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I played around with Wordle, which can generate different kinds of wordclouds, and this one represents the Delicious tags. The number of tagged items recently surpassed the 15,000 mark, but it is very much a collective endeavour as I draw a lot on the findings of the p2pfoundation network, that can be accessed through the network feature of Delicious.
Thanks to Sam Rose for transferring the image it to the blog.
Today I read this amazing article:
It’s worth mentioning that their is no science without theory. The human mind is wired for creating theories. That is why there is a neural network built into our brain/mind system. It is wired to consider the un-manifested.
That being said, what Kevin Kelly describes is a lot like Stephen Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science”. Not exactly the same, but closely related.
In both cases: a *search* based science. Not that science didn’t already have “search”. But now you can start to create billions of possible combinations of simulations and then search through them. So it is simulation/search based.
You can compress thousands, or even millions of years or human trial and error into this type of research. Plus, you walk away with billions of potential variations on your design, and ready ways and building blocks to adapt and change your design, and data about how different variations work under different conditions. You have a design DNA.
Right now, I use databases like google as a kind of bionic brain extension. So, I say bring on the new databases, the computer clusters, the algorithms. As long as we all have equal access to them.
The question for me is: what comes after search? When knowledge bases reach the exabyte level, or higher, and there are algorithms searching/crunching through them and finding patterns, relationships, testing all of the possible combinations, etc, how do handle and process what the machines are outputting? How do we avoid becoming a cybernetic society?
An even more fundamental question is: what can you create with all of this data, and/or with the systems that are used to collect and analyze it? How can it be used as a medium for expression? What are the new ways to “see” and “feel” the data? How can the data systems be grounded as an ecology that is self-balancing, so that it doesn’t overrun our existence like a form of digital toxic pollution, and cause ill effects on living systems, like people being ruled by algorithmic output that is too much in one direction?
Another consideration: When we see that entities like google are the only ones that can wield and harness resources like those that process and hold petabyte databases, then we still have the potential for a power imbalance, where those who can hold and process the most data are the “wealthiest” in terms of capability, adaptability, access to knowledge.
I wonder how many people realize that existing technology possesses the building blocks to allow p2p networks to exceed the capability of any one entity like Google, etc?
I can see the possibilty of something simple, and elegant on a basic scale, that can scale-up easily, that provides a social utility for anyone who accesses it, using the combined resources of millions, or possibly even of people for storage and processing, that cannot be controlled for any specific exclusive purpose by any one person, and that could be controlled democratically by people opting out of participation should they not like the direction things are going in. We could have this today, and some people have already done it on a limited basis with things like SETI@Home, etc. What we need is more evolution in this area, more ways to use swarm super-computers, ways that are accessible by many people. A way to turn swarm super computers into an open social utility. This would is not out of our reach right now. We don’t have to wait until networks are totally decentralized to build this into our social systems. We all have computers and operating systems, free cpu cycles, internet connections with extra bandwidth, and likely ideas about what we could do with those resources. There are already clients like [boinc.berkeley.edu] , and systems like [ceph.newdream.net] or even [www.bittorrent.com] as building block upon which to improve. [www.bittorrent.com] could even work if enough people participated.
The point is, a p2p social computing/data utility could exist today even with just BOINC and bittorrent. I am now in discussion with communities, like [socialsynergyweb.org] about how they could apply evolutionary computing, simulation, datamining, and other modelling and search to local food systems. (see http://socialsynergyweb.org/oardc/local-food-systems-computer-modeling-g…)
A BOINC/bittorrent system could be used with applictions like [www.urbansim.org] , [code.google.com] and countless other open source simulation systems, not to mention datamining, GIS analysis, etc This can give local communities access to pwoerful research and development facilities. It could also be used to render and crunch numbers on design/ FEA (finite element analysis) etc.
The question is, why isn’t this already happening? Probably primarily because we get a minimum of what we need from free/ad-based systems like Google. But we could have a lot more, even right now. There is a huge amount of inherent wealth and untapped commons available right now. Another reason could be that people are not seeing some kind of reciprocation of value from their participation in this systems. It is true that some people are seeing rewards in terms of points for teams, etc. But, what if those “points” could be some kind of credit system? Or, even more, what if people could see tangible results in better crop yields, access to new technologies, or other improvements in their lives? What if you could in part purchase access to new/developing technology in the future, by giving access to your free computer cycles now? BOINC makes this possible *rightnow*. BOINC has a built-in credit system, which could be improved if needed through further development, and was created to deal with the problem of people cheating the system to get more credits in the early days of the SETI@hoem project.
This could be one way to support the development of open design/open license projects and products. A distributed infrastructure for datamining, simulation, modelling, even rendering of open license entertainment projects like [extinctionlevelevent.com] through BOINC-based projects like [burp.boinc.dk] (BURP).
Please let us know what you think about this. If you have a project that is already engaged in research and development in some form, could you benefit from access to huge amounts of processing? It is my theory that access to this resource could also help some open source or open content projects secure funding, because it could drive down the up-front cost of research and development for technologies, and could offer a platform for testing theories of many types, from modelling technology to modelling human economic systems.
