[ox-en] Re: Peer production and/in academia
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 08:39:19 +0200
Hi Jean-Claude and all!
3 days ago Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:
I have been lurking onthis list for a long time as it was indeed
tangentially related to my own main interests.
Welcome :-) !
These happen to be Open
Access (I am an academic) and Free Software (I saw the French
organization AFUL come to light and was on its board twice).
Can you tell us what AFUL is?
I am not sure how all these movements can converge, but I am interested
in thinking about it.
Well, to me Free Software, Wikipedia and OpenAccess are the most
prominent examples of peer production. What amazes me is that all
three are based on similar principles - though the differences from
OpenAccess to the other two would be interesting to explore further
[1]_.
.. [1] There is also the talk of Stevan Harnard he gave on the 4th
Oekonux Conference about this topic. I'll put it here soon.
What amazes me in OpenAccess is that it is a grassroot movement. And -
though this is probably not the goal of the movement - it is opposed
to the attempts from officials to lock away / patent scientific
results. At the same time it solves a major problem of the officials
because it saves them money they otherwise need to spend for extremely
expensive scientific magazines. It's a nice example of a germ form
supporting the old, still existing form.
Similar to Free Software - AFAICS - OpenAccess exists because those
who really do the work find it simply more useful to have openness. In
this sense I also think Free Software and OpenAccess are a part of a
much bigger fundamental movement and in this sense they do not need
further converging. Or in other words: The movement actually happens
in the mode of production instead of on a political level. IMHO this
is where the power comes from.
I like to compare this to the early history of capitalism where
capitalists independent of a political movement founded their
corporations and just began to use money as capital. Just because the
time was ripe and the technological preconditions came about. This is
very different from for instance socialists movements where you had
*first* political demands - and *then* more or less nothing. Or in any
case less than the overcoming of the basic principles of capitalism
like abstract labor.
I will be on the road with limited Internet connection for the next ten
days. But I will read any reaction to this with great interest when I
return.
There is no problem with long delays - take me as an instance having
particularly long delays some times ;-) . In fact I think that it is
impossible to say really interesting things very frequently. Careful
composition of replies is even more important after long delays,
however.
Grüße
Stefan
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