[iDC] Don Tapscott's Wikinomics: A Dismal Netology?

Fri Aug 24 06:19:31 UTC 2007

Hi Pat,

I'd like to offer some added perspectives on social change, based on your
input.

I think that first of all we have a very simple 'logical' ( but actually
physical problem): can a system of infinite growth exist within a finite
physical environment. My answer would be no, and therefore, capitalism as an
infinite growth system is doomed eventually.

The second question is: what are the drivers of such infinite growth? I have
been convinced by the monetary reformers, that one of the key issue is the
protocol of the monetary system, in other words the interest-based system.
Interest cannot function in a static economy, it requires growth. In a
static economy, you can only pay back the interest (which is not created by
the banks) by taking it from someone else, while in a growth system, the
pain is less as you can get it from the growing pie. But what if the pie can
no longer grow? One of the key issues today is therefore to develop monetary
systems with different protocols, and I think the best way to do this is by
'distributing' the money creation, and to have direct social production of
money.l

I also agree with you that at moments of deep systemic crisis, we must
expect rather radical change. The shifts between the roman imperial slavery
system and the feudal serf system were pretty radical, a breach of the
fundamental logic of society, and so was the shift from feudalism to
capitalism.

Non-reciprocal peer production would seem to be the emerging logic of
immaterial production, since we see it emerging with such force, and
adapting open/free, participatory, and commons-oriented strategies are
competitive advantages for for-profit institutions and state forces alike
(apart from the natural tendency of communinities to adopt it). In the
physical world, the realm of scarcity, non-reciprocity cannot work, so what
I expect are peer-informed modes of production, such as fair trade (markets
subjected to peer arbitrage), social entrepreneurship (abandoning money as
an end, just keeping it as a means), trust-based resource management (see
Peter Barnes). Such a situation would be consisting with the historical
record of previous modes which always combined pluralism but always under
the domination of one core logic (respectively the gift economy, the
tributary logic and the exchange logic).

One key question is how antagonistic the change will/must be. It does not
seem that the end of the roman empire and its transformation was antagonist
in the sense of two classes fighting each other, and many feudal to
capitalist transitions did not take the form of bourgeois revolutions. More
fundamental was that in both systems, the new social relations were slowly
being built up, and then, through some mechanism, reached a tipping point.

