Top Ten P2P Trends of 2016
very early draft for publication January 4 2016
thanks to all contributors, which you can see here at https://www.facebook.com/mbauwens/posts/10157911309825548? //https://www.facebook.com/groups/p2p.open/permalink/1354015481309294/?
for comparison: http://commonstransition.org/top-10-p2p-trends-2015/
The Trends
The struggle for the appropriate scale: Localization vs Global Neo-nomadic infrastructures
Localization arguments by Steve Bosserman
Global Tribes
Subsidiarity of Material Production
The P2P Infrastructural Revolution continues: 2017 will be the year of pilots
Solar reached the tipping point, and is now the cheapest source of energy in 60 countries and counting, http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencealert.com%2Fsolar-power-is-now-the-cheapest-energy-in-the-world&h=TAQHPxJOV
http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/
see the bike infrastructure video here at https://www.facebook.com/sharon.ede/posts/10154244825017828?c
Democracy Earth based on the blockchain
Basic Income debate becomes mainstream
the year of preparing the pilots,
map http://infozaps.com/images/UBI_Pilots_2017_a.jpg
bad critiques
mention p2p automation debates
The year of the blockchain and cryptledger applications, but ALSO Open and contributory value accounting
boll report
DAO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)
Standing Rock
"“There is a tremendous awareness from Indigenous Peoples regarding what’s happening at Standing Rock,” said Elsa Stamatopoulou, director of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Program at Columbia University. “The Native Americans there are struggling and are connected to the whole world and a solidarity of rights.”
or as Ivor Stodolky writes: "the whole protest is about defending a commons. It's the water, the land, and the ancestral burial grounds of a community which has held and protected them as a commons for thousands of years."
The Cooperative Economy in Rojava
link to the website for the cooperative economy in Rojava: https://cooperativeeconomy.info/
Platform Cooperativism comes of age
big coop organizations moved to realizing they need to act
barcelona plan (mention also global initiative and procomuns.net policy platform)
Civic and Commons Renaissance in western european cities
oikos report findings /
(includes growth of local currencies now at 13,000 in the world, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpE8UMMZa9w, 5:50 minutes)
iaone report
jose ramos book
Municipal Coalitions in Spain and beyond
see Category:Urbanism for a slate of books
Naples and other rebel cities, see: City-Based Departments of the Commons
Municipal coalitions Bcomu [1], ahora madrid
Rebel Cities
jose ramos book , iaone report
The emergence of Super-Competent Democracies
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/this-is-how-people-power-wins-an-election-the-story-of-ahora-madrid/2016/12/29 (decide madrid)
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/reinventing-politics-via-local-political-parties/2017/01/05
taiwan: http://www.whathappensnow.xyz/lessonsblog/2017/1/3/discussion-audrey-tang-taiwanese-digital-minister
Counter-trend: fake news
"Unlike traditional advertising, the message comes through a secondary source. It's 'word-of-mouth marketing' - the Holy Grail for advertisers. Nothing has more impact on our shopping habits than a friend or someone we trust recommending a product to us. Social Chain now owns over 400 of the most popular Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts. Collectively they have over 300 million followers. After just two years, the company now employs over a hundred young people in offices in Manchester, Berlin and New York. The average age of staff is just 22.
£1.25 billion went on marketing on social media alone in 2015. Paul Mason examines this new economy - the commodification of influence. He considers the ethics of this way of advertising and how it affects trust in the information we're given. Social Chain closely follows regulations laid down by the Advertising Standards Authority, but Mara Einstein, author of Black Ops Advertising, argues that just as the military has moved from face to face action to covert operations, so advertising has moved from being obvious to more hidden - in particular through social media." http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08503d2
Politisation of the Commons / Proliferation of Assemblies of the Commons
European Commons Assembly
post-capitalist debates (mason, inventing the future)
Commons Transition Coalition ; Assembly of the Commons
greater boston coop
Alliance of rural/urban commons
Sophie Jerram writes:
"One of the strongest trends that has struck me well after the European commons assembly (I alluded to it only in the report for Commons Transition) was the coming together of new urban P2P activity with traditional commoning practices. We have begun to meet from very different backgrounds but with similar struggles and connected motivations. To meet friends from Basque and Galician territories - land that has been in common hands for hundreds of years is an inspiration to those of us (especially in the New World) where private property rights are the only forms of property discussed.
