Large infrastructure and peer production (was: [ox-en] Project / Book)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:29:13 +0200
Hi Mathieu and all!
16 months (488 days) ago Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
Plus, how do complex technical systems such as hospitals, airports, electricity grids operate in the type of "commonalist" (you know what I mean) society which I see described (for example) by Christian Siefkes? Do we go back to a village structure where specialised tasks are impossible? What happens to neurosurgeons? Do they disappear?
Well, in a way this is a standard problem. I remember during my
anarchist times this was one of the major standard problems - and IMHO
in anarchism an unsolved one.
I think there are two aspects which needs consideration. The first one
is the feasibility of large infrastructure projects by means of peer
production and the other is the conflicts which often arise from large
infrastructure projects.
As far as the feasibility is concerned I'd like to remind people that
we have peer production projects which *create* large infrastructure.
In fact both flagship projects of peer production - Free Software and
Wikipedia - do create major infrastructure. So this is a practical
prove that this is feasible and even works pretty well.
As far as the conflicts are concerned you might say that these are
"just" information projects which are not stepping on someone's toes.
Well, at least for Wikipedia it's quite obvious that this is not the
case. Wikipedia *can* step on someone's toes, does it at times and
once in a while is criticized for this. Nonentheless there are
reconciliation processes which do solve these conflicts. Considering
the huge room for conflicts and comparing it to the relatively low
number of conflicts which are publically noticed I'd even say they
work very well.
In a way I'm confident that large material infrastructure is not very
different here. It will step on someone's toes but I think there will
be ways to reconcile these conflicts. They will probably be as
creative as in existing peer production projects.
Grüße
Stefan