistribute income to the members and book no net profit are tax-free under for-profit rules because ordinary businesses are taxed only on net income, not gross revenue. Therefore efforts to reform the status quo do not need to sap so much of the time and resource base of the progressive community. More emphasis can be shifted to our creative, pro-active efforts to organize and grow a green economy under the existing legal regime. This is a key point.

I believe in pragmatic, experimental diversity, not in ideological purity.

The modern intellectual context is empirical, pragmatic, eclectic, and interdisciplinary. All the old stovepipes and sandboxes of scholarship and science have to be merged. The old jargon in each specialty is similar to the incompatible database structures across different institutions. Thinking and acting outside the boxes may be retarded by old categorical cliches like “public” and “private”.

Look what The Nature Conservancy accomplished by doing something new under existing laws. It just so happens that our legal framework in the US is open to all kinds of business structures (including non-profit) and forms of ownership (including worker-owned and consumer-owned). Our biggest problem is not some bias in the law, real or imagined, against progressive values and ideals. The biggest problem is our habitual cognitive bias and our voluntary dependence on paychecks and benefits from the state or from private authoritarian institutions. I’m not criticizing those whose circumstances throw them into the social safety net, but those of us who carry the great bulk of the economy on our shoulders.  In voluntary servitude we lay our labors at the feet of various masters in return for a few scraps from the table. They have us convinced that if we want change, it can only come through political struggle. But the truth, hidden in plain sight, is that we can build any kind of workplaces and institutions we might envision in our dreams, entirely outside of the political process and outside of the corporate stables. As twenty percent of the population progressives have far more potential power in our skills, our imaginations, and in our wallets that in our votes.

Tragically, instead of seizing the natural birthright of the fruits of our own productivity, we huddle like feudal serfs and wave our pitchforks and torches at ancient castle walls, demanding  justice and fair play from the Money Moguls, Robber Barons, High Sheriffs, dark-robed Judges and Evil Lords holding court in the high towers above us as well-armed convoys and fleets of Black Knights Templar transport fabulous treasures to and from undisclosed off-shore bank vaults.

By working for the bad guys and then turning around and spending most of our pay at what amounts to the corporate company store,  progressives are enabling the enemy. Most white and blue collar workers are mindlessly participating in a share-cropper economy. As Walt Kelly’s character Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We need to stop enabling the enemy and start empowering ourselves.

The progressive community (perhaps 15 to 20 per cent of the US population) can, as I like to say, “circle the wagons”–that is we can invest more time and resources  within the progressive community to build all the kinds of  fair, safe, sustainable, right-sized, co-operative and synergistic social and economic infrastructure(s) that people of reason and good faith can conceive. (Of course much of the inventing was already done for us back in the old rural co-operative days–the days of farmers’ co-ops, rural electric co-ops, telephone co-ops, and such, and in the early urban America where exploited workers formed the first trade unions, credit unions, and other mutual-support societies).

Some Co-op Facts:

• About 30 percent of farmers’ products are marketed through co-ops and there are more than 3,000 farmer-owned cooperatives in the U.S.
• Almost 10,000 credit unions provide financial services to approximately 84 million members.
• Nearly 1,000 rural electric co-ops operate more than half of the nation’s electric distribution lines and provide electricity to more than 37 million people.
• More than 50 million people are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with co-ops.
• Food co-ops have been innovators in the areas of unit pricing, consumer protection, organic and bulk foods, and nutritional labeling.
• In total, 47,000 co-ops in the United States serve 130 million people — 43 percent of the U.S. population.
• More than 50,000 families in the U.S. use cooperative day care centers, giving co-ops a crucial role in the care of our children.
• Two million U.S. households receive telephone service from telephone cooperatives across the country.
• More than 6,400 housing cooperatives exist in the U.S., providing 1.5 million homes.

(http://www.go.coop/co-op-faqs)

By taking the direct economic self-development path, as many Argentine workers did after the economic collapse of that nation, and as many of our other South American neighbors are doing, we can help to insure the future security of our country, reinforce our progressive social values, and offer a dignified way of life with the greatest measure of  liberty, equality, opportunity, and security for all. Why wait for an economic collapse when by a simple shift of of our collective social and economic weight to the “other foot” we might preempt the kind of economic collapse that many nations have experienced and which many more still fear? The progressive community is large enough to accomplish this on our own if we collectively  marshal our resources to that end. We can build suspension bridges and global internets one-handed if we are working under the watchful gaze of “the man”, so why do we seem to slump into a veritable productive stupor when we stray outside the time-clock-punching, florescent-light-flickering, cellular-ring-tone-bleating structure of the corporate environment? Could it be the constant media drone, the educational mesmerism, and the non-stop cultural monotone that’s been fed us from early childhood that has put the warrior in us to sleep? What kind of pots and pans banging will it take to bring us back to our senses and into the streets?

