[p2p-research] mass production and p2p production, was ecovillage and communities

[Nathan Cravens]

Hi Franz,

I'd prefer to acknowledge my own judgment toward the appropriate
distribution of my writings, but I do want that judgment to be as agreeable
as possible. Thanks for your blessing. ;)

In this age and capacity it must, especially if the product can mass
produce, become fully automated at costs less than employing people to
perform the same repetitive tasks. In this way, if someone in the community
wants to learn how products are made in a factory, they may go and learn
from the web interface onsight how to fabricate the device or outcome.
The first generation of these factories may have a robotic arm on wheels
with a laptop attached that follows or leads you around expressing how parts
are assembled on the screen in the way the particular person can understand.
If the person is blind or deaf, a pad with Braille will explain the room and
the objects within it as they occur.  For the deaf only, highly visual
representations will compensate for products that have otherwise
unrecognizable audible expressions. (I'm becoming very interested in
learning Braille when imagining the device that communicates in this way,
because essentially all you do is place your hand on a dynamic pad that
creates the surfaces as if they were swept from left to right as they would
from a static surface. This means for those with sight can have the ability
to better absorb knowledge if they can both read visual text
and receive Braille simultaneously! To do this would only require a sensor
to follow eye movement on what text is being read to output the appropriate
Braille expression. You might set your Braille output to nudge you along if
your eyes wonder from the text surface. Neat! ;p)

In my critical view, 'worker's collectives' or 'worker owned factories' are
simply a milder or mutual form of exploitation. The profits may directly
return to the worker, but if the worker must depend on income or ration
units to remain a participant of resource rights, (the economy) the
collective will be persuaded to neglect the means to fully automate process
or enable the product user to personally fabricate to ensure the right to
participation within that tyrannous exchange trade framework. (I view any
form of exchange trade tyrannous as I hope any post-scarcity theorist might)


Nathan



On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 2:15 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

> Nathan Cravens / globalvillages at yahoogroups.com schreibt:
> >
> >
> >It might seem p2p rejects mass production outright the way I addressed
> >it; that may not be the case so long as the mass production is fully
> >automated so a 'worker class' is not required. That may be a matter of
> >debate, but that approach I consider the most ethical way of having a
> >mass production model if one is necessary.
> >
>
> Nathan,
>
> it might not really make sense to crosspost a whole discussion strand on
> two lists, lists with very different culture, speak (terms), symbols,
> frequence etc. like globalvillages and p2p. But at this point I want to
> give an answer because it is also highly relevant to global villages.
>
> I think its a no - go to negate the advantages of mass production in many
> cases.  For me this means being as ideologically blindened to a complex
> and divers reality as our our opponents of the industrialist faction. I
> even had a discussion with Marcin Jakubowski on this issue, and we agreed
> that to a certain point that villages will never ever be able to make
> everything they need. You might know that Marcins ambition in this field
> goes much higher than I think is reasonable as balance between village and
> city, but even from his point of view (includig steel furnace per village)
> cooperative factories are a reality that you cannot totally deny.
>
> We must tackle with the problem of mass production already today if we are
> to seriously to discuss a new reality. P2P society is imminent, global
> villages are a very plausible prevailing lifestyle, and they are in need
> of many special products and tools which can much better be brought about
> in mass production. The "father" of the perception of this empowerment,
> Alvin Toffler, has rightfully observed in his bool "The Third Wave", that
> the whole notion of re-empowerment comes out of industrial products that
> allowed us to liberate ourselves from a "worker" role and assume a
> "producer" or rather "prosumer" role. While Toffler did not really foresee
> that prosumers are not isolated entities but organize in new
> agglomerations, from crowdsourced to active to self-determining
> communities, he very well understood that there is an intrinsic relations
> between tools and micro-markets, a new ongoing division of labor etc.
>
> We have to start looking at mass production from a p2p point of view,
> which would imply:
>
> - combining p2p values with ethical production values and ecological
> values. as prosumers we should be able to discuss and create standards of
> the products we deal with in a much easier way than as consumers.
> - looking at new, cooperative forms of mass production. In fact, the
> linkage with the workers movement and the cooperative movement is based on
> our own engagement as the initiators and supporters of production. Thomas
> Dieners FairWork concept shows the way.
>
>
> Villages depend on mothercities. Small production depends on the right
> type of big production. Industry will survive but shrink as agriculture
> survived but shrank.
>
> Franz
>
>
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