P2P Foundation:About

The Foundation for P2P Alternatives proposes to be a meeting place for those who can broadly agree with the following propositions, which are also argued in the essay or book in progress, P2P and Human Evolution:

• that peer-to-peer based technology reflects a change of consciousness towards participation, and in turn strengthens it

• that the "distributed network" format, expressed in the specific manner of peer to peer relations, is a new form of political organizing and subjectivity, and an alternative for the current political/economic order, which though it does not offer solutions per se, points the way to a variety of dialogical and self-organizing formats, i.e. it represents different processes for arriving at such solutions; it ushers in a era of ‘nonrepresentational democracy’, where an increasing number of people are able to manage their social and productive life through the use of a variety of autonomous and interdependent networks and peer circles; that global governance, and the global market will be, and will have to be, more influenced by modes of governance involving multistakeholdership

• that it creates a new public domain, an information commons, which should be protected and extended, especially in the domain of common knowledge creation; and that this domain, where the cost of reproducing knowledge is near zero, requires fundamental changes in the intellectual property regime, as reflected by new forms such as the free software movement; that universal common property regimes, i.e. modes of peer property, such as the General Public Licese and the Creative Commons licenses should be promoted and extended

• that the principles developed by the free software movement, in particular the General Public License, and the general principles behind the open source and open access movements, provides for models that could be used in other areas of social and productive life

• that it reconnects with the older traditions and attempts for a more cooperative social order, but this time obviates the need for authoritarianism and centralization; it has the potential of showing that the new more egalitarian digital culture, is connected to the older traditions of cooperation of the workers and peasants, and to the search for an engaged and meaningful life as expressed in one’s work, which becomes an expression of individual and collective creativity, rather than as a salaried means of survival

• that it offers youth a vision of renewal and hope, to create a world that is more in tune with their values; that it creates a new language and discourse in tune with the new historical phase of ‘cognitive capitalism’; P2P is a language which every ‘digital youngster’ can understand. However, 'peer to peer theory' addresses itself not just to the network-enabled and to knowledge workers, but to the whole of civil society (the 'multitudes'), and to whoever agrees that the core of decision-making should be located in civil society, and not in the market or in the state, and that the latters should be the servants of civil society

• it combines subjectivity (new values), intersubjectivity (new relations), objectivity (an enabling technology) and interobjectivity (new forms of organization) that mutually strengthen each other in a positive feedback loop, and it is clearly on the offensive and growing, but lacking ‘political self-consciousness’. It is this form of awareness that the P2P Foundation wants to promote.

The Foundation for P2P Alternatives would address the following issues:

• P2P currently exists in discrete separate movements and projects but these different movements are often unaware of the common P2P ethos that binds them

• thus, there is a need for a common initiative, which

1. brings information together;
2. connects people and mutually informs them
3. strives for integrative insights coming from the many subfields;
4. can organize events for reflection and action;
5. can educate people about critical and creative tools for world-making

• the Foundation would be a matrix or womb which would inspire the creation and linking of other nodes active in the P2P field, organized around topics and common interests, locality, and any form of identity and organization which makes sense for the people involved

• the zero node website, i.e. the site of the P2P Foundation, would have a website with directories, an electronic newsletter and blog, and a magazine. It aims to be one of the places where people can interconnect and strengthen each other, and discuss topics of common interest.

Michel Bauwens, November 29, 2005

Structure of the P2P Foundation

The P2P Foundation is a decentralized organization. In order to foster it's growth, however, it has been necessary to create some centralized and managed structures. These are documented here.

• The P2P Foundation is a registered institute founded in in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It's local registered name is: Stichting Peer to Peer Alternatives, dossier nr: 34264847.
• There are no formal operational roles, but Founder Michel Bauwens acts as the leader on content creation and community management.
• Bios are available for the P2P Foundation's 3 Founders
• The P2P Foundation has several nodes on the web: a wiki, a blog, a social network, and an email discussion list. Each has an administrator.
  • The wiki is administered by James Burke
  • The blog is administered, and the server space paid for, by James Burke
  • The list is administered by Ryan Lanham and Kevin Carson
  • The social network in administered by Michel Bauwens

Read here for more on the History and Structure of the P2P Foundation

What Other People Are Saying about Us

- Franz Nahrada GIVE - Global Villages Lab, Austria:

"The Peer to Peer Foundation is the one organisation that brings toghether knowledge about the emerging cooperative economy and society from all walks of life. Be it new products based on collective imagination and testing, be it participatory forms of decisionmaking, be it good practises of strengthening the cultural commons - P2P foundation spans it all and provides us with knowledge resources essential for our daily work in harnessing the power of local community and global networking."

- Sam Rose

"How will humans solve the problem of working together to create new and better working systems for technology production, energy, knowledge creation, education, conflict resolution, media production, health care, design, research and development, finance and natural resource management? If you are interested in engaging these questions, P2P Foundation is one of the few entities that gives those interested access to explore, develop, contribute and benefit from the largest knowledge base in the world of people trying to set right what is really abundant, what is really scarce, and act accordingly. Trying to help create a better world? Start here!"

- Natalie Pang

"In a world dominated by market relations, the Peer to Peer (P2P) Foundation provides a solid insight on how alternative structural mechanisms i.e. peer-to-peer and collaborative production can be applied to all aspects of everyday life. This includes technological developments, the economy, cultural and social development, research and development, and the sustainability of natural resources. While grounded in theory, the P2P Foundation also offers ongoing dialogue with interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners to explore pragmatic solutions to contemporary issues and problems."

- Kevin Carson

"The quality of writing on the P2P Foundation blog is incomparable, and I have relied heavily on material in the P2P Wiki on peer production, open source manufacturing, and desktop manufacturing, in writing Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen of my org theory manuscript.

I highly recommend Bauwens' extended essay "P2P and Human Evolution," and his shorter introductory essay "The Political Economy of Peer Production."