I have tried to put my case for peer to peer, in a succinct format and adapted to the region where I live, it could in my mind be used as a syndicated column that would appear with country-specific references. I would appreciate any distribution amongst the Asian blog community.

Here is the text:

As our world is becoming more and more networked, distributed networks are becoming the norm for the design of technologies and social organizations, and a new type of human relationship is arising with it: peer to peer. The new mode of relating to each other, which results in new social processes such as peer production, peer governance, and new modes of ‘peer property’ has significant impact on development and innovation policies. Here’s why.

First observation: our most important technologies are taking the form of peer to peer. The internet is a point to point network. The second generation Web, called Web 2.0 or the read/write web, allows anyone, without too much technical difficulty, from any computer, to publish his writings, to ‘podcast’ audiofiles in MP3 format, or to ‘webcast’ audiovisual streams with BitTorrent, to any other internet access point in the world. The filesharing of music and other content has become a massive social phenomenon, and almost half of American teenagers have become content producers themselves. Moreover, a new generation of technologies, called viral communicators or ‘meshworks’, can simply connect to each other, without prior infrastructure, using their own surplus capacities to enable the network. Skype, the new internet-based telephony, with tens of millions of users, has been built on that principle and it is expected that wireless broadband will rapidly grow using these same principles.

Second observation: new social, political and technical organizations are taking on a peer to peer format. The Zopabank in the UK allows any person to lend money directly to lenders, using a distributed risk methodology, without the intervention of any bank. It works, and is growing rapidly. In Uganda, Kiva has started the first peer to peer microfinance bank, no paternalistic NGO needs to be involved. More significant than these two isolated examples: the alterglobalisation movement is organized as a network of networks, uses peer to peer technologies to communicate and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. Peer-configured mobile phones, using buddy lists and even specialized political software such as Textmob, have been instrumental in many recent political mobilizations in Asia.

The peer to peer relational dynamic takes on three basic forms.

The first is ‘peer production’. Linux, the fast rising operating system that is challenging Microsoft, Firefox, the fast-gaining browser, the Apache server which is the backbone of the internet; all these are cooperatively produced without corporate hierarchies or market allocation, but through the social relations of those involved. Tens of millions of people are producing content on the web: alone in blogs but by continuously pointing to material produced by their peers, in a global dialogue producing the tens of billions of pages, only a fraction of which is indexed by Google. And millions of people are producing collective knowledge through cooperative wiki’s. Learning has become a peer-based process, using communally validated microcontent rather than institutionally mediated macrocontent. The crown jewel is of course Wikipedia, the peer-produced encyclopedia that is taking the world by storm, has already more articles, on more subjects, in more languages, than the venerable Encyclopedia Brittanica. While peer production is geared to use value (and not exchange value for the market), it is already enabling the growth of many service-orientated businesses. Participatory platforms for minipreneurs that want to directly engage with each other, as they do on eBay.)

Second observation: new social, political and technical organizations are taking on a peer to peer format. The Zopabank in the UK allows any person to lend money directly to lenders, using a distributed risk methodology, without the intervention of any bank. It works, and is growing rapidly. In Uganda, Kiva has started the first peer to peer microfinance bank, no paternalistic NGO needs to be involved, while the Southeast Asian initiative P2P aid.org aims to help get citizen to citizen aid to places hit with a catastrophe.. More significant than these two isolated examples: the alterglobalisation movement is organized as a network of networks, uses peer to peer technologies to communicate and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. Peer-configured mobile phones, using buddy lists and even specialized political software such as Textmob, have been instrumental in many recent political mobilizations in Asia.

The peer to peer relational dynamic takes on three basic forms.

The first is ‘peer production’. Linux, the fast rising operating system that is challenging Microsoft, Firefox, the fast-gaining browser, the Apache server which is the backbone of the internet; all these are cooperatively produced without corporate hierarchies or market allocation, but through the social relations of those involved. Tens of millions of people are producing content on the web: alone in blogs but by continuously pointing to material produced by their peers, in a global dialogue producing the tens of billions of pages, only a fraction of which is indexed by Google. And millions of people are producing collective knowledge through cooperative wiki’s. Learning has become a peer-based process, using communally validated microcontent rather than institutionally mediated macrocontent. The crown jewel is of course Wikipedia, the peer-produced encyclopedia that is taking the world by storm, has already more articles, on more subjects, in more languages, than the venerable Encyclopedia Brittanica. While peer production is geared to use value (and not exchange value for the market), it is already enabling the growth of many service-orientated businesses. Participatory platforms for minipreneurs that want to directly engage with each other, as they do on eBay. Many of the new and fast-growing companies, such as Amazon (relying on customer provided reviews), Google (whose value derives from the access it provides to peer-produced content), eBay (enabling the creation of an endless number of peer to peer marketplace which can operate without intermediary), are in fact derivatives of peer production. U.S.-based venture capital is already pouring hundreds of millions dollars in open source-based companies, who all rely essentially on peer production.

