the TIMN forms (not to mention fiske’s forms as well) have existed, spread throughout life, since ancient times. but they have arisen and matured at different rates, in different eras (for reasons discussed elsewhere). and as each form has arisen, a new realm or system of activity has take shape around it: e.g., the rise of +I leads to development of the state and associated politics as a major realm, even though hierarchical institutions show up elsewhere in society too (like business companies).

these and other dynamics about the rise of earlier forms and their realms have implications for projecting what +N will do, and i think also for P2P. most important, its rise must end up defining a new realm, at least the core of that realm. if it does not do so, it cannot gain its fullest philosophical and doctrinal import. (maybe that’s the limitation of fiske’s EM form; it’s about a set of fairness principles and behaviors that are so widely distributed they cannot define a single realm, unlike his CS or AR.)

thus a challenge for me, and i believe you as well, as we try to look ahead, is to figure out exactly what philosophical and doctrinal principles are so embedded in +N, and/or P2P, that a new realm emerges, a realm that is different from the prevailing ones. another way to ask is, what aren’t advanced societies getting done using existing forms that they could get done using a new form.

asking that about +N or P2P when their rise is still new right now in the 21st century is a bit like asking, back in say the 16th or 17th century, how +M (the rise of markets) would affect societies. who could foretell +M would not only reshape their economies but also enable the spread of market principles into politics, resulting in liberal democracies?!

even though it’s early and it’s dim, my thinking is that the answer will take shape around some civil-society activity that will better address social equity or public-goods matters. a new realm will emerge around that. at the same time, +N will affect the other realms. it will give rise to what i call the nexus state as a successor to the nation state, but it will still have hierarchy at its core. there will also be some new modes of economic production, but that won’t be the key, since +M markets will endure at the core.

if this line of thinking is on track, one possible implication here is, don’t hang the future of P2P too much on new modes of production. look for something else as a central emphasis.

onward.

A big thanks for this cogent response.

Some reactions:

1) first, you and Fiske are not talking about the same thing; yours is a governance typology, his a relational model. In my view, different relational models can co-exist in societies dominated with a particular governance model

2) second, I associate P2P indeed with CS, i..e communal shareholding, because it is contributions to undifferentiated wholes, without expectation of a direct return from a particular individual

3) I do find the evolutionary implication of CS coming first, problematic, because of my association of P2P with CS, and of the tribal economy with the gift economy.

In my view of the literature, I’ve seen a lot of people describing tribal economies as gift economies and therefore Equality Matching … Perhaps he is talking about the very early, more undifferentiated tribal forms, where there was little exchange with the outside? And I’m looking at the more complex forms, using sophisticated gifting circles?

4) To remind you of the essential P2P challenge to TIMN: we are focusing on distributed networks in particular, and of a particular governance forms that emerges with self-aggregation in peer production; while for me, TIMN generalizes different network forms into one model

5) Otherwise, I agree that P2P will emerge and operate within continuing state and market forms for a long time to come

Michel

first, regarding fiske: i came across his work a few years ago. it remains intriguing that he too is working on four forms, and that we each started at about the same time in the early 1990s, he a couple years earlier.

to recap, his four forms — or relational models — are communal sharing (CS), authority ranking (AR), equality matching (EM), and market pricing (MP). he indicates that people learn them starting in childhood, in that order. he also explains that they may occur in different mixes in different settings. if he offered a simple summary table about them, i’d post it, but the only table i find (fiske, 1991) goes on for pages (too complicated).

i have quibbles with his details. for example, he says (fiske & haslam, 2005, p. 271) that elders deciding who marries whom is an instance of AR — but i’d say that in tribal/clan settings it has a lot more to do with CS. [yikes, so many letters. sorry, readers.]

but even if we handle my quibbles, i still wonder about his framework. it’s good that his CS, AR, and MP models align respectively with my tribal (T), hierarchical institutional (I), and market (M) forms. as i recall, he agreed in an email that his CS corresponds to tribes (my T).

but that leaves me wondering what to do with his EM. it does not quite match up to my notion of networks (the N in TIMN). and when i look at the details he lays out, it seems to me that some pieces belong under one form, and other pieces under another. yet, of his four models, it seems the one most suited to energizing civil-society relationships, though i don’t see where/whether he makes that clear. moreover, his evolutionary view — CS comes before AR, comes before EM, comes before MP — makes MP seem to be the most mature and sophisticated of all his relational models, which makes me cringe a bit.

so, i’m continuing to think that, from a social systems perspective, EM should be broken up and distributed. i’m also thinking there’s a relational form that lies beyond, that’s not in his framework yet. perhaps something to do with knowledge-searching teamwork that doesn’t quite fit under his existing models.

btw, i gather you associate P2P mainly with his CS (though i earlier thought you associated P2P more with EM?). yet, fiske (table, 1991) associates peer behavior with EM, not CS. but he associates the commons with CS, not EM. so, i suppose some matters remain to be sorted out regarding P2P vis a vis fiske’s models. i admit to being a little confused.

i quite agree that there are different kinds of networks, and that this matters for governance. indeed, there are different kinds of tribes, hierarchical institutions, and markets too. that might be for another set of tables (but it’s not high on my agenda right now).

as for TIMN vis a vis P2P, there is still much to discuss. in my view, TIMN means that +N is next, and that this will alter the earlier forms but not subordinate or absorb them. for +N to work well in advanced societies, culture wars (T-level) must subside. states (+I) will continue to be needed, in new ways. markets (+M) must be brought back into balanced association with the other forms. and maybe much of what you (and i too) like about P2P will take place along the way. at the same time, i sense that your view of P2P may be much more expansive across all the forms than is my view of how +N may shape TIMN. we shall see. — onward, david