[p2p-research] Ways to frame the p2p agenda

[Ryan Lanham]

Michel,

This is not what you asked for...but see if it is usable.  No pain felt if
it is trash...

What is a P2P Mensch?

Ryan Lanham

A mensch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch is a person of integrity and
honor.  These are very old age words.   Can they be applied to a new age
media phenomenon like P2P?

Speed, zip, bang.  The web invents brevity and tolerates partial and
ill-formed, ill-spelled, slang, emotives, emoticons, and poly-participation.
It doesn’t give a doodle about grammar.  Anonymity covers a great deal of
malicious and perverted actions and mental health is often lost or
demonstrably splattered all over forums, dialogues and tweets.

Is it hopeless?  Yes.  It is.  For those who crave 19th century styled
penmanship and ideas carefully framed with sentences that ring of perfect
craftsmanship the (post?)  modernism of the P2P world is like setting a
skyscraper next to old art gallery.  It is the French Academy versus the
Impressionists.  It is…well, next topic.  You get the idea…

It turns out the essay isn’t dead.  It is less formal, but people do reflect
and focus when something causes them to consider the value of a topic
greater than the deadline of immediacy.  Some still take time to turn a
phrase and others retreat into the old ways hoping the web is a fad.  It
isn’t.   Academics feeling demure about being messy are going to be screwed.


So what does a mench do in such an environment?  He or she (or soon…it) is
polite.  Full of self-doubt.  Accepting of the mishmash and bric-a-brac
world that is the web and still respectful that eyes must read something and
minds must try to connect.

“Mensches” share.  They participate.  They realize that governance requires
support and involvement when there is not time…not one extra second to
absorb one new responsibility or one new stupid tidbit when there is so much
of value to be read, scanned, bookmarked and ultimately processed or not
processed into some new form.  Mensches go local in their communities and
stop building elitist hierarchies to protect their precious…stuff.
Mostly P2P mensches try very hard to make sense of what’s going on.
Sensemaking
is invaluable to others.  They need help in seeing the forest for the
clichés.  It isn’t a job that can be done with the pride of
perfection---being a P2P mensch—it leaves those who aspire to this thankless
and low-wage job with self-doubt, a feeling we are too occupied with
machines and screens, and a sense that we are behind…always, always behind.
It is the new normal.  Get used to it.  And be a mensch.

Ryan


On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 1:59 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> and in particular, our friends in cc,
>
> I'm sensing that this is a very important article: see
> http://aivakhiv.blog.uvm.edu/2009/05/framing_cognition_affect.html
>
> It aims to improve our understanding on how we can change people's mindsets
> towards sustainability, going beyond Lakoff's ideas on framing
>
> I will have a hard week preparing for my first classes, so I'm really
> hoping that one of you can tackle this subject for our blog?
>
> Michel
>
> quote:
>
> George Lakoff's progressive framing is insufficient, here's a more
> encompassing alternative understanding: For Connolly, there are no "frames"
> to be found in our "neural circuitry," and that circuitry is not organized
> secondarily by "values" which "determine our identity." What there is,
> instead, are complex, layered interactions between thinking and emotion
> (both of which are biologically and culturally mediated), action and ethos
> (or sensibility), and micro- and macro-political practices which are
> supported by the structured relations and infrastructural formations that
> make up our world. The emphasis, in Connolly's work, is not so much on
> changing the frames as it is on combining efforts across a wide range of
> activities and scales in order to create "contagious resonances" across
> constituencies, resonances that carry ideas as well as sensibilities
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>
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