Re: Expansion into material sphere (was: Re: [ox-en] Impressions from WOS 4)
- From: Michael Bouwens <michelsub2003 yahoo.com>
- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 18:26:06 -0700 (PDT)
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Stefan,
I don't think we disagree, and I didn't say it is easy, but the trends is there, and is not entirely naturalistic. In other words, some of the required change towards distribution might require political interventions.
But the precedents, of distributed access to physical goods and capital, are already there: customer-build network infrastructures such as Skype and FON, the filesharing networks, carpooling ...
As some of such forms of technical and financial capital become more finegrained with tools of global coordination, i.e. under the control of cooperative individuals, they will increase the scope of 'Free' possibilities.
As for the third condition, Martin Springer explained to me the bicycle program in Germany (German railways?), where the 'white bicycle has a lock, is usable by all participants, but the object's identity and whereabouts can be monitored by the internet so that it cannot be privately appropriated). But think of Bookcrossings as well.
Michel
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.
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?
YES, I DO
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Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
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