P2P is a specific form of relational dynamic, based on the assumed equipotency[2] of its participants, organized through the free cooperation of equals in view of the performance of a common task, for the creation of a common good, with forms of decision making and autonomy that are widely distributed throughout the network.
There are several fundamental aspects of social P2P processes:
Characteristics[edit]
Many of the characteristics of P2P processes emerged in the open source movement.
P2P processes are not structureless but are characterized by dynamic and changing structures that adapt themselves to phase changes. We can describe this by invoking self organization. Stigmergy is also cited by some practitioners in P2P as their principal mode of coordination, as an alternative to planning (see more on the Open value network model).
Its rules are not derived from authority, as in hierarchical systems. It does not deny ‘authority’, but only fixed forced hierarchy, and therefore accepts forms of influence that based on expertise, initiation of the project, etc.[4] P2P may be the first true meritocracy.
P2P eliminates most, if not all, barriers to entry. It is assumed that ‘anybody’ can contribute and does not use formal rules in advance to determine its participating agents. The threshold for participation is kept as low as possible, to being permissionless at the extreme, for example in mining for the Bitcoin network or in opening a wallet and perform transactions on the same network. Participants are expected to self-select the module that corresponds best to their expertise. Equipotency means that it is the immediate practice of collaboration which determines the expertise and level of participation. Validation of knowledge, acceptance of processes, are determined by the collective through the use of digital rules which are, in some cases, embedded in the project's basic protocol.
Communication is not top-down and based on strictly defined reporting rules, but feedback is systemic, integrated into the protocol of the collaborative system. Techniques of 'participation capture' and other social accounting make automatic collaboration the default scheme of the project. Personal identity becomes partly generated by the contribution to the common project. P2P characteristics have been studied by Howard Rheingold et al.'s Cooperation Project.[5]
The organizational topology in P2P is a network, not a linear or 'pyramidal' hierarchy (though it may have transient elements of it); it is 'distributed' or 'decentralized'; intelligence is not located at any center, but everywhere within the system.
P2P processes start from the premise that ‘we don't know where the needed resource will be located’. Thus, most processes are crowdsourced.
Collaboration must be free, not forced, and not based on an exchange (i.e. time vs money).
These P2P interactions are geared to produce something, enabling the widest possible participation.
Whereas participants in hierarchical systems are subject to the panoptism of the select few who control the vast majority, in P2P systems, participants have access to holoptism, the ability for any participant to see the whole.
These are a number of characteristics that we can use to describe P2P systems ‘in general’, and in particular as it emerges in the human lifeworld.
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In the economy[edit]
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Capitalism[edit]
There are two important aspects to the emergence of P2P in the economic sphere. On the one hand, as a format for peer production processes, it is emerging as a 'third mode of production' based on the cooperation of autonomous agents. Indeed, if the first mode of production was laissez-faire based capitalism, and the second mode was the model of a centrally-planned economy, then the third mode does not use market and pricing mechanisms, or managerial commands, but instead uses social relations and socially-defined goals, motivations and incentives.
As a new mode of production, peer production is still largely dependent on the mainstream economy to reproduce itself. Recently, with the advent of web 3.0 and Web3 we are seeing breakthroughs in developing its own incentive mechanisms, using various coins and tokens, showing promising signs of bootstrapping itself as an independent and self-sufficient mode of production. As the influence of P2P grows larger, hybrid models have started to emerge. At play are coaptation attempts from institutions that subscribe to both, socialism and capitalism ideologies. For example, initiatives like The Network State, which coming out of the Silicon Valley, are the adaptation of Platform capitalism (itself an adaptation of Capitalism to new capabilities introduced by Web 2.0) to newer capabilities introduced by Web3. On the other side of the spectrum we find the Coordi-Nation as an adaptation from Platform Cooperative, as proposed by Primavera De Filippi and others.
