[p2p-research] Information sector: a qualitative different mode of production?

[Roberto Verzola]

> Another very common theme in these discussions is that the
> economics of this production is now very different from the
> past - as though the underlying Mode of Production and ownership
> of the Means of Production is no longer an issue.
>   
I will argue that there are important qualitative differences between 
production in the agriculture, industrial and information fields. 
Agriculture is about living goods, which by nature reproduce themselves. 
The role of the human is secondary to the intrinsic process of 
reproduction by every species of their own kind. Industrial production 
is about non-living material goods. It starts with dead matter (it must 
be killed if it is not dead yet), and transforms this raw material into 
finished products through human labor, usually aided by machines (or 
more commonly now, through machines, aided by human labor). Industrial 
production gets much of its raw material from living matter, but that 
does not make it identical to agricultural production. The production of 
information is also a creative act, like the design of material goods, 
but information itself is non-material, intangible, and in most cases 
can be represented by a binary string or its equivalent, which makes it 
qualitatively different from material goods, even if this intangible is 
stored in material media, or needs some material tools (and non-material 
ones too, like software), to process it.

Anyone who does not yet see the essential difference between information 
as an intangible good, and say a car as a tangible good, or the 
difference between fixed costs and variable costs, cannot yet fully 
appreciate why today's ICTs represent a qualitatively different *mode* 
of production from the industrial mode, in the same way that the 
industrial mode is qualitatively different from the agricultural mode, 
even if it uses agricultural products as raw materials.

It is true that the Internet requires a tangible infrastructure, such as 
a network of servers, routers, satellites, undersea cables, modems, 
transceivers, computers, CD readers/burners, etc. etc. These are 
products of the industrial economy. But the bits, bytes and files for 
rent, for sale or given away for free, that course through this fixed 
infrastructure are the intangible goods of the information economy. They 
are qualitatively different from industrial goods, which are in turn 
qualitatively different from living goods.

> This mixes-in with the dreamy visions of self-replicating robots that
> will save us from ourselves, even though organisms (used to be)
>   
I don't believe that self-replicating robots can save us either. 
Techno-utopianism is different from a hard-nosed recognition of the 
qualitative difference between making a thousand units of any assembly 
of metal, rubber and plastic versus making a thousand copies of any file.

In short, this debate is whether we consider -- or not -- the 
information production mode as a qualitatively different mode of 
production, which must be studied on its own terms, compared to 
industrial production, in the same way that the industral mode is 
qualitatively different from the agricultural mode.

These three modes also have their similarities, and all three are also 
subject to ownership and control conflicts. I have made clear in my 
Berlin paper that I consider the conflict between monopoly, common 
ownership, and competition to be a defining conflict of the 21st century.

Greetings to all,

Roberto Verzola