[P2P-F] Thrashing the p2p foundation

Tue May 31 04:47:45 CEST 2011

Responding to Miles, and by the way, NextNet is in not 'our' list , I'm just
a participant, and so are eventual other people who may contribute to our
work. The list was created by Venessa for ContactCon, and the section on P2P
Infrastructure was conceived as a service to that community.

Miles, you write,

<Perhaps it's that the p2pfoundation wiki is young, or perhaps it's that
I just know too much about the various subjects that are indexed -
either way I struggle to find a value add above what I can find through
judicious use of Wikipedia and Google.>

Yes, indeed, it is not meant for people who know too much about the various
subjects, though I would find it surprising that you would also be an expert
on say p2p spirituality, or p2p agriculture and food trends ... As for
Wikipedia and Google obviating the need for curation, being a very good
searcher myself, I am quite doubtful of that. First of all, not so many
people know how to search well, and search and the wikipedia are inevitably
biased (of course, so is p2p-f), but the issue is time and organization.
Each section aims to be fairly comprehensive, but may not always be, and has
many gaps; nevertheless, if you combine say a p2p-f wiki section with some
of the other portals being referenced on a same topic, you would quickly
gain an overview of a field that may be quite time-consuming to obtain.
That's all really. Anyway, as imperfect and incomplete as it is, we still
get enough feedback from researchers who say it made a difference for them,
and that's all we can hope for.

<And then, perhaps I find myself disappointed that a "Foundation" that
"studies the impact of Peer to Peer technology and thought on society/"/
is really primarily functioning as a "clearinghouse for open/free,
participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives" - with seemingly
little participation by folks who are truly pioneers and thought leaders
in the field (where, for example are Richard Stallman, Linus Torvald,
Ian Murdock, or Eric Raymond in any of this?).>

People who are already firmly established in a field in which they are
experts will generally not be motivated to volunteer to such information
gathering exercise, nevertheless, apart from Ian Murdock, whom I don't know
yet, ost of these names would be represented by tags or quotes or references
in the wiki, but it is true that we do not focus on those people who were
active say 15 years ago, but on emerging actors of the last few years. One
of the reasons is that we use 'opportunistic updating' as a methodology for
the site, i.e. we do not search to write complete entries, but rather add on
new things as we come across them, it's rather like putting a puzzle
together. To the degree that say Richard Stallman would make new
interventions, we would add and reference them, but we would not necessarily
go back to the early writings, though if some other volunteer would want to
do this, it would get done.

I don't think there is such a "Bible" available, but, many good (some very
good) books and essays have appeared and are available, and most of them are
referenced; we have a list with recommend essays; we have a book section in
the wiki (http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Books); we have regular coverage
of books including a book of the week section in our blog, etc ... We make
top ten list of best books every year, etc ... The field is probably too
vast to have just one such book, but again, the specialized sections, say
p2p spirituality, will certainly point you to the major books on a given
topic. Never perfect or fully comprehensive, but putting you on the way in a
decent fashion, I think so.

> in Berlin ... at that time, pessimism about open hardware was
> pervasive, it had all been tried, and failed (see Graham Seaman's
> texts of the period);

I guess we have a different sense of history, and of Graham Seaman's
writings (which of his writings are you thinking of?) >

I don't have a specific reference, but the different of perspective may be
explained by different 'timing'. Certainly, in the period in which I
researched open hardware the first time, say around 2004, people were
despondent and it followed a wave of failures; but things started picking up
a gain 2-3 years later and we're now at a high point of emergence and
optimism. Undoubtedly, a period of relative failure may create a new wave of
despondency, etc ... I only retained a positive assessment of Seaman in the
wiki, see
http://p2pfoundation.net/Can_peer_production_make_washing_machines%3F

<Hey, I was there, in the middle of a lot of it. What I disdain is
looking at things through rose colored glasses.>

I don't think Isaac or others are necessarily looking at reality through
rose-coloured glasses; they are motivated, have a vision however imperfect,
and are willing to face obstacles; I don't think they are going to approach
it in the same way as the older waves did; it is of course useful for the
new generation of hackers to look at the experiences of previous
generations, not to be discouraged, but to see more usefully where they have
most chance of succeeding; most likely their experience will be a mix of
successes and failures;  however, the conjuncture is also very different,
the 60s were still a period of ascending capitalism, in the high-growth half
of Kondratieff; we are now behind a systemic breakdown of a kondratieff
wave, with no structural reforms to speak off, and an all-out war against
workers and middle classes, i.e. in which the system hardly offers any hope
to young people but rather the opposite. It makes a lot more sense to build
constructive alternatives now, rather than attempt say to cajole the system
into reforms. Recent mobilizations in Spain, Greece and elsewhere show that
this generation is inventing its own forms of struggle and is not just
content to built dwarfish alternatives, but is also starting to engage in
more fundamental pursuits. It's early days, and they must learn, and history
can be a bit of a guide, but cannot offer exclusive guidance.
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