Peer to Peer and Human Evolution On "the P2P relational dynamic" as the premise of the next civilizational stage Author: Michel Bauwens, [email protected] The essay is an emanation of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives, Draft 2.014, July 3, 2005; it was written after several months of collaboration with Remi Sussan. - The most recent version (mid-June 2005) of the essay is located at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2ptheory1 - Older draft versions are located at http://noosphere.cc/P2P2bi.htm (html); http://www.networkcultures.org/weblog/archives/P2P_essay.pdf (pdf); http://noosphere.cc/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.P2pEvolution (wiki) - An earlier draft version for the ‘integral discourse community’ is located at http://207.44.196.94/~wilber/bauwens2.html However, it's always best to ask me for the latest version by email attachment, since I tinker with the essay almost daily. A weekly newsletter, Pluralities/Integration, monitoring P2P developments is also available from the same author, free by email request. See the archive at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p The foundation website-in-progress is at http://p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Main_Page ; a mailing list for the site's development is available at [email protected] / http://groups.yahoo.com/group/p2pf/join; a mailing list to discuss political strategy is available at [email protected] / http://groups.google.com.au/group/strategic_p2p Table of Contents Peer to Peer and Human Evolution ............................................................................................ 1 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... 1 0. Executive Summary ........................................................................................................... 2 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 5 1.A. What this essay is about ............................................................................................. 5 1.B. The use of a integral framework................................................................................. 7 1.C. The Sociology of Form............................................................................................. 10 1.D. Some acknowledgments........................................................................................... 10 2. P2P as the Technological Framework of Cognitive Capitalism ...................................... 11 2.1.A. Defining P2P as the relational dynamic of distributed networks ......................... 11 2.1.B. The emergence of peer to peer as technological infrastructure............................ 13 2.1.C. The construction of an alternative media infrastructure........................................ 15 2.1.D. P2P as a global platform for autonomous cooperation.......................................... 20 1 2.2. Explaining the Emergence of P2P technology.......................................................... 22 2.3.A. Placing P2P in the context of the evolution of technology ................................... 22 2.3.B. P2P and Technological Determinism .................................................................... 24 3. P2P in the Economic Sphere ............................................................................................ 26 3.1.A. Peer production as a third mode of production and new commons-based property regime............................................................................................................................... 26 3.1.B. The Communism of Capital, or, the cooperative nature of cognitive capitalism.. 30 3.1.C. The Hacker Ethic or ‘work as play’....................................................................... 33 3.2 Explaining the Emergence of P2P Economics........................................................... 35 3.2.A. Advantages of the free software/open sources production model......................... 35 3.3 Placing the P2P Era in an evolutionary framework ................................................... 40 3.3.A. The evolution of cooperation: from neutrality to synergetics ............................... 40 3.3.B. The Evolution of Collective Intelligence............................................................... 42 3.3.C. Beyond Formalization, Institutionalization, Commodification............................. 46 3.3.D. The Evolution of Temporality: towards an Integral Time .................................... 49 3.4 Placing P2P in an intersubjective typology................................................................ 51 3.4.A. P2P, The Gift Economy and Communal Shareholding......................................... 51 3.4.B. P2P and the Market................................................................................................ 55 3.4.C. P2P and the Commons........................................................................................... 56 3.4.D. Who rules? Cognitive capitalists, the vectoral class, or netocrats?....................... 59 3.4.E. The emergence of a netarchy................................................................................. 60 4. P2P in the Political Sphere............................................................................................... 63 4.1.A. The Alterglobalisation Movement......................................................................... 63 4.1.B. The ‘Coordination’ format..................................................................................... 64 4.1.C. New conceptions of social and political struggle .................................................. 65 4.1.D. New lines of contention: Information Commons vs. New Enclosures ................. 67 4.2.A. De-Monopolization of Power................................................................................ 69 4.2.B. Equality, Hierarchy, Freedom ............................................................................... 71 4.3. Evolutionary Conceptions of Power and Hierarchy.................................................. 73 5. The Discovery of P2P principles in the Cosmic Sphere .................................................. 77 6. P2P in the Sphere of Culture and Self.............................................................................. 80 6.1.A. A new articulation between the individual and the collective............................... 80 6.1.B. Towards ‘contributory’ dialogues of civilizations and religions........................... 82 6.1.C. Participative Spirituality and the Critique of Spiritual Authoritarianism.............. 83 6.1.D. Partnering with nature and the cosmos.................................................................. 84 7. P2P and Social Change .................................................................................................... 86 7.1.A. Marginal trend or premise of new civilization? .................................................... 86 7.1.B. P2P, Postmodernity, Cognitive Capitalism: within and beyond ........................... 89 7.1.C. Three scenarios of co-existence............................................................................. 91 7.1.D. Possible political strategies ................................................................................... 93 Appendix 1. Launch of The Foundation for P2P Alternatives............................................. 95 Appendix 2: The P2P Meme Map........................................................................................ 96 Appendix 3: Reactions to the Essay: Kudo's........................................................................ 99 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 102 0. Executive Summary 2 Peer to Peer is mostly known to technologically-oriented people as P2P, the decentralized form of putting computers together for different kind of cooperative endeavours, such as filesharing and music distribution. But this is only a small example of what P2P is: it's in fact a template of human relationships, a "relational dynamic" which is springing up throughout the social fields. The aim of this essay is to describe and explain the emergence of this dynamic as it occurs, and to place it in an evolutionary framework of the evolution of modes of civilization. We emit the hypothesis that it both the necessary infrastructure of the current phase of 'cognitive capitalism', but at the same time, significantly transcends it thus pointing out the possibility of a new social formation that would be based on it in an even more intense manner. In section one, you will find an initial definition, an explanation of our methodology for research, and some acknowledgements. The structure of the sections consists of 3 parts: a phenomenological description of the emergence of this social form in a particular field, an explanation of this emergence based on the relative advantages of the format, and a discussion of the succession of different phases in the evolution of this sphere. After a first initial definition of the peer to peer format, we start describing the emergence of P2P as the dominant mode, or 'form', of our current technological infrastructure (section two), as an alternative information and communication infrastructure, and as a global platform for potentially autonomous cooperation on the basis of rapidly evolving forms of 'social