A crucial aspect of peer to peer theory, the attempt to produce a theory that aims to understand peer to peer processes, and also a key differentiator between the more liberal and the more radical interpretations, is whether peer producton, the common production through communities, as evidenced in free software, linux and wikipedia, can be expanded to the physical sphere, and additionally, whether that expansion can be enclosed in the money economy.
My own take at the P2P Foundation is of the more expansive school of thought, we think that peer to peer has the potential, and even likelyhood, of becoming the new core of the next political economy, the one that will arise to save us from the very success of capitalism, and its corollary: the destruction and depletion of the biosphere.
Today, as if often said, we treat physical resources as if they were infinite, and the market does not bear most of these costs of negative externalization, and we artificially attempt to make infinite non-rival (even anti-rival) resources, scarce. A P2P-based society would simply reverse that trend, it would treat scarce resources as being scarce, and would free the natural abundance of a free culture. The key, in terms of human identity and desire, is to have a successfull shift from the accumulation of physical assets and resources, to the accumalation of immaterial ‘assets’.
If we ask ourselves, through what strategies and trends could we see an expansion of peer production to the material sphere, I usually give two answers, one is the ‘distribution of everything’. To the degree we succeed in expanding the distributed format, in intellect, productive capital, financial capital, we expand the space where peer production can thrive. Additionally, if we can envisage a process whereby the design phase of industrial production is separated from its physical production space, there is no limit to the use of open source methodologies in the design phase. We can easily imagine for example, the design of a car that would be vastly superior to the car designs by corporations. But the question remains on how to finance its physical construction. But we already see companies in the software industry, who successfully link their market-based aims and behaviour, with a dependence on a intellectual commons and an open source community, fruitfully building a ecology from which all parties profit. It’s a model that can be expanded to other sectors of the economy.
All of this above is a summary of my views so far, and a preparation for my review of an important contribution by Martin Springer, which is the subject of the next entry.
Michel, you write: “We can easily imagine for example, the design of a car that would be vastly superior to the car designs by corporations. But the question remains on how to finance its physical construction. But we already see companies in the software industry, who successfully link their market-based aims and behaviour, with a dependence on a intellectual commons and an open source community, fruitfully building a ecology from which all parties profit. It’s a model that can be expanded to other sectors of the economy.”
Let me say that, if we can co-design a car, or a house, or a machine, or another similar structure online right now, we can also design it in a way that would allow people to physically construct it for less money, and within the means of general fabrication industries available to the average person right now. Basically, we can co-design the contruction process of the car as well. The actual cosntruction could be done by a combination of different independent fabricators. This could actually create a new industry. Because, many of the parts of such a car could be fabricated on CAD/CAM or CAX machines that are wideley available. So, people who want to be paid to fabricate peer produced design can do so.
To peer-design a car like we are talking about would be no small task, though. It has taken http://www.theoscarproject.org/index.php 6 years and they are still in the concept phase. However, they are making mch more progress, and I believe that projects like this will progress more quickly because the tools to make them progress more quickly are becoming cheaper and easier to access and use.
Also, there is the http://www.osgv.org/
The thought: community-based, viral peer education comes to mind. This could be a quick way to reskill neighborhoods open to the idea. Teach one skill you know to a stranger in your neighborhood until they can teach it to someone else. You should be with them for 3 occassions to support their first tries at teaching another before they can go off on their own. Maybe people could also swap skills.
When I look at this: http://www.osgv.org/cdv1.php
And the question “How much will it cost?” their answer is: “Preliminary analysis indicates that such car can be built for under USD$15,000 in large quantities. Actual production cost could be higher, depending on the supply of materials.”
But here again, the costs can be brought down in the design, and through research of fabrication costs and materials. This research can be done in a peer to peer way. so can the whole administration of ordering the cars,a nd manufacturing them.
For instance, manufacturing could become a fabricate-on-demand system that is distributed to networks of many different independent fabrictors who bid on indvidual jobs, and take their piece of the project and create it, then send their completed piece to the contract assembler. These independent fabricators can be monitored by reputation systems. The most specialized and costly service would be the final assembly, as far as I can tell, but even this could be done by many private, small companies based on demand.So, you could place an order for a car, and have it created and assembled in maybe 3 weeks, or even possibly less. The bidding system finds the people who will make you car parts for the best price, and the people who will sell you car parts for the best price, with the best reputation.
The people who would lose would be the early adopters, the ones who actually have to go out and get these fabricators and assemblers to participate in this system, and who have to settle for the possible sub-quality output of the first cars, or other products produced. But, I believe this would be short lived.
Sam: I find your responses very illuminating. However, let me play advocate of the devil here. Granted, that it can be done. Clearly in the design phase, we have evidence of the advantages and even superiority of such peer production. But in the material sphere, it’s not enough that it, as you indeed explain convincingly, but that it can be done, more productively than with the old system. I presume that the industrial system also looks at the cheapest possible way to produce such items, and their model is a response to that, in order to obtain advantages of scale, streamlining of efforts, etc..
Thanks, Michel, for the response. I actually think that the biggest roadblock in the material sphere would be getting fabricators to participate. And, also, getting enough people who want to by a peer to peer designed car to make it worth the time/effort for the fabricators. I know that the technology already exits to make material peer production of a car like I describe possible. But, the people with the knowledge and access to the technology would not be willing to actually do it unless enough people were willing to pay.
Alternatively, there could be some type of non-profit cooperative/administration entity that helps bridge the gaps between the networks of people involved. A non-profit that exists to help facilitate between the design commons and the for-profit material producers. Or, the cooperative could be a financial commons created by everyone involved with it, that pools their money to create the best infrastructures for material production. Or, it could both pool money into a commons for creating infrastructure, and also outsources to for-profit companies when possible or desireable. This pooling governance and non-profit administration actually comes closer to resembling the open source software production models than the for-profit production networks that I talked about above.
We’ve also discussed this type of cooperative money-pooling with regards to financing things like fiber to home, so that people own their own last-mile broadband connection to their homes. This cooperative financing for material production could actually interface well with open design production.