[P2P-F] FW: Blogpost: Applying the ICT Lessons of Revolt to the Institutional Challenges of Reconstruction: They overthrew Hosni Mubarek, Now Can They Overthrow Robert Michels?

Tue Mar 1 14:07:15 CET 2011

Hi Michel,

Thanks very much for the below and I must confess to not having read the
comments on Zeynep's original post. I found the comments, particularly those
of "Parliament of Things" more or less directly parallel to my own thoughts.

I've never had a lot of interest in network analysis or network
theory--thinking about it. I realize that the reason for this is that to my
mind network analysis is a way of avoiding class or (in my case) community
analysis where the issues are not simply about analysis but also about
social change ("networks" are to "communities" (or P2P?) as "social and
economic status" (SES) is to "class"--I go into this in a bit more depth in
my little book "What is Community Informatics..."
http://www.docstoc.com/MyDocuments/ ("Networks" in this approach, at least
as presented in "network analysis" are statistical constructs a la SES and
bear little relationship to the lived world of real networks, P2P
associations, communities or whatever...

The issue is not, I think, some "iron law" (or statistical regularity) but
rather what it is that one wants to do and what the best way is of
accomplishing it. If one wants the opportunity for democratic participation
then there are potential means for achieving this and examples where it has
been done. If one believes that P2P relationships are the necessary
underpinnings for democratic participation then one can work through ways of
realizing these. Of course after the fact it is possible to design analyses
that show why one or another approach is more or less useful in achieving
the goal (or not), but the pragmatics of moving forward toward the objective
are, as several of your commentators pointed to, rather more in the hands of
the participants than they are constrained by any kind of social
behaviourism.

(But maybe that's why I stopped being an academic sociologist 20 years ago
or so... :-)

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Michel Bauwens [mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 9:00 AM . 
To: P2P Foundation mailing list
Cc: Pedro Gioya; Michael Gurstein; Dougald Hine; Paul B. Hartzog
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] FW: Blogpost: Applying the ICT Lessons of Revolt to the
Institutional Challenges of Reconstruction: They overthrew Hosni Mubarek,
Now Can They Overthrow Robert Michels?

Hi Pedro,

I follow Zeynep closely and we've covered this particular entry in our blog
as well,

these are if you will, the two sides of the same coin, and do not
necesseraly contradict each other,

Michael points out the real changes that took place through the use of these
media, and their further potential, while Zeynep points to the dangers  that
do not just come from outside, but from within the peer to peer dynamic
itself

from the blog,

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/preferential-attachment-in-p2p-networks-is-tha
t-really-the-issue/2011/02/21

but especially this:

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/debating-the-iron-law-of-bureaucracy-and-the-p
ower-law-knowing-networks-as-an-alternative-to-scale-free-networks/2011/02/1
8

Paul Hartzog also had a comment on this,

Michel

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 3:30 AM, Pedro Gioya <pg at institutodeliderazgo.com>
wrote:

Hi
Look at this post on the same issue but with different  perspective (Sure
you know, but anyway....)
http://technosociology.org/?p=366

Pedro

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Michel Bauwens <mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com>  
To: Michael Gurstein <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>  
Cc: p2p-foundation <mailto:p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>  ; Dougald
<mailto:dougald at schoolofeverything.com> Hine 
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] FW: Blogpost: Applying the ICT Lessons of Revolt to the
Institutional Challenges of Reconstruction: They overthrew Hosni Mubarek,
Now Can They Overthrow Robert Michels?

This is really brilliant Michael and I warmly recommend it to our
listmembers,

Michel

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 4:11 AM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
wrote:

Michel,

I think this is one that you will find interesting...

M

---------------------------------------------
http://wp.me/pJQl5-5Z

"In this, I think that the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have access to
skills and resources which were unavailable to earlier movements that is-the
Internet, social networking, mobile telephony and perhaps most important,
the experience and knowledge of how to use these in support of collective
social ends."

-- 
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