Blaqswan's Collective

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= two-person group undertaking a research project with the P2P Foundation: the Thermodynamic Efficiencies of Peer Production, with Xavier Blaqswans and Celine Trefle

URL was blaqswans.org

The approach is to consolidate empirical evidence and academic research that has focused on flows of energy, tapping into fields such as thermodynamics, agro-ecology and engineering. It shows that a P2P approach can help create negentropic cycles, effectively slowing down the depletion of energy and matter in a material way.

Description

Black Swans are improbable events with dramatic impact. The term "Black Swans" has been popularised with the eponymous book by risk analyst and scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb who believes such an improbable event has 3 attributes:

  • it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations,
  • it causes a ‘cognitive bias’ because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.
  • it carries an extreme impact.

Human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence only after the fact, making it explainable and predictable. These Black Swans are the Global Credit Crisis and its sequels, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the 2013 horse meat scandal in Europe, BREXIT, the election Trump, and so on…

Céline and Xavier are 2 analysts based in Paris and Sydney who have been tracking those 'black swans events' since the early 2000s. Particularly focusing on Economics, Technologies, Energy, Resources, Politics, Feminism, Systemic Risks, and P2P as a post-capitalist paradigm.

They were primarily using their main blog blaqswans.org as their 'base camp'. During the past 15 years they have also contributed to several other initiatives with activist associations like 'ATTAC France' and 'Osez le féminisme', research institutes and Think Tanks like 'The Australia Institute', and more mainstream media in France and Australia like the 'ABC'.

Project

To research and document with the P2P Foundation the Thermodynamic Efficiencies of Peer Production.

The aim of this research is to present evidence that a transition to peer-to-peer open and shared models can result in significant savings in the amount of matter and energy needed for a civilized and comfortable infrastructure.

The approach is to consolidate empirical evidence and academic research that has focused on flows of energy, tapping into fields such as thermodynamics, agro-ecology and engineering. It shows that a P2P approach can help create negentropic cycles, effectively slowing down the depletion of energy and matter in a material way.

Links

blaqswans.org

@BlaqSwans on Twitter