[p2p-research] Is the p2p approach utopian?

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Sam, some responses in line, and I hope you can explain your a/b
argument in an even more easy way for a future blog posting, as this seems
to be a crucial argument, though I'm not sure I understand it yet in this
form,

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is great, Michel. (a few thoughts inline and will post to blog)
>
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > This will be published on the 17th, and calls for a 'triarchical'
> political
> > approach to social change, aligning constructing alternatives, social
> > mobilization, and commons oriented policy frameworks,
> >
> > Michel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > So the approach of the P2P Foundation, as proposed by myself, and there
> may
> > be other views as we are a pluralist platform, is the internetwork all
> the
> > human initiatives towards open and free, participatory, and commons
> oriented
> > practices, and the open infrastructures needed to make it happen.
> >
>
>
> It seems at least at times we advocate practices and principles of
> foresight.  The research by P2P Foundation consistently uncovers
> evidence that systems are highly interconnected, emergent, dynamic,
> complex-adaptive, and perpetually evolving.
>
>
>
>
> > Our approach is subjective-objective, but the last term is very
> important.
> > Without the necessary maturation of objective modalities of production
> and
> > human organization, a subjectivist approach based on the human will, like
> > say the Negrian waiting for insurrectionist rapture, would not succeed.
> Open
> > infrastructures need to be build, social organizational forms and
> > institutions need to be built, while AT THE SAME TIME, human
> consciousness
> > evolves and becomes politicized.
> >
> > In a recent seminar of the Universidade Nomada in Venice, Italy, where a
> lot
> > of post-autonomist thinkers and activists where present, some of the
> > speakers outrightly dismissed any open development as already coopted by
> > capital. Geert Lovink, not an autonomist himself, went even so far as
> > declaring the free culture movement as public enemy.
> >
>
> Can you point to a reference of this view by Geert Lovink? I am having
> trouble understanding the position.
>

it was an oral presentation, I summarized it for another list but need to
find it back,

but essentially,

1) he critiqued the culture of free, in my interpretation because it
endangers the livelyhoods of creators, but thereby confusing in my mind free
beer and free speech. He showed one slide of chris anderson's free, arguing
we should fight    "that man's" advocacy of everything free (while in my
interpretation he is merely explaining why free is a sensible commercial
strategy in an age of digital reproducibility, chris anderson may be
somewhat superficial, but he does not advocate that everything should be for
free, since he explains all the secondary business models that make it
sustainable); 2) he then showed the barcelona charter as an exampe of what
should be fought, but again that charter does not advocate 'free beer', but
a set of rights for cultural creators and user communities

2) he then put forward two critiques which he positively values, nicholas
carr and jaron lanier's, both are cultural reactionaries, in my view the
first one is smart, but the second one seriously misunderstands the
collective dynamics on the internet as collectivist and anti-individualist,
as Kevin Carson already explained in one of our blog postings

I have trouble understanding his position also, but a mistaken assumption
that free culture is opposed to livelyhoods seems the key.

>
>
>
>
> > This is evidently not our approach. While we think that cooptation will
> > happen, and is happening, we also see it as a necessary maturation of the
> > new infrastructure of social production, of the new  sharing and
> > commons-oriented consciousness, and these are trends which are to the
> > advantage of the communities of peer producers and sharers.
>
> In P2P systems, there is threshold where cooptation by mostly
> commercial-interested entities breaks down. The core recognizable
> principle can be seen in triadic relationships. Where a connection,
> relationship, or "flow" of energy between A and B is facilitated by an
> entity that is more like A and B (more like a "peer" than not), there
> is a lack of cooptation. The more triadic connections where
> connection/relationship/flow between A/B resembles A/B, the more
> resistant to cooptation the system will become to
> connection/relationship/flow facilitator that is not like A/B (so long
> as what is "like" A/B performs better than what is not "like").
>
> A/B as human entities collaborate to choose facilitators of various
> relationships. Given rate of change in existential conditions, A/B as
> human entities can benefit from a plurality of choices about how to
> facilitate any given relationship (it could be more appropriate to
> centralize or decentralize, depending on the specific existential
> conditions). Contrary to common belief, both the system and individual
> can reap greater rewards by leaving the choice in the hands of the
> individual. For instance, a common daily choice made by individuals is
> to invest their energy, time, resources in various
>

I need to understand this better and hope you can rewrite for a standalone
argument

michel
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