Peer production has become a significant part of the mainstream economy, even if it is not much advertised as such in mainstream economic literature.[6] As such and despite significant differences, P2P and the capitalist market are highly interconnected and interdependent. Peer production produces use-value through mostly immaterial production. In the early stages, up until the creation of The DAO in 2016, which marks a turning point in P2P for building its own bootstrapping mechanisms, peer production could not directly provide an income for its producers. Participants could not live from peer production, though they were deriving meaning and other types of benefits from it.[6] Today, with the development of DAOs and OVNs an increasing number of individuals can sustain their lives directly from their engagement in P2P projects and ventures (see also Sensorica).
The market and capitalism are also dependent on P2P. Capitalism has become a system relying on distributed networks, in particular on the P2P infrastructure in computing and communication.
Moreover, practices that have been developed within P2P networks have been adopted by private and public institutions, to the extent that capitalism has become highly reliant on cooperative teamwork. See for example agile development and extreme manufacturing, influenced by open source development. Other examples of partial implementations of P2P practices by for-profit enterprises are various forms of crowdsourcing or user-generated data or content. For instance, Amazon built itself around user reviews,, while eBay lives on a platform of worldwide distributed auctions, and Google is constituted by user-generated content.
The support given by major IT companies to open-source development is a testimony to the use derived from even the new P2P property regimes (digital commons in this case).
Thus, production today is no longer confined to the enterprise, but beholden to the mass intellectuality of knowledge workers, who through their lifelong learning/experiencing and systemic connectivity, constantly innovate within and without the enterprise.[6] See also Verna Allee and the value network concept.
One hybrid business model is that businesses use the P2P infrastructure (the Internet for example, or even their computing cloud which may run on Linux, an operating system issued from peer production), and create a surplus value through services, which can be packaged for exchange value.
Another hybrid model is the creation of two-sided markets. One form of this was improperly called the "sharing economy",[7] also termed "access economy" or "peer exchange economy."[8]. More properly speaking, this is better described as a "micro-services economy", instantiated by businesses like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb, which are proprietary platforms that mediate coordination among people who can engage in transactions. This new practice is also called Platform Capitalism, or the adaptation of Capitalism to the new possibilities introduced by web 2.0, in which the firm doesn't own the means of production and doesn't even engage in production, but coordinates a network of producers and consumers. In this context peer production is contained within a private domain (a proprietary platform for coordination) and subject to with will of whose who control the platform. The Platform Coop arrangement also exists, where the platform that insures the coordination among producers and consumers is owned by a cooperative with a more democratic governance. The P2P movement proposes fully decentralized alternatives of these type of economic coordination systems, where the platform is in the hands of participants, like in the Bitcoin network.
Peer-to-peer systems contribute to more specific forms of distributed capitalism. The massive use of open source software in business, enthusiastically supported by venture capital and large IT companies such as IBM, is creating a distributed software platform that will drastically undercut the monopolistic rents enjoyed by companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, while Skype and VoIP have drastically redistributed the telecom infrastructure. It also points to a new business model that is 'beyond' products, focusing instead on services associated with the nominally free FS/OS software model.
Industries are gradually transforming themselves to incorporate user-generated innovation, and new desintermediation has occurred around user-generated media. Many knowledge workers are choosing non-corporate paths and becoming mini-entrepreneurs, relying on an increasingly sophisticated participatory infrastructure, a kind of digital corporate commons.[6]
Market economy[edit]
Social P2P systems are different from market economy:[6] neither market pricing nor managerial command are required for P2P processes to make decisions regarding the allocation of resources. There are further differences:
In politics[edit]
Governance[edit]
Governments of countries are composed of a specialized and privileged body of individuals, who monopolize political decision-making. Their function is to enforce existing laws, legislate new ones, and arbitrate conflicts via their monopoly on violence. Legislation can be open to the general citizenry through open source governance, allowing policy development to benefit from the collected wisdom of the people as a whole.
Michel Bauwens has stated, that current society is not a peer group with an a priori consensus, but rather a decentralized structure of competing groups and representative democracy, and as such it cannot be replaced entirely by peer governance.[9] In a recent Substack post [10] Michel Bauwens reiterates his idea of the Magisteria of the Commons
The following is a list of individuals who have made contributions to the peer-to-peer paradigm.
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