This is a blog post in reply to [blog.p2pfoundation.net] and the quote therein from James Edwards:
“I feel that if the movement doesn’t free itself from its dependence on corporate support it can’t legitimately claim to be a viable and credible alternative to the current system.”
Problem is not that p2p production is or is not a viable or credible alternative.
The problem is whether enough people *see* it as a viable alternative. I am not ready to write it off quite yet, as the conditions for change have only just begun to emerge.
I think land is important. But, I already have land. I already own land. And, I am beginning to build ways to produce on that land. It’s not enough to own land. You have to find people who are willing to work with you to change the way you live on that land (which is exactly what Marcin Jakubowski is doing trying very hard to do with [openfarmtech.org).] I fully support what Marcin is exploring, but I am focused on applying work with Marcin to helping people find better ways to live in Urban/Suburban systems, because that is where I am physically located, and it is also where most of the people are.
I think even more than land, property, means of production, etc, while they are all very important, it is the way that people see and regard land, property, etc that will be the fundamental, deep core pattern from which everything else will unfold. That being said, I think part of what will help people see will be to experience hands-on the democratization of design and production of physical technologies, and the immediate/local production of foods.
For instance, the only way for a group of people to take advantage of p2p network dynamics around physical resources like land, is for them to *see* and use the resource, and co-govern the resource, as a commons. This is the *infrastructure* that is needed to replace existing. Not everyone is willing to do this right now.
Therefore, it is my theory that, if you desire to co-govern property, knowledge, land, etc as a commons, that you collaborate directly with those who agree with you. But, you also make room in your plans for those that don’t. Figure out how you will make your alternative systems survive and grow within existing systems.
Also, the people who agree with you, in this day and age, are not going to fall in line lock-step and all do the same thing. The people who are immediately ready to see a change are actually a “Long tail” of people with many different interests. How can you work with all of them? If collaboration really does require social negotiation, then give people space and time to negotiate socially. Don’t sit them all in chairs and make them listen to what you have to say. Turn control over to them, and become an enabler. Remove obstacles and get out of the way. I have seen this work enough, to be thoroughly convinced that bringing people together who resonate with the idea of treating common pool resources as an ongoing “commons”, and letting them hash out how they will create an ecology, will be the route to plausible alternative “peer to peer” infrastructures.
It won’t come from academics, other than some on the fringe of academia, who are already working to change academia. It won’t come from business, other than from people now on the fringe of business who are bypassing traditional business notions and systems.
But wait a minute, let’s rewind back through everything I just wrote here for a minute, because if I am right, and the people who are most ready to change and explore alternative infrastructure systems are part of a “long tail”, that means there are more of us in total than people who want to keep things the same. I think that I could actually find some convincing proof that what I am asserting here is correct, in existing work of different types. At this point, I am just taking it for granted that people like me, who do not like things the way they are, and have insight and desire for change that is workable, outnumber those that want to keep everything the same. If someone reading this would like to challenge me on this assertion, I will do the work of proving it and then we can move on.
The important point is that, if you buy what I am saying (and I do buy what I am saying), the majority who want and are ready for change are fractured by way of their scope and area of interest.
In my opinion, the next thing to do is to start bringing together diverse groups of these people. But don’t try to force them into doing specific tasks. Instead, give them ready and free, unfettered space, time, tools, infrastructure, and they will start to realize the possibilities beyond their current narrow scope of interest. They will start to realize that the building blocks for alternative infrastructure already exist. This “magic, pie in the sky” emergence of realization will happen just as soon as all of the people reading this, all of the people concerned with seeing this type of change, clear paths and get out of the way enough for it to happen. So long as we are foisting our narrow focus upon the great, diverse masses of people who are hungry and excited for change, we’ll just confuse and muddle their genuine progress further.
Michel Bauwens recently sent this link in an email to the p2plist:
http://research.cibcwm.com /economic_public/download /feature1.pdf
Along with the question: “Are higher transportation costs reversing globalization?”
My own answer:
Globalization was never a self-sustaining system to begin with. Globalization began in part (after WWII) precisely because local systems were too efficient for market mass producers. They needed governments to go “open up new markets” for them. But then the people on the receiving end started wanting something in return, so the governments also quietly but steadily started to look the other way while market mass producers made war on those local systems, to drive out local competition, and get their deal-cutting global networks in place as an only choice system.
This was always heavily subsidized by the largest and wealthiest governments. This is why apples from New Zealand are cheaper at my local grocery store than Michigan apples from 10 miles away!! I pay the remainder of the cost of New Zealand apples in the 1/3 of my earnings that go towards federal taxes. So, the Michigan apple was actually always cheaper in the first place.
Since we can’t keep those subsidies up for ever, like oil and fuel and shipping lane subsidies, we’ll be returning to local food systems, which will in part DEFINE this new century we are in. A shift from the unsustainable to the sustainable, for human and earth-system survival.
However, we don’t all ride off happily into the sunset, unfortunately. All of those mass market producers, sitting on top of piles of money, are going to quickly catch whiff of the change. They are going to try to co-opt it. To make it look like they are also doing this local thing. But what they really will be doing is trying to do is go around and buy out and control these emerging local food systems.
Indeed, this could be the next financial “bubble” that we experience (at least in the US, anyway). With wild speculation based around green tech, local food systems, sustainable products and services, fueled by optimism and enthusiasm based around change in government (namely when Obama is elected president).