On 8/23/07, pat kane <scottishfutures at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi Michel
>
>  I thought Benkler regarded peer-to-peer as more than just an appendage to
> market-system and state-system allocations of resources, but as at least a
> vigorous corrective, and at best a viable alternative to them - indeed
> reconnecting resource allocation and generation to democracy and citizenship
> in a way that the previous two domains have insufficiently done. My problem
> with Tapscott is that his perspective on mass collaboration is so
> relentlessly (and literally) in-corporating - which is why I quoted D
> iLampedusa. Actually by way of Immanuel Wallerstein in this brilliant
> essay - http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/iw-vien2.htm - from which the key
> quote is this:
>
> The basic reason for concessions by persons of privilege to demands for
> democratization is to defuse the anger, to incorporate the rebellious, but
> always in order to save the basic framework of the system. This strategy
> incarnates the di Lampedusa principle that "everything must change in
> order that nothing change."
>
> The di Lampedusa principle is a very efficacious one, up to a tipping
> point. Demands for further democratization, for further redistribution of
> the political, economic, and social pie, far from having exhausted
> themselves, are endless, even if only in increments. And the democratization
> of the past 200 years, even if it has benefited only my hypothetical 19% of
> the world population, has been costly to the 1%, and has consumed a
> noticeable portion of the pie. If the 19% were to become 29%, not to speak
> of their becoming 89%, there would be nothing left for the privileged. To be
> quite concrete, one could no longer have the ceaseless accumulation of
> capital, which is after all the raison d'être of the capitalist
> world-economy. So either a halt must be called to the democratization
> process, and this is politically difficult, or one has to move to some other
> kind of system in order to maintain the hierarchical, inegalitarian
> realities.
>
> It is towards this kind of transformation that I believe we are heading
> today. I shall not repeat here my detailed analysis of all the factors that
> have led to what I think of as the structural crisis of the capitalist
> world-system. Democratization as a process is only one of the factors that
> have brought the system to its current chaotic state, and immanent
> bifurcation. (7) <http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/iw-vien2.htm#N_7_> What I
> see, as a result, is an intense political struggle over the next 25-50 years
> about the successor structure to a capitalist world-economy. In my view this
> is a struggle between those who want it to be a basically democratic system
> and those who do not want that. I therefore somewhat unhappy about the
> suggestion of the organizers that democracy may be "an essentially
> unfinishable project." Such a formulation evokes the image of the tragic
> condition of humanity, its imperfections, its eternal improvability. And of
> course, who can argue with such an imagery? But the formulation leaves out
> of account the possibility that there are moments of historic choice that
> can make an enormous difference. Eras of transition from one historical
> social system to another are just such moments of historic choice. (8)<http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/iw-vien2.htm#N_8_>
>
> Is peer-to-peer part of this struggle towards a 'successor structure'? Or
> not? The panic of Tapscott in the face of mass collaboration makes me think
> it must be.
>
> PK
>
>
>
>
>  Pat Kane
>    +44 (0)7718 588497
> http://www.theplayethic.com
> http://theplayethic.typepad.com
> http://www.newintegrity.org
> http://www.scottishfutures.net
> http://www.patkane.com
>
> All mail to: patkane at theplayethic.com
>
>
>
> On 23 Aug 2007, at 08:03, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
> Just a quick reply to this one.
>
> I think that the various attempts to make sense of emerging passionate and
> collaborative production outside the institutional frameworks of the
> for-profit world, such as this one, are legitimate. But indeed, I think
> there is a key differentiation to be made, and that is the following:
>
> 1) between all those, and that includes both liberals such as
> Benkler/Tapscott, but also left commentators (does Trebor belong to this
> category) who believe that peer to peer is entirely immanent to the current
> production system, a simple appendage to the market
>
> 2) and those, such as myself, who believe it has a 'transcendent'
> potential as well. Taking the latter view does not mean upholding any
> automaticity, nor denying the immanence, but simple accepting that the
> immanent aspect is not sufficient, that both the system-confirming and
> system-transcending aspects and potential have to be held at the same time,
> to make a full sense of the phenomena.
>
> This being said, both communities and institutions need to take account of
> each other, and to undertake processes of adaptation, and this is what the
> Wikinomics book addresses, from the point of view of the for-profit world,
>
> Michel
>
>
>
> On 8/20/07, pat kane < scottishfutures at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >  *From: * pat kane <playethical at gmail.com>
> > *Date: * 19 August 2007 21:51:29 BDT
> > *To: * iDC list <idc at bbs.thing.net>
> > *Subject: * *Don Tapscott's Wikinomics: A Dismal Netology?*
> >
> > Hi all
> > Trebor asked me to post this - I've been reading Don Tapscott's
> > Wikinomics for a review for the Independent, a UK 'quality' tabloid. It's
> > not up to the usual levels of theoretical precision that abounds on iDC, and
> > you'll all know most of the references, but it might at least be a
> > thought-starter. It also has a reference - I think the first newspaper
> > reference ever! - to the work of Micheal Bauwens, our resident integral
> > net-sage. Any (and better) responses welcomed.
> >
> > Pk
> >
> > Pat Kane
> > http://www.theplayethic.com
> > http://theplayethic.typepad.com
> > http://www.newintegrity.org
> > http://www.scottishfutures.net
> > http://www.patkane.com
> >
> > All mail to: patkane at theplayethic.com
> >
> > *Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything*
> >
> > * *
> >
> > *By Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams*
> >
> >
> > Reviewed by Pat Kane
> >
> >
> > A spectre is haunting the information age – the spectre of communism.
> > And if you don't believe me, listen to Bill Gates<http://news.com.com/2102-1041_3-5514121.html?tag=st.util.print>.
> > In a 2005 interview, when asked whether the idea of intellectual property
> > was being challenged by the net generation's ingrained habit of downloading,
> > using and sharing content for free, Gates disagreed.
> >
> >
> > "I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in
> > intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the
> > world today than there were", mused the uber-geek. "There are some new
> > modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for
> > musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They
> > don't think that those incentives should exist."
> >
> >
> > Gates' views <http://www.openoffice.org/> have since been ridiculed
> > widely throughout the tech community (though they recently received some
> > elegant support in Andrew Keen's *The Cult of the Amateur*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Keen>).
> > But the tycoon's anxieties weren't baseless. In particular, Microsoft faces
