[p2p-research] [Apropos Two Theories] New comment on New paper on “The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revis....

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear David,

Thank you so much for engaging with us on our little criticisms, I would
rather not call it a critique yet, as it was based on a first cursory
reading of the postscript section only.

If you agree, some further reactions.

First of all, I want to reiterate how useful I have found your work past and
present, including your TIMN framework

I had excerpted from it here
http://p2pfoundation.net/Tribes%2C_Institutions%2C_Markets%2C_Networks and
here http://p2pfoundation.net/David_Ronfeldt_on_the_Evolution_of_Governance

I'm using a very similar scheme from Alan Page Fiske, which I think is
totally congruent with yours, it's just that instead of taking a view of the
social formations, he takes a view of the relational dynamics as the
starting point, as do I.

See http://p2pfoundation.net/Relational_Model_Typology_-_Fiske

The main idea then, is that history starts with a equality matching (gift
economies of the tribal period) (TRIBES), the hierarchical allocation of
authority ranking (INSTITUTIONS), the market pricing dynamic (MARKETS) and
communal shareholding (NETWORKS)

Each relational dynamic has always existed, but there seem be successive
historical epochs where they are dominant, and therefore dominate the form
of society, including the other relational logics.

I guess an important question would be how much you would see your vision of
networks as indeed dominated by the communal shareholding logic, but this
issue could be solved by recognizing different network typologies as well,
and obviously, I would then be talking about a particular format of networks
that arises around the CS dynamic.

If such changes do indeed occur in history, and these indeed occur over the
very long term (centuries), then we would expect:

1) a first phase in which the old dominant format (say Tribes adapting to
the early forms of tributary power), absorbs the new format, and can even
use it for strengthening itself. So today, the markets would absorb the p2p
dynamic, as would the state form.

2) in a second phase they would exist uneasily together, eventually forming
an unstable parity (I'm thinking of 18th century Europe, or the 5 to 10th
century transition from slavery to feudalism)

3) in a third phase though, the emerging form would start to become dominant
and in turn, the other forms would start to adapt to the new meta-logic and
meta-system.

If that were true, and that is my thesis, then, we would eventually have a
p2p-network based logic society, but co-existing with peer-informed or
peer-transformed tribes, institutions, and markets, to use ure TIMN
language.

This is of course speculation, and in any case, we are now in the emerging
phase of peer to peer logics coming to the fore, which means that the old
forms are indeed using them to strenghtem themselves.

For example, the Obama campaign is the first to successfully instrumentalize
the p2p dynamics of social networks, for its own aims.

So we have a top-down logic (a group wanting dominance in the institutional
field), using the new forms, but at the same time, the new forms, however
emergent, also exist on their own, and have their own logic and strenght and
a mutual adaptation arises, in which the instrumentalizing party (Obama),
needs to adapt just as much as do the social networks they are mobilizing.

But we need to be clear about what networks we are talking about
(centralized, decentralized, distributed), since p2p, as voluntary
aggegation around the production of common value, only pertains to
distributed networks, or to hybrid ones in which the distributed element
remains strong enough not to disallow the self-aggregation to occur.

I would make a strong claim, and we may differ on our vision of temporality
here, as in our reliance on scholarship, that we are in the midst of a rapid
cristallisation of the new logics, that are taken an institutional form
already.

I have no time to do this now, but amongst the 200+ items here at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/category/p2p-governance, I summarized about a
dozen (or more), serious academic studies of how this format already
operates around free software/FLOSS production.

I discuss this more thoroughly in: The social web and its social contracts.
Re-public, . Retrieved from http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=261

Here a summary of the main ideas and hypotheses:

It usually takes a triarchical form:

1) a self-aggregating community governed through peer governance

2) a new kind of NPO/NGO (misleading terms here because they imply
derivation from the other 2 forms), which I call 'for-benefit institutions',
which govern the infrastructure of cooperation

3) a business ecology of corporates, operating in the market but practising
benefit sharing with the 2 other players, see
http://p2pfoundation.net/Benefit_Sharing

Two important points:

- the community-corporate dynamic gives rise to a ladder of participation
giving rise to practices that may be dominated by either pole, but are
rarely ever totally controlled by either party

- the for-benefit institutions (http://p2pfoundation.net/For_Benefit), such
as the open source software foundations (
http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Source_Software_Foundations) differ
SIGNIFICANTLY from the older format.