Secondly, I’d like to suggest that there is a trend away (could we say post-Ostrom>>??!!) from discussing commons as resources only. Instead, many of us are discussing commoning practices. Obviously common pool resources are a motivation for many people still to engage in commoning. But land, for example is more than a utility and could be considered a living being. Take for example, the Te Uruwera Act of 2014 from New Zealand has made the land of the Tuhoe people sovereign unto itself and to have the "rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.” See http://maorilawreview.co.nz/2014/10/tuhoe-crown-settlement-te-urewera-act-2014/ "
P2P Value report findings on really existing peer production communities
https://p2pvalue.eu/762-2/ .. full report at https://www.academia.edu/29210209/Commons_Based_Peer_Production_in_the_Information_Economy
Intro by Michel Bauwens: P2P Value is a landmark study because it is the first long (3-year) scientific study of 300+ peer production communities, and it largely confirms the ten years of empirical observations that form the basis of P2P Theory and the documentation in the P2P Foundation Wiki. Our team was also one of the 8 partners in the consortium. Here are some interesting findings, which I would like to highlight: 1. These communities are also ‘imaginary communities’ with specific values, i..e. they want to make the world a better place, i.e. they are ethical communities not just profit-maximising entities, and their identification is in global networks, not just the locales they are embedded in. This is historically important since it echoes the birth of nation-states as imaginary communities (see Benedict Anderson’s landmark book on this topic) 2. A majority of 78% of these communities are practicing, preparing and/or looking into open value or contributory accounting systems; again, this is significant since changes in accounting practices and philosophies have accompanied the great value regime transitions in the past 3. Reputation capital is a fictitious commodity that has an effective capacity to drive and allocate resources to these common projects. This document is therefore a must-read for the P2P and Commons community.
P2P Foundation research comes of age
havens center book
thermodynanmic efficiences research and DGML / Cosmo-localisation with fab city and sharon essay linkage
Technological Sovereignty, Distributed Manufacturing, and the Commons Turn in Developement
Report from Inpact
Circular Finance of Terre des Liens
Commons turn of AFD
suggested illustration: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1250/1*y4i7Nmkx06l_asMjKSSSKg.png
Gender and Race; diversity and p2p
Analysis
Steve Bosserman:
"In consideration of your request, I would offer that historians will look back on 2016 as the year when the forces of change aligned to begin the world's final drive into a post-capitalist reality. Each of us have our preferred evaluative methods to note this occasion. My primary indicators concerned the ongoing and pervasive presence of certain human behaviors which I considered essential to precipitate such an onslaught:
1) Commitment by individuals and groups to systems, processes, and tools that enable people to meet their basic needs where they are so they do not resort to destroying the environment, emigrating / seeking refuge elsewhere, or resorting to radicalism or nihilism
2) Adoption of acknowledgement systems that assume each person has value to offer regardless of circumstances and recognize those occasions when each person contributes the value they have
3) Match of distributed governance structures to population centers (nodes) so that residents have the authority to localize their knowledge commons, manage their resource flows (sources to sinks), and ultimately, meet their basic needs
4) Connections of distributed population centers (nodes) into regional and global economic networks wherein residents can exchange ideas, share experiences, refresh their knowledge commons, and restore the sources of their localized resource flows
The political, diplomatic, economic, societal, and environmental events of 2016 have provided the catalyst to launch what's next in an irreversible and inevitable way. While the list of Top Ten Trends for 2016 you've compiled thus far and will no doubt rigorously refine, is excellent, I submit there's a larger contextual drama playing out that the composite listing does not fully address. And that is that 2016 represents the year when the world turned the corner on its future and from here on out we're building what's next more than we're perpetuating what is or what was." (Facebook, January 2017 [2])
Further response by steve: https://github.com/stevebosserman/timebanking-matters/blob/master/why-is-2016-a-pivotal-year.md
Final Text
Michel Bauwens:
It is very hard to characterize 2016 from an internal perspective to the commons, in part because 2015 was such a stellar year of new developments. To my mind as a privileged observer, it has been more of a year of consolidation, and so, I felt quite doubtful when Steve Bosserman proposed to call 2016 a pivotal year for the Commons Transtion. But, it makes more sense when we take a external or geo-strategic point of view. Indeed, from the point of view of the existing dominant world system, 2016 has very likely been a pivot year. While 2008 can be seen as a economic proof of the collapse of the neoliberal model, it is really only 2016 which truly deserves the characterization of "Peak Neoliberalism". It is not just that world trade is in retreat, but that core groups of the population are now rejecting the model, not just from the left anymore (the rapid rise of Syriza and Podemos come to mind), but from the right. Hence 2016 has definitely been the year of the loss of faith in the global neoliberal world order. There are of course forces, such as the Economist, which will be wedded forever to the global oligarchy. But the main visible reaction is now a return to 'national protectionism'. This is what Brexit and the Trump victory represent, and also the strenghtening of many radical-right movements in Europe, such as the Front National. But this is of course a 'reactionary' model, a hope to get back to the past, which we believe is destined to feel, while it also releases the social forces of hate and ingroup vs outgroup conflicts on a global scale. This is empathically not, a commons-centric reaction. Our first trend therefore, describes what that commons reaction has been, and in which sense, Steve Bosserman's description may in fact be correct.