> > a swarming battalion of services on the internet which promise to provide
> > everything the software giant does in your computer – email, database,
> > operating system, everything – for nothing.
> >
> >
> > These services ( Open Office <http://www.openoffice.org/>, Ubuntu<http://www.ubuntu.com/>,
> > Firefox <http://en.www.mozilla.com/en/firefox/> and many others) have
> > mostly been created, and developed, by digital idealists committed to a
> > vision of knowledge and culture which – if not communist – then at least
> > revives the old idea of a ' commonwealth<http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.3/bollier.html>',
> > a realm of resources available as of right to free men and women, and places
> > it bang in the heart of the late-capitalist West.
> >
> >
> > The flurry of brand names from web culture that we conjure with in our
> > daily news stories – Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr – are
> > fuelled by the free labour, and avid attention, of the netizens of this new
> > commonwealth. And the only sustainable way these Web giants have found to
> > make any money is by demonstrating to advertisers that potential consumers
> > are watching. So it would seem that, at least at the networked end of
> > things, capitalism is parasitic upon collaboration. No wonder Bill Gates
> > would rather try to mitigate Aids in Africa<http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm>these days, than deal with this Monday-morning head-splitter of a problem.
> >
> >
> > If there's any group poised to profit from the bewilderment of executive
> > managers in the midst of turbulent markets and trends, it's business
> > consultants. And Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, as they say in these
> > circles, are certainly built to last. The extremely gimmicky title of their
> > book draws inspiration from one the less satisfying aspects of this digital
> > "mass collaboration" culture, the wiki. (Apart from Wikipedia, have you ever
> > used a real wiki? To a nineties'-era newspaper hack like myself, it
> > sometimes seems like as if the most fiddly aspects of page-setting software
> > has been perversely elevated to a new economic paradigm).
> >
> >
> > At times, Wikinomics reminds you of the famous quote from the nobleman
> > in Giuseppe De Lampudesa's The Leopard<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/euro/story/0,,977706,00.html>:
> > "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change". Meaning
> > that if the corporate West wants to find a way to keep making money out of
> > the circulation of information and culture, then the whole way they do
> > business will have to turn on its head.
> >
> >
> > Tapscott and Williams present themselves quite self-consciously as the
> > hand-holding guides of trembling CEOs and senior managers through this scary
> > landscape. A land where copyright can barely be protected; where powerful
> > companies have to open up their products and services to collaboration with
> > hackers and amateurs; where new technologies largely propelled by
> > irrepressible geeks can threaten and unravel existing commercial markets.
> >
> >
> > They do their best, but most of the writers' attempts to bolt the usual
> > scarcity-and-control models of money-making on to these alarmingly
> > collective processes are remarkably tenuous. For example, they suggest that
> > the most active participants in YouTube or Flickr be given star status, and
> > granted a small but proportionate share of the ad revenue that their
> > impassioned participation helps generate.
> >
> >
> > But can you imagine the resentment that would build among such playful
> > enthusiasts, each currently with as much right to access and status as the
> > other, if a lucrative star system began to appear on these platforms? The
> > very altruism and creative spirit that vitalised these networks would
> > quickly evaporate, and all manner of gamings and distortions of the system
> > for profit would ensue. Talk about 'not getting it'.
> >
> >
> > Many of Tapscott and Williams' other recommendations to big business are
> > inspired by an ideal of scientific practice – peer-support-and review, the
> > open sharing of knowledge – which is as much about Enlightenment as it is
> > about capitalism. And let's not forget that the Web itself, the platform
> > that dynamised this whole situation, came out of the purely scholarly vision
> > of Tim Berners-Lee<http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9910/21/berners.lee.interview.idg/>– a physicist who wanted to help his fellow researchers freely exchange
> > information.
> >
> >
> > There's a weird blindness at the heart of this book, with its gushing
> > celebrations of how world-wide corporate collaboration might produce the
> > next Boeing airliner, or a new kitchen surface wipe. As the peer-to-peer
> > visionary Micheal Bauwens <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Bauwens>has eloquently written, the problem is that we regard what is truly
> > plentiful as scarce (information), and what is truly scarce as plentiful
> > (our finite natural world).
> >
> >
> > There is virtually zero consciousness in Wikinomics of the kind of
> > limits to global corporate activity that our acute environmental crisis must
> > necessarily impose. Indeed, with an award-winning cheesiness, the book opens
> > with an anecdote about a goldmine – revived, of course, through wikinomical
> > means.
> >
> >
> > As Jeffery Sachs noted in his BBC Reith Lectures this year<http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/radio4/reith2007/lecture5.shtml>,
> > mass collaboration through informed networks will be one of the key tools
> > whereby we might heal the planet, environmentally and geopolitically. But
> > you'd hardly learn of that grand ambition from this rather comically
> > opportunistic book. The spectre of consultantism hangs over it more
> > oppressively than anything else.
> >
> >
> > Pat Kane is the author of 'The Play Ethic' ( www.theplayethic.com).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
> > distributedcreativity.org)
> > iDC at mailman.thing.net
> > https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
> >
> > List Archive:
> > http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
> >
> > iDC Photo Stream:
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
> >
> > RSS feed:
> > http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
> >
> > iDC Chat on Facebook:
> > http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
> >
> > Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
> >
>
>
>
> --
> The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
> alternatives.
>
> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
> http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
>
> Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499 ; interview at http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
>
> BEST VIDEO ON P2P: http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU
>
>
> KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by
> http://www.ws-network.com/04_team.htm_______________________________________________
>
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org
> )
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
> distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>

-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by
http://www.ws-network.com/04_team.htm
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20070824/b93cb0fa/attachment-0001.htm 