Peer to Peer Economies and the Revolution in Values
Written by Kalle Pakkala on March 30, 2009.
A long-standing historical problem with social alternatives has been that none have them have been more productive than the for-profit alternatives, or at least not, in the context of the existing balance of power.
However, a combination of technical and social trends has produced a historically novel situation that challenges this state of affairs. Internet-based technical infrastructures have made it possible to scale small-group dynamics to the level of global coordination of highly complex social artefacts that produce common value for self-aggregating peer producers; deep changes in ways of being, knowing and feeling have produced a new set of open and free, participatory, and commons-oriented paradigms that are changing the structure of desire of emerging generations. Remarkably, the new set of social practices, i.e. peer production, peer governance, and peer property, are both strengthening the current political economy, (much as emerging capitalism did for the flagging feudal system from the 16th century onwards), but also undermining it through a systemic crisis of value, while also pointing to post-capitalist alternatives that may want day supplant the core of the current system.
This lecture by the founder of the P2P Foundation will examine the impact of peer production as a challenge to the current political economy and present different scenarios for the future of social change, especially in the context of the current meltdown.
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