Trend 1: The struggle for the appropriate scale of a new world order: Localization, Global Nomadic Structures, and the Subsidiarity of Material Production
Indeed, what Bosserman describes is the loss of faith in bigger centralized structures, such as the nation-state, and a huge return to the necessity and feeling of localization. And we can see it everywhere. In 2016, a study on the Flanders by the Green think thank Oikos, confirmed the results of an earlier study by Tine de Moor in her booklet Homo Cooperans: there has been a tenfold increase in local civic initiatives over the last ten years, and many of those involve the creation of commons-based shared resources at the local level. So yes, there is indeed a demonstrated exponential rise of urban commons inititiatives. With Christian Iaoione and his colleagues of LabGov, and with Vasilis Niaros of the P2P Lab, we have undertaken a analysis of 40 urban commons case studies (half of them from the Global South), which confirms the present sophistication not just of the project individually, but of public urban policies that support them.
At the same time though, the internet continues to exerce itself as a technology for global neo-nomadic structures. In our list from last year, we mentioned the huge underground neo-nomadic economy of the transmigrants described in the Alain Tarius' seminal book (Etrangers de Passage) on the 'poor to poor, peer to peer' infrastructures. This year, we witnessed the international expansion of the kind of peer to peer entrepreneurial coalitions we are following, such as the Enspiral collective. On the geeky side, infrastructures such as the Embassy Networks, ImpactHub and other franchises are continuing their development apace, creating 'circular territories' or territories of circulation that are not confined to borders and nation-states. Our own report, Value in the Commons, co-written with Vasilis Niaros, highlights three cases studies of how such global entre-donneurial (i.e. generative towards the commons, rather than extractive) coalitions are developing complex contributory accounting systems. The P2P Value study, which studied 300 peer production communities over 3 years, with the P2P Foundation as member of that consortium, unearther significant findings under-writing our theses on these global governance mechanisms. For example, in Adam Arvidsson's (et al.) concluding esssay on the findings, he found that a majority of 78% of these communities are practicing, preparing and/or looking into open value or contributory accounting systems; again, this is significant since changes in accounting practices and philosophies have accompanied the great value regime transitions in the past. Just as important are the findings on the new post-natioanl ideologies being born in such communities: these communities are also ‘imaginary communities’ with specific values, i..e. they want to make the world a better place, i.e. they are ethical communities not just profit-maximising entities, and their identification is in global networks, not just the locales they are embedded in. This is historically important since it echoes the birth of nation-states as imaginary communities (see Benedict Anderson’s landmark book on this topic). As one neo-tribal advocate [3] writes: "Neotribes aspire to be both grounded in the local and connected to the global."
The issue that is raised here is how to compose the contradictory yearnings for localization, with the emergence of global trans-national structures, practices and mentalities that are occuring at the same time. At the P2P Foundation, we believe there is a logic which 'transcends and includes' the advantages and necessities of both localization and trans-nationalization: what we call Cosmo-Localization as a organizational principle for the organization of society at all levels (what's light is shared globally, what's heavy is organized and produced locally). Applied to industrial and material production, our friends at the P2P Lab call this methodology: DGML ('Design Global, Manufacture Local') and a prime expression of this are the plans of the Fab City coalition (of which we are now a part as well), which works around the Barcelona Pledge, to re-localize the production of products, services and food by a factor of 50% by 2054, and which now coalesces 16 cities. One of the main expressions. and drivers of such trans-nationalization may well be international coalitions of cities such as this one. The spanish municipal coalitions do in fact have a internationalist agenda as much as a local one, and are striving for a alliance of rebel cities. In the last few weeks, thinking through the tension between localization and trans-nationalization, I have come up with the concept of 'the subsidiarity of material production', which marries both imperatives, and can be clearly distinguished from both nation-state protectionism, neolilberal globalization, but also simple reactive localism.
Trend 2: The P2P Infrastructural Revolution continues: 2017 will be the year of pilots
talk about value sovereignity and technology sovereignty here
the commons, vs ultracapitalism vs accelerationism
https://thegreenhorns.wordpress.com/2017/01/06/commons-based-technology-inside-latelier-paysan/
(see platform coop videos for urban tech sov / and inpact report for rural tech sov)
Baruch Gottlieb wrote: " it was a great year for developments in end-to-end web applications, with projects like Patchwork, Git-SSB, datproject/beaker, webtorrent/instant.io emerging a very usable scalable p2p alternatives to proprietary communications platforms... p2p distributed systems beyond blockchains. it was also a good year for meshnets, alternets, community networks which work outside, or beside the Internet, based on Freifunk... they have developed robust solar panel-powered freifunk nodes which will generate alternative free communicative communities on or off the Internet. "