This is why people who are working to create local food system infrastructure need to be careful to make them a self-sustaining, community, collaborative, peer-governed system. They also need to be more agile, more adaptable than behemoth companies are. The people that make them up need to realize that they can do business with large companies, but that they should not put themselves in a position of relying on large companies, nor governments, for their existence. They will emerge on the other side of the “bubble” burst in a few years, as the entities that possess actual value once all of the ponzi and get rich quick schemes fall apart.
Additional useful related resources for thinking about this:
[globalguerrillas.typepad.com] great blog by war and systems analyst John Robb that looks at how declining globalization is moving us towards a networked global/localization that puts a lot of infrastructure for energy and food and other production back into communities.
Writer Micheal Edwards’ recent book [www.justanotheremperor.org] takes a critical look at the hype surrounded the emerging phenomenon that some are calling “philanthrocapitalism”: using business and market systems to affect social change. The main criticism from Edwards can be summed up in his opendemocracy.net article:
“My worry is that the hype surrounding philanthrocapitalism will divert attention from the deeper changes that are required to transform society, reduce decisions to an inappropriate bottom line, and lead us to ignore the costs and trade-offs involved in extending business principles into the world of civil society and social change. I’m concerned that these questions, and the evidence that underpins them, are not being given a fair hearing. And I want to provoke a conversation in which different positions can be aired and listened to. The only way that philanthrocapitalism will be able to fulfill its considerable potential is by moving beyond the hype.”
Mohammed Yunus has also recently written a book that looks at how Social Enterprise can affect change. Yunus argues:
“The social business dollar is much more powerful than the charity dollar [..] Whereas the charity dollar can be used only once, the social-business dollar recycles itself again and again, ad infinitum, to deliver benefits to more and more people.”
Although, I’ll also point out that Social Entrepreneurship is different than “Philanthrocapitalism”. Social Entrepreneurship as discussed by Yunus covers many scales, from small to large business. While, “Philanthrocaptialism” is defined by Edwards as:
Both Edwards and Yunus appear to be right, in my estimation. Yunus is right that there is much power in entrepreneurship, in the freedom to create wealth for yourself and others. Yet, Edwards is right that (in my words) there is also a huge machine, which is a combination of broadcast media corporations, and a plethora of big businesses and wealthy people around the world, that seek to co-opt social emergences, so as to funnel money, human energy, and control over domains towards their market corrals.
This is nothing new. With every social movement, from the early 1960’s, to the “creative class” of the early 2000’s, there have been people trying to capitalize on, and co-opt the symbols and energy of emergent social movements. (see [www.press.uchicago.edu] for a look at the origins of the phenomenon). Social entrepreneurship, or “philanthrocapitalism” is really no different. When a social phenomenon starts out in a “democratized” way (as they often actually do), meaning that most, or all of the building blocks are already present for individuals to participate in self-sustaining ways, that would let people bypass or obsolete their need for mass pre-produced solutions, the big companies must act to keep people buying something, or risk being obsoleted from their lives. This basically means that corporate spending of public money is sold to the public as a project to make it easier for them to be more “creative”, more socially or environmentally responsible, or more philanthropic. This, I believe is the danger that Edwards is warning us about. That we’ll just leave it up to “business” to take the lead in social enterprise.
The problem is that when we leave social transformation to business, we end up with a society that is structured by the principles of business management. Edwards’s book contends that there is evidence that the mission “drifts” away from social change, and towards profit, efficiency, and sometimes corruption. What is lacking in these situations is a social basis for social change.
The market, and while being a powerful force, is no basis for sustainable social change. The atomization of business infrastructure to an individual level is but one building block towards real social change that is enabled in part by social enterprise. The next step is the atomization of social infrastructure. People must learn to cooperate and collaborate together in equitable ways. People must learn to co-manage common infrastructure, and common resources in a democratic and transparent way. Accessing and employing the efficient production and distribution systems of business and the market is not enough. Those who rely on those systems must also have co-control of them.
This means that everyone in the “chain” gets a say, from grower/builder/laborer, to the person that buys a finished product. This means that a person’s “job” is not just to specialize in being a lawyer, baking bread, or hauling garbage, but also in direct civic participation and oversight of the systems that feed, clothe, and house you. How can you know that the companies your are buying from, or are employed by, are working equitably? You are involved in making sure that they are. Adam Arvidsson’s Valuing the Ethical Economy offers some deep insights into how this is plausible. Adam writes:
” What creates these ethical values? They are not the direct results of investments in labor time. You can work as much as you want on your music and style, that, in itself will not make you a rock star. Rather, suddenly something happens and then, you’ve made it. What determines your value are the quality and quantity of affect (attention) that you have been able to accumulate. The relation between the productive time invested in a project and the mass affect that it is able to attract is non-linear, or viral, to use a popular marketing term.[2] Models could be found in contemporary mathematical theories of network dynamics, and perhaps in Gabriel Tarde’s theories of the role of public sentiment.[3] Indeed, the logical relation between value and labor is rather the reverse of that usually associated with the capitalist economy. Once you have a sufficiently attractive brand, you will attract an abundance of free labor as well as other resources. Linux has no problems recruiting new programmers: people want to work for them for free; people pay to use brands in their everyday life and thus freely co-produce their ethical value through their constructive consumer practices. On financial markets, capital flows to the most attractive brands. More means more in this case, if you have accumulated a significant stock of ethical capital, people will freely give you their time and further attention, or, on financial markets, their capital.”