In response to the economic crisis in Argentina, many Argentinian workers occupied the premises of bankrupt businesses and began to run them as worker-owned cooperatives. As of 2005, there were roughly 200 worker-owned businesses in Argentina, most of which were started in response to this crisis.

In the documentary The Take director and journalist Avi Lewis and writer Naomi Klein (author of the international bestsellers No Logo and Disaster Capitalism), champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century with examples from Argentina.

The Chávez government in Venezuela has a policy of financing worker cooperatives, resulting in a growing number in that country.

In the article Building Socialism from Below: The Role of the Communes in Venezuela, Jeffery R. Webber and Susan Spronk interview Antenea Jimenez, “a former militant with the student movement who is now working with a national network of activists who are trying to build and strengthen the comunas. The comunas are community organizations promoted since 2006 by the Chávez government as a way to consolidate a new form of state based upon production at the local level. She told us about the important advances in the process, as well as the significant challenges that remain in the struggle to build a new form of popular power from below.”

Antenea explains:

Historically there were diverse organizations that came together to resolve the problems of the neighborhoods. Our idea was to bring these organizations together to start to participate with concrete issues. We organize workshops. Let’s say that a community does not have water. We will organize a meeting about water. The people say, “Ah see! We can solve our own problems.”

Working first from the basic needs of the people will inspire them to participate. We also work with them to think more about the future, how we can improve things over the long term.

Step by step we work together towards solving simple things, like living together. Things that just require norms, a little bit of effort that helps us live together better. The community might decide that “We can’t drink in the streets,” for example. Other people see these small changes and then join the struggle when they see the results. They see that collective organization is possible.

There is a network of promoters of the comunas that coordinates, but the participation of the people is fundamental. There are people of all kinds that participate in the comuna: people from the left, people from the right, people that don’t care about anything. The people get involved with a problem that touches their family, the school for example because it involves their children.

Not everyone is socialist. Actually, a minority of participants in the comunas are socialists. We have to attend to the issues that matter to them. This can only be done through practice, and this is the way people get involved.

Without waiting for the old economy or the political state to be reformed we can start to shift the weight of our progressive labor, creativity, and capital resources towards the development of small cooperatives and cottage industries in renewable energy, organic food, green manufacturing,  transportation and construction,  ethical banking, humane and affordable insurance, and any other area where there is a niche amidst the social needs and market demands that our worker-owned enterprises can fill.

Another example–Mondragon

“The MONDRAGON Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. Founded in the town of Mondragón in 1956, its origin is linked to the activity of a modest technical college and a small workshop producing paraffin heaters. Currently it is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2009 it was providing employment for 85.066 people working in 256 companies in four areas of activity: Finance, Industry, Retail and Knowledge. The MONDRAGON Co-operatives operate in accordance with a business model based on People and the Sovereignty of Labour, which has made it possible to develop highly participative companies rooted in solidarity, with a strong social dimension but without neglecting business excellence. The Co-operatives are owned by their worker-members and power is based on the principle of one person, one vote. (Wikipedia)

Incubating Green Free-Enterprise

The corporate state will put up obstacles to green free-enterprise, of course, (they are quietly doing that all the time via the convoluted and anti-competitive laws that industry lobbyists ghost-write for Congress), but every profit-driven small businesses and right-wing entrepreneur will scream bloody murder if the bar is raised too high for them. If those turkeys can jump through the hoops, we can, too, with the right kind of progressive organization and support.

Mr. Progressive says: There are so many millions of people turning progressive  that there is probably already a critical mass in half the counties in the country if there were just some existing organization(s) that could serve as a clearing house for expertise on starting a wide range of worker owned coops–a national clearinghouse with a coop “incubator” approach. The critical kickoff play is finding or recruiting a good-sized organization like the Sierra Club, let’s say, that can dedicate some resources to serve as the nucleus of a clearinghouse/incubator for all kinds of worker-owned start-ups and strategic buy-outs of existing business that may be struggling to keep above water in the current economy. The incubator needs to combine cooperative financing, insurance, and technical assistance.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” –Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues

There are already some worker-owned coop support efforts in the US. One is the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives headquartered in San Francisco. There are numerous other links to organizations that promote worker-owned enterprises in the Wikipedia article on worker cooperatives.  What we still lack is an adequate national umbrella and a flagship organization to head the networking effort. In Venezuela the national government has provided that infrastructure. In the US  progressives can not afford to wait for the government. We can pressure our political representatives on this issue, but that is not enough. We need to pressure all our progressive organizations to adopt the green free-enterprise agenda and to actively join the networking and incubating efforts for progressive green free-enterprise in the private sector. That is really what direct economic democracy and participatory economics is all about.

