We had a lot less readers when we started the blog at the beginning of the year, so this is the start of a series of recaps of valuable material which appeared earlier on, and many of our readers might have missed.

P2P Culture (open, free and participatory cultures)

Distinguishing Open Access from Open Process

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=42

“I heard that there are two kinds of “open.” Open as in open access — to knowledge, archives, medical information etc. (like Public Library of Science or Project Gutenberg). And open as in open process — work that is out in the open, open to input, even open-ended (like Linux, Wikipedia or our experiment with MItch Stephens, Without Gods).”

The Three Meanings of Openness: legal, social, technological

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=30

The Three Power Systems: Hierarchy, Heterarchy, and Responsible Autonomy

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=29

“If hierarchy is the power system of centralized systems, then heterarchical power is the power system of decentralized systems and Responsible Autonomy is the power system of distributed systems.”

The Logic of Affinity vs. the Logic of Hegemony

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=12

“In political strategy, the old leftist view was antagonist, two ‘classes’ fighting for hegemony, facing each other as two hierarchies. Today, as distributed networks arise, with their ever shifting connections, it is increasingly difficult to recognize such clear opposing camps. Many people are therefore shifting from an antagonistic stance, “we’re against”, to a logic of creative action, seeking like-minded people through networks. That’s the logic of affinity.”

Nicholas Bentley on Intellectual Contributions as an alternative to traditional copyright

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=9

P2P Economics

David Bollier on capturing the Wisdom of Crowds (P2P and the Market dialogue)

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=44, http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=40

“David Bollier wrote in his comment: “Who owns the wisdom of the crowd? Whomever is able to capture it. The key to the sustainability of a user-based commons (such as a free software community) is a legal or institutional mechanism such as the GPL, which assures that the “surplus value” created by the commons stays WITHIN the commons (or at least is not over-exploited by private appropriators). If user-based communities are going to be able to acquire long-term equity in their own production, we will need to create innovative instruments to assure that private capital cannot own and control it.”

Socially Centered P2P vs. Business Centered P2P

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=43

P2P and Quarternary Economics, a dialogue with Wim Nusselder

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=39

I strongly recommend this typology of the evolution of human economic civilization.

“The fourth type of economy is organized by ideological leaders. It is organized with relations of membership and contribution. Common goals and common interests provide additional meaning. To convince (others that your way of reaching goals or serving interests is the best way) or to follow others, that is the question. Contributing to the best of one’s ability to common goals and interests is normative. The defining characteristic of this fourth form of economy compared to the earlier forms is the voluntary choice to ‘belong’ or ‘not to belong’. Ideological leaders make their followers identify with their group by convincing them. ‘Belonging’ or ‘not belonging’ to groups depends on the strength of identification with their common goals and shared interests.

‘Quaternary societies’ contain even more overlapping and complementary groups. ‘Belonging’ to different groups at the same time is enabled by complex, multi-layered identities. Boundaries are even less clear-cut. They can be determined by asking whether someone contributes or not to the common goals and shared interests, however little. ‘Quaternary economies’ can pool even more resources, enable more division of labour, specialization, economies of scale etc. than tertiary ones, because people can participate in several different roles at the same time. One can be a specialist in one field and in other fields a layman, who can only follow what others propose to contribute to reaching common goals and serve shared interests. Our present economy is of course a mix of all these forms.”

P2P and the Distribution of Everything

http://blog.p2pfoundation.com/?p=23

What is Netarchical Capitalism?

http://blog.p2pfoundation.com/?p=19; http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=18

“So we can clearly see that for these firms, accumulating knowledge assets is not crucial, owning patents is not crucial, though, driven by the profit motive and the desire to obtain monopolies, they use it as a secondary strategy. You could argue that they are ‘vectors’ in the sense of Wark, but they do not have a monopoly on it, as in the mass media age. Rather they are ‘acceptable’ intermediaries for the actors of the participatory culture. They exploit the economy of attention of the networks, even as they enable it. They are crucially dependent on the trust of the user communities. Yet, as private for-profit companies they try to rig the game, but they can only get away with so much, because, if they loose the trust, users would leave in droves, as we have seen in the extraordinary volatility of the search engine market before Google’s dominance. Such companies reflect a deeper change into the general practices of business, which is increasingly being re-organized around participatory customer cultures.”

Kevin Carson on the economics of scale and the trend towards Desktop Manufacturing

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=8

P2P Spirituality

John Heron on the concept and history of relational spirituality

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=47

“Relational spirituality defines itself in contrast to the vertical spirituality that focuses on inner transformation alone, in abstraction from the relational basis of human life.”

Jorge Ferrer on Participatory Spirituality

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=5

“An integrative and embodied spirituality would effectively undermine the current model of human relations based on comparison, which easily leads to competition, rivalry, envy, jealousy, conflict, and hatred. When individuals develop in harmony with their most genuine vital potentials, human relationships characterized by mutual exchange and enrichment would naturally emerge because people would not need to project their own needs and lacks onto others. More specifically , the turning off of the comparing mind would dismantle the prevalent hierarchical mode of social interaction—paradoxically so extended in spiritual circles—in which people automatically look upon others as being either superior or inferior, as a whole or in some privileged respect. This model—which ultimately leads to inauthentic and unfulfilling relationships, not to mention hubris and spiritual narcissism—would naturally pave the way for an I-Thou mode of encounter in which people would experience others as equals in the sense of their being both superior and inferior to themselves in varying skills and areas of endeavor (intellectually, emotionally, artistically, mechanically, interpersonally, and so forth), but with none of those skills being absolutely higher or better than others. It is important to experience human equality from this perspective to avoid trivializing our encounter with others as being merely equal.”