To sum it up, in order for markets to really help change society, we first need to create social infrastructure that allows us to value the ethical capital of the companies that we are doing business with. We need to democratize and equitably control these infrastructures on the level/scale of voluntarily cooperating and collaborating individuals. This will then create a conduit of ethics, and social focus, through which we all can pursue market exchanges. Markets measured against our real social interests, not just made to appeal to our base needs, or fool us into thinking they will solve our social problems.
See also:
Via: BoingBoing Great Firewall of China crumbling from within
Reading this boing boing post yesterday got me thinking about how watching whatVeroEl juego del casino es un juego de naipes que ha convertido en uno de los mas practicados en todo el mundo gracias a su sencilla mecanica y reglas que son tan fasil para entender. al suo nome
I’ve just returned from Nottingham, UK., where I participated in the first-ever academic workshop on p2p concepts, a conference/workshop on “the political economies of peer production”.
I plan on giving a review of each presentation in blog postings here. This first post is about Adam Arvidsson’s amazing, and thought provoking presentation on what he is calling the “Ethical Economy”.
(I am reviewing Adam’s presentation first, because my notes ended up being most complete on his. I plan on reviewing all other presentations here as well, once I have a chance to reconstruct and map them).
This review will be in my words, and mostly paraphrased, but I’ll do my best to stay faithful to the vision that Adam was communicating.
Adam’s idea about an “ethical economy” is basically a new human-centric economy, that is emerging out of materialistic economy that has dominated the world for over a century now.
Adam’s compelling arguments include:
Many people in the conference responded to ask, basically “how will we make a living in this new economy”, if value is no longer centered on materialistic gain. Indeed, this is the problem we all face, but it is also simultaneously the opportunity that is currently wide open, and wating, for people to build out new types of wealth.
I’ve created a dialogue map, that attempts to show Adam’s key points, and conceptual connections between them. I made this dialogue map while Adam gave his presentation. One interesting thing to note is that all arguments point toward the building, support, and sustaining of community as the answer to the questions that the ethical economy raises (”Value is contingent on the construction/sutainence/producing of community in the ethical economy. Communities depend on ethics for cohesion/sustainability”).
(click on image above to see map full size).
I’ve just returned from Nottingham, UK., where I participated in the first-ever academic workshop on p2p concepts, a conference/workshop on “the political economies of peer production”.
I plan on giving a review of each presentation in blog postings here. This first post is about Adam Arvidsson’s amazing, and thought provoking presentation on what he is calling the “Ethical Economy”.
(I am reviewing Adam’s presentation first, because my notes ended up being most complete on his. I plan on reviewing all other presentations here as well, once I have a chance to reconstruct and map them).
This review will be in my words, and mostly paraphrased, but I’ll do my best to stay faithful to the vision that Adam was communicating.
Adam’s idea about an “ethical economy” is basically a new human-centric economy, that is emerging out of materialistic economy that has dominated the world for over a century now.
Adam’s compelling arguments include:
Many people in the conference responded to ask, basically “how will we make a living in this new economy”, if value is no longer centered on materialistic gain. Indeed, this is the problem we all face, but it is also simultaneously the opportunity that is currently wide open, and wating, for people to build out new types of wealth.
I’ve created a dialogue map, that attempts to show Adam’s key points, and conceptual connections between them. I made this dialogue map while Adam gave his presentation. One interesting thing to note is that all arguments point toward the building, support, and sustaining of community as the answer to the questions that the ethical economy raises (”Value is contingent on the construction/sutainence/producing of community in the ethical economy. Communities depend on ethics for cohesion/sustainability”).
(click on image above to see map full size).
(Via Panarchy “Social Publishing” talks coming up | Panarchy.com)
Fellow P2P Foundation blogger Paul Hartzog will be in the UK in November to talk about the exciting topic of Social Publishing
Nov 14, de Montfort University, Leicester, U.K.; Institute of Creative Technologies IOCT
Co-presenter: Richard Adler, Michigan State University
“Social Publishing”
This talk will focus on how social publishing at oort-cloud.org came into being, and on some interesting phenomena that have emerged regarding the future of narrative.
[www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk] 15-16, Trent University, Nottingham, U.K.; The Political Economy of Peer Production
“Social Publishing”
This brief talk will focus on how social publishing might affect the peer-to-peer p2p economy, and on ways in which social publishing can help us to formulate a more general approach to understand the p2p economy.
[www.ntu.ac.uk]
Both myself and Michel Bauwens will also be present at the Poltical Economy of Peer Production workshop.
Paul’s Social Publishing background comes from his experience in helping to found the [www.oort-cloud.org] collaborative science fiction writing community. If you are a science fiction fan, be sure to check out Oort-Cloud.
GiveMeaning - online donation, online fundraising and creative fundraising ideas
An interesting idea, connecting news stories with Donation projects, and giving people ways to collectively rate and filter different dimensions, or propose their own way to solve the problem. “Problem spaces” are sorted through tags, and tag clouds show areas with higher activity.