The second form is peer governance. These production processes have to be managed, and are no longer following the traditional hierarchical model of the corporation, which does not function in a network; moreover, since peer production is geared to use value (universal free access), market pricing is not used to determine what gets produced or not, but rather it is the self-unfolding desires and need for creativity, and recognition, of millions of individuals. Peer governance is a seriously understudied aspect and challenges many of the assumptions, both of authoritarian dictatorships and corporate leadership, but also of representative democracy. Peer governance and multistakeholdership will fundamentally remodel how the world is managed.

The third form is peer property. Wikipedia, Linux, and all peer ‘products’, are not privately owned, and they are not ‘publicly owned’ by the state. They form a new type of public domain or ‘Digital Commonwealth’. As property, using the General Public License, Open Source licenses, or Creative Commons License, they share two important aspects: 1) attribution: the creator is always recognized; 2) share-alike: you can use it for free, on the condition that the users of your modification in turn enjoy the same rights. This has enabled the rapid ‘viral multiplication’ of this universal common property regime to peer-produced content), eBay (enabling the creation of an endless number of peer to peer marketplace which can operate without intermediary), are in fact derivatives of peer production. U.S.-based venture capital is already pouring hundreds of millions dollars in open source-based companies, who all rely essentially on peer production.

The second form is peer governance. These production processes have to be managed, and are no longer following the traditional hierarchical model of the corporation, which does not function in a network; moreover, since peer production is geared to use value (universal free access), market pricing is not used to determine what gets produced or not, but rather it is the self-unfolding desires and need for creativity, and recognition, of millions of individuals. Peer governance is a seriously understudied aspect and challenges many of the assumptions, both of authoritarian dictatorships and corporate leadership, but also of representative democracy. Peer governance and multistakeholdership will fundamentally remodel how the world is managed.

The third form is peer property. Wikipedia, Linux, and all peer ‘products’, are not privately owned, and they are not ‘publicly owned’ by the state. They form a new type of public domain or ‘Digital Commonwealth’. As property, using the General Public License, Open Source licenses, or Creative Commons License, they share two important aspects: 1) attribution: the creator is always recognized; 2) share-alike: you can use it for free, on the condition that the users of your modification in turn enjoy the same rights. This has enabled the rapid ‘viral multiplication’ of this universal common property regime.

The further emergence of P2P depends on the spread of distributed forms of organisation in our society: the distribution of intellect, through advances in general education; the distribution of the means of production, through cheap computers; and finally: the distribution of financial capital.

Taken together, these are not marginal developments, but pointers to structural change. We have a new mode of production, that is more productive in many instances that for profit production and state ownership; we have a mode of governance that is more efficient in managing complex global projects involving hundreds of thousands of collaborators; we have a form of property which is more democratic and guarantees better access than either private property or state property. It is a mistake to think that it only works in the immaterial sphere of information, it is growing in the world of material production as well. America’s second mode of transport, carpooling, is entirely organized around peer to peer principles. Contemporary production is essentially immaterial design, which could take place using such principles, and forms of material production can be envisaged, which use distributed forms of capital. Moreover, the trend towards esktop manufacturing is growing very fast (emachineshop.com, ifabricate.com) and personal fabricators are on the horizon of possibility.

What does this all mean? That many debates about the alternative between the neoliberal market and interventionist state are becoming obsolete. Because a third player has arisen directly from civil society in the form of the Commons and it is increasingly demanding its place in the global concert. That the rapid extension of this social practice points to a underlying tsunami affecting the younger generations: new modes of feeling and being, new modes of knowing, new constellations of values. It has all the trappings of a social and political revolution to come: a Commons-based civilization within a reformed market and a reformed state.

What could it mean for Thailand Social and political reform movements in Thailand should not only look to the past, but also look at how Thai society could be enriched and developed by enabling peer models and Commons-based governance models, such as the use of trusts for protecting the environment of rare natural resources. The state and government should know that the new restrictive intellectual property legislation imposed by Western powers actually significantly restrains and slows down innovation, and that open access to research is a key enabler of innovation; businesses should know that it pays to enable peer production and user-centric innovation from their own customers. Open source business models should be explored by Thai innovators.

On January 20, Michel Bauwens, who teaches Globalization at Payap University, will present a lecture on peer to peer at the Asian New Media conference, organized by http://www.seacem.org

Contact the author via the Chiang Mai-based Foundation for P2P Alternatives at: michelsub2004ATgmail.com

What does this all mean? That many debates about the alternative between the neoliberal market and interventionist state are becoming obsolete. Because a third player has arisen directly from civil society in the form of the Commons and it is increasingly demanding its place in the global concert. That the rapid extension of this social practice points to a underlying tsunami affecting the younger generations: new modes of feeling and being, new modes of knowing, new constellations of values. It has all the trappings of a social and political revolution to come: a Commons-based civilization within a reformed market and a reformed state.

What could it mean for Asia? Social and political reform movements in Asia should not only look to the past, but also look at how Asian society could be enriched and developed by enabling P2P models of production, governance, and property. The state and government should know that the new restrictive intellectual property legislation imposed by Western powers actually significantly restrains and slows down innovation, and that open access to research is a key enabler of innovation; businesses should know that it pays to enable peer production and user-centric innovation from their own customers. Open source business models should be explored by Asian innovators.