* Essay: The political economy of information production in the Social Web: chances for reflection on our institutional design. Vasilis Kostakis. Contemporary Social Science. June 2012
Our P2P Foundation Greece collaborator has published a new scientific paper:
“This paper is based on the idea that information production on theWeb is mainly taking place within either proprietary- or Commons-based platforms. The productive processes of those two ‘workplaces’ of information production do share some certain characteristics, but they also have several crucial differences. These two modes of production are discussed here and it is investigated how production is organised in each case. In addition, the paper concludes by articulating the lessons taught by the investigation of the structural relationships of information production for enhancing modern societies’ institutional design.”
Excerpt from Introduction, by Vasilis Kostakis:
“The idea that the main body of information production on the Social Web is taking place within either proprietary- or Commons-based platforms is used in this paper as a point of departure. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this seemingly contradictory distinction, focusing on the common characteristics as well as the essential differences of these two modes of production, and it argues that the lessons taught by the investigation of their differences can be of a particular interest to social policy. To become more specific, it is articulated that what sets Commons-based peer production apart from the proprietary-based mode of production—the ‘industrial one’, according to Benkler (2006)—is its mode of governance and property, whose foundation stones are the abundance of resources, openness, commons ownership and the underestimated, from the Standard Textbooks Economics theories, power of meaningful human cooperation that delivers innovative results, such as the Mozilla Firefox browser, BIND (the most widely used DNS software) or Sendmail (the router of the majority of email). This paper’s narrative begins with some succinct definitions of the central concepts to the discussion that follows. It is then described how the information production in both proprietary-based and Commons-based platforms is organised, arguing that the latter mode inaugurates an alternative path of economic development—building on Bauwens’ (2005a, 2005b) triptych of peer production, governance and property. Concluding, it is claimed that the processes of Commons-based peer production can offer interesting insights for a more productive and meaningful institutional design of the modern, information-based societies while new technological capabilities, such as desktop manufacturing, are developing.”
Instead of conclusions: chances for reflection on our institutional design
“Light has been shed on the structural relationships of information production with a focus on certain essential concepts for political economy, i.e. labour, property and governance. In proprietary-based platforms, it might seem that there is a win–win model with profit generation for the owners and satisfaction of users’ higher needs such as communication, reputation-building and knowledge gain. The owners of the platforms renounce their dependence on the regime of artificial scarcity, celebrating an age of information abundance while enabling social participation. However, as mentioned, the architecture of proprietary platforms combines open and closed elements to ensure a measure of profit and control.
This makes proprietary platforms dangerous as trustees of the common use value. Moreover, issues and problems such as privacy and electronic surveillance; exploitation; and online manipulation and control, come to the fore due to owners’ speculative nature. Hence, the Internet and its Social Web platforms exhibit both emancipatory and exploitative aspects, and the political struggle of online communities and users should be to foster the one over the other, strengthening the Commons sphere. The Commons-based peer production brings to the fore, amongst others, two ideas which have been consistently neglected in the design processes of the modern institutional systems of Western societies. Firstly, it is the power of human cooperation that becomes evident through the study of the social production which is taking place on the Web. As Benkler (2011) elaborates, the currently dominant socio-economic paradigm is premised on the idea that humans are driven solely by self-interest, guided by the invisible hand of the market or the iron fist of a centralised government. Benkler draws conclusions from hundreds of diverse studies and uses a large amount of case studies, amongst others many Commons-based peer production projects, to show ‘how cooperation trumps selfinterest— maybe not all the time, for everyone, but far more consistently than we’ve long thought’ (p. 249). We, as a society, following Benkler’s thought, should dedicate ‘the next fifty years to the vastly more complex but infinitely more rewarding task of designing the systems we inhabit for the kind of diverse, complex, but overall fair-minded, moral, sociable, and humane beings we in fact are’ (p. 249). Furthermore, it was claimed that the concept of abundance, in relation to the emergence of power structures and autonomy, is another idea that the social production of the Web has brought to the forefront. It was argued how abundance resists to the emergence of power structures in the online communities of peer projects, giving rise to new modes of governance, i.e. peer governance. It can be also articulated that in the social production of the Web abundance and autonomy seem interrelated concepts: information, inherently abundant with zero-marginal costs, and the cheap ICT, i.e. both essential means of production, are distributed to the people who are eager to contribute to the creation, the advancement and the enrichment of the Commons sphere. Thus, it can be claimed that the productive models, premised on abundance and, thus, autonomy, exemplified by FOSS or Wikipedia, should be counted in the institutional designs in the fore-coming years; wherever it is possible, we should pull down the barriers of artificial scarcity, often set by legal restrictive regimes, enabling abundance. If nanotechnology and engineering succeed in making capabilities such as desktop manufacturing and three-dimensional (3D) printing—a technology which has the potential to transcend mass production, being more flexible, productive, customisable and cost-effective (The Economist, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c)—accessible to the masses by dropping the costs (in the fashion of microprocessors evolution since the 1970s), the possibilities for the current information-based techno-economic paradigm become arguably unprecedented, connecting the social production on the Web with the low marginal costs of material production and the do-it-yourself (DIY) culture (for an informative account of DIYand open design movements, see van Abel et al., 2011). Think of collaboratively designing a car, like software, and be able to produce its parts using desktop manufacturing technologies and setting them up, say, like IKEA furniture. Then, what may lie ahead might be, to put it in the Perezian style (Perez, 2002), a ‘Golden Age’, in terms of innovation, prosperity, development and well-being, built upon creative synergies and alliances amongst Commons-based communities, the market and the state.”
Citation: Vasilis Kostakis (2012): The political economy of information production in the Social Web: chances for reflection on our institutional design, Contemporary Social Science: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences, DOI:10.1080/21582041.2012.691988