Process Network building theory - P2P Foundation
Diagram
Stage 1: Discussion/Credibility establishment
Assuming the two groups decide they want to connect at all: The process starts out with discussion/conversation among the two groups. This is where the two groups both start to create shared understanding through dialogue, and mutually determine the level of credibility and knowledge of one another. This process is transparent, in order to encourage equitable interaction. Stage 1 could be:
* Conversation/reasoned discussion and debate
* Mutual peer review of each groups self-selected “highest insights” Peer review could be done through a semantic annotation process, that would semantically “tag” both an ontology, and a “rating/review” onto content (which would then make an RDF-exportable knowledge network map, that could be filtered and sorted via machine, based on peer-review, and/or ontology)
* Summary of conversation into Pattern language [c2.com] wiki pages, that help create mutual understanding
The groups can then stabilize into a conversation based relationship, which has value based mostly around feedback and loose connection. Or, the groups could decide to establish a “process network”, and collaborate together, to leverage the power of their numbers. if so, they move on to stage 2
Stage 2 Evaluate and Orchestrate
They mutually evaluate one another’s capability to accomplish the proposed work, and they decide which group will fill what role based on the capability assessment. Then they select individuals to act as “orchestrators” to help coordinate, and to make sure that reciprocation of value is reaching participants satisfactorily.
The “middle ground” that I proposed to create on Semantic wiki was to help facilitate stage 1.
Tools and Techniques
Examples of people summarizing discussion into wiki pages
This concept actually emerged from the first wiki. If you read the page of the inventor of wiki [c2.com] you’ll see his description of how he goes about doing this. You can also see this in [www.usemod.com] and [communitywiki.org]
All of those wikis are “CommunityOverContent” wikis, which means there is some very cutting edge thinking and discussion going on, but the purpose of the wiki is for a group of close collaborators to create a PatternLanguage, as opposed to creating pages for a publication. Readability is less important than evolution of mutual understanding, in those wikis.
When Wikipedia was founded, and when Media Wiki software was created, the purpose of the wiki in that case was ContentOverCommunity, the community was dedicated to content. So, the discussion was moved off of the content page, and to a talk page, and the content pages in Wikipedia were organized for maximum readability.
Most communities that use wiki are usually some degree of a hybrid of these two purposes. So, MediaWiki becomes a great tool for them to both try to develop a PatternLanguage (as you see happening at [c2.com] and [www.usemod.com] and trying to develop good quality readable content, like a Wikipedia-type encyclopedia site. P2P foundation falls under this category.
Sometimes, though, two groups that are trying to collaborate, when they are in “stage 1″ of the process described above, can use more of an open CommunityOverConent space, because it is more important to try and create a PatternLanguage at that stage (Shared understanding), and to build trust (through Shared Understanding, and through mutual equitable evaluation/review of existing knowledge bases). Stage 2 is when they will be able to join forces on the creation of refined content.
References
The Only Sustainable Edge John Hagel, JS Brown - Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2005
Retrieved from “ [p2pfoundation.net]
In How do we take care of each other?, Chris Messina writes about Kevin Burton, a dedicated Open Source software project leader, who was attacked, and how a growing social network is donating money to help demonstrate that there are some good people in this world, to someone who does so much good.
Chris writes:
Kevin Burton IM’d me yesterday and asked if he could give me a call. “Y’know Greg Stein?” “Yeah,” I said, “I just finally met him at BarCampBlock. What’s up?” “I just heard that he was mugged on his way home yesterday.” “Is he okay?” I asked. “No.”
Apparently two guys jumped Greg (who happened to be on crutches), gave him a black eye and serious laceration that was bleeding profusely when the ambulance arrived.
All for a hundred bucks and a credit card.
Now, for those of you who don’t know, Greg is a great guy, and one who has done a tremendous amount of good for the open source world. He’s now at Google doing loads of good work open sourcing their innards while chairing and acting as director of the Apache Software Foundation, lead developer of Subversion, and all things WebDAV.
And it’s really too bad that terrible things happen to good people like Greg.
So Kevin decided he wanted to do something. And that’s why he IM’d and then called me. He’s collecting donations in order to buy flowers, buy dinner and generally prove that, even when shit like this happens, that there is still good people and humanity in the world. And that when you give so much of yourself away to others and expect nothing in return, you’re the best candidate to receive the support of the community you’ve helped for so long.
So as I talked to Kevin about what we could do for Greg, it become abundantly clear that in all the social networking and digital ephemera that we’ve wrapped ourselves in we’ve done a pretty shoddy job of creating simple or obvious ways to help each other out in meaningful and effective ways when we’re most in need. Our networks are self-healing; people are not. So what have we done to make it possible to immediately mobilize ourselves when things do go wrong in order to provide the most effective and helpful response? When it comes to taking care of one individual out of our hundreds of friends across these online networks, does the network confound or enhance our ability to pitch in and materially help out?
This idea is new, natural, and yet confounding at the same time. Because, it is so easy and affordable for many of us to chip in some money towards helping others. And yet, it is so counter-intuitive to so many people’s world-view. A giving attitude is one of the biggest changes that I believe has emerged from online cooperation networks. People are slowly more and more able to build trust among their networks, and to put that trust into action.
