LITMIR.BIZ

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Compared to vulnerabilities inherent in a centralized Internet design, mesh networks are disaster proof – whether the disaster is caused by a totalitarian government cutting off Internet access, or by a hurricane. Ideology also drives the current resurgence in mesh networks. Many CWN participants value the possibilities associated with sharing resources and deciding for themselves how – and where – to deploy Internet infrastructure. Rather than rely on Internet service providers, peer networks represent a bottom‐up scheme of governance open to anyone with a desire to contribute. This chapter also examines how these projects serve as a testbed for related technologies, such as FreedomBox’s secure software. The case studies highlighted in this chapter suggest that developing open source applications, infrastructure, and platforms – on which competitive providers may offer content and services – is as important to community wireless projects as connectivity itself.

      20 Commoning the Urban

       Nicholas Anastasopoulos

      This chapter seeks to illuminate facets of the urbanized world that most of humanity now lives in, as an introduction to the alternatives that may have existed for the longest time or are being created as we speak. The urban commons are examined as a distinct domain, a category of their own, taking into account cultural traditions and commoning activities in an urban context. Their production, political nature and cultural identity, the dilemmas involving their governance, as well as current trends regarding the impact of creative practices, architecture and of digital worlds are also examined, and a variety of case studies serves as a reference to these topics.

Part V Conflicts: Peer Production and the World

      21 Peer Production and Social Change

       Mathieu O’Neil & Sébastien Broca

This chapter examines the claim that peer producers can meaningfully oppose the social harms of neoliberal capitalism and the democratic failures of the state in liberal democracies. We distinguish “political” actions from “economic” ones, as separating terms enables a clearer delineation of recurrent tensions between social change today and tomorrow, between grassroots activism and electoral politics, between the commons for capital and the commons as the “germ” form for a post‐capitalist society. We critically engage with this radical vision, as peer production projects are often absorbed within neoliberal digital capitalism: what if the commons now enable the metastasizing of a capitalism beyond the commodity form into the heart of peer production projects? Inside some free and open source projects, financial rewards are rejected on the grounds that they might distort the self‐directed means of determining the relative value of project goals. Not only does this rejection reproduce class and gender inequalities, it also hinders the evolution of the commons into a sustainable mode of production. We conclude that the capacity of peer production principles to inform a believable alternative depends on peer producers’ capacity to make the commons economy more connected to wider society and more robust, challenging the structural imbalance between what digital capitalism obtains from the commons and what it gives back.

      22 Peer Production and Collective Action

       Stefania Milan

      Over the last three decades, social movements around the world have embraced peer‐production principles such as collaboration, co‐production, and self‐organization. From Anonymous to the Spanish 15M movement, from the global #Occupy mobilization to the ultra‐conservative Alt‐Right, peer‐production mechanisms have empowered movements to generate models of organizing for ensuing protests to appropriate. They have been used to create shared normative references and collective action frames, outreach to novel audiences, and mobilize other like‐minded individuals. This chapter investigates the consequences of peer production for social protest, looking at how peer‐production reshuffles social change activism today and exploring the convergences and tensions between peer networks and social movements. First, the chapter traces the historical trajectory of peer production, linking distinct approaches to organizing to technological innovation. Second, it reflects on the social affordances of digital infrastructure and their role in fostering specific modes of creativity. Third, it explores three consequences of peer production for social movements: cultural production and norm change, collective identity, and the commons. It finally examines three tensions that might emerge while embedding peer‐production mechanisms and values in collective action: individual vs. collective engagements, peer networks vs. social movement organizations, and self‐organized vs. commercial infrastructure.

      23 Feminist Peer Production

       Sophie Toupin

      Feminist(s) have not only criticized certain aspects of peer‐production practices, but have come to “do” feminist peer production. This chapter examines the feminist criticisms of peer production, which they argue has rendered invisible the analytical categories of gender and race. It then focuses on new practices that have emerged out of feminist peer‐production sensibilities, practices grounded in feminist objectivity and which reflect specific socio‐technical realities.

      24 Postcolonial Peer Production

       Maitrayee Deka

What are postcolonial peer‐production practices? This chapter aims to answer this question by examining the ways in which postcolonial peer production has emerged as a way to provincialize the dominant Euro‐American versions. The proposition that imagines the West as the unique origin of peer‐production practices is disrupted in this chapter, which traces the histories of peer production in postcolonial contexts and highlights their main characteristics. The main focus of the chapter is to centralize embodied knowledge systems and ad hoc techno‐social assemblages that form a large part of creative and productive practices in the Global South. By highlighting popular bases of knowledge creation, one diverts attention from the dominant Euro‐American peer communities in their reliance on creative figures onto a more chaotic universe of creative practices.

      25 Gaps in Peer Design

       Francesca Musiani

      From a technical standpoint, systems based on peer design are often deemed to be superior to proprietary and more centralized systems, because they value long‐term robustness over cost‐effective commercial expedience. Yet, in several cases, peer projects are unable to compete with proprietary systems. A number of factors may be the cause of this phenomenon, including the difficulty in providing proper quality of service in the early phases of a system that relies exclusively on users’ contributions; the volunteer development model, which oftentimes lacks incentives for performing routine albeit necessary tasks; the difficulty in equaling user‐friendly, sometimes non‐technical aspects of proprietary systems, such as attractive and comfortable design; or finding a straightforward business model that can successfully be associated with decentralization. Drawing on two case studies, this chapter addresses the issue of the “gaps” in peer‐based design of the technical architecture of Internet‐based services; although net architecture will be our primary focus, we will see how dynamics of motivation/incentives to participate in peer‐based systems and their attractiveness/usability are fundamentally linked to the constraints and opportunities of different architectural designs. Indeed, the chapter shows how these gaps are grounded in a mix of technical, social, and economic factors, and contributes to explain why, while user‐controlled, peer‐based decentralized alternatives to Internet‐based services have been regularly put forward in preference to Internet giants, their developers have found it challenging to compete with proprietary market leaders.

      26 Makerspaces and Peer Production: Spaces of Possibility, Tension, Post‐Automation, or Liberation?

       Kat Braybrooke & Adrian Smith

      Makerspaces are open community workshops for peer production

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