We’re a peer production club.
We build socially useful stuff in the new context of economic democracy, made possible by crowd funding, ubiquitous networks and the maker movement’s evolution of the design commons from software to hardware (from bits to atoms).
Wow, that’s a mouthful!
Let’s unpack it a bit:
- Peer production. The original form of work: doing useful stuff together, cooperatively. That’s how we created language, science and engineering.
- Economic democracy. If we’re lucky, we live in political democracies – but the corporations dominate the economy and just want to sell cars and carbon to passive consumers doing McJobs on zero hours contracts%footnote(Not their fault: to make a profit in a competitive market means sacrificing just about everything else.) To make democracy work we have to control production, not just a few clowns in Westminster or Washington.
- Crowd funding. The democratic alternative to venture capital. The market is efficient, but only at maximising share-holder value – no matter if it means making everything in China and shipping it half way around the world. Crowd funding short-circuits the market-based venture-vulture route to producing stuff, with the added bonus that backers join projects (rather than consumers responding to advertising).
- Maker culture. Us two-legged animals are uniquely creative in generating the conditions of our existence. Maker culture celebrates human creativity and sharing in order to build useful stuff.
- The commons. Copyright and patents started as a means to reward invention. They have become the way that greasy Hollywood investors punish people for watching TV the wrong way. As social animals, our most successful strategies are the most social – creative commons, open source and peer production are a way to reclaim our social nature and share the miracles of technology for the good of all.
- From bits to atoms. If the last 20 years were about the web, then the next 20 will be about making. Why? Ubiquitous connectivity and decentralised production in the virtual world have made revolutions in creating, sharing and consuming on-line. Now the same changes are starting in the world of manufacturing, and the consequences are likely to be massive.
Crowds work. Want to join? You’re invited!