Chris goes on to write:
If the government’s response to Katrina proved anything, it’s that our safety and well-being is in each others’ hands. And that we have to figure out how to put these new networks into our employ, and to figure out how design them to serve our human needs in the most vital times. It’s ideas like Brian Caldwell’s Emergency Social-Repeater System or the recent thread on the coworking mailing list for P2P health care that suggest that we’re beginning the work to figure this stuff out for ourselves.
In the meantime, Kevin is just about half way through raising $2000 to send Greg out to Big Sur where he can relax and recuperate. Even though no one deserves to experience the kind of thing that Greg did on Friday, I think he’s more than earned the support of the community here. The systems of supporting ourselves and keeping each other safe certainly have a long way to go and deserve our attention; however, in the meantime, there is a more pressing need. For the moment we’ll make due, and do the best that we can, for each other.
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The following is wiki post that I made recent to the coworking wiki, in it’s entirety. Feedback is most welcome
ContextAs detailed at HealthCareArchive, previously, we tentatively figured out (http://tinyurl.com/328dk8) that creating a formalized health care entity might:
ChrisMessina, TaraHunt, and maybe others were thinking about the idea of
group-buying, to help coworkers leverage their numbers. This is a good idea,
yet, if I recall correctly, we also seemed to find geography is still an
issue, because one provider cannot cover many different states, in many
cases.
Inspiration from “Church Plan”Thinking back on a phenomenon that I research for the
http://cooperationcommons.com project, and the
http://p2pfoundation.net project. SamRose came across the “Faith Based Health
Insurance” phenomenon:
The way this works is that “members send a monthly check, or “share,” that
ranges from $200 to $400 to the plan or to members the plan designates with
“needs,” or medical bills. The plans subtract overhead and administrative
expenses from the total collected and use the remainder to pay claims”
Members are “vetted” or qualified to join the “plan” based on a letter from
their clergy person verifying they are an active church member, and
trustworthy person.
So, what does this have to do with Coworking?This “church plan” shows a plausible legal international route to
sharing health care costs among a network of people, religious or otherwise.
These “church plan” participants are really just donating money to one
another, facilitated by their churches, and by “plan” coordinators. Might a
non-religious network of people also think about a way to pool money, and
route it to people who need it in this way? Some of us think so.
The idea here is that it is legal for us to give money to each other for
pretty much anything we want to, so it becomes a matter of figuring out how
we can give each other money in an equitable, not-for-profit way, that can
systematize some aspects, and can buil on inherent trust.
The System Evisioned:1. Participation is based upon the trust metrics of others who are already in the network (others “vouch” for you on the local CoWorking level). Each participant joins a local group made up of people they actually know. Each group votes on whether it will participate with other groups, based on an AggregatedRating for each group.
2. Each donor is given a mechnism for splitting their donation up and paying out to all others in the network who have donation requests
3. The system calculates the minimum that each donor would need to pay to ensure that all donation requests in the network or the month are fulfilled. (When possible, larger lump sum requests are split up across as many months as possible per donation request)
Goal: 100% coverage for all users.
Factors that impact use of system - Items To Docurrently give $12,000.00 US per year, $1,000,000 ove lifetime before paying these taxes (don’t
know what state laws are) [www.irs.gov]
1. You would not be able to write off your contributions into the
system
2. You would not have to pay taxes on your contributions into the
system, because even if you contributed as much as $500 per month,
you would only have contributed 6000.00 per year (this would of course
eat into you ability to give other gifts, except to qualifying
charities, which would then allow you to claim a deduction)
3. It would appear that you would still be allowed to write off your
health care costs off of the top of your income, even though they
would all presumably be payed by the donation system. This is because
the recipient does not have to declare the gift as income. This needs
further research, but I believe I am right about this.
This also does not factor in what you state government may do with
regards to taxing gifts, if anything.
4. Total actual healthcare costs for US citizen (not monthly insurance premiums, but actual billed costs from care providers) per capita (average) in 2005 is $6401.00 (from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/36/38979632.xls) about 533.00 per month. So, given that this is average, monthly minimum donation to create 100% coverage for all involved could range from roughly $50-$500 per month. Donation requests might need to be “throttled” to a maximum per month to keep system stable. These are only quick rough numbers. Full research needed to create accurate picture of system dynamics.
5. 50 state legality needs to be researched, and vetted by lawyer before any actual exchange of money takes place
Example tools that can facilitate exchange
Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation discusses the core P2P concepts at Swinburne in Australia recently:
This video is probably the best, most concise explanation of these concepts so far. Definitely worth watching. Also, visit [p2pfoundation.net] for more information on what is discussed in this video.
(via P2P-Kredite)
The P2P Lending enabler-site [prosper.com] is experiencing a rebellion by it’s lenders, mostly found on it’s forums:
See: ”FLASH:Prosper bans $100.000 lender“, “Prosper Mng. Living Under a Rock“, “Shooting the Messenger“, “What happens if Prosper goes under?“, “I am done lending on Prosper“, “Hello Prosper Moderator“, “Lender’s WHO are DONE with Prosper“, “My letter to Prosper” and ”Open letter to John Witchel“.
