Individuals

D

- Dan Gillmor

for his advocacy of citizen-based journalism

R

- Howard Rheingold

Author of Virtual Communities, Smart Mobs, brilliant trend analyst and promoter of the Cooperation Project

Mark Pesce, Co-creator of VRML

Mark Pesce is an inventor, author and educator, best known for work that fused the World Wide Web with real-time 3D computer graphics; the result, known as VRML (for Virtual Reality Modeling Language) has become an international standard. The author of numerous articles on science, technology, media and the arts, Pesce has also written five books, including The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination (Random House, 2000) which presented a roadmap of key 21st century technologies. Pesce contends we are entering an ‘era of hyperdistribution’ that will radically change our media ecosystem. Central to this shift is the take-up of p2p filesharing software like BitTorrent that provides the first truly efficient digital media distribution platform based on the principles of swarming. Open Source Television (OSTV) is an early indicator of this ‘hyperdistribution’ era. OSTV enables users to bypass programming schedules, international time zones, over-regulation and oligopolies. Independent media producers are using the principles of OSTV to reintermediate the digital media value chain and go directly to consumers. This has the potential to transform broadcast television and give users access to a virtually unlimited amount of digitally produced content, accessed via the Internet. More recently Pesce has discussed the importance of articulated social networks as a means to socially filter increasing informational pressure and sort quality material based on recommendations from trusted sources. In 2003 Pesce was invited to review and redesign the curriculum at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, integrating new media practices into the school’s production-based methodology. He has remained with the school to oversee the implementation of his recommendations.

Papers:

Piracy Is Good? PART ONE: HYPERDISTRIBUTION http://www.mindjack.com/feature/piracy051305.html

Piracy Is Good? PART TWO: THE NEW LAWS OF TELEVISION http://www.mindjack.com/feature/newlaws052105.html

Redefining Television, ‘Producing Interactive Television’ seminar, AFTRS Interactive Media, 10 May 2004. http://www.aftrs.edu.au/go/library/research-tools/reports-and-papers/redefining-television/index.cfm

Open Source Television: Liberte! Facilite!! Egalite!!!, User Environments conference, Smart Internet Technology CRC, 14 July 2004. http://www.aftrs.edu.au/go/library/research-tools/reports-and-papers/open-source-television/index.cfm

F*ck Big Media: Rolling Your Own Network, National Student Media conference, This Is Not Art, 3 October 2004. http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/fbm.html

URL: http://www.playfulworld.com/

Email: mark@playfulworld.com

P2P BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

- Pekka Himanen, the hacker ethic as the new P2P work culture

Pekka Himanen is a Finnish philosopher and researcher on the information society, most well-known for his landmark book The Hacker Ethic, which updates Max Weber's classic on the Calvinist work ethic. In his book he shows how network society is both exacerbating the Calvinist work ethic to the point where it becomes immoral and unsustainable, while also creating as a counter-reaction the new hacker ethic, which is based on a peer to peer ethic. The hacker ethic in this broad sense of cooperative working should not be confused with the more specific sense of the ethic of computer hackers.

Website at [1] ; Email him at [pekka.himanen@hiit.fi]

The Wikipedia entry on The Hacker Ethic at [2] A random review at [3]

--203.146.247.4 06:00, 29 Jun 2005 (CEST)MB, June 29, 2005

- Maurizio Lazzarato, cognitive capitalism and its alternatives

Maurizio is a philosopher, expert on Gabriel Tarde, co-founder of the magazine Multitudes, who has been specializing in the analyis of cognitive capitalism, and its discontents, hence his work on the P2P-concept of Multitudes, the coordination format in political and economic resistance, etc.. His work is historically situated in the Italian movement of 'autonomous Marxism'.

Short French-language profile with links to his books at [4]

Some of his writings are located here:

Struggle, Event, Media: http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/03/08/1253213&mode=nested&tid=22

European Cultural Tradition and the New Forms of Production and Circulation of Knowledge: http://www.moneynations.ch/topics/euroland/text/lazzarato.htm

Multitude and Working class: Maurizio Lazzarato interviews Paolo Virno http://www.generation-online.org/t/multitudeworkingclass.htm

General Intellect: Towards an Inquiry into Immaterial Labour http://www.emery.archive.mcmail.com/public_html/immaterial/lazzarat.html

From Biopower to Biopolitics (pdf file) http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/csisp/papers/lazzarato_biopolitics.pdf

Maurizio Lazzarato: Dialogism and Poliphony http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/csisp/papers/lazzarato_dialogism.pdf

--203.151.141.196 12:54, 8 Jul 2005 (CEST)MB June 30, 2005

- Eric von Hippel, user-centric innovation expert

Eric von Hippel is the author of the Democratization of Innovation, and an expert on peer-based innovation processes in business and industry.He is Professor and Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Home page is located at [5] Contact email at [evhippel@mit.edu] Online version of his book at [6]His papers are located at [7]

He's a representative quote on the nature of his research on user-centric vs. manufacturer-centric innovation, from the first chapter of his book:

"When I say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services—both firms and individual consumers—are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation processes offer great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation development systems that have been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years. Users that innovate can develop exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents. Moreover, individual users do not have to develop everything they need on their own: they can benefit from innovations developed and freely shared by others. The trend toward democratization of innovation applies to information products such as software and also to physical products.

The user-centered innovation process just illustrated is in sharp contrast to the traditional model, in which products and services are developed by manufacturers in a closed way, the manufacturers using patents, copyrights, and other protections to prevent imitators from free riding on their innovation investments. In this traditional model, a user’s only role is to have needs, which manufacturers then identify and fill by designing and producing new products. The manufacturer-centric model does fit some fields and conditions. However, a growing body of empirical work shows that users are the first to develop many and perhaps most new industrial and consumer products. Further, the contribution of users is growing steadily larger as a result of continuing advances in computer and communications capabilities. In this book I explain in detail how the emerging process of user-centric, democratized innovation works. I also explain how innovation by users provides a very necessary complement to and feedstock for manufacturer innovation. The ongoing shift of innovation to users has some very attractive qualities. It is becoming progressively easier for many users to get precisely what they want by designing it for themselves. And innovation by users appears to increase social welfare." (([8] )

--203.146.247.4 12:21, 28 Jun 2005 (CEST)MB, June 29, 2005

P2P PHILOSOPHY AND SPIRITUALITY

Jean-Francois Noubel, theoretician of collective intelligence

Mr. Noubel, once co-founder of AOL France, is the author of a very illuminating book-in-progress which is published as a Wiki on the Web.

Short profile at [9]

Collective Intelligence Wiki, at [10]

Email: jf@thetransitioner.org

--203.151.141.196 07:06, 12 Jul 2005 (CEST)MB, July 12, 2005