Expansion into material sphere (was: Re: [ox-en] Impressions from WOS 4)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 08:20:33 +0200
Hi Michel and all!
3 weeks (27 days) ago Michael Bouwens wrote:
And this is probably what he responded to:
Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:
I'm not so sure whether we are already there. What we saw on WOS4 was
that the principles of production of Free Software spread out to other
digital goods. OpenAccess and Wikipedia are other important example
for this. But so far these are all relatively small islands and they
are surrounded by a huge ocean of capitalist production.
Thus I guess we will see more such islands emerge from the ocean over
time. Digital goods are certainly the most fertile ground so far so
all such goods can be expected to flourish. I guess this will work
similarly well and peaceful like Free Software.
But I think the material side will need some special break. I think
there is a big step from digital to material production - although I
have no doubts that it will happen. Today I'd say: I don't know when,
where it happens and which shape it will have - but I'm pretty sure
I/we will recognize it :-) .
I use 3 arguments in my p2p seminars to argue about the expansion
of peer production into the material sphere:
1) it can happen everywhere where resources can be distributed,
hence the importance of user-capitalized networks, p2p and mutual
financing schemes, desktop manufacturing ecologies
Well, as long as you say money it is really difficult to decouple such
a type of production from the capitalist sphere. In fact I think it is
impossible: If such a way of production would result in improved
products then some clever capitalist would have tried this out
already.
May be the fundamental problem is the need for raw resources which -
so far - can only be bought and are not available.
Free Software for a good part is built on computers which are
available to private persons - today typically in their household -
together with an Internet connection. This means that the machinery
needed for being productive is easily available - it is abundant.
The other resource Free Software needs is brainpower. This is under
the control of private persons anyway. Indeed there are no other raw
resources involved. Or to put it differently: The means of production
needed are all Free already.
I could imagine that this is an important precondition. That would
mean that real Free material goods can be produced only from other
real Free material goods. To start we thus need a resource which
already exists in abundance.
2) it can happen everywhere where the design phase can be
separated from the centralized production sphere; the design can
be done in peer production using open source licenses; with the
production taken up a posteriori
This is certainly an important condition. In particular this makes
half-Free models like service models in Free Software possible: The
good is Free but the service for the good is not.
Some years ago we discussed about Free chip design where chip
manufacturers could use the design to produce computer chips. Does
anyone know whether this really took off?
3) the virtual commons can help strengthen physical commons, by
linking objects (physical sphere), to licenses (the logical
sphere), to RFID's or other digitally linked tags (digital
sphere). The while bicycle project of the Deutsche Bahn, or
Bookcrossing, are examples of this.
You mean by transferring the information part to the Internet?
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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