Apparently, the problem lies in Prosper’s reported un-responsiveness to their lender community. The lenders have raised issues about Prosper’s lack of effective collections on deliquent loans, and Prosper’s reported past inaction on preventing “blenders” (people who are both borrowers and lenders, or group leaders who are also borrowers) from lending money when they are deliquent on their own Prosper loan payments. Apparently Prosper.com has since announced that it will take action on deliquent “blenders”.
My own analysis is that some of these problems appear to be inevitable given the conditions on Prosper.com’s loan marketplace:
It is my theory that many people are likely defaulting on their Prosper loans because they are over-extended in credit. Because of the huge problem in the US with people being over-extended on their credit, Prosper is affected by the same factor as any unsecured credit lending entity. When people find out that they have a chance to obtain unsecured credit, whether they are over-extended or not, they are flocking to Prosper, and they are getting money, and they are not paying it back.
This actually reflects a deeper problem with the economy in America (and possibly elsewhere): for a huge amount of individuals, borrowing money is the only way to raise capital in the immediate future. roughly 6 in 10 US citizens are in Debt. Especially given economy slowdowns in many areas across the US over the past 8+ years, this also means things like getting a raise from your employer, or changing employers to increase wages is less likely of an option for a huge amount of people. So, people are turning to borrowing money.For the last 8+ years, there has also been an explosion in US subprime lending. This led to a mortgage bubble that is now collapsing in the US. In my opinion, our total societal system is broken when companies respond to economic downturns by stepping in to tempt people with quick money that the companies know many of them will not be able to pay back. In the case of mortgages, this means that finance companies acquire property when borrowers default.
For a system like Prosper to work in the long term, lenders and borrowers need literacies and knowledge to know when to borrow, and when to lend. Otherwise, Prosper will end up becoming part of the problem.
And, in general, there is a greater need now more than ever, for people to have other ways to invest in one another, and for individuals to raise capital, and to have the knowledge and personal infrstructure to use the capital in sustainable ways, that increase the chances that investors see ROI.
We’ve been discussing these ideas at [barcampbank.com,] and at [www.aboutus.org] and Open Business Models Wiki Hive. These ideas have also been discussed at [solari.com]
The idea is to create a P2P investing marketplace, that is tied to a fast-growing knowledge commons, and that is coupled with ongoing efforts to help people seek and use investment on a personal level wisely. People need open access to data about their local and regional conditions, and ways to pool their money without going into debt. Borrowing money is a great option, but only if you can pay it back. Otherwise, people need a way to leverage their abilities and resources to attract investment, and use it to grow wealth for themselves and investors in ways that can be sustained. Right now, the law makes little or no provision for this type of investment.
Wired reports on an overview of the Assignment Zero Pro-Am Journalism project. Assignment Zero described itself as:
“Inspired by the open-source movement, this is an attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story. It’s a collaboration among NewAssignment.Net, Wired, and those who choose to participate.“
The Wired report describes a project that looks like it could have been successful, but that was possibly run to much by a “seat of the pants” system of planning:
“One of the key problems confronting the project managers was technological. How to build a site that would allow large numbers of contributors to sign up and participate in meaningful ways?
The site developers turned to was Drupal, an open-source publishing system that’s become one of the leading platforms for community-driven projects. The designers built in numerous topics for contributors to colonize when they arrived. But the AZ team chose to hold off recruiting editors until after the launch, with the result that when contributors signed up, they essentially arrived at a ghost town.
The flood of volunteers made Assignment Zero’s design flaws quickly apparent. Potential contributors — which numbered roughly 500 after the first week — were routed to a single Assignment Zero staffer, a former WashingtonPost.com editor, Steve Fox.
The net effect was to put the organizational onus on the volunteers themselves. Baffled by the overarching concept of crowdsourcing, confused by the design of the website and unable to connect directly to a manager or organizer, most of the initial volunteers simply drifted away. “What we learned,” says Rosen, “is that you have to be waaaay clearer in what you ask contributors to do. Just because they show up once doesn’t mean they’ll show up over and over. You have to engage them right away.”
Over the course of the next two weeks, around 30 volunteer professional editors were assigned to manage various topics. Theoretically this should have solved Assignment Zero’s organizational problems. But this presented a new set of hurdles. For one, each editor needed to be trained to use our implementation of Drupal. But even once they were up to speed there was a lack of understanding of how open-source projects tend to work.
“What we really needed were people who understood online organizing,” says David Cohn, an Assignment Zero editor. “But many of the editors just didn’t have much experience with the internet.”
After roughly six weeks — halfway through its run — Assignment Zero reached its nadir. Most of the initial volunteers were gone, the majority of topic pages were deserted and communications between staffers, volunteer editors and the few contributors that remained were uneven, resulting in frequent misunderstandings. A drastic change was required.”
This is an important lesson for all Pro-Am and community-driven, internet-networked publication projects. Thanks to Jay Rosen, Wired, and Assignment Zero for sharing this valuable insight so quickly and honestly.
I’m going to try and catalogue and summarize the lessons in this article as I review it in this blog posting, so:
The Wired article then describes the changes that were implemented based on review of project progress:
“Although much had already gone awry, Rosen and the Assignment Zero team had one advantage working in its favor: hard-earned knowledge from six weeks of trial and error.
