internet swarms and peer production

Internet Swarms and Peer

ProductionPetri Kola

Physical vs. virtual

•tradition of physical metaphors in understanding computers/networks

•but as a system the virtual is different

•differences in friction, privacy,...

Examples of hard questions

Borrowing someone’s open

WLAN•Salo court in Finland decided that it was illegal to use an open WLAN without permission [Helsingin Sanomat: 14.4.2008]

Internet censorship

•secret block-list

•no court involved in blocking decissions

•can be bypassed in 10 seconds

•blocking is DNS based

Stealing a file

•"copying is stealing"

•technically, copying is not theft because the original copy remains

Economics and scarcity

•markets not recognizing scarcity of physical resources

•markets creating pseudo-scarcity in the virtual

Micro contribution

•my hypothetical concept

•doesn’t exist in physical reality

•virtual community -> peer production

Driving forces

•productivity in cognitive work depends heavily on the right participants and resources meeting each other

•open systems systematically better as administrative information processing systems

Combining contributions

•criteria

•does the code run?

•neutral point of view in Wikipedia

Forking

•branching from the main project

•bad for the project -> the community tries to avoid it

•“insurance for participation”

We need to recognize how

virtual organizing is different.

Open peer production

•micro contributions

•traceability - who did what

•early feedback

•undo

•post priori authorization

Swarm like organization

•focus on action and achievement

•unclear borders

•emergent rules

•doesn’t look like much

•doesn’t have to succeed

Hacker attitudes

•creating, sharing

•information-sharing as both an ideal and a practical strategy

•hostility to secrecy

•upholding the right to fork

•emphasis on rationality

•distaste for authority

•playful cleverness

Produsage

•Production + Usage = Produsage

Swarm methaphor

•worth more research

•stigmergy = indirect coordination between agents or actions