[p2p-research] new crowdsourcing book is out

[Samuel Rose]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 1:32 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Sam,
>
> concerning hype cycles, I think we should be careful to distinguish our own
> circles, even expanded with voices like Wired etc... with the more general
> business population ... you'd be surprised ...
>

I agree. I also anticipate within the coming few years that the general
business world, which is already starting to pay some attention to our
circles, will begin the process of selectively  "co-opting" many of the
ideas/concepts that originate and have developed among people in the circles
we are involved in. Perhaps that will make the necessity to distinguish even
more important?



>
>
> and jeff is the same guy who started the hype in the first place with his
> article in Wired ...
>
> Michel
>


Jeff seems like a great guy, and I had followed his blog for a while
starting a year ago when he first started spreading the "crowdsourcing"
meme. After a while, my opinion of a lot of the "crowdsourcing" business
schemes was that I think we (as in we humans on this world) can do at least
a little bit better.

I think a lot of the participants in the communities have also realized
this, and many of them have moved on.

Examples include the demise of Cambrian House:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/12/when-crowdsourcing-fails-cambrian-house-headed-to-the-deadpool/

(what is interesting there is that a huge amount of capital is *not* needed
to carry out this concept)

The lender exodus from prosper.com over a year ago, and their abandonment of
the "group" requirement for obtaining loans
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-prosper-lender-rebellion-and-the-us-creditborrowing-black-hole/2007/08/16and
http://future.iftf.org/2007/08/finance-prosper.html

http://www.crowdspirit.com/ is still under construction, still not a fully
functioning project 2 years after it is started.

Also, despite the initial hype behind
http://aswarmofangels.com/participation dropped quite significantly
last year around this time.

These are a few examples, and I think I could find quite a few more. In at
least 3 cases (not crowdspirit apparently), it appears to me that the
problem boils down to the way that the community feels about being treated
like an expendable resource (a "crowd" who can be "sourced", exploited,
capitalized upon).

Community participation and peer production can work, but the community
needs to be allowed to establish themselves as a real commons, a
self-governing system. They need to be listened to, because they can so
easily leave. The early "crowdsourcing" attempts from a year ago or so, are
actually burning a lot of people on the idea of peer production in general.
The time is actually quite ripe for someone to come along and offer ethical,
community-driven peer production systems. But this type of system is:


   1. Probably should not be approached as a typical internet start up
   venture seeking capital
   2. Could have money-making businesses that are associated with it, but
   itself should be managed as a commons

more later..running out of time..
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