Political level - How do we build a political case and sell it
Hi all,
In response to THIS post on Edgeryders I think building a political case is very important. We need to make it real, to show how p2p makes a difference in people’s lives. I have more than 5 years experience in peer production, as a practitioner and as a designer of new economic models and of the infrastructure to support commons-based peer production. I know first hand what works, as well as the areas that need attention. I can also help in explaining and demonstrating how peer production helps the local economy. I operate within www.sensorica.co and I am one of the main architects for the open value network (OVN) model.
I can associate with open knowledge, open hardware, open networks (as in value networks).
One of our biggest challenge is to put in place processes to transfer global digital commons into local economies, in a sustainable way: open source innovation, which is a global process, produces digital commons in the form of designs, methods and protocols, etc. which can be used to solve local problems. Currently, the economic activity generated from the global commons is enclosed within classical organizations and the benefits that are generated are not redistributed back to the global open innovation network. There is a problem with the value flow between open source innovation and the economic activity that results from it, and that makes open source communities struggle to stay alive. Our understanding of the current reality is obscured by some very large and healthy ecosystems like Arduino (in the hardware realm), Linux and Android (in the realm of software). The truth is that most open source projects are supported by a small number of individuals who are struggling. The sum of these projects represent the bulk of open source development. The problem is that these open source initiatives lack effective mechanisms to capture the value they create. This value is captured by classical entities that are essentially parasitic to the open source movement. This is not sustainable. The tension between open source communities and corporate structures that capture the value they create is real, as it is illustrated in the case between RepRap and Makerbot (3D printer manufacturer). Some see open source development and business as two separate things. Some can’t see beyond classical business models and think that the conflict between open source innovation and classical ways to monetize that value is just normal. We think that this is only a transient anomaly during a phase of economic transformation. We think that the new open source mode of innovation is currently evolving its own means of sourcing (crowdsourcing), production (extreme manufacturing and other distributed manufacturing models) and distribution, as well as its own mechanisms for redistribution of benefits (the open value network model and others like it).
These new economic models to transfer global commons into local economies in a sustainable way need to be refined in pilot projects, and they need infrastructure. The p2pValue project is a good step in that direction, but only the first one. This issue was also at the core of the FLOK society project.
I can also associate with the Internet of Things (IoT), since SENSORICA’s mission is about sensing and sensemaking. We advocate and help build a distributed IoT. The other current, advocated by large corporations, is to put data into proprietary databases. We all know where the second option leads…