Читать книгу The Handbook of Peer Production - Группа авторов - Страница 66

Through peer production we observe the emergence of a novel ecosystem of value creation consisting of three entities: productive communities; commons‐oriented entrepreneurial coalitions; and for‐benefit associations. Our description cannot be all‐inclusive because each ecosystem is unique. Moreover, it cannot be definite since we deal with a rapidly evolving mode of production. The aim is to offer a birds‐eye‐view of the expanding universe of peer production. The following table includes just five of the oldest and better‐known peer production ecosystems in the field of intangible production (Figure 2.1).

In addition to the well‐documented ecosystems of free and open source software projects as well as Wikipedia, the cases of Enspiral, Sensorica, Wikihouse, and Farm Hack offer new perspectives on the rich tapestry of the increasing number of peer production ecosystems. They all fit within the parameters of our description that build new commons‐based ecosystems of value creation (Figure 2.2). These examples also show the shift from purely digital production of software and knowledge, to the emergence of entities producing physical products and sophisticated services. Enspiral creates software; Sensorica is a project to make open source based scientific sources; Wikihouse produces designs to create sustainable housing; the Farm Hack community designs and manufactures open source machinery for small‐scale farming. What we see here is a replay of the tripartite institutional structure that we see in digital production. A recent study of the urban commons in Ghent (Bauwens & Onzia, 2017) shows that commons‐based urban provisioning systems also exemplify this new structure.

Figure 2.1 Five of the longest‐running and better‐known commons‐based peer production ecosystems.

Source: Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V. & Pazaitis, A. (2019). Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London: Westminster University Press, p. 16. © 2019 University of Westminster Press.

Figure 2.2 Four emerging commons‐based peer production ecosystems.

Source: Kostakis, V. & Bauwens, M. (2019). How to Create a Thriving Global Commons Economy. The Next System Project, p. 6.

The current emerging infrastructure (Figure 2.3) consists of the following:

The productive community comprises all the contributors to a project of peer production. The members of this entity may be paid or may volunteer their contributions because of some interest in the use‐value of this production. However, all of them produce the shared resource, a commons. The most important characteristic, as compared to systems based on wage labor, is that the system must remain open to contributions (equipotentiality).

The second entity is the commons‐oriented entrepreneurial coalition, which attempts to create either profits or livelihoods by generating added value for the market, based on the shared resources. The participating enterprises can pay contributors. The digital commons themselves are most often outside the market, because they are not scarce, and therefore not subject to the laws of supply and demand.

What is crucially important in the relation among the entrepreneurs, the community and the common‐pool resource on which they depend, is whether their relationship is generative or extractive. There is a rich literature on the relationship between for‐profit enterprises and peer production communities (see, e.g., Dahlander & Magnusson, 2008; Bonacorsi et al., 2006; O'Mahony & Bechky, 2008). Of course, extraction/generation are polarities, and every entity is expected to present a mixture.

Figure 2.3 The ecosystem of a single commons‐based peer production initiative.

Source: Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V., Troncoso, S., and Utratel, A. (2017). Commons Transition and Peer‐to‐Peer: A Primer. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, p.16.

Marjorie Kelly (2012) introduces non‐capitalist/generative enterprises, which again comes back to the distinction between markets and capitalism. So, we can have cooperatives or other forms of collectively managed organizations (e.g., nonprofits, NGOs) that have social and environmental goals and use their surplus for these goals, rather than accumulation. To demonstrate the difference between extractive and generative, think of industrial agriculture and permaculture. In the former, the soil becomes iteratively poorer and less healthy, while in the latter case the soil becomes richer and healthier.

In recent years a new type of platform‐based extractive entrepreneurs have sought to maximize their profits, and generally do not sufficiently re‐invest in the maintenance of the productive communities. Like Facebook, they do not share any profits with the co‐creating communities on which they depend for their value creation and realization. Like Uber or AirBnB, they tax exchanges but do not directly contribute to the creation of transport or hospitality infrastructures. So, the problem is that though they develop useful services that rely on underused resources, they do this in an extractive manner. Though they facilitate these services, they also create competitive mentalities which destroy the collaborative and environmental advantages of mutualizing pooled resources. Moreover, extractive enterprises may free‐ride on a whole set of social or public infrastructures (e.g., roads as in the case of Uber) and further undermine welfare provisions through the use of fictional worker autonomy to evade taxation and social benefits.

In contrast generative entrepreneurs create additional value around these communities. Seed‐forms of commons‐oriented entrepreneurial coalitions create added value on top of the commons that they co‐produce and upon which they are codependent. In the best cases, the community of entrepreneurs coincides with the productive community. The contributors build their vehicles to create livelihoods while producing the commons. They re‐invest the surplus in their well‐being and the overall commons system they co‐produce.

The third entity is the for‐benefit association that can also be seen as the infrastructural organization of the commons, i.e., they manage the infrastructures of commons‐based cooperation. Indeed, many peer production ecosystems not only consist of productive communities and entrepreneurial coalitions, but also have independent governance institutions that support the infrastructure for (stigmergic) cooperation. They enable cooperation to take place autonomously and do not command and control the peer production process itself. Behind any commons project, you always find some infrastructural organization, as you cannot have commoning without infrastructure. For example, the Wikimedia Foundation, as the for‐benefit association of Wikipedia, does not coerce the production of Wikipedia producers. That is also the case for the free and open source software foundations that often manage the infrastructure and networks of the projects.

By way of contrast, traditional non‐governmental and nonprofits organizations operate in a world of “perceived” scarcity. They identify problems, search for resources, and allocate those resources in a directive manner to the solving of the issues they have identified. This approach arguably offers a mirror image to the for‐profit model of operating.

For‐benefit associations operate for “potential” abundance. They recognize problems and issues but believe that there are enough contributors that desire to assist in solving these issues, most often via holoptism‐based stigmergic cooperation. Hence, they maintain an infrastructure of cooperation that allows contributive communities and entrepreneurial coalitions to engage in peer production processes vital for addressing these issues, without directly commanding them. Not only do they protect these commons through licenses, but may also help manage conflicts between participants and stakeholders, fundraise, and assist in the general capacity building necessary for the commons in particular fields of activity (e.g., through education or certification).

Next we discuss the novel aspects of such new interconnected commons‐based ecosystems.