The first order of business was a site redesign. After consultation with the rest of the team, Cohn, who doubled as AZ’s webmaster, rebuilt each topic page to include social networking features. The relevant editor’s picture and contact e-mail were placed at the top of each page, and each topic area now included a forum. The idea was to make each topic a sort of home page, a community gathering-place.
The effect of this reorganization was felt immediately, as contributors could now collaborate openly with each other and review one another’s reporting. This certainly reinforced one of the lessons that was learned from reporting on various crowdsourcing projects: Essentially, it’s all about the community.
However, the majority of topic pages had yet to attract a base of interested volunteers. This demonstrated another lesson: The community controls the scope and direction of the project. “We had to jettison most of the topics we’d started off with,” says Cohn. “Instead, we concentrated on the topics that people were most clearly interested in.” At about the same time the Assignment Zero team made the decision to shift the goal from producing scores of feature stories to producing scores of interviews. Asking contributors to “write the story on open-source car design” had all the appeal of asking people to rewrite their college term papers. Asking them to talk to someone they admire and respect was met with a far warmer response.”
So, here it looks like AZ implemented some simple team organization and structure into their site. One thing about Drupal is that it is an amazing tool, but it’s not an “out-of-the-box” solution. It needs some real adjusting/tweaking and sometimes even customization to create a useful and comfortable environment, for both content users and creators, and administrators. Drupal administration in it’s default setup can be bogglingly complex. Yet, Drupal is flexible enough to be molded into a powerful and intuitive community tool. The Assignment Zero interface has some remarkable differences now, as compared to when I first looked at it a few months ago. It’s been my experience in launching Content Management System websites, that it is often essential to do a “test-run” of the technology, tools and proposed processes before inviting the greater public into the system. So:
Another note from the quote above, is that subject matter for AssignmentZero was pre-selected in a mostly top-down way. Consequently, contributors ended up selecting the topics they were interested in, and ignoring those they weren’t. There are some different possible ways this might have been approached in hindsight. Contributors might have been given the opportunity to vote on content choices during the first week or so of the project. Or, group selection by vote on potential content could have been a “phase” of the project, prior to launching the actual writing phase.
These are some important lessons that we hope to apply to the decentre project, an effort to create a community-authored book about the diversity and issues of Artist-Run Culture in Canada:
decentre isa book about artist-run culture as we find it at this particular moment
a collection of short texts by many authors that strives to articulate the ideas behind artist-initiated activities, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, accomplishments and futures
a rhizome of people, projects and places, a work in progress and continually evolving
a set of network tools to initiate an organic, evolving discussion, including a wiki, online forums and groups, blogs, as well as email, list-servs, etc.
We are carrying out much of the discussion at [www.arcpost.ca] and in Facebook at Artist-run Centres Unite! and Decentre - concerning artist-run culture and on Flickr at Artist-run Culture on Flickr. Last but not least, a wiki at
YYZBOOKS Book Wiki hosted by SocialSynergyWeb.net. This is combining multiple different creatie/intellectual processes to attract people to share their ideas and experiences in Artist-Run Culture, and to distill those contributions into a book.
Decentre faces some of the same potential issues as Assignment Zero, including encouraging passionate participation, and creating conditions where editors and contributors can work together to create content worthy of the project goals. Decentre also faces potential technological issues, similar to some of those experienced by Assignment Zero. Hopefully, we can learn from the valuable lessons shared y Jay Rosen and the many great people who worked for AZ.
I asked Sam Rose’s permission to highlight his comment from my post…because I heart new information:
Tara, it’s interesting that you’ve intuited the pattern of “individual” and “collective” in the way that people go about solving problems. About 40 years ago, this is the pattern that Clare W. Graves found when he did psychological research on his students over about a 15 year period. You can read about it here: [clarewgraves.com] I’ve mentioned his work here before, because I think it is really relevant to a lot of what you are talking about, and observing (as conveyed by your blog posts). And, for all of it’s incompleteness, it’s one of the best theories that we hve about human nature. Graves changed his theory over time, to account for new data. One example from the Futurist Magazine can be found here” [clarewgraves.com]
and an even better explanation is here:
Basically, Graves found that human nature tends to center on either the “individual” or the “collective” focus. This can hold true even for one person. In one situation, you may solve problems by focusing on the “communal” in some way, in other situations in your life, you may solve problems by focusing on yourself. This is true for all of us, I believe.
The amazong thing about Graves’s work is that we came to his conclusions by asking people to write a conceptualization of what they thought a “mature healthy adult” is. Then, he tasked the same people with defending their conceptualizations against each other, and gave them a chance to defend them against the leading “authorities” of the time period. Then, he turned the data over to indpendent judges and ask ed them to “quantify this any way that you can”. He did this for 15 years or so. Amazingly, the first pattern that emerged every time was the “indpendent” and “communal”. The exact same patterns you came up with, by observing your dinner party social dilemma! Later, people started calling this the “Locus of Control”, and started calling the patterns “inner directed” and “outer directed”, and other names which basically all mean the same thing.
Graves’s “levels” were really just more specific versions of these two “locus of control” centers.
Thanks Sam! I’m reading these resources right now…