The reason is that they exist to support the community logic, and do not
command and control the community. Internally, they have skeleton staffs.

I believe this can be understood by looking at the abundance/scarcity
polarity, with the new institutional formats only taking care of the
scarcity-driven infrastructure of cooperation, while the community functions
differently on the abundance logic of sharing immaterial goods according to
the p2p relational logic.

The important thing though is that we have an observable logic at play, even
as it is early days. And what we see is that this same logic is now being
exported to the design of material things (http://p2pfoundation.net) , in
combination with more distributed manufacturing (
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Manufacturing).

Because the design is immaterial, I content,  based on observation, that the
same triarchical structure seems to be operating as peer production moves to
that new sphere.

Of the latter though, there is no scholarly material available as yet, as
far as I know, but we cannot possibly wait for the slow grinding academic
world, and we need hybrid outfits such as ours, which can at least present
the raw material for further study, and offer grounded, but non-academic,
speculations on it.

One further step needs to be considered. Is peer production limited to 'an
aspect of the economy'. No no no!!!

Self-aggregation works across all social fields, and so we can say that
social networks are peer producing politics as well, and that this may
exhibit the same triarchical logic.

For example: self-aggregating communities of Obama sympathizers, more formal
institutions (such as Move.on etc..) which function as platforms BUT WHICH
DO NOT DIRECT the peer production, and institutions, such as the Obama
campaign, which attempt to extract institutional value from it (electoral
victory translating into power).

So to make my point clear, what I would have liked to see in the Postscript,
is not just a phrase allowing for this dynamic, but a more serious
consideration of this very specific network logic, the p2p network logic and
its already observable transformative effects.

Michel

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:21 PM, David Ronfeldt <ronfeldt at mac.com> wrote:

> Michel et al. -- Fair enough.  Interesting too.  Some comments in reply:
>
> At first sight, I thought your criticisms meant we had generally neglected
> p2p networks.  But that can't be.  We make a big deal out of the rise of
> network forms of organization, including "p2p" (though I have previously
> preferred the term "all-channel").
>
> Then I saw you refer to "peer production" (a la Benkler?), as found among
> open-source undertakings for software development and file-sharing.  Well,
> that we do not attend to.  I view it mostly as an innovation in a part of
> the economy -- one that engages a proposition for my TIMN effort, and I'd
> rather take it up when I get around to doing the rise-of-markets chapter for
> that study.
>
> [See below for a reminder of what TIMN is about.  The proposition is that
> the rise of a new form (and its realm) has effects that modify the existing
> forms/realms.  Thus, state hierarchies get modified by market principles to
> generate liberal democracies.  Today, capitalist markets are being modified
> by network principles to generate new modes of social production.  But I
> digress.]
>
> However, I finally spotted that you were mainly referring to "peer-governed
> civil-society networks" that include newer kinds of entities than just NGOs
> and NPOs.  Hmmm.  Well, the paper does repeatedly emphasize NGOs and NPOs,
> partly for shorthand reasons, and it wouldn't have taken much extra space to
> add epistemic communities, virtual associations, and other new network
> entities to the picture, not to mention individuals, as we have done in
> other writings.  Moreover, on review, I see I left out a phrase I've used in
> the past to help cover such possibilities, by referring to the emergence
> from civil society "of a new network-based realm whose name and nature are
> not yet known."  I'm certainly not supposing that all of civil society will
> fold into this new realm.  Maybe Danielle and I can edit for all this before
> long.
>
> I try to keep an eye out for innovative entities and networks that
> transcend existing NGO/NPO-related categories.  But I've not spotted a lot
> yet, even less when it comes to durable new entities that would be of
> interest to policymakers and could participate in governance programs.  It
> will be interesting to see what happens to the "Obama network" in this
> regard.
>
> Amid all this, you found our second section in the Postscript
> "disappointing, as a third nonprofit sector already existed."  Well, yes, it
> has kind of existed for a little over a decade or so.  But that isn't long.
>  Researchers didn't make much of it as a social or third sector until the
> 1980s-90s (see our citations).  Policymakers still aren't sure about it,
> from what I've seen.  Our point is that its significance will be for sure
> when policy dialogue shifts -- when it moves beyond the standard
> public-private, government-or-market categorizing, and engages a language
> that means going in distinctly new directions.
>
> Later, you claim we have a "top-down bias."  But in fact, there is lots of
> room -- and need -- for bottom-up as well as side-to-side structures and
> processes in our vision.  This is most evident in the section on sensory
> apparatuses, as in our references to sousveillance and collective
> intelligence.  However, your comment is aimed at the section on networked
> governance.  There we observe that hierarchy will persist; it is essential
> to some degree for states. But, even in the quote you use as an example of
> top-down bias, what we look forward to seeing are more networked
> partnerships between state and other actors.  I figured it would be implicit
> that such networks would not have to be top-down hierarchical.
>
> Perhaps you have a deeper critique in mind, akin to Kevin Carson's
> interesting comments aspiring for p2p networks and p2p governance to
> displace hierarchies (not to mention markets too) as a main form of social
> organization.  That networks are gaining ground relative to hierarchies and
> markets has been a key theme in my work for many years, esp. in writings
> with John Arquilla.  We have even helped argue that networks can outfight
> hierarchies in some circumstances.  But it is quite another matter to
> suppose that, over the long run, hierarchies (or markets) are goners, and
> networks their entirely preferable successors.
>
> My theoretical stance stems from trying to figure out the TIMN framework
> and what it means for social evolution.  As you may recall, it concerns how
> societies have developed four major forms of organization -- tribes,
> hierarchical institutions, markets, and networks -- and combined them (and
> their resulting realms) in a prefered progression that takes centuries to
> evolve:  from monoform T, to biform T+I, to triform T+I+M, and next to
> quadraform T+I+M+N societies.  As I see it, one of the underlying principles
> for success is balance:  Each form, as it arises, is essential.  For
> societies to achieve higher levels of systemic complexity, no form (or the
> realm it creates) should be allowed to dominate any other; some kind of
> balance and equilibrium should be built among these inherently contradictory
> forms and their realms.  If correct, I regard that as science, not bias.
>
> I hope to get back to working on this framework soon.  Our cyberocracy
> paper relates to it, but I never meant for it to be a major endeavor.
>
> One advantage of posting and sharing via SSRN is that the paper is not
> firmly published.  After we see what other comments roll in, we could revise
> and repost.
>
> I commend you on the material here on your blog.  I've spent more time than
> before in browsing it, and I'm impressed.  I'm also pleased that you've
> helped circulate our paper.
>
> These are my personal, independent views (and Danielle's may differ).
>
> Onward.
>
> ===
>
>
> On Jan 18, 2009, at 4:10 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
>  Dear David,
>>
>> emailing is fine, I'll post it on the blog when appropriate and also
>> forward it to our p2p research list of academics and researchers,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 4:38 AM, David Ronfeldt <ronfeldt at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>> i'll get back to you guys soon on your various emails and blog posts.  my
>> inclination will be just to email back, and then if you want, you can insert
>> into your blog(s).  ok?  i'm not entirely averse to commenting directly
>> within a blog; i just don't have the inclination for it yet.   also, i'm so
>> new to blogging practices, i'm wondering where would i put a reply, my blog
>> or yours, when i'd want it to show in both?  anyway, i'm not ignoring you,
>> just being slow. . . .
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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>>
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>
>


-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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