[P2P-F] The Material Basis of Immaterial Production (was: must watch on future of internet)

Mon Nov 21 15:54:50 CET 2011

Organizations that care about User Freedom, such as the Free Software
Foundation, the Free Culture Forum, Libre Planet, and many others I
forget at the moment do not seem to admit the material basis of our
struggle, for if they did, they would be attempting to discover how to
share the hardware needed to *host* that production.

Sharing hardware is the next crucial step in our emancipation, but is
avoided in favor of individual ownership (such as plug-computing and
wireless mesh networks) while the larger issues of the physical
resources such as the network and agriculture being owned by
profit-seeking entities remains untouched.

Richard Stallman seems to imply there is no way to build cloud
computing that respects user freedom.  This is a lack of vision or an
avoidance of the admittedly complex problems that occur when users
attempt to share hardware.

Sharing hardware is difficult, and not yet fully understood.  That is
why we must put effort into designing a system of governance which we
can then apply to physical resources that we buy and co-own in small
groups for our own, mutual benefit.  Until we do this, we will forever
beg those that have ownership while wondering why they won't do the
right thing.

If these groups were to admit and attempt to solve these issues, they
would buy hardware to begin hosting the software that already exists
needed to replace Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.

Until we do this, we are sitting-ducks in denial of the The Material
Basis of Immaterial Production.

Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
http://ImputedProduction.BlogSpot.com