When I first read the assignment for this week’s blog, I said to myself, as did probably a lot of you, WTF!!!!!! What is this? What is Commons-Based Peer Production? It must not be that important if I have never heard of it before! Well, I was wrong! To explain it down simply Yochai Benkler states; “Peer production is production that harnesses the creative energies of many self-selecting participants without any financial compensation and lacking a formal managerial structure”. Examples of this would be GNU/Linux, Apache, Perl, SETI@home, NASA Clickworkers, Wikipedia, Slashdot.
So the answer to the question is why not! I believe that as long as there is a platform provided and people sharing a common interest or goal, products or services can and will be generated with Commons-Based Peer Production methodologies. It is already being done today at a rate that is changing the way the world and how corporations and society are operating. As long as people are willing to donate their own time and effort to, what they believe is justified, than the possibilities are endless. Think of this scenario, do you remember when the millionaire Steve Fossett’s airplane went missing a few years ago? People, in their spare time and working towards a general cause, used Google Earth to search the Nevada Dessert in hopes to find the plane wreckage and if they found something suspicious they were suppose to flag it. The response was massive and the wreckage of the plane was found.
People are using Commons-Based Peer Production to help make the world and society a better place. What is good for you and I may not be good for the pocket books of some companies though. Some of the products and services that have been generated now are threatening some of the Market-based, decentralized systems. Take Skype for example, how much money do you think is being taken away from telephone companies’ bottom-line every year when people choose to use Skype and talk long distance and/or overseas? I would say millions! But, as long as Commons-Based Peer Production is free for its users and for its makers, society today will continue to evolve at the rapid rate that it is today. Who knows maybe you and I can help develop the next technological advance.
These are the following resources that I found helpful in explaining Commons-Based Peer Production.