Sidebar:

United Nations Declares 2012 International Year of Cooperatives

According to Melissa Hoover and Beadsie Woo writing in the Christian Science Monitor:

To jumpstart US job market, turn workers into owners

Many Americans build wealth through their home. Why not through work?

(January 11, 2010, San Francisco and Baltimore)

Seldom do the United Steelworkers, the United Nations, and film director Michael Moore express the same idea at the same time. But all have, in their own way, promoted the benefits of cooperative businesses in recent months.

The Steelworkers Union, North America’s largest industrial union, has signed an agreement with a 100,000-member European co-op to help workers here gain an ownership stake in their workplace.

Just last month, the UN declared 2012 the International Year of Cooperatives. It’s urging governments worldwide to collaborate with the co-op movement to reduce poverty and create more productive societies.

And Michael Moore sent a valentine to the co-op movement in his latest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” As a form of economic democracy, he said in an interview, co-ops are “the patriotic thing to do.”

Many people think of co-ops as the hippie-dippy grocery store that sells organic goods. In fact, a 2009 study by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives found more than 29,000 cooperatives in the US, which make $500 billion in annual revenue, support 83,000 people, and pay $25 billion in wages and benefits.

(Melissa Hoover is executive director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. Lillian “Beadsie” Woo is a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore.)

http://www.usworker.coop/node/436

Through our P2P lens (at the technical level) and our green free-enterprise lens (at the popular culture level) we can see ahead to a time when conventional  government is shrinking (just as many conservatives and libertarians hope it will, thinking that will mean greater freedom from taxation and regulation for them) and the paleo-corporate dinosaurs are also gradually fading into history. At the same time, we will have a diverse, P2P, green free-enterprise system growing up beneath the old corporate state’s thinning branches, slowly and organically from the grass roots.

Unlike the old corporate state,  the progressive community doesn’t see less government as more net freedom from rigorous regulation because the progressive community is eager to regulate itself rigorously from within, in a decentralized way full of organic checks and balances, according to ever-higher standards of design, social justice, and environmental stewardship.

If we take a long view, the progressive community can overcome the paleo-corporate regime almost without politics–by slowly but steadily attracting workers and consumers to our green, free enterprises. All we have to do is to get on about our own business…

Progressives, lets start to circle the wagons now, start investing more time, energy and capital inside our own green, progressive, p2p circles, ease off on some of our struggles with the old corporate-state  Tar-baby , pull out the  24-hour-a-day intravenous news feeds,  and for the time being,  completely ignore the fake Tea Party Indians running around out there in the weeds!

Poor Richard

Additional PRA 2010 posts related to this topic:

• Green Revolution 2.0
• Why can’t the public and private sectors just get along?
• Progressive Framing
• Voluntary Servitude
• Inalienable rights and wrongs

Resources

Peer-to-Peer

• P2P Foundation Wiki
• P2P Cook Report Aug 2010 (The COOK Report on Internet Protocol)
• P2P Cook Report Oct 2010 (The COOK Report on Internet Protocol)
• Everything Open and Free – P2P Foundation (Prezi Presentation)
• Everything Open and Free – P2P Foundation (MindMeister Presentation)
• Peer-To-Peer Politics And Its Vision For The Future – Video Interview With Michel Bauwens (w/transcript)
• From Open Business Models To An Economy Of The Commons – Video Interview With Michel Bauwens (w/transcript)

Cooperatives

• Makers Local 256
• 100k_garages.com
• Green Worker Cooperatives
• Go.Coop | Learn about co-ops.
• US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
• The National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA)
• MONDRAGON Corporation homepage
• The International Organisation of Industrial, Artisanal and Service Producers’ Co-operatives, or CICOPA

Green Business

• Worldchanging: Bright Green
• Green America: Economic Action for a Just Planet

Green Banking/Finance

• The Community Investing Center
• e3bank .:|:. enterprise, environment, equity
• First Green Bank
• ShoreBank -Sustainable Business, Non-Profit, and Personal Banking
• GreenBank
• Native American Bank
• Native American Community Development Corp

The post Poor Richard’s Trilogy (Part 3) appeared first on P2P Foundation.