Introduction

This page is for political and activist practices and processes that are somehow influenced by the peer to peer dynamic. See also the related page on P2P Governance Concepts, which deals with 'how we manage peer to peer processes'.

Not all concepts from the Encyclopedia have been ported to this page yet: only the terms from A-D (first two columns).

Here is a Podcast on the political aspects of P2P.

The P2P Foundation supports an emerging Coalition of the Commons

Thought Capsules

Changing Self, Community, and Society, by Inspector Lohman [1]

Blog Entries

Please check the blog archive, for entries on the political aspects of P2P.

Here's a selection of a few articles:

Four levels of P2P, The influence of P2P advances in stages: which ones?

Peer Production and the State, and follow-up

Is P2P left or right?, and follow-up

Citations

McKenzie Wark on expressive politics

There can be no one book, no master thinker for these times. What is called for is a practice of combining heterogeneous modes of perception, thought and feeling, different styles of researching and writing, different kinds of connection to different readers, proliferation of information across different media, all practiced within a gift economy, expressing and elaborating differences, rather than broad-casting a dogma, a slogan, a critique or line. ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ This expressive politics does not seek to overthrow the state, or to reform its larger structures, or to preserve its structure so as to maintain an existing coalition of interests. It seeks to permeate existing states with a new state of existence. It spreads the seeds of an alternate practice of everyday life.

-McKenzie Wark. A Hacker Manifesto

David Snowden on idealistic vs. naturalistic sense-making

"In the idealistic approach, the leaders of an organization set out an ideal future state that they wish to achieve, identify the gap between the ideal and their perception of the present, and seek to close it. … Naturalistic approaches by contrast, seek to understand a sufficiency of the present in order to act to stimulate evolution of the system. Once such stimulation is made, monitoring of emergent patterns becomes a critical activity so that desired patterns can be supported and undesired patterns disrupted. The organization thus evolves to a future that was unknowable in advance, but is more contextually appropriate when discovered.” (Kurtz and David Snowden, Bramble Bushes in the Thicket)

William James on Meliorism

"meliorism treats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become" (William James. Pragmatism. Harvard UP, 1975, p. 137)

"As meliorism takes as its goal to make things better through concerted effort, meliorism is a habit of mind and a mode of practice that aims for realistic optimism rather than passivity, pessimism, or nihilism" (Peter Lunenfeld [2])

Pessimism is a luxury we can only afford in good times

"Pessimism is a luxury we can only afford in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence. This insight, to me, is real Realism or real Realpolitik, far from blue-eyed Idealism. We have to courageously resist the current tendency to suspect those who work for a better world to be hopeless idealists. This would mean Realpolitik letting disaster happen (by deepening fault lines instead of transcending them), and us not at least attempting to prevent this. Strange real Realpolitik!" (Evelin Lindner, 2004.)

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." (Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, 2004, p. 208)

(both citations found here [3] )

More citations

It takes a long time for change to happen quickly.

- Jon Husband, Wirearchy.com

Resources

Tags

P2P Governance [4]

P2P Politics [5]

P2P Activism [6]

P2P Political Theory [7]

P2P Warfare [8]

Alterglobalization Movement [9]

Internet Governance [10]

Thematic Issues of P2P News

• Multitudes, Issue 95 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p95
• P2P Political Theory and Practice, Issue 93 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p93
• Empire and Multitudes, Issue 92 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p92
• Peer Governance, Issue 90 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p90
• P2P and Cooperation, Issue 88 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p88
• P2P Hierarchy Theory, Issue 87 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p87
• On the Commons, Issue 77 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p77
• P2P Cooperation and Activism, Issue 76 of P2P News, at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2p76

Selected Wikipedia Articles

• Alterglobalisation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterglobalisation
• Co-Intelligence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-intelligence
• Collaborative Intelligence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_intelligence
• Free Content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content
• Free software, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
• Free Software Foundation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation
• Free Software Movement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Movement
• Free Software Movement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement
• Open Source Intelligence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_intelligence
• Open Source Movement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_movement
• Public Domain, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
• Reputation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation
• Smart Mobs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_mobs
• Social Networking, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking
• Swarm Intelligence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_Intelligence

Key Resources

• Steven Clift monitors e-democracy initiatives, at http://www.publicus.net/e-government/

• A Spectrum of Politics and Governance Grounded in Empowered Citizen Dialogue and Deliberation, at http://www.communicationagents.com/tom_atlee/2005/07/04/a_spectrum_of_politics_and_governance_grounded_in_empowered_citizen_dialogue_and_deliberation.htm