[p2p-research] Non digital commons a lot more complicated than Free Software

[Roberto Verzola]

Hi Martin,

I would like to continue our dialog; sorry for the long delay.

When you are travelling or are in remote, you usually have no choice but 
to be off the net. I don't think getting off the net for a few days will 
give you the feel of not having access. It is not long enough. When you 
asked people to "log off", I initially thought you meant to try living 
without the Internet. When you take such a critical position of the 
Internet (as I do... see for instance 
http://www.scu.edu/sts/nexus/summer2005/VerzolaArticle.cfm), it is
important to balance that critique with what could it mean if we were
*without* it.

> I have logged off when I have been in remote places or travelling and I
> like it a lot. The world around me comes closer and I have more capacity
> to process the information emerging from it.
>
> I am not anti-technology and I didn't mean to log off permanently, but
> just long enough to see some other dimension. Like you rightly say, the
> way we think is technologically embedded and there is a significant
> different between pen and PC as a means of thinking and communicating.
>

On the material basis of the information sector, I think you are right
to point it out. However, the essence of the sector is the immateriality
(or intangibility, the term I use more often) of information, and it is
this intangibility which determines the special unique features of the
information sector (in particular, the near-zero marginal cost and the
non-rival nature of information goods).

In the same way that industrial sector of the economy has a basis in the
agriculture/natural resources sector, yet is distinct from it, the
information sector likewise has a basis in the industrial sector (the
entire hardware infrastructure of the information sector is part of the
industrial sector) but is distinct from it. And the distinctions are
quite clear: the agriculture sector is a sector of living goods, the
industrial sector is the sector of non-living material goods and the
information sector is the sector of non-material goods. We all know, of
course, how the industrial sector impinges on the agriculture/natural
resources sector (which we might also call the ecological sector). So
as far as ecological disruption is concerned, the greatest challenge is 
posed by the industrial sector, including that  part on which the 
information sector is based.

I think this way of looking at the major sectors of the economy answers
your concern -- it fully acknowledges and recognizes the industrial
(non-living, material) sector. I have said elsewhere that the solution 
is a shift to closed material loops, fuelled by renewable energy (easier 
said than done ...)

Let me clarify that I don't believe in the "progress" principle of one
replacing the other, of the agriculture/natural resource economy being
replaced by the industrial economy which is turn is supposed to be
replaced in the future by the information economy. I look at it more as
diversification of options and choices. Some people can choose to live
their lives mostly in the agricultural sector, or in the industrial
sector, or in the information sector, etc. What is important is for the
strengths and positive aspects of all these sectors to be enhanced and
the "dark side" minimized.

> The material dilemma must be fully acknowledged/recognised - that's all
> I am saying. The leaders of the free culture movement do not do that -
> quite the contrary - and many others simply follow their lines of
> inquiry, hence obscuring further the dark side. Accordingly, it was the
> subject line of this email that prompted this current exchange, which
> perpetuates the myth that digital commons are simple, immaterial systems.
>
>   
What led me to answer your post is actually the impression (which could
be wrong...) that you were focused on the 90% that is bad and were
criticizing some of us for focusing on the 10% that we considered good
(such as the potential for abundance, of which critique I believe
triggered these exchanges, or the benefits of the intangibility of
information).

I've compared it earlier to the half-full, half-empty debate (ok, 10%
full, 90% empty...). I don't mind that others focus on the 90% bad state
of the world. I have also been through a pessimistic phase myself and
know the feeling.

But I do consider it misguided to criticize people who focus on the 10%
good, for not focusing on climate change, the extinctions of species
(actually I did mention them in my abundance paper, but the paper's
critics must have missed it) and all those other bad things that make up
90% of the state of the planet. At a certain point, when one decides to
work on the 10% part that is good in order to expand it, so that it
becomes maybe 11% then 12 then 15, 20, 50 and so on, this work will
require *all* of one's attention, that one concludes: let others work on
the 90% if that's what they want, I want to focus on the 10%, the
positive advocacies, and turn them into the future of this planet.

This is actually what I like about the P2P list. Many (most?) people are
working on the 10% good, instead of dwelling too much on the 90% bad.

Greetings,

Roberto